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All posts for the month January, 2017

An hour earlier the pool area was pristine. Then it started raining.

An hour earlier the pool area was pristine. Then it started raining.

Apparently even paradise has off days. When I wrote earlier that “it only rains a little” I should have added “…until it rains a lot.” We were out to lunch a couple days ago and when we left to go home you could tell it was going to rain. A lot. I still decided to go a bit out of the way to the liquor store, since there are priorities. Mark got home just as it started raining but I got caught in a torrential downpour. I figured the worst that could happen was that I’d get soaked, right?

Well. I got home, it was pouring, I showered, and was just lying down reading when Mark told me to come outside: our grounds were flooding. He told me to look in back where water was coming in through a couple gaps in the cement wall separating us from the neighboring properties. Just as I got there I heard a crash and saw the brick wall collapse. And then the water just swamped our heavenly pool area, the rest of the grounds, and then came running into the house.

The cement walls apparently held back the water for a while ... until it didn't anymore. This is well after it had stopped raining, but the water was still flowing in.

The cement walls apparently held back the water for a while … until it didn’t anymore. This is well after it had stopped raining, but the water was still flowing in.

Within minutes (seconds?) we had the runoff from thousands of acres up in the hills in our once-pristine pool. Two hours before I’d found it disturbing if a leaf dropped in the pool to ruin the perfection. Now it looked more like a septic tank. We learned later that a little stream nearby had backed up because there was so much trash in it, then when it broke through it just overwhelmed everything. We learned, too, that it was the third time in just a few years that it’s happened. And thus our little slice of heaven was distinctly no longer heavenly.

The good news is that the local property managers did a fabulous job cleaning it up. They were over in just a little while and quickly arranged for us to stay in a neighboring villa that was unoccupied. They started the cleanup before it had even completely stopped raining. We were stunned the next morning to discover that the house was again habitable, though it would take days to drain and refill the pool. We couldn’t say enough good things about how quickly they turned things around.

The next morning our pool boy thought maybe they'd dredge it out and just add some extra chemicals. I was pretty skeptical and sure enough when more experienced managers came over they recognized they would need to rent a pump to empty it.

The next morning our pool boy thought maybe they’d dredge it out and just add some extra chemicals. I was pretty skeptical and sure enough when more experienced managers came over they recognized they would need to rent a pump to empty it.

Not pretty

Not pretty

One upside to all the trauma was that I’d been curious what other villas in the area were like, and we got to see. Staying just one night in the substitute villa made us so happy to get back to Villa Padma. The other place was just a couple buildings away, and sure, it had a nice pool and all that. But my God, the difference between this place, with all its great outdoor space, right on the edge of the rice fields, and a house with just no personality at all couldn’t have been greater. I guess there’s a reason Mark spends so much time doing research before we pick a place to stay.

The only outdoor sitting area at our replacement villa was distinctly inferior to what we'd become used to at Villa Padma. There was, though, a cat, which helps. Note the top of the wicker chair she's sitting on: she's spent a lot of time clawing away at it!

The only outdoor sitting area at our replacement villa was distinctly inferior to what we’d become used to at Villa Padma. There was, though, a cat, which helps. Note the top of the wicker chair she’s sitting on: she’s spent a lot of time clawing away at it!

Another upside was that, since the pool would be unavailable for several days, we took the opportunity to go back to Munduk, a little town a bit inland from here, where we’d stayed at a really beautiful little resort nearly three years ago. Sanak (the Munduk resort) has been this iconic little retreat in my memory ever since, so the flooding was a perfect excuse to pack overnight bags, toss them on our little scooters we’re renting, and go riding up the hills. The hour-long ride itself was half the joy, with gorgeous views across valleys and terraced rice fields. And then a long afternoon and morning the next day in another slice of heaven. You gotta love Bali.

Sanak resort in Munduk. It really is that beautiful

Sanak resort in Munduk. It really is that beautiful

Now just a couple days later life is nearly back to normal. The pool is full again and later today it should be ready for us. It will take a while – weeks, presumably – for the landscaping to recover fully, but this is a great place even if it’s not quite as perfect as it was two weeks ago.

Otherwise the big highlight of our second week here was a visit from Tamara, a free-spirited woman who loves traveling as much as we do, whom we met in Bali nearly three years ago. We’ve stayed in touch on Facebook and, the day we got here, Mark saw that she was back, too, staying in a writer’s colony in Ubud. We invited her up for the weekend and had a fabulous time eating, drinking, and getting to know her better. A lovely woman and a great visit, so now we’re scoping out our next opportunity to meet up with her. Somewhere in the world.

