Bali bumming

BALI is the last installment of my trip to Indonesia. It’s over a year too late this report, but here it is. =)

Traveling non-stop for almost 2 weeks and dispirited by my just broken Canon G9 camera, beach bumming in Bali is a much needed R and R. Sometimes traveling too fast or for too long can really sap your energy.

Read: Temple of Borobudur Experience

I often get asked why I didn’t dive in Bali. Well, I haven’t dived everywhere in the Philippines yet, so I’ll leave diving abroad for the future. Surfing though is unignorable. I thought I’ll try it again. I was in San Juan, La Union 2 months before and was totally stoked when I was finally able to stand. But first, I need some serious beach bumming.

I was warned that Kuta can be crazy touristic. It was! But it’s alright, I put on a big sunglasses and dissappear into the sea of people. Sometimes I like this feeling of not existing while in a different city and watch things happen.

Oh, if you don’t have sunglasses with you, believe me you will leave Bali with one, or 2, or more. The vendors here are persistent (if I’m being polite). They will offer you sunglasses even if you already are wearing one. Actually it’s a good idea to wear one so you can pretend you don’t see or hear them. Other than that, I love the happy Bali vibe.

Strangely I awoke the next day with an agonizing pain on my lower back. I devoted 1 day relaxing at the beach and I got back pain?! I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t get to surf at all. I also wanted to check out Ubud but ditched the plan too. Luckily, shopping is also popular in Bali! There were rows and rows of streets with beautiful shops and popular brand outlets like Billabong and Rip Curl.

One of the fun in solo traveling is meeting fellow travelers. In this trip I hung out with some really cool people. Dom is a German guy who travels half the year in sunny countries and works half the year. His main objective is to escape winter. Raluca is a Canadian lass who had been traveling for 2 years when we met. Her facebook profile shows she hasn’t stop going. Nina is a pretty German girl who looked latina. She tells people she’s from Argentina and can get away with it because she speaks Spanish. I met Raluca on her last day but the 3 of us (girls) are able to check out the Bali night scene together. Dom had visiting family at that time but Nina and I went to hear a local band play with him. I hanged out most with Nina and we became good friends. In fact, she’s the person responsible for me getting my everlasting souvenir!

There were tattoo shops all over Kuta, and I asked Nina about hers. She has one on her shoulder and another on her ankle. I mentioned I went into a shop the other day to look around. The next thing I know, we were back at the tattoo shop getting inked!

 

*the photos in the collages were from Nina’s camera.

Aum/om/o3m is a sacred symbol for absolute in Hinduism and Buddhism. There are several versions to write this symbol: Thai, Tibetan, Jain, Tamil, etc. (click symbol for full meaning) and this one is Balinese. I find the symbol so beautiful and thought it would be a good souvenir for this trip. It costs me 200,000 Indonesian Rupiah or about 1,000 pesos or 22 US dollars. I love it to this day and contemplating on a new one. :)

As an afterthought, I decided to add the LCA+ camera to my backpack. And I’m glad. I hadn’t been shooting film for a long time but with my G9 out, this was my only camera. Here find the slices of Bali seen through my LOMO eye.