What is the fuss about Bali?

Most people from the west spend a fortune to get to this Indonesian paradise Island, and I can see why. For us it was a matter of an one hour flight.

It is a tropical Island where you can drink coconut water straight from a coconut.

You can dive under the ocean and see fishes and corral reeves. (sorry no underwater pictures but it was super cool)

(The guys in the picture kept us safe, while one of us dived and the other took care of Mark)

 

You can go to the jungle and walk among the monkeys. Unfortunatly I didn’t have the camera ready when one monkey started to inspect Marks diaper bag.

You can see Hindu temples that looks like something taken from an Indiana Jones movie. 

And you can see a bunch of other things that we couldn’t see because of Mark. Like hidden canyons where you have to climb, swim and hike with waterfalls. Thanks Mark!

But after living in Indonesia for a while, we also had another perspective. First thing that hit us leaving the airport was all the taxi scammers, all of them also providing services as tour guides. This way they get around the laws of taximeter in the taxis. Some areas like Ubud, the taxi scammers are run by a local mafia cartel where they have kicked out the country’s biggest taxi company and all app driven taxis too. And by kicked out, I mean with violence, sabotage on cars and threats. So you can expect a cartel price for a taxi, 4 times higher than normal, and feeling unsafe throughout the trip.

In general, Indonesians are very pleasant people to deal with, they are warm hearted and very honest, but some of the people we met in Bali are far away from that. This is saddening that the only place where they have tourist income is a center for scammers.

Fortunately, we went to Bali in the low season, for us this meant that every hotel we went to gave us a room upgrade, the last hotel gave us a villa with a garden on the roof terrace, which was very good for a food poisoned Roozbeh.

For those who wondered, yes Mark was famous in Bali as well. He has also learned to wave, which is attracting more unwanted attention than ever.