"When in Bali!"

I apologize that this post, specifically going to be about our trip to Bali, is coming a week after getting back into Perth.  As of last Monday, official classes have only 5 weeks remaining, and it's getting into "crunch mode", if you will.  Essays are being due, and projects are starting to get underway.  I had one 2,000 word essay due on Friday (the 6th) and another 1,500 words due tomorrow (the 9th), both of which I mistakenly began after our Bali trip.  Luckily, both are done and I have just one essay and one large report due the last week of classes (May 30th).  After that week hits, we actually get a full week off for study, followed by two weeks worth of exams.  I only have three exams, but it's so strange having an entire week to prepare, unlike U of I that gives you the notorious "Reading Day" before exams.  I suppose that's what happens when your finals are worth 50% of your entire classroom grade... :(

BUT, back to the important stuff!  I have a feeling this post is going to be long, as I haven't really been updating this blog about my reactions to what I've been doing in a while.  With this being said, Bali was...interesting...and my expectations were definitely higher than what actually occurred on this trip.  Don't get my wrong, it was a life/cultural/necessary experience that I don't regret at all, but if someone asked me if Bali was the "it" vacation spot to visit, I'd have to disagree.  Let's start from the beginning:

Sunday (Easter Sunday):  After an amazing weekend in Margaret River, we all returned back to Currie Hall pretty exhausted.  We got in around 4PM, and our flight out of Perth International wasn't until 2:40 that following morning.  I ate dinner, did some laundry, and packed a little bit before getting to the airport.  There were 10 of us that went, and luckily we made it there with plenty of time to spare, because apparently Air Asia wanted our 'printed' itineraries upon receiving our boarding passes.  None of us did this (seeing that printing anything around here is A) A challenge and B) Expensive).  So, this information desk attendee had to then hand write all of our itineraries.  I was first in line for this little escapade, and the line behind us definitely grew for this reason...since when is it not acceptable to merely have your passport?  This attendee was not happy by the end, but regardless, a funny story.

Monday:  We arrived in Bali after a 3 hour, 40 minute flight at around 6AM.  Sleeping on the plane was an epic fail (I had 3 seats to myself and tried laying down on all three.  Did I ever mention how much I enjoy being 5'10"...?!).  We were all wiped at this point, and were pretty angry that we had to pay a $25 visa fee for entering into Indonesia.  Lame.  We finally make it outside and are hit with an epic amount of humidity.  I complained about Australia being hot in February, but this heat was just plain sticky.  I felt gross after the plane ride, and even more disgusting after being outside.  It was about 6:30AM by this point, and we found two taxis to take us to our hotel.  Another thing about Bali:  EVERYTHING is about bargaining, and people will ask you for "transport?! transport?!" just about any time you walk outside.  We didn't realize then that you have to find 'proper' taxis that have a meter inside to accurately add up your fare.  Mistake #1 made and we each paid about 30,000 rupiah (weirdest currency system everrr) for the taxi.  In all actuality, we should have paid about 30,000 total for the entire ride.  Woops!

We get to our hotel, which was down a shady ally, but actually was really nice.  Minus smelling of random sewage at times.  Plopped down our bags and headed out to find breakfast, as we weren't allowed to check into our rooms until 2PM.  We walked along the beach, which was less than incredible.  I have become absolutely spoiled with Perth beaches (which are practically spotless of any trash), and was disappointed upon seeing the Indian Ocean in Bali.  Maybe it was just tiredness and crankiness taking over at this point.  Luckily, we found a great little breakfast place and each ate 2 rounds of meals (consisting of mi goreng, which is hugely popular in Australia, as it is an Indonesian food).  Mi goreng is the equivalent of America's Ramen Noodles (only not Japanese obviously).  You can buy packets of these things in stores here (in Perth) for about 30 cents each.  They're delicious, but even more so when you get the real version.  Props to Bali for having amazing, and CHEAP food (but then again, just about everything was dirt cheap our entire trip).  Sidenote:  3 of the 10 of us fell asleep at the breakfast table, myself included.

We continued the day (after slapping ourselves once or twice to stay awake) with some shopping down the vendor streets.  The streets in Bali are jam-packed with little market shops, all trying to sell you cheaper versions of real things (fake Gucci purses, fake Calvin Klein perfume).  We bought a few things, including two pairs of sunglasses and a $10 bottle of perfume that would have normally cost me about $120 in the US.  WIN.  We checked into our hotel finally, sat by the pool and had a drink (swim up bar!), crashed for nap time, and went to dinner later.  Where did we go while in Indonesia?  An Italian restaurant of course.  I was hesitant to say yes to eating food I could have gotten in America, but I was wrong.  Oh so wrong.  This food was easily the best I've eaten during my entire time abroad.  Salad, calzone, and a beer ('Bintang' is the locally brewed beer of Bali, and we all made a pact to pretty much drink one every night at dinner).  I am not a beer fan (or drinking while eating fan) in general, but when in Rome (Bali?!) !!