Mark, Tamara, and me walking back from lunch. She headed back to Ubud just as the rainstorm was starting so, while her drive back was not great, she missed the trauma here.

Mark, Tamara, and me walking back from lunch. She headed back to Ubud just as the rainstorm was starting so, while her drive back was not great, she missed the trauma here.

As of today we’re just over half way through our four-week stay at Villa Padma. I’d worried that I would get bored in a small place like this. So far? Not a problem, especially if the weeks are broken up by periodic natural disasters.

The other big news is that with all the time we have, we’ve figured out how to fill the time between Bali and Japan in early April. Mark learned online that apparently – apparently – we can get visas for China in Bangkok. So we’re going to Bangkok and then, assuming we get visas, we’re going to spend three weeks in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. That was the goal two years ago when Mark’s knee problems (and the earthquake in Tibet) screwed up our plans. With much of it mountainous, Yunnan is supposed to have great hiking and a beautiful Tibetan culture so we’re pretty excited about our little upcoming Yunnan vacation.

This is our front drive. Such a mess!

This is our front drive. Such a mess!

Two mornings later, all was clean again. This is our housekeeper Julie (on the right) dressed up for a holiday at the local temple. She wasn't working that day but stopped by to put all the proper blessings in place around the property.

Two mornings later, all was clean again. This is our housekeeper Julie (on the right) dressed up for a holiday at the local temple. She wasn’t working that day but stopped by to put all the proper blessings in place around the property.

Me and Tamara in Lovina

Me and Tamara in Lovina

And getting ready to enjoy dinner at My Greek Taverna, our go-to place for dinner

And getting ready to enjoy dinner at My Greek Taverna, our go-to place for dinner

Besides having good Greek food, My Greek Taverna can be a fun place. Here we made friendies with the neighboring table of Aussies.

Besides having good Greek food, My Greek Taverna can be a fun place. Here we made friendies with the neighboring table of Aussies.

In addition to our overnight trip to Munduk, we biked up into the hills a couple days earlier to a plantation/resort partly for lunch and partly just to see stuff. It was way up in the hills with this infinity pool that seemed to just hang out over the edge of the earth. Great views, but not so great food.

In addition to our overnight trip to Munduk, we biked up into the hills a couple days earlier to a plantation/resort partly for lunch and partly just to see stuff. It was way up in the hills with this infinity pool that seemed to just hang out over the edge of the earth. Great views, but not so great food.

This, though, at our favorite Thai place in Lovina, is good food

This, though, at our favorite Thai place in Lovina, is good food

Cute girls in Lovina

Cute girls in Lovina

Oh, I almost forgot this picture from Munduk. This was the view as we walked out of our little cabin. Sweet!

Oh, I almost forgot this picture from Munduk. This was the view as we walked out of our little cabin. Sweet!

Mark out by a rice field

Mark out by a rice field

And in Bali you can never have too many pictures of rice fields, right?

And in Bali you can never have too many pictures of rice fields, right?

These are the rice fields next to our villa. I didn't even set foot off our grounds to take the photo.

These are the rice fields next to our villa. I didn’t even set foot off our grounds to take the photo.

We’ve come to Lovina, a little town on the north central coast of Bali, for a four-week rest stop. We both got to feeling a few weeks ago that we’d been moving around just altogether too much of late. The plan – assumption, really – had always been that sooner or later we’d slow down our travels considerably, start spending longer periods in a smaller number of locations. And I’d always assumed that it would have happened a lot sooner than this, that after just a couple years of truly peripatetic traveling we’d tire of it. One of the things we learned, though, is just how big and interesting the world is. There were always more places to see and explore, favorite places to go back to, regions we hadn’t even touched.

While we were in Australia, though, we really got the sense that we needed some down time. And what better place than Bali? We’ve been here a few times and we always love it; a great combination of tropical weather, seriously beautiful natural environment, friendly people, and dirt cheap. What’s not to like? So we went online, found a three-bedroom villa with a private pool in a small village for $150 a night. So we’re settled in for four weeks.

