Back in Kali
What up kids?
So I am back, got back last Monday and went directly back to work on Tuesday. It was a little ugly, but I am recovered now. I have not blogged because I have a couple of video clips that I wanted to post, but they were taken on my camera in .jpg format. Blogger and Quick Time can't seem to recognize them as anything more than still images. Grr! And the weird thing is, I downloaded a similar video a couple of months ago when I got back from Mexico. I have looked through the code and tried to figure out a way to make it happen, but it seems to be a bit too much for my lacking html skills.
Anyhow, Asia was amazing. I arrived in Hong Kong and felt as if I had never left. There is a certain comfort to HK that I do not exactly understand, but it feels very much like home to me; masses of people, heat, amazing street food, the harsh and frenzied tones of Cantonese, an unbelievable skyline, and one of my favorite airports anywhere. I had booked a hotel in Wan Chai off Priceline that was fine, nothing to brag about. I have yet to find a hotel in HK that really impresses me, but NYC is like that too. Unless you are paying big bucks, most of the rooms are the size of a walk-in closet. On Good Friday, I headed for Shenzhen to do some shopping unaware of two things. 1) Good Friday is still an official holiday in HK, a hold over from the British days. 2) People from the U.S. and the U.K. cannot get day visas at the border anymore. WTF? Apparently around the time of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government decided to make some cash off the gwai-los and require us to get regular tourist visas. So I'm heading for the border with about a half million HK residents who had the same brilliant idea as me to go shopping on the holiday. I exit HK and then am in line for my day visa, only to find out the great news. A nice waste of three hours or so. Still, now I know.
I spent the better part of the weekend in HK, going out on the weekend nights and spending the days either hitting the markets or exploring the city on foot. The bird and flower markets were pretty cool areas to wander through, but you cannot help but feel sorry for the larger birds (like toucans) that they have for sale in these cages that are way too small for them. I had some great dim sum on Sunday near the downtown area. Surprisingly, the standards of har gow and shu mai were kind of unremarkable in flavor; the American versions here in SF are more flavorful. However the fall back dishes of pork ribs and chicken's feet soared over their counterparts. They were not as dense, but the flavors were more complex and the better part of the meal for me. I also went in search of Anthony Bourdain's pork restaurant in the New Territories, but ended up at some beef noodle place he went to instead. It was good, but se no habla ingles. Thankfully the lady I got seated with was helpful and knew several English words including "beef", "noodle", and "rice". Sadly, that was about the extent of it. The waitress brought me what she was having to simplify things. The place had seating for 20 max and the line outside was at least 20 deep.
Because of the holiday weekend, I ended up having to forfeit a night in Singapore. I arrived early Tuesday morning with one day to see what I could of the city. First observation of Singapore - it's hot; really ugly steamy hot. I do not think the weather ever varies there. There are these amazing food stalls everywhere and the food looks great, but who wants to eat when it's scorching hot out and you are soaked in sweat? I made the most of my day there and had some chicken rice as well as did some shopping. I did not want to take a chance on missing my flight to Bali later that night, so I did not attempt anything too adventurous. World famous Changi Airport is definitely one of the world's best airports with free wireless service everywhere, an unbelievable amount of entertainment and food options, and a host of other services like free movie theaters and dry cleaning. I prefer HK, but I am biased and I know it. It is kind of like me and high end retailers like Nordstroms or Neiman Marcus. I am perfectly happy with Macys and Target, thank you. Whenever anyone is really nice to me, I am instantly suspicious.
I hopped a budget airline (Valuair, recently acquired by Jetstar Australia which is partially owned by Qantas) down to Denpasar (Bali). They fly A320s and did a nice service for the cheap fare. I landed in Bali close to midnight and then headed to Ubud which is about half an hour north of the popular resort areas of Kuta Beach. Ubud is a hilly, green area in the center of the island. They are mostly known as a spiritual tourist area; lots of holistic healers, yoga clinics, artists, and celebrations of local culture like nightly religious dances for tourists. I stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast type place that overlooked a river. Every night, I fell asleep to the sounds of the river and the tree frogs. Each morning, breakfast was delivered to my veranda by a smiling member of the staff. Indonesia is just as hot as Singapore was. Even the daily showers do not cool it off much. I was either swimming or showering three times a day. I did a lot of walking and exploring the area on foot. I probably should have rented a moped as riding one of those at least gives you some circulation of air that dries you off after sweating crazy amounts. I did not figure that out until I was ready to leave though. I was kind of scared to join the other thousands of motorbikes on the road, but next time I will go this route.
The countryside surrounding Ubud is gorgeous and consists of peaceful rice paddies and streams. One of the highlights of my time in Ubud was visiting Ketut Leyer, one of the characters from the popular book Eat, Pray, Love. Ketut is 90 years old by his estimate and very similar to his personality in the book. He gave me a palm and face reading and told me I will live until I am 110. Hmm... I am not sure if that is true or not, but most of what he said rang very true. When I arrived, he was making two pendants for two local children whose mother had brought them to him because they were having problems sleeping. Just to be able to sit with them and Ketut and watch him work was very special. He has a great amount of energy, an enormous grin, and two or three teeth max. Some of the reviews of meeting him on the Internet had not been very favorable, but I had a great time.
My final night, I headed to Kuta Beach to check out the area and the gay scene which is one of the only ones in Indonesia due to rest of the country being overwhelmingly Muslim. Kuta is reminiscent of Phuket or Pattaya or any of the other Asian beach resort destinations; lots of Australians and other white European and American tourists running around. The beaches were nice, but I am not a huge beach person. The bars were fun, there are only about two large ones and a couple of smaller ones. Nice and friendly people though all through Indonesia. By this point, I was about ready to start heading home and familiar sites like Macdonalds and Starbucks were looking pretty good.
The great thing about Bali is that it is super cheap. A meal, even in a nicer restaurant, is not going to cost you more than $5-10 U.S. On average, I would estimate paying $3 to $5. Major hotels that you book online are expensive, but there are a host of places to stay when you get there for anywhere from $5 - $30 a night. An hour massage is about $5. I suppose Kuta is like Cancun for Australians. A lot of Australians have been buying up property on Bali in recent years.
So I headed home last Monday. I have to say, my standby flights could not have gone better. With the exception of not making that one flight from HK to Singapore, I got First Class every leg which on flights that long is a GODSEND. I am very lucky (which Ketut told me a couple of times) that I have such generous friends and flight benefits again.
That's a quick synopsis of my trip. I have posted a couple of pics here. E-mail me if you want to see the set.
It is nice to be home. Cuidate.
posted by SilentBob @ 11:06 AM
0 comments
