Upside Down in Indonesia

They warned us. The few long-term-travel books that we read in preparation for our trip said that there would be peaks and valleys during our year on the road. We now know what the descent into the bottom of the valley feels like.

After arriving in Kuta, Bali, it didn't take us long to realize that we didn't like the place. It reminded us a bit of the grungy side of Mexico: dirty, loud, and crowded. One full day in Kuta was enough and after 2 nights we escaped to the east side of the Bukit Peninsula to a town called Sanur. On the ride over we met Joe, a friendly fellow American traveler from San Diego. After we got off the bus, the three of us scoured the town for cheap accommodation. We found it at Ira Accommodation for a whopping US$5.75 a night. The room wasn't much, but we liked it enough to call it home for the next four nights. We also liked Sanur immediately, as the beach was pristine, the town quiet, and there were very few tourists. We ate some great local food (Mie Goreng and Nasi Goreng) at the night market and local warungs, especially Warung Anna's, with you guessed it, a lady named Anna and her mischievous kitten Kris. Ryan surfed the local reef breaks with Joe and, and mainly we relaxed for the next four days. We even found a new way to make sure you always know where your money is:

After we where well-rested, we got the itch to move on so we decided to head to Ubud, the cultural center of Bali. Here we splurged and spent the US$9/night for a room with A/C. Unfortunately, Ryan had some stomach problems the next day (we think from something he ate in Sanur) and spent most of the day in bed. Luckily it only lasted 24 hours, so we were able to explore Ubud, including the many monkeys that inhabit the Monkey Sanctuary.
The following day we had our hotel host, Made, take us around to see the terraced rice fields, temples, a Balinese Barong dance, and a coffee plantation, and we had lunch in Kintamani overlooking the Gunung Batur volcano. Surprisingly, we were the only westerners at the Barong dance and the rest of the audience was comprised of tourists from Java. I guess they don't see too many westerners in their part of Java, because after the dance was over we were bombarded by teenagers who wanted our autographs and pictures taken with them. A mom and her baby even wanted to get in on the action. We felt like movie stars and finally had to say "no more photos" to move on to our next destination.

The Barong creature

Freshly roasted Kopi Luwak

After spending a last night in Ubud, we took a shuttle to the port town of Padangbai, where we caught the 4.5 hour ferry ride over to Lombok. Once in Lombok, we headed over to Kuta, Lombok, an area known for its waves. Like every other tourist, we rented a motorbike equipped with surf racks since every surf break is at least 2km from town. The next day as Anna, myself, and the surfboard headed to the nearest beach, Sagur, we took a slight spill on the motorbike. Luckily we were going slow and only suffered some road rash. Nonetheless, the tops of our feet got scraped up pretty well and putting on shoes or snorkel fins was out of the question for a while. Ryan was still able to get a surf session in at Grupuk inside, a break accessible only by hiring a boat for ~US$3.

The moto spill put a damper on things in Kuta, so after three nights Ryan sold his surfboard to the local surf shop and we headed to the little island of Gili Trawangan, off the northwest coast of Lombok. Originally, we wanted to take a scuba dive course to get certified, but our wounds were (and are) still bad enough to not be able to wear fins. So instead we took the next four days to just relax and let ourselves heal a bit. However, the second day on the island, it was Anna's turn to get sick from minor food poisoning. She recovered within 24 hours but we were both pretty drained at that point. So we spent the next few days reading, trying to stay dry from the torrential downpours that occurred everyday, and trying not to get bit by the millions of mosquitoes on the island.

The cramped boat ride to Gili Trawangan

The sole means of transport on the Gili's

After four days, island fever started to get to us, so we made the all day trek to get back to Kuta, Bali. On our way, we made arrangements to fly from Bali to Medan, Sumatra the following morning. So we woke up early yesterday morning and caught our flight to Medan. Next we are off to see the Orang-utans of Bukit Lawang.

And hopefully on our way to the top of a new valley...

P.S Whenever locals ask us where we are from and we tell them America, the next word out of their mouth is "Obama!" No joke. They really like him here

P.P.S. Sorry for the solo photo. Even though Medan is Indo's third largest city, its internet is one of the slowest we have encountered. We'll try to post more photos soon, maybe just a blog of photos.