Our very private pool after a rainstorm

Our very private pool after a rainstorm

We’ve been here for 10 days now and there is a lot to love. The setting is pretty much everything you could hope for in Bali. We’re at the end of a little lane, with nothing but rice fields the other side of the fence. You really have the sense of pretty much total isolation. Still it’s just a 10-minute walk (through the rice fields) into town.

And for $150 a night you get a lot. The house is huge, though we really don’t use it much. There’s a huge patio with a couch and chairs and dinner table where we spend time if we’re not at the pool. And if we’re at the pool, well that’s just pure heaven. On top of that we have a housekeeper who cleans up, does our laundry, cooks breakfast, and either lunch or dinner if we want her to. Did I mention laundry? After all these years of too often washing clothes in the hotel sink, we drop our dirty clothes in the laundry basket and by noon it’s hanging out in the sun drying. Amazing! And she’s not the only staff person: we have a part-time gardener/pool boy who comes daily, and another guy who comes in the evening to sleep in a little house next to the entrance gate. Security, you know.

And the pool when it's not raining. Pretty nice, huh?

And the pool when it’s not raining. Pretty nice, huh?

In other words, crazy inexpensive.

We’re here a bit off-season; this is actually the rainy season in fact. And while it’s cloudy part of the time pretty much every day, it only rains a little. And then it’s sunny again and then cloudy and then sprinkling maybe … and then sunny. It’s not bad.

The one down side is the paucity of good food. When we started thinking about spending a month here Mark observed that there was a well-rated Greek restaurant just 15 minutes by foot. I guessed – incorrectly, it turns out – that if there was good Greek there would be other good food too. Not so much. There’s a nice Thai place where we eat lunch pretty often, and a great place called “Secret Garden” that’s too far to walk at night. Solution? They send a driver for us and then drive us home after dinner. For free. Yeah, I love Bali.

Lunch at Jasmine Kitchen. If you don't have wine, a big lunch runs maybe $22. With wine it skyrockets to $35 or something like that.

Lunch at Jasmine Kitchen. If you don’t have wine, a big lunch runs maybe $22. With wine it skyrockets to $35 or something like that.

I’d expected that we’d find at least one decent grocery store where I could find food I would recognize so we could do some cooking on our own, but that hasn’t worked either. There is surprisingly limited fresh produce available, and even less of it that I would have any idea how to cook. In the city maybe 30 minutes east along the coast there’s a larger supermarket but even there the selection is really limited. I did find a jar of olives so we could make martinis at home and the girl at the checkout counter was puzzled and asked what they were. “Do you eat them?” she asked. So it was pretty unlikely that I’d find smoked salmon or cream cheese here.

Except for the fact that we’re going to get genuinely bored by the food choices though – and that’s not a trivial matter for us – it’s definitely a slice of heaven.

This is what we pass through walking into town for lunch

This is what we pass through walking into town for lunch

One of the questions we had before arriving was whether we’d ever want to leave. Maybe we’d love it so much we’d want to buy it. After 10 days the answers are pretty clear: yes and no, respectively. Four weeks will be plenty. And we understand why the Dutch owners have the place up for sale. It feels like paradise, but there’s only so much paradise you need in one year.

After we’re done here we’re going to stay in Bali for a while longer, five days at a resort on the beach and then eight days at another villa in the much-busier southern part of the island. But four weeks of paradise will be enough.

Heading off into town through the rice fields

Heading off into town through the rice fields

Google Maps shows that as the "road" into town. Seriously.

Google Maps shows that as the “road” into town. Seriously.

Lest you ever forget you're in Bali there's always temple-kind-of-things around

Lest you ever forget you’re in Bali there’s always temple-kind-of-things around

Lots of this kind of stuff

Lots of this kind of stuff

And did I mention the rice fields everywhere?

And did I mention the rice fields everywhere?

Oh, and one shot of me at the edge of one section of town

Oh, and one shot of me at the edge of one section of town

Downtown Perth from Kings Park & Botanic Garden

Downtown Perth from Kings Park & Botanic Garden

After six weeks we flew to Perth out in Western Australia for our 11th and final stop in Australia. “Why fly?” you might ask. “Why not take a bus?” As we’ve learned, the distances in Australia are massive. From Adelaide in South Australia to Perth in neighboring Western Australia it’s nearly 1,700 miles. In other words, driving from the capital of one Australian state to the neighboring capital would be like driving from Boston to Wichita, Kansas.

