October 7, 2008
Well, I went to Bali, Indonesia. I loved it. It moved me on many levels and now I'm thinking about how I could live my life there, and I'm seriously trying to figure out if I'm just dreaming or if it is a realistic possibility for my future. Let me tell you about my trip!
(This will be the play-by-play version of my trip. If you want the more emotional and meaningful stories, you'll have to ask me later....)

I left my country in Asia at 7pm and traveled by a "sleeper bus" or "hotel bus" to Macau. I haven't traveled on one of these before. I would give it a medium rating for comfort.
   

My friend and I were riding the bus together, and were supposed to arrive in Macau at 8am. We were planning on doing the World's Highest Commercial Bungee Jump off the Macau Tower and then catching our 1:30 flight. Our bus had many unexplainable delays and we didn't end up in Macau until around noon, so from there we just ran to the airport in hopes that we wouldn't miss our flight. Once we got to the airport we met up with one more of our fellow vacationers and flew from Macau to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sweet! When we arrived in Malaysia we hired a shuttle to take us from the airport into downtown KL, which was about an hour and 1/2 away. We checked into our hotel and then explored the downtown area. It was amazing with so many different cultural influences. We had some Starbucks (which would be the first of MANY for me on this vacation) and then ate at an authentic Moroccan restaurant for dinner.
    
   

Each place we traveled had a different currency. The Malaysian currency had some bills with a part that was clear - meaning you could see through it, like a piece of plastic or something.

We then walked around downtown trying to find a place to take our pictures in front of the famous twin towers. It was hard to do because they're so tall and we were way too close. So we got creative with our upward camera angles and did our best.
          

The next morning we drove back to the airport, enjoyed some wonderful coffee, and flew to Bali. We met up with two more friends on this leg of the flight.

When we arrived in Bali we did some quick negotiating with the cab drivers and then piled in a van to head to our "hotel." It was on Sanur Beach and was very peaceful and simple. Grass roofs on our small bungalows, each room had a porch connected to it, the bungalows were all set within a lush garden full of flowers, landscaped ponds, and singing geckos. We were right on the beach. It was perfect and exactly how I always dreamed that a beach vacation should be. We spent a while just taking it all in.
   
Later that afternoon we traveled to Legion Beach area to have dinner at a Greek restaurant. This security guard was protecting something across the street and I just had to take a picture of his Miami Vice styling.

The rest of our group arrived later that evening. In the morning we set off on our first adventure activity; white water rafting. We went into the mountainous jungle of Bali to take our rafting trip. Along the way we passed some good spots to take pictures of the scenery.
    

We got suited up and headed off for a great day of rafting. The water wasn't too high, but the rapids were still big enough to make us work hard and give us a thrill.
   
      

After we finished our rafting trip we hiked up the side of this hill to eat an authentic Indonesian lunch buffet from a spot overlooking the valley. It was great food and a great view.

We got back to our hotel that afternoon and my friends decided to cool off in the ocean. It wasn't really that deep. They just all decided to squat down in the water right before I took their picture. Later that night we got together for our first evening meeting. We met on the beach and spent time singing songs and hearing a good word from our speaker. We all wore our special Bali retreat t-shirts and then took some funny pictures in them later.
   

The next morning several of us got up early to watch the sun rise from our beach. It was so beautiful that I ended up getting up at 5:30am the rest of the week to catch the gorgeous sunrises. It was a perfect peaceful time each morning.
   
  

The next morning we rode back into the mountains and jungles of Bali to go "Extreme Mountain Tubing." I had a general idea of what this would be. I think the rest of our group had no idea. Each time we went into the mountains it took around an hour. The whole way there we played Mafia. There was a couple from Germany in the van with us. I tried to get them to play but I think they were a little weirded out by the Mafia game and how we kept "killing people" and calling each other liars. It was pretty fun.

We arrived at a really rustic base camp where we suited up with our life jackets and helmets and then headed deeper into the jungle to go tubing. Several people in our group saw monkeys in the jungle around us as we set out on our adventure. It was just crazy how remote and raw and wild everything was. There were literally vines hanging down all around us while we were tubing and I kept thinking that if Tarzan was going to swing from some vines; these would be the kind he would swing from. It was beautiful and totally natural.
   
The mountain stream we floated down was so perfectly carved into the canyon that it felt fake. It was TOO perfect. It felt like a ride at Disney World, where the conditions are so ideal that they could never exist in real life. But here we were, floating through the jungle in a mountain stream, in Bali. It was awesome.
   
Once we finished our tubing trip, we hiked up a steep hill and then a jeep met us along the dirt road. There wasn't enough room inside for everyone so some of us rode on the roof.           

