Sightseeing? No. Too long of a drive from Nusa Dua.

Swimming at the pool or beach? Nope. The doctor banned Libby and Emerson from water-related activities for a couple of weeks.

We spent the day doing basically nothing. And, it was surprisingly blissful. Emerson played happily with her dinosaurs in our hotel room, and Libby and I got caught up on work. Plus, I could leisurely get us repacked and organized for our return to a cooler climate (as Sydney should be in the upper 40s to upper 60s this week). That was a real bonus as I’ve been previously prepping us during the darkness of night for our early morning flights.

We checked out of the hotel around 2pm today. The bill was $800 for our pool-side room, airport transfers, a number of meals, full day private tour, and the aforementioned doctor’s bill. And this is the peak tourist season! Bali is a great value…

After checkout, we returned to the Bali Collection and wasted some time. Libby had a “fish foot spa” that she really enjoyed. Basically, you stick your feet in a fish tank, and the fish give you a pedicure. We’ve seen it malls all over the world… Stockholm, Dubai, etc. She says she’d do it again.

We then returned to the beach and explored the temples and statues on the point:

After this, we returned to our hotel, had dinner, said goodbye to Adi (the friendly waiter), collected our bags, changed into our travel clothes, and left for the airport. We had the same driver as yesterday. Check-in was painless. We had to pay 450,000IRP as a departure tax (about $15/pp USD) to leave the country. This was on top of our $25/pp entry visas. This is still better than some countries like Argentina and China.

If all goes well, my next update will be from Australia. It’s the final country of this trip (#84 overall) and completes our visits to all seven continentson Earth. Very cool!

The distance we’ve traveled so far seems to play with put sense of time. It seems like we left Tampa ages ago. London too seems in the distant past ( though it’s really been only a little more than a week since we landed in Asia). It will be fascinating to see what effect another long, overnight flight has on our perception of time/space.

From Nusa Dua, the drive to Ubud is rather lengthy due to have traffic congestion. We made relatively good time in the morning (about an hour and a half) whereas the drive back to our resort took almost two hours. That’s crazy bad considering it’s only a distance of approximately 30 miles.

At least the drive was interesting. I can’t say that the drive was generally picturesque until we approached Ubud, but I was struck by simply how much there is to explore. For example, I simply lost count of the number of arts and crafts galleries that one could explore for carvings, paintings, and metal work. There are a seemingly endless number of shrines and temples. The culture and spirituality feel very deep; not something you’d ‘get’ as a Western visitor here for just a few days. Of course, Bali is still very much part of the developing world with obvious infrastructure limitations and the sort of griminess (such as trash/liter) that you don’t see in a place like Singapore.

Our main stop in Ubud was at the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. It consisted—rather unsurprisingly—of a forest that contained both sacred temples and monkeys. We fed the monkeys bananas, explored the forest grounds, and visited the temples. The setting is spectacular, but the monkeys are clearly the main attraction and fascinating to watch in close proximity.

Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary

Portrait of a Balinese macaque

Monkey moms and tots...

After the forest, we spent a little time exploring the arts and crafts vendors along Monkey Forest Rd. We then departed Ubud to visit the temple Pura Puseh, which dates from the 11th century, in the nearby village of Batuan. To enter the temple, Libby and I had to don sarongs. The grounds and buildings were covered with intricate carvings. Unfortunately, our driver was just a driver… a tour guide would have been really useful to explain to us more about the symbolism of the iconography, as well as the uniquely Balinese religious/spiritual beliefs.

Pura Puseh, Batuan's village temple

On the ride back to our hotel, Emerson had a bit of a mini-meltdown again today. She was also rather fussy once we’d returned to our room. Unlike yesterday, this was completely out of character and arose for no obvious reason. After a while, I noticed that she seemed to be tugging at one of her ears. Eventually, she admitted to not feeling good. Today, Libby too complained about her ears starting to bother her. No bueno.

What to do? Try to wait it out and see what develops, risking one or both getting worse? Or, call a doctor here in Bali for some antibiotics? Ultimately, I concluded that with our flight / travel schedule it would be best to seek medical attention now. So, I called the front desk around 6pm. Within 30 minutes, we had an entire medical team (doctor, nurse, and assistant) here to check out Emerson and Libby.

The doctor gave them an examination (nothing serious / no infection yet… just some inflammation in the ears due to their earlier cold worsened by swimming and air pressure changes with flights) and provided a veritable pharmacy of medications for their treatment (antibiotics, decongestants, topical solutions, analgesics, etc.). Total cost for the house call, two examinations, and bounty of medications? Roughly 2,000,000IDR or about $200USD. Amazing! And, I’m sure this was a huge mark-up for a Sunday evening visit to see us at a resort hotel.

