September 01, 2009

Honeymoon in Bali Part One

A few hours after getting married on Lake Tahoe, we hopped into our rental car and headed to the Reno airport. Final honeymoon destination: Bali, Indonesia!

Tuesday, September 1st

On the road from Tahoe to Reno.

Awesome views.

It's pretty much downhill the whole way.

The Sierra Nevadas.

HUGE statue of a prospector outside a candy store on the side of the highway while driving through Washoe Valley, Nevada.

We checked into our flight and were pointed in the direction of the gate by this construction worker fairy!

Mer, chilling with bears.

While we were sitting at the gate waiting for our flight to board, I received this email notification on my phone. Yes, I will confirm your SPOUSAL REQUEST, wifey!

Ticketed and ready to travel. In order to get to Bali we were looking at three flights and almost THIRTY total hours of travel time. Oof. 1st flight was from Reno to San Francisco. Then, SF to Hong Kong. And finally, HK to Bali! Ready?

BEGIN!

Leaving Reno and headed to San Francisco!

me, meredith — Official start of the honeymoon!

Before leaving Reno, I'd texted our friend Mike Doyle to let him know that we'd been in San Francisco for just a few hours on our layover.

We weren't sure if we were going to see him or not, but after we got off the plane, we heard my name being called over the public address. First time I'd ever been summoned to a white courtesy telephone! Haha.

You has message for me?

me, meredith, mike doyle — After much wandering around (SFO international is HUGE) we finally met up with Mike and he became the very first of our friends to see us as a MARRIED COUPLE!

And because Mike is one of the most-thoughtful people I know, he brought cans of champagne(!!!) for the occasion. (A move that totally out-classed the champagne at our wedding that was served in plastic Coors Light cups).

meredith, mike doyle — Delicious!

meredith — We got some food to go along with our champagne. Mer got veggie sushi...

mike doyle — ...and I got a big old plate of airport-Chinese veggie lo mein. Mmmmm.

After we ate, we walked around the terminal a bit and looked at some ceremonial African clothing they had on display at a big exhibit. This is basically where the boogey man came from.

Neato.

me, mike doyle — JC Penny back-to-school catalog pose #142!

me, meredith — Mike took this great photo of us with some of the Cathay Pacific flight attendants, then we said goodbye and headed to the gate. Thanks so much for coming out to see us off, Mike!

Tuesday, September 1st

A little before 2am, it was time to board for second leg of our trip from San Francisco to Hong Kong.

me, meredith — Hey hey, are you ready for a...

...SEVENTEEN-HOUR FLIGHT?

The plane was massive.

Late dinner.

Started reading Lamb by Christopher Moore. (Liked it a lot.)

Many hours later, I decided to check out the movies and ended up watching The Proposal which much to my surprise (and the surprise of the poor people who were sleeping around me) actually made me cackle out loud several times. Not even married for 24 hours and already enjoying Ro-Cos. Tragic.

Fell asleep with my hoodie on. Haha.

Duh!

Wednesday, September 2nd

Seventeen hours later we arrived in Hong Kong and went to a restaurant where we got to watch the sun rise behind the mountains that ring the airport tarmac.

My body was convinced it was time for breakfast and I got banana pancakes.

meredith — Mer was feeling lunchtimey and got some lo mein.

Dragon Air's planes look pretty bad-ass.

We wandered the massive Hong Kong terminal for a few hours, then it was time for the third and final leg of our trip: a four-hour flight from Hong Kong to Denpasar, Bali!

Another meal? Sure!

TOUCHDOWN IN BALI! (After almost thirty hours of travel! Oof).

Waiting in line at customs.

Not playin.

me, meredith — The local time was 3:30 in the afternoon.

The stonework in Bali is absolutely incredible.

Graffiti's not bad, either.

About 45 minutes later, we arrived at The Legian, our hotel.

Our parents had found the hotel and made a reservation for us to spend our first two nights there while we made plans for the rest of our trip. It was really nice.

meredith — They brought us freshly-squeezed tropical juice smoothies while we waited to be registered.

Our room was pretty insane.

The bathroom alone was pretty much the size of our NYC apartment.

Flowers in the bath tub!

Bed.

At the foot of the bed was a little framed print-out with daily suggestions from the traditional Balinese calendar. Tuesday is training your pet day! Haha.

The view from our balcony. Wow.

Do not disturb, please!

The view from our balcony after sunset.

Around 10pm, we woke up after a super-long, jetlag-induced nap and decided to head downstairs for dinner. We were so tired we could barely chew our food and ended up back in bed before 11pm!

