Bali

Bali is one of the 18 100 islands in Indonesia. It is a very nice, interesting place. I think I was too excited before we arrived on the island. I thought this would be the most beautiful place, I'd ever seen. That's why I was a little bit  disappointed after a few days. But anyway it was a good and pleasurable holiday, just not what I was expecting.

Now here is my opinion about Bali.

                   

People in Bali

The Balinese people are very kind. We didn't meet anybody who wasn't. Everybody started to speak to us on the street, in the stores, in the small shops. Of course, they wanted to sell their handmade wares, such as lamp cover from coconut shell, silk or just wanted to be our taxi driver. But the foreigner has to be very careful because they always want to have more money for selling things than they are worth. You have to know how to bargain for every object. They loved the kids. They always said something nice to my daughters.

Transport
I had never been in Asia before so it was the first time for me to experience the means of transportation there. It was chaotic! There were no rules of the road. You couldn't see any lanes on the streets. Thousands of motorbikes were everywhere. On the motorbikes were children without any helmets, babies tied across the body with a scarf.

If you would like to go somewhere it is a good idea to have a driver because they know how to drive there :). In a lot of cars there were no seat belts on the back seats. That was a problem for us, because we didn't know how to fix our car seats for the children. So Lili used the front seat (we didn't have to worry too much because there were no air bags at all).

We traveled two full days (8 hours/day) and two half days while in Bali. I felt guilty in respect to  my children after the second long day, but I really wanted to see something from Bali. The distances were not so great. But the roads were so bad and the traffic also. We could move just very slowly (like 5 miles/hour).

What to do in Bali with kids

• You should go to the Monkey Forest in Ubud. My daughter loved to watch the monkeys. We had to be very careful with the food. The monkeys were very aggressive and wanted to have all the food, the people carried in their hand or backpack. We read this before in our book so we didn't have any trouble.

• One of my favorite place was the Bali Bird Park. 

It was a park with two sides. On one side lived the birds on the other side were the reptiles.  I liked the first part better. We watched a bird feeding show. That was amazing. I had never seen parrots fly before. They are just absolutely beautiful.

W took more photos while holding the birds. Look, how this one looked at me. He or she wanted to ask me something, but I didn't understand. :)

• One morning we watched the Barong Dance in one small theater. The kids loved the costumes . In the dragon costume were two people so that was very interesting for the children. They enjoyed the one hour performance.

• We went to the Waterbom park at Kuta. 

This wasn't something special from Bali, but cooling in that hot, humid weather. My older daughter, Sophie loved the huge, long slides and my younger one enjoyed the shorter slides and the water.

What was interesting for parents

• The Balinese Temples were very nice and unique to my eyes. We were so lucky because we could see some temples with ceremonies. 

• The rice fields were very special to me. I'd never seen anything like this before. They were beautiful.

What we missed in Bali

We really wanted to go to the beach and to go snorkeling. I knew the best places in Bali were at the north of the island. That was too far from our house (Sanur). But even to find a nice beach for the kids that was hard.  A lot of garbage was in the ocean and the streams as well. That made me very sad. One morning we went one and half hours to find a nice beach at Nusa Dua, where the most expensive hotels were. There was a nice beach, but I thought that was too far to go with two small kids. So we didn't go there more than once.

Animals in Bali

I didn't know before we arrived. That lizards and geckos were living in the gardens and the houses as well. I was surprised the first evening, when I figured out which animal made this very loud noise in our living room. At first I thought that could be a frog, but a very noisy one. Even at the end of the week, I woke up every night and every time when the geckos made this loud sound.

In Bali there was a lot of mosquitoes. They could be dangerous as well, but we had just a lot of bites from them. 

In our garden after a rainy morning huge, red ants came out. I didn't recognize them until my 4 year old was screaming with the pain which an ants's bite had caused. Poor Sophie she had 3 times the same experience and you can imagine how scared she was after that.

After a week we left Bali and went to Hong Kong for 5 days to explore a totally different world.