Bali


To travel in Bali there are 2 ways to go about. nr. 1 go by a guided tour or nr. 2 hire a car yourself to get away a little bit cheaper. We went for the car but soon realized that there was more to pay than money; The great risk of loosing and jeopardizing your own life. Driving on the left side with usually not more than one line for both directions and Balinese people driving like 12 year old kids. And the police is not helping trying to bust all the tourists for random offences!?? We had to bribe one not to go to jail or justice or whatever what thy were threatening us with. But driving in these landscapes was quite extraordinary reminding us of some kind of "Vietnam"like environment.
		Lovina We drove up to Lovina a small village on the north coast known for its good diving and dolphin watching. We got there in the evening and soon got booked up with some boat owner to go out the morning after. It was an amazing morning with a beautiful sunrise. And yes we got to see dolphins among the other twenty boats circling and hunting around the poor little fish(wales).
The dolphins popped up to the surface every now and then and immediately got caught up with about 20 boats. When the sun was up and the dolphins had gone out to sea again the boatman took us to a good place for snorkeling with all sorts of small colourful fish and coral. Beautiful!
		Ubud Another trip we made was for Ubud. The genuine Bali we were told with nice people and hospitality. And it was true no pushy salesmen and lots of nice little shops with all kinds of handicraft. Not as many tourists and a really pleasant environment. We had some nice candle lit dinners with with very good food only a little bit more expensive than Kuta.
In Ubud you find the well known "monkey forest" full of cute little monkeys and a temple just like the Jungle book. We bought some bananas so that we could get close to them. But some of the monkeys were not very grateful at all. The big males almost robbed us straight away. Aggressively attacking us so that we should drop the fruit. But the small little monkey kids made up to it. They were so cute.
		There were more strange animals in Ubud. For example this pair that we bumped into on the street. Two stray dogs in a very strange posture that we just had to document.
One day we passed an alligator farm that we had to check out. They had all sorts of reptiles and performed silly crocodile dances. But they had some really extraordinary animals. Huge alligators, comodo dragons and lots of snakes. Among them a nice little net python(python reticulatus) that we got to hold for as long as we dared.