And yes, Western Australia is big: at over 1 million square miles it’s the second-biggest subnational entity in the world after Russia’s Sakha Republic (capital, Yakutsk for you Risk players…). To put that in some context, the two largest states in the U.S. (Alaska & Texas) together are just 932,000 square miles. So yeah, it’s big out here.

Now, as for Perth. Meh. It’s a big western boom town, with over 2 million people in the “Greater Perth” area. It’s first big population boom was the result of late 19th century gold rushes, and mining remains the center of the still-booming economy here. But there really wasn’t much to do out here.

We've seen more interesting street art in Australia than just about anywhere. This snake was just one example.

We’ve seen more interesting street art in Australia than just about anywhere. This snake was just one example.

And then there was this...

And then there was this…

We tried. We looked into renting a car and driving out into the great vastness of Western Australia. The goal, though, was the Pinnacles Desert and it was a few hours outside of Perth and, if that wasn’t bad enough, you needed to be there in the early morning to appreciate it. We weren’t interested in leaving Perth at 3:00 AM, so that was out. Then we thought maybe we’d rent bikes and enjoy some of Perth’s bike trails. But the bike rental place wasn’t where Google Maps said it was and when we walked 30 minutes to where their own website said it was, the hostel there said “Oh, they haven’t been here in months.” And by then it was 90 degrees and we weren’t that excited about biking anymore anyway.

We did, though, take a relaxing boat trip down the Swan River from Perth to Fremantle out on the coast. Fremantle is the main port in the region and we’d heard great things about it. Meh. Nothing that exciting, for us at least. It does has a UNESCO World Heritage site, an old prison that dates back to the age of Australia as Britain’s penal colony, though it operated until well into the ’90s. Worst tour ever!! We didn’t learn anything useful and the guide was way too interested in showing us how witty he was to be interesting. We were so annoyed, all we could think was “God, when can we get out of this prison?” So maybe that was the plan after all, to be so annoying we’d experience what it was like to be an actual prisoner.

Yup, that's a prison

Yup, that’s a prison

There was one nice spot in Perth, the Kings Garden and Botanic Garden. At just over 1,000 acres it’s nearly 20 percent bigger than Central Park though, to be fair, the population in Manhattan is somewhat denser than that of Perth. Nonetheless, the Kings Garden was a nice little interlude in an otherwise pretty boring city.

So. The boat ride down to Fremantle was the highlight, mostly because the cool breezes made for a lovely place to sit and read. Food? There were slim pickings. There was a good enough Greek restaurant, and a genuinely good Thai place, though with prices you’d expect more in Paris. And, to our surprise, a fun lunch place out in Fremantle that we went to twice, the second time just because it made more sense to take the train back for lunch than settle for what Perth had to offer.

Desperate for something interesting to do, we walked out to Perth's modern art museum. To discover that it was closed for a few weeks, setting up the next big exhibit. Instead we want to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. It was ... nice enough.

Desperate for something interesting to do, we walked out to Perth’s modern art museum. To discover that it was closed for a few weeks, setting up the next big exhibit. Instead we want to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. It was … nice enough.

Oh, enough bitching. We’re leaving Australia. It’s been good, despite restaurant prices that were just not warranted given the quality of food. But we’re itching for exotic adventures again so now it’s off to Bali which we’ve always considered one of the nearly perfect places on earth. We’ll come back to Australia in a couple years; we still didn’t get to Tasmania or Uluru in the center of Australia. For now, though, we’ve had enough of everything being in a sort of English. Time for adventure!

I enjoyed getting to know some of the statues out in Fremantle

I enjoyed getting to know some of the statues out in Fremantle

Including this little guy

Including this little guy

The cells in the Fremantle prison were pretty grim. The last resident here, though, was given permission to brighten his up. Pretty nice!

The cells in the Fremantle prison were pretty grim. The last resident here, though, was given permission to brighten his up. Pretty nice!

Some local color, at the entrance to a classy Thai restaurant in Perth

Some local color, at the entrance to a classy Thai restaurant in Perth

And finally, the beach at Fremantle. What's interesting here is that after six weeks and 11 stops this was the first time anywhere that we saw beach chairs and umbrellas in Australia. Alas, the beach was kind of sucky, though, so we didn't use them.

And finally, the beach at Fremantle. What’s interesting here is that after six weeks and 11 stops this was the first time anywhere that we saw beach chairs and umbrellas in Australia. Alas, the beach was kind of sucky, though, so we didn’t use them.