Visiting Simone in Java and Bali

Before my stay in Australia I visited Simone in Indonesia, who had been studying there in a language course since June 2008. I arrived in the middle of the night in the bustling town of Denpasar and flew on to Yogyakarta in the center of the island of Java. Yogya is the cultural capital of Java with the big campus of UGM University close to the center of the city.

Coming back to South-East Asia already made me really happy but having someone with me who can actually speak the language was even better. After experiencing the Indonesian-Uni live for a few days we then went on trips to explore the surrounding temples like Borobudur and Prambanan. These ancient Buddhist and Hindu temple areas have only been discovered at the beginning of the last century and since then been nicely restored. Watching the sunset and sundown up from the ruins was especially spectacular.

This holds also true for the old Temple ruins in Yogya city itself close to the bird market. This market displays a big variety of birds from racing doves – that are equipped with little pipes on their backs, to hear them racing through the air – over parrots to totally black roosters. But you can not only spot birds hear actually they sell almost everything that crawls this earth and often in very bizarre forms.

We saw skinks and lizards with two tails, giant geckos crammed into tiny cages, frogs that had bigger heads than bodies, wild cat babies, flying squirrels and even Lemurs from Madagascar!

But the real charm of Java lies in the lifestyle of the people! There is nothing cooler than sitting in an Warung (Indonesian version of a food stall) on the floor with some pillows around you, sipping on a beer and listening to John Lennon himself! Beat that ; )

After Yogya we flew back to Bali to see more of this beautiful island. Even though most tourists (beside the Bintang-Australian of course) get fed up with Kuta and Sanur after a few days everyone has to admit it has some appeal that can be found in such intensity only in few places in South East Asia (not even Thanon KhaoSan in Bangkok can rival this).

Kuta with its laid back surfer style, beaches, surf-schools, clubs, shops, day and night markets, food stalls, eat inns, fastfoods, restaurants, hotels and backpacker places is probably the most oppositional to the conservative Javanese lifestyle and culture. However one has to learn that Balinese are different.

If you want you can easily escape the craziness of the city easily by driving only a few kilometers south or north. In preparation for Australia I also needed to get my PADI advanced and rescue diver certificate. That’s why we did a course with a diving school in the southern tip of the island at Nusa Dua.

The highlight of the course was two dives we did in the North of Bali at a wreck called Tulamben. This wreck sunk right of the black steep lava beach. Laying at about 25 meters in the black fine sand it displays an oasis in the black desert around. An array of soft corals has settled on the wreck attracting big schools of rhino-horn fish, batfish, some sea snakes, lionfish, soft coral gobbies and even an eel garden.

For the last week we hired a little SuZi Jeep to explore the island. Our first stop was the ‘cultural and artistic capital’ of Bali – Ubud. This village like dwelling about 50 km north of Denpasar and Kuta is home to many artists, craftsman, and other sorts of creative beings. Definitely worth a visit is the crazy palace called the ‘Blanco Renaissance Museum’. This guy who (arguable) called himself the ‘Dali of Bali’ has a display of mostly erotic pictures and collages in an old fashioned renaissance temple surrounded by a beautiful garden with an equally beautiful display of birds. Some of the latter ate my entry card which consisted of a tropical flower.

If you like monkeys the so called monkey forest sanctuary with its thousands of greedy macaques is definitely the place to go. However what makes Ubud special is its relaxed atmosphere and maybe not doing more than taking a scenic walk through the light green surrounding rice paddies or just floating in the guest houses pool and pretending to be dead.....

Taking the north eastern passes through the mountains we

passed the tea plantations of the highlands and arrived on the northern coast in Lovina. Lovina’s biggest attractions are dolphins that can be spotted in the early morning close to the coast. It is not quite clear why the big schools of sometimes more than 200 animals come here every day. It is definitely a graceful sight to see so many of these tiny whales surfacing on the almost mirror like calm sea.

Unfortunately our holiday had to come to an end. But however before flying out of this beautiful country I celebrated my birthday with some very good friends and delicious seafood in Jimbaran. And how else could such a night end……..