I'm back! (Bali 2012 re-cap)

Yep, here I am, ready to share my thoughts on Bali, and how my expectations compared with the reality. I must say I think I had a very polite introduction to the Bali experience. Firstly, it wasn't the busiest tourist season (thankfully). Secondly, the villa we stayed in was paradise. I could have stayed there for all 7 days, never moving from my deck chair or from the depths of the aquamarine pool. But of course I wasn't in Bali just to hang out "at home".

"Our" pool from the living area.

I looked forward to...
In my previous blog post, I mentioned things I was looking forward to in Bali (massages, beautiful food, not swimming in the ocean, fishbowl cocktails, and the wedding). I did have beautiful food but not all of it was Balinese (my favourite was Thai, unsurprisingly), and lots of massages. I did not have one single fishbowl cocktail. Very disappointing. I did have other cocktails, though. I did swim in the ocean, on one day at least. The rest of the time, I swam in that beautiful pool. And yes, I did make it to the wedding!

The entrance to our villa.

Weather...

Apparently a ginger flower?

This time of year in Bali isn't too hot, comparatively. For people hailing from colder climes, it might cause heat stroke. But for me it was tolerable. Most of the time. I was sometimes being grumpy due to slight overheating. I looked forward to getting home to the Aussie winter, even as I wallowed in the pool and guzzled cocktails.

Being a tourist...

The Thai laksa thingy that
heated things up even more.

Mum and I went to Waterbom Park one day. It was the most touristy part of our trip, I'd say. We only stayed for half a day. It was silly fun. Later that day, I visited Balangan Beach, not far from Jimbaran Bay, and watched the guys surf (boooring! The non-surfing company was fun though). I also went for a swim in the lagoon there. It was really shallow but surprisingly refreshing (not tepid as I had expected).

Culture...?

A musical instrument
I wanted to bring home.

The day after the wedding, we drove out to Ubud, where I was hoping to see more of the Balinese landscape off the beaten track. Alas, I didn't see much at all beyond more busy streets and teeming markets. We passed the monkey forest, but with a two-month-old baby in tow, hanging out with cheeky Balinese monkeys wasn't on the cards. We spent most of our time in the Ubud market. I bought some cool stuff. On the way back to our villa, we saw some rice paddies, but they weren't those giant ones I'd hoped to glimpse.

Frangipani walkway
at the wedding.

The wedding...
We were not the only spectators at the ceremony (a crowd of locals gathered to watch from the sidelines, and other tourists also looked on with interest). It was a fairly small gathering but for my brother it brought most of his old gang (scattered to the nine winds nowadays) back together again in their old stomping ground. I also saw people I hadn't seen since I was a little kid.

The ugly bits...
In conclusion, the main bad parts of the trip were: 1) seeing stray, mangy, slat-ribbed dogs and cats that nobody is taking care of, that would be better off being shot, 2) knowing that the majority of people in Bali work super hard for very little reward, and 3) two of our party getting Bali belly the night of the wedding, and having a pretty nasty time of it.

Revisiting Ireland, post-Blog O'Hop

Not long after arriving in Ireland.

Hi everyone! Yes, it's Sunday and ordinarily I'd be basking in the lack of need to post anything for the A-Z, but I decided that I didn't want to fail at anymore goals this year than I absolutely have to, so I'm here to post my monthly travel blog post.

Killarney.

Back in March, I took part in Mark Koopmans's Irish-themed Blog O'Hop, in which I talked about my upcoming travels to Ireland and what I thought I could expect from the visit. Mark gave me the idea of following up at some point with a reflection on how my expectations measured up to the reality of the Emerald Isle as I found it. So that's what I'm going to do today!

A view from the top of
Blarney Castle.

Want to know something funny? I actually did believe I'd never visited Ireland before. But one day during my travels, after I'd sent my mum a text message filling her in on our trip around the Ring of Kerry, I got the following surprising text back from her:

"Is it a big ring? You fell off a table while Lester rode around the ring of kerry. You and I stayed at a caravan park. You were about 10 weeks old."

Imagine my surprise to learn that I had, in fact, visited Ireland before! Sure, I was only 10 weeks old at the time, but still, it counts!! Right? ;) Oh, and Lester's my Dad in case anybody wondered. Anyway, let's get back on track. During my Blog O'Hop post, I mentioned the following expectations that I had of Ireland:

What am I expecting of Ireland?

Blarney Castle gardens.

• Cold(er) weather
• Lush green landscapes
• Possibly some depressing dinginess, but also cool medieval-ness
• Guinness!
• A lot of old history
• Groovy little old Irish pubs with hot stew...and potatoes.

And I can say that, for the most part, I got what I was expecting. But let me break it down for ya:

Weather

I did get a bit of mist,
which made me happy.

The Cliffs of Moher.

I didn't get the sort of cold weather I was hoping for, and yet it was perfect weather for sightseeing. We were some of the lucky few who saw the Cliffs of Moher without mist obscuring the beautiful views. We had blue skies and hardly any mist most of the time, and while I personally adore a dark, misty landscape, I was still thankful that I could actually see the stuff I'd come to see. I was disappointed by all the overbearing central heating, but not surprised. It's a chronic fault of countries in the colder northern climes, I find. ;)

Landscape

This is my kind of scenery!

To be honest, I was expecting it to be more green. People sitting with me on the bus would probably scoff to hear this. "What, you want it more green than this? Jeez, can't please you can we?" But seriously, it wasn't that sort of searing emerald green I'd been led to believe from all the photos my friends have taken of the place over the years. Still, it was beautiful.

Depressing dinginess & cool medieval-ness

I didn't really see much of the dinginess, which I suppose is a good thing! ;) I guess the most depressing part was various monuments to the awful history, i.e. the Potato Famine and the like. Speaking of that, I once read a great book called STAR OF THE SEA by Dublin-born Joseph O'Connor, which while it was pretty tragic, was also a great read. As for cool medieval-ness, yep, saw that. I will talk more about it lower down, when I mention Blarney. :)

I also sampled a fair few wines...
mostly Chilean. The rest were
Australian. haha

Guinness

Well, yes, I found a lot of Guinness, but I only had one pint of the stuff! I actually found that my favourite Irish beverage was Kilkenny, similar to Guiness but with much more creamy goodness. Yep, I'm a Kilkenny konvert!

Old history

Of course there was a lot of this, and probably  my favourite example of it was our visit to Blarney, and more importantly the castle that resides there! It was an amazing experience, climbing those tiny stairwells and imagining people of hundreds of years earlier doing the same thing.

Irish pubs, stew, potatoes

There wasn't really much stew that I saw, but there was soup...and we ate a lot of soup. There were also potatoes left, right and centre. As for pubs, oh yes, there were plenty of great pubs. Mostly though, we stuck to the bars at the hotels because we were too exhausted from the gruelling tour schedule to wander too far out.

Hunting for Phil Lynnot's grave.

Unexpected things

Walking back down Blarney Castle.
See my silver Doc Martens?

Some place I can't remember...

There were things I saw and did that I hadn't planned on. They included a visit to the Trinity College Library (my friend and I, both being librarians, got a little bit giddy as we stepped inside that mammoth vault of history), a trek out to the site of Phil Lynnott's grave, and an awe-inspiring walk up the Blarney Castle (I didn't kiss the stone; too worried about who else might've kissed it. haha). All in all, my favourite place in Ireland was Blarney, but there was a lot of amazing stuff to see in that country. Someday I wouldn't mind going back and doing things properly, i.e. by driving myself around!

I hope you enjoyed my revisiting of the Irish experience, and that if you haven't visited yourself yet, you get to someday soon!