back from bali
September 20th, 2005 by boon
5 dives. 4 days. 3 nights. 4 mantas. 2 pygmy seahorses. 1 frogfish. 1 lone baracuda.
NO Mola.
None at all. And freezing waters did not add to our livelihood. That fish just would not show up. Sigh, now we have plan another trip to Bali.
All in all, it wasn’t a complete waste of 2.5 million rupiah. The company was good. We managed to get our share of the local cuisine, like the ayam bertutu in Denpasar, a not-so-great babi guling (not baling guli), sate, and we had Bak So more times than we actually wanted.
I got 2 paintings from I Nyoman Suarsa up at his Ubud gallery (actually got to meet the man, nice chap), who I felt was more genuine than the copycat painters along the beach. Seriously, why would anyone want buy paintings that are constantly duplicated?
Kintamani was nicer the second time around. A lot less flies. However, the locals were still as adamant in trying to sell me wood carvings of semi-naked old fishermen, t-shirts, and other assortment. How come they don’t make new things? Maybe a wood carving replica of kintamani, or a t-shirt which says “the guy kept pestering me, so I bought this shirt”. Oh well, I still wouldn’t have bought it.
I want to thank the nice folks at Bali who took us diving. The dive master’s name is Putu, and he did a real good job in taking care of us, and showing us the sights, short of the molas. If you’re ever in need of a divemaster in Bali, you can email him at artana_diver at yahoo dot com.
Thanks also to Doctor Made (pronounced Mah-day) for taking us on the less-than-one-day tour to Kintamani, and getting us some babi guling, even though it wasn’t from the super popular one. The popular one sold out when we got there at 3pm on a Sunday.
Actually, Bali is a pretty cool place to hang out if you book your flight on Air Asia early, and find a relatively nice hotel around Kuta. Actually, Ubud is really cool too…. it’s on the hillside, and there are lots of art galleries, fancy boutiques and cafes along the road. But you could just browse Lonely Planet and find out for yourself.