We didn’t try “taking and joking” with Baba, but we followed the sign and found the Good Karma Bungalows and Restaurant. They are thatched bamboo bungalows right on the beach at Amed. You can hop out your front door and into the water (having run the gauntlet of fishing boats that are parked on the beach […]
This place was built in the 1940s by a king of south-central Bali – several sculptures are dated 1948. It’s name means waters of the Ganges, and although it’s remote from India the water did seem pure and plentiful. I don’t know if it’s source is springs or rain. At any rate it’s not a […]
Like so many Asian countries, one of the wonderful things about Bali is that people wear traditional costumes as well as the ubiquitous T-shirt and jeans (or shorts). Herewith, some pictures of people in Balinese garb: This man is wearing the Hindu turban (as opposed to the Indonesian muslim skullcap), with a peak at the […]
These are cheery Balinese cows, in their little shelter about 50 feet from the beach. All the cattle we saw were these smallish red ones. There are little huts all up and down the precipitous slopes of East Bali, and I think they just move the cows to the ones with the lushest grass every […]
This sculpture is to be found outside a building at the Science Park, adjacent to the National University of Singapore. OK, is it a bunch of vaguely Tibetan clouds? Or is it, as we think, a pyramid of brains? You know, I think that aside from gardening, Singapore’s general sense of aesthetics is pretty completely […]
We stayed in two hotels in Bali: One was a 3-month old penthouse suite overlooking the ocean (in Bali, even we can afford such a thing), and the other was a bungalow in the small city of Ubud, adjacent to the Saraswati Temple there. Both advertised themselves as bungalows, although they were adjoined to one […]
This post is mainly for Daxin, unless there’s another botanically-inclined reader out there. Here are two interesting plants we saw in Bali. The first is in a pot in the Tirta Gangga (Water Palace) near Amlapura: Below is a closeup- or at least as close as I could get in the conditions: It looks like […]
We began our stay in Bali at a beach community on the east coast, which is lined by a 1.5 lane road. Here’s what the ocean looks like from the hotel: Or, if you look from almost any other place on a hill amidst the greenery, like this: It’s blue, it’s clear, it’s fairly warm, […]
We went to Bali last week, which is a mere 2.5 hour plane trip from Singapore. I’ve now been to Indonesia, which for some reason is as far away as you can get on my mental horizon – maybe because of all those primitive carvings on exhibit in museums that only show that aspect of […]
I saw at least four of these this morning on my walk. Apparently they’re migrating south from Thailand – unless they’re locals, but I’d never seen them before. They’re in the area where the dollarbirds were nesting back when I posted about them. Anyway, the feathers on the crests are very cute and floppy. […]