Exploring Bali by car

After getting back from the road trip to East Bali, I was frazzled as usual, after several hours of swinging an SUV through Balinese mountain roads and hairpin corners. As mentioned before, there are several factors that will affect every trip, anywhere in the world. Among these factors are number of people, weather, budget, mode of transport, time frame. In a sense I felt I was trying to ram a square peg through a round hole (hey, maybe I’m becoming Balinese!). We had a short time frame due to my web site commitments, people from a cold climate who need AC, 2 Indonesians, who’s diet is considerably different than other people in the group, and quite long periods in a car, due to traffic and the road system.

Still, Bali is beautiful, no taking that away, especially during the wet season, when everywhere is a carpet of green, with the strong slate grey clouds welling up over the mountains. I hope Ika and Toby got a chance to enjoy some of that scenery, in between dealing with Jevon and Maya.

More than once I mentioned to Toby, that if it was just the 2 of us, we’d have a very different trip, go off road more, hang with the locals more, and not worry so much about getting lunch organized. Being a dad is a learning experience, which hopefully Jevon and Maya gained from going to Amed.

New Years for Toby, Maya, Ollie from Oregon and Asia, will be spent in Ubud, where I dropped Toby and Maya off. They want to do shopping and will hang out together. Incidentally, Toby was successful in tracking down a certain dessert, a friend from Oregon had recommened. “He told the name of the place, but I just can’t remember it,” said Toby. We went through the list of places our friend would likely visit (Casa Luna, Ary’s Warung, Tukmak etc.) and finally found it at Batan Waru, in Central Ubud. Toby remembered it was some kind of ‘blueberry drizzle’ and on the menu we saw it was ‘blueberry apple crumble with a drizzle of cream’. Both trying this delight, it was quite good. I’m partial to the Key Lime pie myself. Toby has been in training for his trip to Bali, by hitting Pizza Hut 3 times a day, plus everything off of McDonald’s menu once a week. I’m sure he’ll go through Batan Waru’s dessert menu, like a hurricane through a kampung. Hope to see him and the other again soon.