We went over to Kuta Beach that night at had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was right on the boardwalk, so we got to see a beautiful sunset. Kuta beach was really crowded and I was glad we were staying on Sanur. I'd keep my peaceful sunrises over the crowded sunsets any day. Dinner was great, but finding a Starbucks around the corner was even better! After our meeting that night we hung out outside my room playing cards and talking.
     
 

More beautiful sunrise pictures to show you:
   
   
  
Our hotel gave us a pretty decent breakfast along with our rooms. Each morning as the sun had finished rising I would take about 5 steps from my seat on the beach to my seat in the beach-side restaurant and have fresh fruit and coffee, along with a selection of other foods for breakfast each morning. I'm telling you, this was a pretty great setup.

On Wednesday our adventure was going SCUBA diving. We went to their office, got fitted with our diving gear and wetsuits, and then went on the boat for about an hour ride to a small island off the southeast coast of Bali. I was the only certified diver in our group, which I was grateful for because I got a free review as they were instructed in diving. The last time I was diving was while I was doing my open water certification in Hawaii 4 years ago, so I definitely needed a refresher course. We did have a couple of girls in our group who never really felt comfortable with the whole "breathing under the ocean" thing, but everyone else loved the whole experience. We were given some brief instructions and then did two dives where we saw amazing coral, tropical fish up the wa-zoo, other strange sea creatures and every kind of plant you can imagine. We also watched each other fall onto the plants, coral, and each other, as well as accidentally floating to the surface several times. I think we had a very successful day of diving with a group of beginners. The water was completely clear and the weather was great all day. This was one of my favorite days of the trip.
I was overwhelmed by the beauty I saw under the ocean. Every time I go diving I am struck with the thought that this is part of the world that wasn't necessarily made for us to see. Dad made a huge part of the world that humans can't experience, and yet He filled it with beautiful that I can hardly believe. It just makes me think how much He loves beauty, and how He has created so many things that human eyes will never see, and yet He made them beautiful for His own enjoyment. And seeing a glimpse of the creation full of color and life and uniqueness that exists in the ocean, I am amazed at the new way that these things can testify about the beauty and glory of the One who created them.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

We didn't get a very long night's sleep after our day of Scuba diving. The next morning we were up and leaving our hotel at 2am. We drove for about 2 hours to get to the base of the active volcano on Bali; Mt.Batur, at 4am. We drank down some coffee and started our hike up the volcano in the very chilly dark. There weren't enough flashlights for everyone and the hike was pretty challenging as the mountain got steeper and steeper. But every single person in our group reached the top before the sun rose at 6:15am. It was well worth the early morning and the strenuous climb once we saw the glory of the sun rising over the island, with the clouds and mist rising off the lake below us. I'll never forget it.
   
      
  
  
  
After spending some time just taking in the view, our guides fixed us breakfast of eggs, Balinese biscuits, water, and more coffee. I'm telling you - it was a perfect morning. When we were ready to move on, we hiked into the crater of the volcano and saw several places where steam was coming up through the ground. We could see down into the crater, but it wasn't like the inside of the mountain at the end of Lord Of The Rings or anything like that. We watched them cook some eggs on the hot steam coming from the ground and after we hiked around the crater rim, we headed back down the volcano. It took another two hours to hike down. When we all finally reached the bottom we were really surprised at the size and steepness of the mountain we had climbed up in the dark.
   
   

We were back down at the base of the volcano by 9am, and then had some vans waiting for us to explore the north side of the island for the rest of the day. It was incredibly beautiful everywhere we drove, but we were all so tired that everyone fell asleep in the vans. We ended up at this small town called Lovina where we stopped for lunch. One of our drivers had grown up there so he took us to this great Indonesian buffet right on the ocean. The food was great and it was very inexpensive - like everything else in Bali.

We decided to revise our sightseeing itinerary for the day, since none of us could stay awake for more than 5 minutes of driving. We headed down to one of the key landmarks in Bali; the Temple on the Lake. It happened to be a religious holiday during the week we were in Bali, so many people had come to offer sacrifices and worship at this temple.
    
  
After we looked around the temple and had a drink of refreshing "Pocari Sweat", one of our vans took a group to head back to the hotel, and the rest of us went off to find some monkeys to play with. We found a ton of them, along with gargantuan bats. A woman selling goods at the place where the monkeys were roaming around became my friend. Her name is Putu. She has a young daughter who's name is Putu number 2.
  
