Finally, my long await trip to Indonesia! I call this post Pt.1 because my entire trip to Indonesia was centered around a visit with my mother, and then later on a friend from Canada. I arrived at Denpasar airport on July 11 after my quick 5 day visit to Kuala Lumpur. I was picked up at the airport by my mother and her (at the time) fiance, and after a short drive we arrived at our villa in Seminyak. I have to admit, my first impression of Bali was not the tropical island paradise that I expected. DPS airport is actually located just south of Kuta and not actually in Denpasar. The whole area of South Bali is incredibly touristy, especially the long strip between Kuta/Legian/Seminyak. Completely over-run with tourists, and extremely busy with tons of traffic. Not quite what I expected Bali to be like. Although, to be fair, my initial visit coincided with the high season so this should've been expected.
I spent lots of time down at the beach, taking in the amazing Bali sunsets, but the highlight of this part of my trip was just being able to spend some time with my mother. We did some wonderful things, such as the Balinese cooking course we took at Amika. We took a day trip to Nusa Dua and took a glass bottomed boat over the reefs and over to the Turtle Conservatory (and also had the opportunity to hold some very strange creatures!). Later in the day we made a stop at Padang Padang Beach, the later to the monkey temple of Uluwata, where we saw a great Kecak performance right as the sun was setting just beyond the cliffs the temple is situated on.
We also had the opportunity to sample some of the many great restaurants in the Seminyak area, played lots of very competitive games of Rummy 500, and watched a few of the many bootleg movies that you can buy for less than $1/each. The villa we stayed at was wonderful, with an outdoor living area and kitchen, and a pool shared by the other two villas right next to us. I think we pretty much had the pool to ourselves any time we wanted to use it.
Unfortunately, my visit with mom was too short. They left around a week and a half later, and I stayed in the Seminyak area for another week after that. Luckily I had met some great friends - 4 girls from the states who I spent many a wild night out on the town with. Good times for sure, but I was certainly lonely when everybody had to leave. I stayed around until July 29th, then decided that I needed to do some scuba diving and headed out to Nusa Lembongan and Gili Trawangan, some beautiful islands located just to the east of Bali. More on this coming next...
