Christmas @ the Gili's

For the Christmas weekend we had arranged a trip to the Gili islands. The Gili islands are Lombok's most popular tourist destination. They are three small islands in front of Lomboks west coast and we had booked a hotel on Gili Trawangan, the biggest of the three. The Gili’s are called paradise and it truly was! The pictures underneath also show the paradise, but to explain in words: white sand beaches, turquoise waters, corals ride on the beach, beachside cafes and restaurants, relaxing atmosphere and best of all NO motorized traffic. Especially that last item was very relaxing, now we only had to watch out for horse carts :-)

To come to the Gili’s there are a number of fast boats and slower boats going from Bali. We booked the fastboat Gili Cat, which left from PadangBai. The journey in the boat took 2 hours and was a bit more rough than we thought, which not everybody liked that much, but we survived. In Bali the weather wasn’t good for the past few days, but the Gili’s have 300 sunny days a year so the beach was waiting for us when we arrived. Rino had booked the hotel Big Bubble Dive and Bungalows (see here his review on TripAdvisor). After checking in and lunch we rushed ourselves to enjoy the beach. Marion by coincidence met an old friend from Drenthe, so the world keeps on being small (especially because she saw the same friend one and half week later in Ubud again). Most of our time on the Gili’s we spend on or at the beach, relaxing, snorkeling, reading, playing games, swimming and just having the perfect vacation. We had read that people often stay longer than planned on the Gili, Marion and Jort originally thought they would explore Lombok, soon they decided to stay longer on the Gili’s and Loek and Els quickly followed their idea. The second day we all made a walk around the island, which took only 2 hours. We would also love to come back to the Gili’s one time!

Christmas eve
Of course Christmas on the Gili islands felt totally different than normally in Norway or the Netherlands, but we had planned a small Christmas Eve with a few presents. For Iris it’s just an impossible idea not have some kind of Christmas Eve celebration. Els even had arranged a small and very fake Christmas tree and we all sat together in front of one of the hotel rooms and shared our presents (see the pics in the slideshow). For dinner we made a reservation by one of the beachside restaurants, but unfortunately not everything went so smoothly at this restaurant compared to the one we eaten the day before (see Rino’s reviews on TripAdvisor).



Glass bottom boat
On first Christmas day we had booked a glass bottom boat, which is a boat with a few glass windows so you can watch the underwater life from the boat. Unfortunately Roger was sick and not able to join the trip. The boat brought us to several beautiful snorkeling spots around the 3 islands, we had a lunch on Gili Air and a walk on Gili Meno the smallest of the 3. It was a very successful day and we all enjoyed it very much. The underwater life showed us turtles, beautiful young and old corals and lots of tropical fish. We were not in the possession of a underwater camera, so unfortunately we can not show you the underwater life yet, but we have bought a underwater casing for our camera now, so next time we will show the beautiful underwater life of Bali and Lombok :-)



Except one incident in a popular reggae bar about the worst Mojito in the world (see link with Rino’s review about the Gili islands on TripAdvisor), everything was absolutely fantastic on the Gili! :-)



Review Scallywags Organic Seafood Bar & Grill the restaurant we eaten the first day

GOD JUL & FIJNE KERST! :-)

Hi from the sunny and idyllic Gili Trawangan!

We want to wish all of you out there a merry christmas wherever you are! We are at this moment enjoying a white christmas on the beach with blue green water and a car and scooter free island! It's as perfect as it can be but also strange for us to think it's christmas eve...

Tonight we will share some presents and after have a good dinner at the waterside :-)

Have a peacefull and gooood christmas with your familly and loved ones!

Ho ho ho from family Frohe and Romeyn <3

Fortunate

We are fortunate in so many ways. Fortunate to be able to be here 10 months, do what we do and experience everything we do. Fortunate to have been born into the lives we have in the western countries with money and all the opportunities we can imagine. Fortunate to have the luxury and freedom of choice in every situation we are in. But I realise more and more for each day here how much we also lose or miss because of all this wealth. In Norway as an example I know that we complain all the time about something instead of appreciating what we have and what we do and we are the richest and wealthiest country in the world. As people in Norway and Netherlands we have the opportunity to change what we want in life whenever we want, although many of us don’t realise this, we are stuck in our own patrons and think we have to search for happiness somewhere new and outside ourselves.

