2008 Bali Trip

I just got back from Bali on June 29th 2008. I went down to visit a freind of mine who was down there on business for a few weeks prior to me getting there. Pomai is also the guy who went skiing with me and the kids back in March in case he looks a little familiar in the pictures.

We took a ton of picuters and some videos. The pictures are all posted via this link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickspics1/sets/72157605896939829/

The videos (when I get finally get them uploaded) will be via this link.

http://www.youtube.com/user/rwbiiv

We toured a great deal of the country as you will be able to see by all the pictures. Bali is a beautiful country in a numbers of ways. Obviously the country side is breathtaking. The rice terraces are interesting and beautiful at the same time. The people of Bali are very very friendly. I don't think we had even one bad interaction with anyone there. I was totally blown away by how nice everyone was.

In addition the dining scene is fantastic. While you need to be a little careful where you eat there are a lot of fine dining restaurants. Even some of the average places have fantastic food. It's all very inexpensive. Most meals cost us around $ 7 or $8 US for both of us and we didn't leave hungry.I think the most expensive meal we had at a fine dining restaurant was $150 US. This meal would rival any five star restaurant in the US in terms of quality of food and presentation. The service is good overall. Keep in mind that 60% of the cost of that meal (if not more) was for alcohol. Alcohol is very expensive in Bali. Everything else was cheap.

We stayed at two villas while in Bali. The first one is woned by my friends boss. That's the more rustic looking one. The other we rented for less that $150 US a night for both of us. It was a two private bedroom, our own private pool. Living room area. Dining area and ktichen. A chef was included who made breakfast for us everyone morning. You should be able to determine which pictures are what. (there were far too many pictures to put captions on every one - sorry).

Bali is made up of villages that specialize in different things. Some villages may specialize in wood furniture. Some in Silver and gold. Some in glass and so on. There thousands of wholesale furniture places and it's very inexpensive. You need to be careful as the qulaity of the wood furniture does vary. But for the most part it's pretty good. THe area similiar to our Waikiki has tons of souviner shops. Those places you have to be acreful as there is alot of crap. Bargining is a way of life so whatever you buy on the street you can wheel & deal on.

Kite fliing is a huge tradition in Bali and there are some beautiful & ingenious kites. I bought a couple fo Dragon kites for the boys. I met the guy who hand painted them. They are about 5 ft long X 4 ft wide. Every where you look in the sky there are huge kites flying very very high up. I tried taking pictures of them so when you see a sky with dots thats the kites.

We are planning on going back next year around the same time frame for the annual Bali International Triathlon. Stay tuned on that one!

In the mean time enjoy my picutres and if you have any questions email me or post a comment and I will get back to you.

Rick