Merry Christmas from Bali!!

Sending our family and friends love and hugs and wishing you all a wonderful holiday season! We miss you!

Love,
The Rongeys

Nusa Lembongan, Amed, Candidasa and back to Ubud

(pic: Nusa Lembongan)

Bali, I just can’t get over how nice and charming the Balinese people are. With smiling faces and friendly hellos, I think they are the friendliest people we have met during our travels.

During our time in Ubud, we were able to experience the Balinese festival, Galungan. This Hindu holiday fell on December 8, and is celebrated every 210 days (the end of the Hindu calendar year). During this festival the Balinese people pray, present religious offerings to their God, and share food together.

Ad and I decided to rent a scooter and headed north out of Ubud to a temple located in Tampaksiring to see what it was all about. As we arrived, many locals were entering the temple carrying (either in their hands or on their head) religious offerings such as food, rice, flowers and small gifts. As we got off our scooter, we grabbed our sarongs (thanks Kram) and were immediately greeted by Made (Maw-day), an extremely nice Balinese man who had huge hoops hanging from his ears. He introduced himself and told us we could be his guests for the ceremony (very cool!).

[Sidenote: Everyone in Bali is either named; Wayan, Made, Oman, or Ketut. This is the order of when they were born; it starts over with Wayan when number 5 is born.]

We followed him and his family into the temple where we sat cross legged on the grass and observed the ceremony. There were a series of bells that rang, people were blessed with Holy water, and rice was placed on their foreheads and throats for protection from evil spirits entering their body. After the ceremony, we went to Made’s house where he and his family treated us to homemade ‘satay’ (incredible!) and Balinese coffee. We checked out his art (he is a Jack of all trades for sure) and listened to him play his guitar before we left; it was a really great experience.

Ubud is a cool town with many shops and restaurants, and is located about an hour north of Denpasar. We stayed in two places while we were here, Gusti’s Gardens and Kajeng Bungalows. Both places had bungalow style rooms surrounded by lush gardens and a refreshing pool. We could hear the river and see the beautiful rice paddy fields from our porch, pretty nice! However, the climate is incredibly hot and humid, I (Adam) felt like I was melting everyday and much prefer our Colorado weather.

After checking out Ubud for about a week we decided to head to Nusa Lembongon, an island that is about one hour off Bali. We didn’t really know what to expect yet we were excited to check out another place. On Nusa Lembongon, there are no cars and when you pull into the beach there is no dock either; the accommodations are pretty close by, so it wasn’t a problem to walk and find a place.

We stayed at Tarci’s Bungalows, nothing spectacular (which is about par for the course in Bali when you are traveling on a budget), but it did have a pool. The beach, which was directly out in front of our place was kind of depressing with the trash and boats monopolizing the shoreline. So, swimming wasn’t really an option. On the positive side, three surf breaks (Playgrounds, Lacerations, and Shipwrecks-all reef breaks) were also right out our front door, but there was no swell, therefore no waves. This was a bummer as I heard these breaks are awesome when it is pumping.

We rented a moped and made our way to the other side of the island via roads that were more like bike paths, and a suspension bridge that was a little rickety. Something we noticed while we were cruising around is how quiet it was, Nusa L is pretty chill. We did find a nice little gem of a place called, Dream Beach (out in the middle of nowhere), it had beautiful turquoise water and a small white sandy beach. We relaxed here for a bit and had lunch, then made our way back to our bungalow. Being a small island, there is not much to do if you aren’t scuba diving, snorkeling, or surfing, and since we weren’t doing any of these things we decided to leave and head back to Bali.

The next few days we spent between Amed and Candidasa, both VERY quiet places northeast of Denpasar. We enjoyed chillin out eating some tasty fish and talking with the locals (all who wanted us to buy their wooden boats they made, nerp!). I (Adam) had a great time giving math lessons (in the sand) to two very bright local boys, Wayan (14) and Made (12) down on the beach.

We are now back in Ubud, as it has been our favorite place (and has the most to do) until we head down to Seminyak for Christmas. Until then, Happy Holidays everyone!!

Love,
Adam and Cathy