The Balinese peoples fortune in my eyes is that they are born into a way of living that contains a lot of spirituality and to live in the moment, sounds so simple, but did you and I grow up this way? I think as a child we all do and we all are spiritual, but we learn to plan everything ahead what to do and how we will do it, we forget to live in the moment. I know this is a cliché and that a lot of us are aware of this lately, it’s modern to be spiritual and to seek other happiness than in materialism and career. But I realise here that we still don’t know how to easily change and think different than we always have learned in our culture and upbringing, even tough we know things through knowledge and traveling. Who can blame us? We are also just living within our own boundaries with our own references.

I have to think about papa, I remember how he was to me as a child and how he let me stay spiritual and dreamy as long as I wanted it and needed it, later in life he also never made any stress out of anything and always took the day as it was and didn’t plan anything in terms of having to feel obligated to things or worry about something yet to come. The stress inside me and that I also often forget to live in the moment comes from later in life and the culture and society I grew up in.

In Bali they don’t worry so much about what is going to happen tomorrow, they have a saying that I hear here a lot: ‘…like the river flows…’ It symbolises the way they look at life, they don’t plan much ahead, they are not afraid for what will happen next and they believe strongly in the flow of the river and that it takes them to were they’re supposed to go. There are absolutely less fortunate sides about thinking this way, Balinese often don’t plan things efficiently and on time, they don’t always stand up for themselves and they are too (in western ways) humble against another person, being on time is a wide term here. And children don’t were helmets on the scooters and they drive from age 10. Probably I will find out more in the rest of my time here. And still I have to say, I would like to think, feel and look at the world more like a Balinese, if we all did, we would have had A LOT less wars on this planet. We look at Bali with our organised and western look and then think they don’t work efficiently…but who am I to say who is right?

The fortunate anyhow side is clearly that they are much more in touch with them selves inside and they know from childhood already that everybody is the same inside and live on one planet. Off course western/material greed has taken over a lot of the culture also here, but still they have a totally different way of dealing with it. Yet….I hope it will sty like this.
Yesterday I took a taxi from Ubud back home together with Els and Loek. The driver was a dedicated Balinese Hindu who really enjoyed to tell us about the Balinese way of life and the religion. When he understood that I know a few things and that I was very interested to know more about different things, he didn’t stop talking, laughing the typical Balinese way and explain things. He was such a happy man, he told about all different traditions, offerings, ceremonies, way of looking at life, the world and God. It was all so logical for him and he could explain it in such an easy way. God is in us al, but also in the trees or in the animals and everything around us. We are all the same, but also every person is unique. He lives today and doesn’t know what he will do tomorrow, even tonight, he said, I don’t know what will happen, and then he laughed… The greatest thing here is that they don’t want to force anything on you, even better, they don’t even care what you believe. In their eyes we are still the same inside and good and bad is in and outside us all. This they try to keep in balance by for example offering a lot.
He told about karma and how you can learn and change your whole life, if something did not go well you have to evaluate and then change it. It all was so simple for him. And this is wisdom that we western people read in books and here from great thinkers, writers and spiritualists. And there you are talking to a Balinese taxi driver and you have the first seat to one of the most essential and spiritual lectures you can get, fantastic! :-) He also had a great fun trying to teach me some Balinese, haha, I think I will stay with the Indonesian in first place, but it’s nice to know some Balinese too. I love Bali!

So who is more fortunate? That’s the question.

I could go on telling about the culture and the Hinduism here, and I am still learning. There will come more thoughts and philosophies from me for sure.