   
        
 

The next morning four of us went down to Uluwatu Beach to pick up some surfing pictures taken of my friend earlier in the week, and to enjoy the beauty of the southern point of Bali island. There were a ton of surfers out that morning and it made me want to become one of them. The water was clear, the waves were perfect (so I was told...) and there was a whole surfing community on this part of the island with its own culture and atmosphere.
   

       

After being amazed by beautiful Uluwatu for a while, we headed over to Kuta beach where we ate at a Mexican restaurant for lunch and the got foot massages before calling it a day.
   

During the week, our evening meetings were definitely one of the most important parts. We had our own tribal counsel thing going on with the torches and the cool beach meeting place. The hotel gave us a great setup and our times of singing together and hearing some messages about the book were unforgettable to me.
If you ever go to Bali, I recomend the LaTaverna hotel.
   
   
On our last night together, our speaker gave us each a small gift as a reminder of a fun memory we had shared during the week. It was customized for each person and it really made our last night a special time.
The next morning a group of 7 of us were all on the same flight from Bali to Malaysia. Once we got to the airport in Malaysia, we had several hours to kill so three of us went to a small town that we'd heard had some good food for lunch. The town ended up being about a half million population, and the good food choices we'd been directed to were in a huge and modern shopping mall. But it was a pleasant surprise and we made the best of it. We ate lunch at the Kenny Rodgers Rotisserie Chicken restaurant, which was great. We took pictures with our waiter and then with the shopping mall security guard because his outfit was pretty cool. Of course I made note of the Starbucks on site.
   

When the three of us returned to the airport to meet back up with our friends we had some bad news waiting for us. Unfortunately we had been a little lazy in noting the details of our travel information and we weren't all on the same flight for the next leg of our journey to Macau. Which meant that a few of us had been scheduled for an earlier flight, which we had missed because of our journey to explore the small towns of Malaysia. So we had to rush to buy new plane tickets (this particular airline does not do refunds or transfers of any sort) so that we could now catch the flight with our other friends into Macau that evening.

 

We crashed with them in their family-style hotel room and after dropping off our stuff, promptly headed out to have dinner at Pizza Hut. Unfortunately we were all very exhausted and it was freezing cold in the Pizza Hut, so we rushed through the meal and then called it a night. 
  
   

The next morning I was up early, full of excitement and expectation. One thing I had really been looking forward to about my trip was the chance to Bungee jump off the Macau Tower. I didn't get to do it on the way to Bali because my bus showed up in Macau so late. I was very excited to make the jump on my way back home. I energized with a great breakfast from Starbucks and then set out to accomplish my dream. Unfortunately a typhoon decided to hit Macau (and other parts of southeast Asia) on that very day.
   
I ended up going to the Macau Tower about 4 separate times that day, constantly checking and hoping that the wind and rain had died down enough that they'd let me bungee jump off the tower. But ultimately it was not to be. At least not for this trip. But I had a great day with my friends as we went back to Starbucks, went to another coffee shop, drove around town looking for movie theaters, and saw some really beautiful parts of the city.
     
    

Later that day, after my friends had boarded a ferry headed for Hong Kong, and I had watched "Eagle Eye" at the movie theater in the Macau Tower, I crossed the border into my country and headed back home. And after a 15 hour bus ride, I arrived.
   

I didn't realize how many currencies I was dealing with on this trip until I cleared out my purse back at home. The strange thing is not the 5 currencies I knew about. The strange thing is where I got this random Hong Kong Dollar. I am fairly certain I didn't go there.......
     

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October 16, 2008
I got home from a trip to Vietnam last week. It was a new experience for me, which is saying something considering the number of new countries I've visited in the past few weeks. But 'Nam was a whole new ball game. It's the first country I've been to that isn't currently involved in massive globalization of its culture. 'Nam doesn't to McDonalds or Starbucks. Some people might be very supportive on those facts, but for me it was kinda disappointing. Mostly because it's nice to stumble across something familiar when you're immersed in a totally foreign culture. None of the friends I traveled with spoke one word of Vietnamese, so we spent our trip holding up our fingers to show numbers when buying or negotiating the price of something. Trying to convey destinations to cab drivers was a very creative endeavor. Here's the sample of one such attempt, which left us all rolling with laughter.

This trip was the "Bon Voyage" for my small crew of American friends that have been my classmates, friends, roommate, and cohorts in this crazy country I now call home. They all move back to the States in about a week. So we journeyed to 'Nam to have one last adventure together. It was quite an adventure.

We crossed the border on foot and things went pretty smoothly. Then we took a hydrofoil (speedboat ferry) down the coast to our first destination city. The only problem was that the 1 1/2 hour journey turned into a 6-plus hour journey as the engine broke on our boat about 10 minutes into the trip. And there was no food or AC on the boat, and it was crowded.
     