Thursday, September 3rd

meredith — The next morning we woke up before 5am and went downstairs to swim in the hotel's gorgeous edgeless pool that's right down near the beach. (Meredith's in the pool, but you can see the ocean right behind her).

Me, peeking over the edge of the edgeless pool. (Kilroy was here.)

meredith — See the peaked roof behind Meredith? That's the roof over our room's balcony!

meredith — I had brought along my camera's scuba case and snapped some underwater pics in the pool. Mer looking serene underwater.

Me, blowing out all my air and sinking to the bottom.

meredith — Peekor!

Around 7am, we headed back upstairs to get changed out of our bathing suits. The clouds rolling in over Seminyak.

Crazy, right?

Pretty much the entire front of the hotel is a koi pond that has closely-placed stepping stones that allow you to transverse the koi pond to the elevator bank.

Went for a nice long walk down the beach...

meredith — ...then at 9am, we went to check out the hotel's insane breakfast spread.

Teeny tiny delicious pancakes.

Fresh local fruit!

meredith — After breakfast, we relaxed in lounge chairs on the beach...

...and took turns reading up on Bali guidebook and figuring out where we wanted to travel to next!

People coming down the beach on horseback.

Neato.

Later in the afternoon, I decided to really mix things up with a change of scenery and moved my feed up to the lounge chairs by the pool.

meredith — We had a nice lunch up on our balcony.

Balcony view.

Later that afternoon, we left the hotel and decided to walk around and explore Seminyak. We ended up going to check out the local pura, which is a Balinese temple. "Puras are designed as an open air place of worship within enclosed walls, connected with a series of intricately decorated gates between its compounds."

Almost every single town (even small villages!) has a walled temple (pura). The temples are all adorned with incredibly detailed sandstone statues that are like an amalgam of Indian, Chinese and South-Pacific stone carvings.

meredith — When we got back to our hotel later in the afternoon, we found another basket of weird local fruits!

Check out a close-up of the delicious salak, also called a "snake fruit" because of the overlapping scales!

Later that night we went into Puta for dinner. Afterwards, we went for a nice night walk on the beach.

meredith — Came back to the room to find yet another delicious surprise! This time it was a tiny chocolate cake covered in chocolate!

Me showing off the hotel's ninja robes.

Friday, September 4th

On Friday morning we got up at 7am and packed up all of our things! We had decided to rent a car drive to another city!

Down to the lobby...

...and then we went for a long walk on the beach while we waited for the breakfast buffet to open.

So pretty.

Paradise.

After another awesome breakfast...

...we checked out of the hotel and got our rental car! We decided that we'd spend the rest of our trip driving from town to town and playing it by ear!

For our first destination, we picked Pemuteran in the northwestern corner of the island. According the map in our guidebook, driving from Seminyak to Pemuteran was around 160km. We figured we'd be there in two or three hours.

Turns out, driving in Bali is COMPLETELY INSANE. It's basically anything goes on really narrow, twisty, mountainous roads.

The drive that we thought would take two or three hours, ended up taking almost SEVEN HOURS!

The countryside was gorgeous though and made all the stress of driving totally worth it.

Rice paddy.

A little before 4pm, we stopped at a tiny restaurant to eat.

Meredith got "nasi goreng." It means "fried rice" in Indonesian and is considered the national dish. It's awesome.

I got a tiny weird pizza and we shared.

Back on the road! When we got further north up by the shipping terminals, the roads got wider. Check out the amazing stone arches that go over the road!

The landscape on the northern side of Bali was totally different than the south.

Around 5pm, we spotted our first monkey!

Pretty flowering trees.

LOTS of monkeys!

Such a beautiful drive.

Check the inland mountains.

meredith — Our plan was to stay at the Mati Hari Resort, which was highly recommended in our guide book. The Mati Hari was booked, so we ended up getting an ocean front bungalow at Amertha Bali Villas, the second most-highly recommended place. It didn't disappoint.

We were trying to walk around and explore the grounds, but it was so dark it was hard to see very far beyond the illuminated pathways. I pointed my camera in the direction of so REALLY loud frog noises and hit the double-frog jackpot. Two different kinds of frogs!

Also, this little charmer showed up and woke me up around 6:30am when he screamed the word "GECK-KO!" (They really do this and it's almost unbelievable that a tiny lizard makes this noise!)

1 comment

attilaoctober 14, 2011
nasi goereng!! MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM my favorite!!