BALI, INDONESIA Days 2 & 3

We have just returned from our trip to Bali and China! Wow, what a trip! I will have to do a few entries to cover it all, so I am starting with Bali since we went there first. We flew for 15 hours to arrive in Bali and that does not count the time taken by layovers in Hong Kong and Singapore. (Our layover in Singapore was made much more interesting by having a 2 hour tour scheduled for the 5 hours of the layover. I'll blog that tomorrow)
When we arrived at the airport we received a lei greeting! Then at the Le Meridien Resort, we were met with a cold drink, warm, fragrant smelling, clean wash cloths and dancing, beautiful Indonesia girls who welcomed our group's arrival. The resort was absolutely beautiful with a large room and king size beds. The grounds and pools were gorgeous. It reminded us of the ultra nice resort hotels in Hawaii that we would never spend so much money to stay in! We spent one day enjoying the grounds and the pool and even had a couple's massage in a cabana near the cliff edge that over looks the ocean. Wow, what a lovely place to visit!


We always had a local guide and all our travels were by air conditioned bus.We visited a Hindu temple and also the Monkey Forest where 800 monkeys live and roam freely. You could buy food to feed them, but after being bit good and hard by a parrot in Cayman Islands, I'll never feed a strange animal again! I was glad I made that decision when I saw the monkey's grabbing the food from those who had purchased it! And if you saw the monkey bites they had received from each other, that would have made YOU nervous too! However, there were all sizes of monkeys and lots of babies that were as cute as can be. I love this picture of Dennis with one of the monkeys. I was telling him to get closer and he was eyeing that monkey like he expected it to bite him. He's laughing and telling me he thinks he is close enough! We also saw huge fruit bats up in the trees and flying around. They are BIG!


During the visit to the Tanah Lot temple, we walked through a shopping area and were immediate set upon by little girls trying to sell us postcards. They started out at $3, then went down to $2 and finally, when they decided we were not going to buy them, they left us alone. The little girl on the left in the orange shirt is the one who latched onto Dennis to try to sell to him. I got ahead of him and then looked back and took a picture of her hounding him. After we had seen the temple and taken pictures, we went back to find this little girl and bought post cards from her. I showed her the photo of her on the screen of my digital camera and it tickled her to pieces. That is why she is smiling so brightly. (Well, that and the fact that Dennis bought 20 postcards from her for $2. Dennis is holding the cards in his hand and they are the first set we mailed to the kids and family.







This picture is just before we started our couple's massage. I think in Bali they have a different concept of massage. They really work you over. We were looking for more of a "feel good" experience and instead we felt like we had had all our muscles totally manipulated and mangled....but at least some of it felt good! Dennis's legs were sore the next day.

There were lots of optional activities. Some went on an elephant ride, some rented bicycles. We just got into our swim suits and walked from our patio to the closet pool and enjoyed the variety of pools including a waterfall, and 2 different water slides that were so much fun. The water was wonderful and we had a fabulous time. Even had time to get a little sun burn!