Visits on Bali :-)

We are here for 3 month already, time has really flown away, the weeks pass but the feeling is different. I think it comes from the fact that we don’t realise so often which month and time of year it is. Even though we know about the snow back home we don’t feel the season change here, besides that the rain season is coming. The body is so used to that it should have been autumn and winter right now that it still thinks its summer. But we have been buying a few Christmas gifts and we here music all around here in the shops and everywhere. So its slowly coming to us ;-)

At the moment we have a lot of visits, a few weeks ago, Aina and Tonje (daughters of Anders, my brother) came with a friend and stayed in Bali for 3 weeks. They will leave Saturday. Together we have been to Padangbai, Ubud and temple Pura Tanah Lot and off course a number of times just at the closest beach. We have had a lot of fun together and for me (Iris) it has been a great thing to get to know them better than I did before, we match good together and have a lot to talk about, pity that Sofie just misses out to meet them this time. The last nights we could also offer the girls a room in the old villa we lived in before, because we moved BACK TO OUR HOUSE! :-) It’s great to finally live and settle for real in the house, which is ours for the rest of the time here! We have finally emptied all of our bags and suitcases and made an own place for everything somewhere in this cosy house. We love this house!

Last Saturday Els, Loek, Marion and Jort came from NL and we picked them up from the airport. After an almost 30 hour travel they were pretty jetlagged and tired. Monday Loek, Jort and Marion were sick, stomach trouble and throwing up. We were never sick like this (besides Rino’s fever in India) until now, and 3 of the 4 catch it the 2nd day. But luckily it was quickly over for all of them and Wednesday everybody was eating normal food again. This week we have room for everybody in the house, next week somebody has to sleep in the villa. But that’s no problem, we have rented 3 scooters extra. It’ s going surprisingly well with driving the scooters. Loek and Jort both needed a few times to get used to drive left and to understand this traffic a bit, but its going perfect :-)

This Saturday we will pick up mamma, Sofie and Roger on the airport also after a 30-hour travel. Hope they will be luckier with the ‘Bali belly’ and not get sick and feel so bad. So for 2 weeks we will be a group of 9 people and 23 of December we go to the Gili islands for 5 days and to celebrate a white Christmas on the beach of Gili Travangan :-) The Christmas music on the IPod is ready to be plaid on the beach ;-) We look forward to go and we do the sun dance every day so we don’t get rain on the Gili’s when we are there.

Trash = Cash

Last weekend (27nov) we were in Ubud again, this time mainly because an event at the foundation. The 2 weeks before we had a big group of American students doing a project with our teenagers at Sjaki. The students are coming from a university in California and are traveling around the world for 4 months in 10 different countries. In every country they did something good for people. And on Bali they were spending time with our teenagers and us making a lot of stuff. The project slowly took form prior to the time should come. It became a project were they made different items out of all kind of trash that we and others had saved up the last couple of months. The two weeks ended with an event/thank you party with the students and teenagers. All kind of people were invited to come and all the children and parents also. The items made during the two weeks were sold this day by the American students, there was a band playing and there was food and drinks for everybody! :-) It was a great success and the teenagers, children, students and other guests were dancing for hours during the middle of the day in a HOT HOT Ubud. Everybody was sweaty and happy and Sjaki made a lot of money during the day! :-) It was a fantastic experience seeing all the children and teenagers having such a great time dancing and jumping around to the music with all the other happy people. The Americans were great, they loved the teenagers and the children and were very enthusiastic. They also gat a lot of trust from the teenagers witch also is a big complement to them.

In the evening we made plans to eat with one of the girls we had talked to the most and from there we headed over to a lounge/disco where we partied together all of us to celebrate the successful day and as a goodbye party for the Americans who were leaving for China last Monday.

It was a great weekend but also really cool getting to know the group Americans, I must say I admirer the way they travel, their university has made a programme/semester about seeing the world and connecting it to a number of subjects they have in school. They visit Argentina, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Kenya, India, Indonesia and China. This all in 4 months. The students are all around 20 years old. What an experience it must be! They enjoyed it that’s for sure, and we enjoyed them:-)

Sunday we finally bought our sets with traditional Balinese clothing, so now we can join all kinds of ceremonies here and look completely like we are supposed to here :-) Iris’ blouse had to be made by a tailor, because it should be custom-made, the sarong and Rino’s clothing we bought at a marked. Picture will come later.

