Tooth Fairy and Auspicious Days

I forgot to write that the Tooth Fairy finally arrived, after a delay of a few days since one of Briana's teeth fell out last week. Let's just say the Tooth Fairy was not well-prepared for a visit to Bali and needed some time to get her act in gear. Luckily Briana expressed her wish for a little model of a cat with wings that she saw in a gift shop. And whaddya-know the tooth fairy delivered the goods. Now that's magic, Paul Daniels.

The Balinese have their own calendar in which a year consists of two cycles of 30 weeks, making a 420-day year. So much for Balinese Astronomy. Mostly this is used for religious purposes and to denote auspicious days for various activities like proposing to a girl or planting rice. Last Wednesday was strongly recommended for castrating an animal. Fortunately or unfortunately none were to hand at the time.

Misc news from Ubud, Bali

Yesterday and Today Gyorgyi is doing a course in "Tantsu". Meanwhile, yesterday the girls and I went to the local Ubud Monkey Forest which is a temple around which large numbers of Macaque monkeys run wild (and steal your food, hats etc). The girls were a little bit scared by the monkeys especially when one started to pull at Briana's skirt, but we spent a while there.

I can manage to do some decent running around here as it is a relatively rural area. I got out at 6 this morning for a long run on a quiet country road through the paddy fields. The highlight was coming round a bend and suddenly seeing a 100+ group of men around the road preparing for some feast (I guess) today (Sunday) - they were cutting coconuts and other foods - including butchering a cow right there on the road surface! So much for hygiene standards...

There is a shop near the hotel setting DVDs for 15000 Rupiah each, that's just over 1 Euro. They have a library including latest movies, US tv series, etc. All region-unlocked, so they say anyway. Of course one doesn't ask where they come from... :-) Unfortunately when in Kuala Lumpur I bought some for twice the price... a whopping 2 Euro!!! Will get some more here though. Of course I know they can be downloaded but at these prices...

We booked our flight to the larger Indonesian island Java for 23 May, which will mean 6 nights there before flying to Hong Kong. The Balians warn us not to expect too much in Java, that it's not nice like Bali. I can anticipate there is a big contrast - Bali has 3.1 million people, Java is a few times larger in terms of land-mass but it has 88 million. Perhaps a very rough analogy would be between Ireland and Britain - imagine meeting a tourist in Galway or Dingle (especially if the sun shined 365 days a year) who says they want to next visit Birmingham or Manchester, you'd probably try to change their minds! Anyway we were planning 9 days on Java in Jogyakarta and Solo but partly because of flight availability and partly because of advise, we will cut that shorter and it will allow us to stay one extra location in Bali which is just fine; Bali is very nice... and inexpensive too.

The girls finished filling up the drawing books we bought so today we bought some new ones, and as I write this they are busy beside me drawing and colouring-in their pictures of balinese dancers, flying ponies, and monkeys.

ATMs

The maximum amount most ATMs in Bali allow to withdraw is half a million Rupiah. That might sound a lot, but it ain't. Half a million works out at just 36 Euro. That gives some idea of the cost of living for the locals here, although it can create a bit of a headache if you want to withdraw enough money to pay hotel bills, otherwise they slap on an extra 3% credit card charge.

The biggest challenge is making mental calculations with an exchange rate of around 14500 Rupiah to a Euro. In the first day or two it's hard to know what you are paying for anything.

Ubud

Yesterday we arrived to an inland town called Ubud. It's a busy little town, with a lot of nice cafes restaurants and boutiques. Not a place with lots of nightlife but still a funky atmosphere.

Although we are staying right in the center our room (bottom half of a bungalow) is very quiet. The only disconcerting thing is that the doors don't really lock securely, because (according to management) they are traditional Balian wooden doors (and indeed they are very exquisitely carved). It's a little unnerving from a security point of view so I put all our valuables in the hotel's safe, not just the passports and tickets which we would routinely put in a safe.

The bungalows have a decent sized pool so the kids are happy. This morning Gyorgyi and the girls went off to see a Botanic gardens -- the highlight are the flesh-eating plants. I passed on that and strolled around.

We plan to be here for 8 nights. Maybe we will leave a day or two earlier and spend time somewhere in the mountains before our next destination on the east coast.

Flights to the island of Java need to be booked for later in May, which is not too easy as the airlines don't do online bookings and mostly need payment in cash. However Ubud has no shortage of travel agents so we should be able to sort it out here I hope. We don't have any accomodation booked there yet either so we might just wing it and find something there on the day.

One of the unusual things on Bali is the local's habit of putting the offerings for the gods lying on the street. These are usually a small decorative arrangement consisting of some kind of foodstuff like rice or ritz crackers. One has to be careful not to step on the things and it isn't always possible. The Lonely Planet guide book says not to worry about stepping on them, just don't aim to do it!

Tomorrow and Sunday Gyorgyi has a course planned, and with the girls I will probably visit the Monkey Sanctuary just down the road, where the monkeys run wild around a temple area. Caution is advised as the monkeys will happily pilfer your food, sunhats, etc.

No swine fever reported here yet, we're geographically about as far from it as we can get so hopefully it blows over before we return.

Now in Bali

First post in a while. During our week in Phuket, I couldn't access blogspot.com from the internet cafes - I suspect it is blocked by ISPs at the request of the government because I found some news reports from a couple of years ago that it was blocked during earlier political unrest. Then during our 6 days in Kuala Lumpur, I couldn't find a single internet cafe around the area we stayed - lots of nice cafes with free wifi but we didn't bring a laptop.