Tuesday:  On Monday, we booked a group trip to get a tour around some of the more attractive (?!) and scenic parts of Bali, and this was easily the most exciting day for us.  We woke up early, got the complimentary breakfast at the hotel (which was actually reallllllly good), and all hopped onto this little bus (one of those creepy white busses that you would never willingly climb into on your own...).  The ten of us each paid AU $50 for this day, which began at 8:30AM and ended around 9PM.  First off, our tour guide was local, and had some insanely long name that he told us, but seeing that none of us would be able to bet our lives on being able to pronounce this, he told us to call him "Car".  Car was theeee coolest; basically a walking encyclopedia on Balinese culture and lifestyle, and his English was great.

We started off at a traditional Balinese dance performance (which had other tour groups there as well).  We went to a temple later on, stopped by a few artisans (painter, wood sculptor, jewelry maker) before lunch.  The idea behind this, at least in my opinion, is to promote tourists in buying merchandise.  You could actually see the artists making their items, and it was really neat.  I bought a really pretty (but small) painting that morning, and only paid about $10 for it.  Again, shocking how cheap everything is.  We then got back into the shady-looking van and made our way a higher point on the island and ate lunch next to an active volcano!  The scenery here was unreal.  The volcano itself is still active and the last time it erupted was in the 1960's.  You could actually see where the lava had fallen at this time from the restaurant we ate it.  The food may not have actually been as great as we thought later on, but given that we were all starving, we ate like kings.  I still thought it was good... :)  After lunch, I experienced something that I never thought I would experience in my life.  There was another farm area that we visited (all of the things we stopped at were pretty good distances from one another and some had pretty lengthy car...er...bus...rides).  This farm grew coffee beans...but not just ANY coffee beans.  They grew beans, that they then feed to cats, that further ferment the beans in their stomachs, and finally defecate them to be cleaned by the farmers.  WEIRD, so much so I can't help but laugh at myself typing this.  Of course we had to try this coffee, and although it's considered expensive in Balinese culture, we all split one cup and each had about 2 sips.  Yes, I drank "poop" coffee.  Check THAT one off the bucket list.  If that wasn't weird, we then visited this random "park" area that had monkeys.  Oh, we're not talking caged monkeys...we're talking wild monkeys, just hanging out, walking past your legs and what not.  I know I want to be a vet, but this was just too strange for me to comprehend.  There was a woman selling bananas for you to hand FEED these monkeys.  Funniest part?  One of the Currie guys had a monkey jump on his back and pee down his shirt.  "MTV's True Life: I've been peed on by a wild animal" ?!  Hilarious.

After encountering this bizarre and fascinating place, we took a longer trip to dinner, which was a seafood place located on the coast.  We were all tired after a long day, and given that I unfortunately am not a fish person, I ate rice and vegetables.  You win some, you lose some.  After all of this, we had a long drive home (still with Car the tour man), but we all managed to play the song-game straight for about 45 minutes.  This game is normally played in a drinking setting, and the object of the game is that person #1 begins singing a song, everyone chimes in, and they randomly stop and call another person's name, who then has to start another song on the spot without pausing (the pause would cause the person to normally take a sip of beer/mixed drink/what have you), but seeing we were in a van, we made do.  I have never been able to play this game this long, and it was definitely one of those 'bonding' experiences that you have to just look back on and smile.

Somehow, our wheels were still turning and we managed to go out to some nightclubs that night.  Legian Street is the "party scene" of Bali (also where the Bali bombings happened within the past decade).  It was a great and entertaining night, one that lasted until about 3AM.  The drinks were extremely cheap compared to Perth bars, and even in comparison to those in America.

Wednesday:  Wednesday was a much more laid back day, and even maybe a wasted day in a sense, but we were all pretty hungover from the previous night.  I woke up for the hotel breakfast, that I went to alone, and then crashed again after this.  My roommate and I then had to get our room switched (seeing that our current one was smelling horribly of sewage).  After this was taken care of, we headed to a local place for lunch and ate some more great Indonesian food (spring rolls, fried rice, and cashew chicken.  YUM)!!  The rest of the afternoon was spent sorta just hanging around, doing a little shopping, and taking a nap by the pool.  I guess you just have to do that sometimes on vacation!  I was not happy about how the evening panned out, as our intelligent group somehow thought it'd be a great idea to eat McDonald's for dinner, not that we can't eat this SPLENDID food in Australia/anywhere else in the world.  After my bit of complaining, we headed back to the hotel, contemplated going out, decided against it, and watched "The Blind Side" in our room.  Overall, a chill/uneventful night.