To see the products made with the Americans and pictures from the weekend see here. (Because the blog is available to everybody I exclude pictures of Sjaki’s children and teenagers): I dont know why but some pictures are not uploaded well on the webalbum, so they look damaged, sorry about that.
http://picasaweb.google.com/fromeynfotos7/TrashIsCash?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrg6Oulr8bo6QE

Picture link and address

Here the link with the pictures of last weekend:
http://picasaweb.google.com/fromeynfotos7/PadangbaiWeekend?authkey=Gv1sRgCOXGm-Lq-ZuTGw#

Our house here on Bali does not really have an address, therefore we us the address of Rino's hotel. So underneeth our address for if you want to send something:

Puri Saron Seminyak
attn Iris Frohe & Rino Romeyn
Jl. Camplung Tanduk
80361 Seminyak
Kuta-Bali
Indonesia

Ubud and Padangbai weekends

The last 2 weekends we have spend in Ubud and Padangbai. Here our story's:

Ubud (12 – 14 November 2010)

The foundation of Iris (Sjaki-Tari-Us) was hosting (their building) to Bali’s International Meditation Festival, with the motto: “Living life in peace, love and harmony through mediation”. Therefore Iris was scheduled to sit by the booth of the foundation for half a day. This was a good opportunity for us to explore Ubud some more and maybe find our inner self’s ;-) Besides we could participate for free at all workshops and seminars because of them using the building :-)

On Friday night we arrived by our home stay and went out for some dinner by the Warung of Sjaki, called Sjaki’s Warung. Iris knew that one of the teenagers was working and wanted to see how he was doing. He was doing very well and we had a lovely and cheap dinner. Afterwards we had some drinks with Dutch and Balinese colleagues of Iris. The Balinese drink (spirit) arak was having its effect on us this night, haha, we don’t drink much alcohol here. And when the Balinese drink, its mostly the strong arak witch goes around the table in 1 shot glass.

The next day was the first day of the meditation festival and while Iris was sitting at the booth of the foundation Rino joined some workshops. By the booth Iris had some very fascinating talks with some interesting visitors of the festival and Rino tried to meditate… One of the workshops, Rino joined, was held by an Indonesian women and the other by an American. Especially the workshop held by the Indonesian women was hard to follow while everything had to be translated, but still a nice experience to try to meditate. At least it was very interesting to witness all the meditation around us and all the knowledge and experience of the people coming there. And last but not least the vibe and atmosphere that was hanging around the place. It’s sounds “flying high” and dreamy, we know, but this were mostly down to earth people with a message how we all can live more balanced lives and contribute to world peace. So guess its good for all of us…

In the evening a ceremony was planned and we decided to see what it entailed. It was a wonderful evening with lots of Balinese dance -and sing performances, we both enjoyed it very much.

Sunday we both joined two seminars, with discussions about meditation and Balinese culture. This was again a bit hard to follow while the Balinese speakers had to be translated and sometimes they where so caught up in their story that they forgot to pause and wait for the translate. Although this fact we still enjoyed hearing these great speakers talk. Later on in the afternoon we joined a workshop about meditation from an American lady, which was a special experience again.

In between we walked around the city Ubud and saw what attracts people to this village, while walking you can feel the Balinese culture. The village is full of creative souls, arts & crafts and environmental friendly alternatives. There are also so many great shopping places and nice restaurants. It is a great alternative to Seminyak and Kuta, which is made for mass tourism. We decided that we would go for some more weekends in Ubud in the future.

PadangBai (19 – 21 November 2010)

We wanted a chill-out weekend and chose to go to Padangbai, which is a small harbour and backpacker town located on the east side of the island. Rino had read a nice story in the Bali Advertiser (a local paper, with advertisements and some stories) about a hostel in PadangBai and that same hostel was the ‘Our Pick’ of the Lonely Planet, so the choice was easy. The hostel was called Topi Inn and owned by a Dutch man. It had a great atmosphere and was very cosy, read more about the hostel in Rino’s review on TripAdvisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g1078452-d1656115-r87818781-Topi_Inn-Padangbai_Bali.html. In the evening we went out for a drink in a local bar and there we could really feel the backpacker vibe.