     
   
  

We arrived late at night and got checked into a hotel that we all liked quite a bit. They had a great breakfast included with the room. I got up early the next morning because I was longing for more sunrises over the ocean ever since my Bali trip.
        
  
  
  

We booked ourselves passage on a "junk boat" and boarded just in time for lunch. We had an eclectic group of fellow passengers onboard. It was fun getting to know them over the two days we were riding together. Some from England, others were Americans currently living in various places overseas. A fun bunch. And it was a trip to talk with "real Americans" after being removed from our own culture for so long. They were a great sampling of our countrymen, with two Berkeley grads, one of whom was an on-again-off-again vegan Two were female college students from the Midwest spending a semester in Thailand, covered with tattoos and edgy short haircuts. What a great group we all made! Our captain and crew were just as full of personalities and we had a great time together.
  
  
  
  
  
   
  

We drove to this bay with the "Surprise Cave" at the tip. The cave was easily the largest I've ever been inside, and had some significant history that the tour guide was going on and on about... not quite sure... I walked off to take more pictures. When we came out at the top we had an amazing view of the bay full of more tour-boats.
     

  
  
     
  

  

We went kayaking next. It was lots of fun. My kayaking buddy was Julie from New Zealand - originally from California. We had a blast getting to know each other as we rowed around these water-logged mountains and even through a cave to a lake inside one of the islands. Very beautiful. Very amazing. And Julie taught me all about the dangers of people driving cars instead of walking or riding bikes, and the changing trends in public transportation all over the world. I asked her about sky diving and the job economy in New Zealand. We bonded. By the end of our boating trip I decided I'd rather live in Bali.
     

We traveled around many beautiful islands and explore the wonders of Dad's creation, although I'm pretty sure only 4 of us on the boat recognized it for what it was. We put down anchor to have some swimming time. The sun was setting so our time was short but my friends and I got one good jump off the top of the boat before we headed off to a different spot to park with lots of other boats for the night. We enjoyed another great meal and then the crew broke out the Karaoke machine. My friends and I were busy playing Euchre, but we saw that all the other passengers were very uncomfortable with Karaoke so we helped them get the ball rolling and break the ice. We ended up singing loudly and cracking ourselves up for several hours before calling it a night.
   
  
   
     
   

I got up well before sunrise to get a good spot on the top of the boat before the other passengers all crowded up there. I found 3 girls who had decided to sleep up top, which looked so comfortable that I went and brought my bedding up too. The weather was just cool enough to enjoy a light blanket as I watched the sky lighten from the rising son. A crowd of sunrise watchers never showed up, which allowed me to enjoy the peaceful morning and spend time thanking Dad for the amazing moments He surprises me with.
   
  

We traveled through a scattering of islands all morning, had another enjoyable time for swimming and jumping off the boat, and then headed back to the bay to depart. Our time on this boat was definitely the highlight of my time in 'Nam.
  
             
           

We spent the rest of our day exploring the bay and the city nearby. We had fun conversations, a foot massage, and examined a ton of very cheap pearls people were trying to sell us everywhere we looked. Apparently that city is a main producer of pearls. Whatever.    The next morning we boarded a public bus full of locals and headed to the capital of 'Nam. We made up games and asked each other fun questions the whole way there. I'm really going to miss these guys.
     
    
  
     

When we arrived in the capital city we checked into our hotel and explored the "French Quarter" the rest of the evening. There were a surprising amount of small coffee shops and Diet Coke; two things that we rarely see in the country I live in. But for the most part, the area was an overpriced tourist trap, and I was very worn out by the end of the day. I had a wonderful treat when the married couple sang their tribute songs they had written for me as part my prize for winning our weight loss contest a few weeks ago.
      
   
  
       
     

We got up in the morning with a plan to take a bus to the border, cross over, and take a bus back home, arriving later that night. It didn't work out according to plan. We arrived at the bus station just a bit too late to catch the last direct bus to the border, so we took a bus to a different city with a connecting bus. That city ended up being the one we had started out at. And it took us about 5 hours to get there for some reason. Once we arrived we were transferred to another bus on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. That bus took another 4 hours to get us to the border. We arrived just after the border had closed for the night. We caught a hotel and found a KFC knock-off restaurant to have dinner at.

The next morning we finally crossed back into "our" country and then caught the 6-hour bus to get home. It was the first time I felt like I was taking a step UP in familiarity when returning to my country. Compared to 'Nam, I can speak the language, get around and communicate with strangers pretty easily, and understand the culture well enough to move about with confidence. It was really nice to be home.