Thursday:  The day before we also booked a snorkeling/diving trip at Padang Bay.  2 of the 10 of us had diving certifications, but the rest of us just went snorkeling.  I unfortunately wasn't able to get certified thanks to good ol' Type 1 Diabetes.  If I were to have a low glucose level underwater, odds are, I wouldn't be in a very good situation, and my physician frowned upon it.  But, we hopped on another bus that picked us up from the hotel and took about an hour and a half car ride to the beach we'd be snorkeling at.  One of the more humorous parts about this day was this van driver's playlist, consisting of "The Club Can't Even Handle Me" being played over...and over...and over...along with every other hip hop/hardcore R&B song you could think of.  Officially a new Currie Hall joke.  The snorkeling itself was gorgeous, and the fish were beautiful, and some of the reefs were actually quite close to the surface, so it was great to see some of these up close.  Unfortunately, the water was not entirely that clean, and there was some trash here and there.  I'm not saying we had to dive through layers of garbage to see the fish, but there was the occasional wrapper here and there to swim around.  Again, Perth has spoiled me rotten with my opinion of beaches, but we did this for about 2 hours, all managing to get ridiculously sunburned backs, and later headed back to the dive center for lunch.  Again, we ate Indonesian food (similar to what you'd think of with Chinese food).  The traffic on the way back to the hotel was brutal, and we again were subjected to Flo Rida...on repeat.

We cleaned up for dinner and made reservations at a Cuban restaurant that night.  I didn't think the food could get better than the Italian we ate on our first evening, but this was incredible.  The food we eat at Currie Hall is quite possibly the worst dorm food a student could ever have to endure (not to mention extremely unhealthy...I miss egg whites and salads...), so the fact that we were able to eat authentic burritos and fajitas for a night was a real treat.  We made our way to some of the same clubs we visited on Tuesday night.  About half of the group drank a little too much and got a little too rowdy, but the rest of us, myself included, decided to call it an early night (early being 1AM) and head back to the hotel.  It was a good day, finished off with a good night.  Success!

Friday:  Friday was another laid back day.  I again went to breakfast alone (due to the remainder of us being a little too hungover...), and just hung out by the pool until lunch time.  I showered, packed up my bags (left my swim suit in the hotel...sad moment when I realized that happened!), and the entire group of us headed to the same place for lunch that we went the first morning for breakfast.  Sorta a last celebration of our exciting trip in Bali.  I ate a burger (yes, I AM a typical American) and was pleasantly satisfied afterwards.  I did a little more shopping afterwards with the girls (6 girls and 4 guys went), getting in our last bargains, and planned on taking a cab back to the hotel to grab our bags around 3:30PM for our 7PM flight.  Stupidly, we didn't take into account traffic and had to have the guys grab 10 people's luggage and shove it into some taxis and meet us at the airport.  After all was settled, we managed to get home in one piece.

Sidenotes (?!):  Notice how I used 'home' in that last sentence.  By the end of the Bali trip, which I certainly enjoyed, I had that "I'm sick of being on vacation feel" and just wanted to curl up in my Currie bed.  I take for granted how much I really do enjoy the city of Perth; Perth is clean, Perth is busy but not too busy, Perth is friendly, and Perth has become home.  I know I will continue to miss Mokena or being able to sing Illinois' Alma Mater on my way to a Saturday morning football game until my departure date in June, but I'm finally realizing that the 'reverse culture shock' is going to happen when I set foot in Chicago.  The friends I've made here, and connections I've made with these people (Australians, Irish, Scots, Canadians, and other Americans) are stronger after 3 months than some of the friendships I've had with people at home for years.  It's a strange feeling knowing that I won't have the same 'inside jokes' with my friends from U of I, and they'll probably tell me to pipe down about trying to share the amazing abroad stories.  It's hard to explain, but I'm finally starting to fully appreciate this incredible opportunity that is study abroad.


PHEW.  That was long, and again, I'm sorry this is coming so late!  I will post pictures at a later date, as it takes a bit of time to make a decent video, but it is obviously the best way to share photos.  Unfortunately, that thing called schoolwork is starting to consume more and more time, but it'll come, I promise!  Until next time!