Now we are on Bali and except for truly horrendous traffic (narrow roads, constant stream of motorbikes trucks and cars), it's a beautiful place.

We didn't get too much done in our 6 days in Malaysia because Gyorgyi caught Dengue Fever towards the end of our time in Phuket and spent most of the time in KL in bed recovering or at the hospital for blood tests. (The doc in Phuket diagnosed food poisioning and it wasn't until she had a blood test in Kuala Lumpur that it was properly diagnosed. It is spread by mosquitoes.) Still, could be worse as I see Mexican swine fever is coming to a town near you soon.

That aside, we enjoyed Phuket and Kuala Lumpur. In both places we stayed in upmarket hotels which had kids clubs and so on, elaborate breakfast and dinner buffets, etc. Now we are back to basics, relatively speaking! - in Bali. Kuala Lumpur is truly a shopping paradise and we threw out some old clothes and bought replacements. I got a bunch of counterfeit stuff in the Chinatown.

While in Phuket we did an organized boat trip to Ko Phi Phi where we visited beautiful places but it was like being on a tourist production line - each place we stopped had 20 to 40 speedboats full of tourists pulled up to the beach to see the same thing. The girls liked it because they could swim with some fishes in shallow water and feed some monkeys on a beach but I thought it fairly horrible and will avoid package trips from here on.

Today in Bali I had my first surf lesson... in some quite heavy waves. It was fun although a number of bruises to show. Tomorrow we will tour around the west of Bali a little and then maybe I'll take another lesson the day after.

Gyorgyi still needs a lot of sleep but slowly getting her energy back.

For more news, here's an email I sent to a few people while on Phuket.

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We arrived in Phuket from Koh Samui last Sunday. Again I have to say that the airport in KS is the best I've ever seen. Apart from having a completely open air feeling that is impossible to describe in words so I have to upload some pictures, there was FREE SNACKS AND FRUIT JUICE. Yehayy.

We are staying in a Marriot here in Phuket, having run out of enthusiasm to find somewhere else before leaving Hungary. The room rate of about 80 Euro is not bad considering the relative luxury of the place (3 pools, large exercise room, kids play house, etc), but eating and drinking there is very expensive compared with normal Thai restaurant prices.

The area we are in - Surin Beach - is nice enough but fairly dangerous for swimming - big waves and strong undertow - which led to Gyorgyi putting her back out on Monday and I was lucky the same didn't happen to me. But apparently it's like this everywhere along the east coast at the moment - a bit stormy on some days, with occasionally Thunderstorms (not today luckily when we had a boat trip).

Gyorgyi's had a bad run of luck this week - first a crown fell out, then she hurt her back, and this morning she woke up with upset stomach and possibly fever which led to her missing our trip to "James Bond Island" today. On Tuesday we visited a private hospital's dental clinic and in the end it was decided not to do anything with the tooth because she has no pain, possibly it will have to be removed so better to do that at home in case of any complications. She also got her back checked - only pulled muscle - and got some physio for it and again on Thursday.

While she was at the hospital in Phuket town the girls and I went into the town center to look around. Not an especially interesting place but it gave us a reason to see it. We also visited a butterfly farm on the outskirts of the town after the hospital which was enjoyable.

The highlight of the time here was the Thai New Year's day on Monday - called Songkran. The day is an excuse for massive waterfights, with westerners a prized target. You have to imagine groups on people every few meters on the streets, with water guns and buckets and large barrels full of water, then lots of people in the backs of pickup trucks similarly armed driving around, with everyone throwing water over everyone else. Even motorcyclists get drenched which is pretty dangerous. The fire brigade goes around keeping the barrels filled-up. We armed ourselves with two waterguns the night before and set out in light clothing on Monday morning, actually with the intention of taking a tuktuk to the large Patong town. Well, we gave up on that idea after 50 metres when we were already soaked to the skin. So we just joined one of the groups of Thai people on the street
and spent a happy hour firing water at everyone in sight. This goes on all day but an hour was enough for us.

Our visit to Thailand is almost at an end now. On Sunday we fly to Kuala Lumpur. We've visited Bangkok, Chiang Mai in the north, the eastern islands Koh Samui and Ko Phan Gan and the western island Phuket. It's impossible to make any direct "which we preferred best" comparisons, as the north and the islands are completely different. The islands are heavily tourist-ised leading especially to much higher prices for food, transport etc, and a less natural experience of the real Thailand. On the other hand they are breathtakingly picturesque, and great for snorkelling and diving and boat trips. I'm sure if we came again it would be worthwhile to explore much more of the north, but I'd really want to see more islands too. We had been regretting not visiting Koh Tao which is the next island north of Ko Phan Gan - reason being that many scuba diving sites are around there - however we heard two people tell us that they didn't like it so much - good for diving but otherwise not a great destination. (We got a nice surprise on our last day in Ko Phan Gan when some people from Munich we had met earlier came back from Koh Tao for one last night on Phangan instead - they had changed hotel room 3 times during their stay on Ko Tao it was so noisy at their resort!)

Today we visited the James Bond Island (so nicknamed because it was in two JB films) by longboat. And a couple of other locations in the area. Nice day trip and beautiful scenery but gazillions of tourists. Tomorrow we have a trip planned to Ko Phi Phi and a beach where the fishes swim around you on the beach - good one for the kids we hope.

Must go back now to hotel and check the girls out of the "kids club" before it closes. Gy trying to sleep off her illness in peace and quiet.