I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring. We have to check-out by 2pm, but our flight doesn’t depart for Sydney until late in the evening. Given that I don’t know how everyone will feel and where we’re located, I’m afraid tomorrow might be a bit of a waste. However, we’ll try to make the best of it!

After breakfast, we arranged for a private tour / driver for tomorrow. We then headed to the hotel’s “private” beach via the provided shuttle (really more of compact mini-van). The “private” beach is really just a small section of beach that Marriott seems to own/lease, which enables them to operate a bar for drinks/snacks, provide lounge chairs, hold events, offer cabana services, and so forth. There are a few other hotels with equally “private” beaches along this stretch, as well as other Nusa Dua resorts.

Beach in Nusa Dua.

The beach itself is attractive enough to look at, especially in panorama form. On closer inspection, there’s a bit more trash (soda cans, plastic bags, that sort of thing…) in the water than one would like to see and it’s not exactly “white sand” pretty. I’ve been to better and worse places; this one is somewhere in between. We stayed at the beach for a couple of hours and generally had a good time. We then returned to the hotel via the semi-efficient shuttle service.

On returning to the hotel, Emerson wanted to go into the pool rather than have lunch. This was fine with me as it provided a good chance to rid the saltwater from myself, and I’d already had a big breakfast (which is one more meal than I usually eat before dinner).

The pool started out well. Emerson played with some Australian kids, as she often seeks out other kids. Everyone was getting along fine, but the Aussie kids father came into the pool and clearly wanted to play with his kids. He was actually very friendly and nice to Emerson, but it was clear to me that his kids were older and Emerson was going to be a bit of a third wheel in their fun and games.

This is where the trouble started…

Emerson was unwilling to swim away and play with Libby and me. As the others moved on (big pool), she became increasingly upset at not being able to swim after her friends. This quickly devolved, as you might imagine. It ended—poolside anyway—with Libby carrying a screaming, howling Emerson back to our hotel room. After picking up our stuff, I returned to the room as well and found a pissed off Emerson. When I attempted to explain that her actions resulted in the loss of her pool privileges, she hauled off and tried to smack me.

Oh, hell no!

By this point, I had absolutely had it. I have an unusual personality of being both “easy going” / “happy-go-luck” and yet “liking it as a like it” at the same time. However, I don’t often get really, really mad (even if I’m fuming on the inside). But, today I gave Emerson a dressing down the likes of which she’s never heard from me. Libby backed me up in a “preach it, brother” kind of way. Somewhat surprisingly, Emerson didn’t cry or freak out. I think she was mostly shocked and seemed to realize she’d crossed some sort of previously unknown threshold. But who knows?

Emerson spent the next 15 or so minutes sitting quietly on a chair in “time out.” For the rest of the day, she was on her best behavior… even more so than usual. I’d say that today’s behavior was unusual for her, and it was insofar as she’s usually an easy going, happy kid. But, it’s not unusual in as much as she has a streak of (usually quite) independence-boarding-on-defiance that runs through her, just as one runs through me. We’ve seen variations on this theme on rare occasions before.

I like that she has a strong will and independent spirit. In our society, such attributes are very helpful in achieving success. But, there are also limits that one must learn, such as not hurting others to achieve one’s aims. Hopefully, Emerson learned some of that lesson today.

Later this afternoon, we headed to the Bali Collection. It’s a shopping/dining/entertainment complex that’s down the road from our hotel. We’d intended to have dinner there, but we were uninspired by the restaurants’ menus. The shopping was also pretty lame… some major international brands (especially in the active wear / surf market) and more local purveyors of touristic trinkets and trash.

So, we picked up some supplies at the grocery and headed back to the hotel for dinner here again. Tonight, Libby and I opted for the Indonesian version of beef/chicken satay and friend rice. It was surprisingly excellent and at $10 was a pretty cheap meal for a 4-star hotel.

Today wasn’t the best of days. I’m still sick (though feeling better). We had the Emerson episode. Bali was just kind of “alright” instead of “awesome.” This happens on vacations (last summer, I had a down day in Vienna for no particular reason). Some days are just off. Today was one of those days.

Tomorrow will be a new day…

This morning started early with us leaving the hotel a little before 5am. We arrived at Singapore’s Changi International Airport. Today, we were flying on Garuda Indonesia, which 1) has a certain surreal quality to the concept of doing so and 2) yet is slated to become a member of Delta’s SkyTeam Alliance in March, 2014.

