Bali is an interesting place: They speak their own version of Indonesian and are proud that no one else can understand them; most of the Balinese can speak English and Japanese or Spanish because working in the tourism industry is very important here. The price for everything is very cheap, yet they try and charge tourist what they would pay at home. The average salary is $2,500 a year, therefore a $25 dinner or souvenir is a 10th of their yearly salary.
The first temple we saw... I forgot the name of it.
The first temple we saw... I forgot the name of it.Our first full day here, we checked in, took a walk and then had an afternoon tour where we were taken to a pearl shop, a batik shop, a temple, a rice field, a monkey forest with a gift shop, and finally Tanah Lot. Tanah Lot is a temple on the coast, swarming with tourist and more gift shops.
The Balinese at these touristy places are relentless. For example, I drew an interesting comparison between the monkeys at the monkey forest and our tour guide through the forest who led us back to her shop. The monkeys are completely spoilt and depend on the tourist who buy the peanuts and bananas to feed them every day.
Here is the monkey attacking me!
I was attacked by this one monkey who jumped on my head to get at the peanuts that my tour guide was holding. After the walk in the monkey forest, our tour guide led us back to her stall and practically begged us to buy an over-priced souvenir. It was one of the oddest and more disturbing experiences I have had. I felt sorry for the Balinese woman because she was so desperate to sell us something, but I was also really annoyed because I couldn't look at anything without being pestered and shown 20 of the same thing..."How about this...you like?" I already don't like being sold something, but this was too much!
I was attacked by this one monkey who jumped on my head to get at the peanuts that my tour guide was holding. After the walk in the monkey forest, our tour guide led us back to her stall and practically begged us to buy an over-priced souvenir. It was one of the oddest and more disturbing experiences I have had. I felt sorry for the Balinese woman because she was so desperate to sell us something, but I was also really annoyed because I couldn't look at anything without being pestered and shown 20 of the same thing..."How about this...you like?" I already don't like being sold something, but this was too much!
Sam ended up buying a statue. He haggled her down from 350,000 Rp (~$35) to 190,000 Rp (~$19) and then pretended to only have 173,000 Rp on him and she ended up taking that. I was glad when that was over. I definitely don't want to take any more tours like that.
We spent yesterday just relaxing at our hotel. The Nusa Dua Beach Hotel has this wonderful breakfast buffet included with our room that I look forward to each morning. It is outside the hotel overlooking these beautiful carp-filled pools and they have everything you could want for breakfast. It reminds me of a wedding reception or the hotel breakfast up at the place we stayed in Big Sky, MT.
Sam usually gets an omelet from the omelet chef and I rotate between cereal (which I really miss), toast with jam and brie, or Indonesian breakfast of tofu with peanut sauce or rice pudding...sometimes I have a little of all three!
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