Saterday morning we rented snorkelling gear and headed up to the near Blue Lagoon beach, which would be a great snorkelling beach. The snorkelling was great and we saw our first tropical fish and corals of this trip. The beach however was very small and not a good place to swim, so in the afternoon we decided to go to the other beach of PadangBai. That beach was amazingly beautiful. White sand, turquoise waters and some real warungs (small kitchen made out of some bamboo sticks). It was a great spot and we loved to hangout on this beach. To come to the beach we had to climb a small hill though, but that made the beach even more idyllic. We loved the beach so much that we spend the complete Sunday over there. On Saturday night we went back to the Babylon Bar, where we were the day before as well. They had live music planned for the evening, the band was great and we had a real good time together and with some of the local boys working in the bar.

All together it was a very successful and relaxing weekend :-) It may be a place were we return once again :-)

If you are not jealous yet from the story, check out the pictures:

Link didnt work right now, but check out our facebook and we put the link on the blog a.s.a.p. :-)

Munduk

Seminyak, October 31, 22:30

This weekend we went to Munduk, a small village up in the central mountains of Bali. On Friday afternoon the journey started and was partly the same as to Lovina, except for the last 45 min. Even though we where better prepared this time it was still very cold when we came high in the mountains. We had booked a room at Puri Alam Bali Bungalows, which supposed to have good views (according to the Lonely Planet), well the view was absolutely stunning, what a panorama! And this for the nice price of 200.000 rp (16euro) a night. Rino now finally has his KITAS (workingpermit), witch gives a lot of discounts/local prices on many many things. We are very happy with this little passportlike book! :-)

The next morning we had lovely breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of our hotel and we headed up to Jatiluwih, another small village where we should find one of the most beautiful rice terraces of Bali. The rice terraces spread out over 18km up in the mountains and it was wonderful. We could drive through with our scooter and we also took a walk to see the fields and the rice closer. It was fantastic and definitely one of the most gorgeous places we have seen on Bali until now. From the end of the road through the rice fields it was not very far to the temple Pura Luhur Batukaru, one of the holiest Hindu temples of Bali.

Unfortunately it started raining very hard when we arrived at the temple, the rain didn’t seem to stop but with a borrowed umbrella we walked through the temple and could take a closer look. The road back took longer then we thought, mostly because it rained so hard. We even warmed and dried up at a restaurant with a nice fireplace and hot chocolate and tea. :-) It’s funny, we felt really cold and were happy with this fireplace, as you are in the winter back home after skiing in Norway or skating in NL, almost forgetting that it was maybe 20 degrees. No! we are not complaining, it was just an unexpected experience on Bali ;-) In the evening we had diner at another close by hotel and played some cards and red a book in our room. Munduk is a very quiet, small village with nothing further happening at night and no streetlights. We had a very nice time until Iris saw a huge spider, which Rino could not kill because he climbed al the way up to the roof. Luckily our room was a family room and had 2 bedrooms, so we moved to the other one.

The next day we arranged a guide who would bring us to 2 waterfalls. The first waterfall was 30m high and the second 50m. In total it was a 2 hours walk through a beautiful forest, with lots of interesting plantations. Cacao trees, avocado, banana, pineapple, Balinese fruits and many more. The waterfalls where spectacular and we where both very happy we took this trip. It was good for body and soul and for the eye. We needed a weekend like this now, to see and explore a bit and get some exercise. When we arrived back to the hotel we where exhausted and took an early lunch. Unfortunately it started raining again very hard and very long so therefore we decided to go home directly instead of taking an alternative route, which would have taken us through rice fields, coffee plantations and another 2 waterfalls, but we will take that route next time. The great thing is that we still have so much time to see everything we want of the island!

When we arrived back home we could finally switch to the room we wanted in the villa. Rino was trying whether the locks worked and eventually it ended up that we locked ourselves out of the room and we had to break the window in the door to unlock it, not so smart! But luckily these thinks don’t costs much on Bali ;-)

See here our pictures of the weekend on our Picasa. http://picasaweb.google.com/fromeynfotos7/Munduk?authkey=Gv1sRgCLqu-9zC4IWnEw#