In any case, we found the check-in, boarding, and flight to Jakarta to all be more-or-less what one would expect of a national flag carrier. Actually, Garuda Indonesia was recently named as having the world’s Best Economy Class by SkyTrax. I can even sort of see why (aside from the diagram telling customers to not squat on the toilet seat when taking a pee or a shit) given the in-flight entertainment, specialized service for kids (e.g., toys, baby food, etc.), and included hot (and edible) meals even on really short flights.

In contrast, Garuda’s hub in Jakarta leaves a bit to be desired. The airport is nice enough looking. And, it seems to look like and function as a modern, international airport. But, it isn’t/doesn’t!

On the one hand, the visa-on-arrival, immigration, and customs process was fairly straightforward (having done that before). On the other hand, it was a little unclear whether or not we were supposed to claim our luggage/stroller in Jakarta and “bag drop” before going on to our Bali flight (which is the procedure in the USA). However, we understood everyone to be telling us it was “checked through.” So, we went with that and expected to never see our luggage again.

The real confusion for us started in trying to figure out the gate for our departing flight. We were on Garuda #408 leaving at 10:05 (though our boarding pass said “boarding” was at 9:45). Our boarding pass—printed hours earlier in Singapore—said we were leaving from Gate F5. When we asked to confirm this location it sounded like people were saying that is Gate “A5,” which sent us scrambling for a terminal/gate that we couldn’t locate. The situation spiraled downward as we kept asking for directions to “Gate A5,” and we kept getting directions to places with no signs saying “A” anything. This was all made worse by the fact that the monitors didn’t seem to show our flight. Instead, we only saw a Garuda flight #404 to Bali leaving around 9:45.

Frustrated, I returned to the Garuda Executive lounge for the 3rd time and played the part of the prototypical “Ugly American” in a foreign place:

Me: Does our flight leave from Gate A5 or F5? Do you understand me? A or F? A as in Apple… F as in Fu…err… Fruit? Your monitors don’t seem to show our flight, we’re supposed to be boarding in 20 minutes.

Agent: A5.

Me: Do you mean Gate 5? Gate FFFFFFF5?

Agent: Yes.

So, off we went to Gate F5. Security let us through, which is a good sign. We then proceeded to Gate F5, which listed no flights on its destination board. WTF? Yet there was a gate agent checking tickets to allow people into the waiting area. Presumably they were waiting for some flight. Why not ours? Sure enough, she looked at our ticket, put a sticker on it, and let us through to the packed waiting room too. Once there, we discovered people waiting for Flight 404 to Bali and for some other flight sitting in the same waiting room. Again, WTF? Think about it: who would put two nearly identical flights—two different planes going to the same destination around the same time with nearly identical flight numbers—at the same gate?

Answer: Garuda Indonesia in Jakarta. It turns out that lots of flights wait in this gate in order to enter a jet bridge only to go down a flight of stairs to the tarmac and board a bus. However, the bus doesn’t take you “out” to a plane parked somewhere away from the terminal. No, it merely drives you to another gate at which point you climb back up a flight of stairs and proceed down another jet bridge to board your plane.

Why this fandango? I have no earthly idea. They made some announcements in two languages: 1) obviously not English and 2) not understandable English. We had no idea. So, we just kept trying to board flights until they finally allowed us to go on the aforementioned bus/flight, which happily landed in Bali.

Oh, and did I mention we were any hour or so late in leaving for no obvious or particular reason? Thankfully, once aboard the airplane our hour and a half flight to Bali was pleasant (good meal, plush toy, decent inflight entertainment). To be fair, I’m sure we would have been less stressed by the Jakarta airport experience had we had more rest the night before and more time between flights that morning.

At least we got another country out of it: Indonesia (Java)

Our arrival (including the luggage!) and transfer in Bali went smoothly. We’re staying at the Courtyard by Marriott Nusa Dua, which might be the nicest Marriott Courtyard in the world (though we’ve generally found that Courtyards overseas aren’t the drab, cookie cutter establishments found in business parks throughout the USA). The public areas are especially attractive; the room is relatively spacious and nice enough.

Best looking Courtyard by Marriott ever? Maybe.

We spent the balance of the afternoon in the pool. We then had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, where we met a nice waiter (Adi) who worked for five years on Carnival’s cruise ships out of Florida. Adi gave up that work in order to spend time at home with his wife and two kids (including a 3 year old daughter who shares Emerson’s birthday). Good dinner; great guy.

On coming back to our room, Libby spent some time working on the laptop, and I pretty much just passed out. The jet lag, lack of sleep, and illness had all finally caught up to me.

Today’s box score: +2 countries (Indonesia, Java; Indonesia, Lesser Sunda Islands)