This will be remembered as one of the best dives we have had so far and one of those special, easy-going days that make Bali what it is. We are up again at the crack of dawn to be picked up at 7:00 am by the dive bus. It is a smaller van this morning – the one we took yesterday was swamped out in the deluge after dropping us off last evening. In for repairs. Our trek this morning takes us again to the eastern ends of Bali. It is a familiar drive for us. We have already covered the same roads four times in the last 48 hours. This morning it is only the two of us, our driver and Sophie Lejeune, the owner of SkubaSkool, who is also our dive master. We speak of family and books and travel and trans-fatty cookies over our two hour drive to our dive destination.

We arrive at the very peaceful bay village of Padang Bai for our boat and dive. It is 9 o’clock and already hot. The locals are taking the shade as much as possible. Our gear is unloaded, we pick up our simple lunch of Nasi Goreng and fruit and board our outrigger for the 25 minute trip out to our dive sites at Biaha and Mimpang Islands. We will also be diving with dive master Jurgen and his German diver Wolfgang. We find it intriguing that even the local fishing boats sport political banners for next Monday’s election.


Outriggers and Bay views; the red banners on the boat at left are political banners

I am trying to figure out how we are going to enter the water with our equipment from the outrigger when Sofie announces that we will be entering via a backward roll. We have never done this before but are up for the challenge. John and I don’t talk about the potential of hitting our heads on the bamboo outrigger or not being able to see where you are going. All accomplished with no damage done. Our first dive is a beautiful and peaceful dive down a “wall” covered with so much life that you can’t decide where to look next. More live coral and fish than what was evident on the Great Barrier Reef. Sorry Barrier Reef fans but this caps your reef by miles. So colourful and alive with so many creatures and marine life we have never seen before. Spectacular and beautiful. Not only is the underwater scenery beautiful but up top there is some pretty gorgeous stuff too. Even here, on the steep green slopes above the cliffs, the land is terraced for rice paddies. This is what I had envisioned Bali to look like:


Bali HIGH!

Sofie had told us that we will be going into a cave this dive and it looms around the corner. We head in and meet Jurgen and Wolfgang heading out. Sofie had also mentioned that we would probably see some white-tipped reef sharks in the cave. She promised that these sharks are totally uninterested in us, and that, growing to a maximum length of 1.5 metres, we are bigger than they are, so they are as afraid of us as we are of them. As we enter, there they are, about six or seven of them, swimming and prowling just as sharks do. I’m not sure what John is thinking but I just freeze and stop breathing for a second. Sofie is far ahead of me now and I am second in tow with John following up the rear and I don’t want to be left to the sharks so I continue into the cave. I look back and see John doing the same thing I have just done. It is times like this where I wonder what John is thinking and it is tough not being able to verbalize how we are feeling or if we are scarred shitless. You feel helpless as you sometimes watch your partner quickly move into panic mode.

The cave is, well, a cave with many fish and lobster inhabitants. I look back and see the eerie blue/green opening in the cave with John and a school of trigger fish silhouetted in the opening. Sofie has, at this time, her flashlight beamed on what looks like transparent sea weed, moving the light behind and through it showing us what’s inside. We learn after the dive that this is a shark egg sack, and these are miniscule shark eggs. Shining the light through the sack, we can see that the eggs are at a development stage where they clearly look like tiny sharks – but are the size of minnows. Our tanks are at 50 bar and it is time to head back up to the surface. On our way out of the cave one of the sharks swims right towards me. This time I calmly slow down and breeze by him like he is any other fish in the sea.


Mimpang Island

Lunch over and our out-of-water surface interval achieved, we head to a new location for our second dive. Sofie promises a dive that will be just like swimming in an aquarium and she makes good on her promise. We are overwhelmed at the amount of fish that are surrounding and swimming with us. John and I are still trying to achieve complete neutral buoyancy during our dives – this makes the dive much more pleasurable as you are not fighting to keep level during your dive, and thus you use less air, which means you can stay down longer. We achieve some success during this, our 10th dive. We drift lazily along with the current, simply hovering beside and over the coral, watching the incredible neon colours of the fish and corals go by. We wish we could photograph this entire landscape but that would mean more equipment for us to carry around the world with us. I think to myself how easy it would be to do this all day.

On the way out of Padang Bai, our car is chosen at random by the police at a checkpoint to pull over. We ask Sophie what is going on and she tells us that it is the "end of the month pay raise". We ask what she means, and immediately the door opens and our driver tells us that he needs 20,000 rupiah, not a lot of money (just over Cdn $3), but on an island where the average income is about 300,000/month, it is a lot. Sophie says that if you are willing to invest the time, you can get away without paying, but for $3, why spend 1 hour arguing about what you did or did not do wrong.

We are home by about 3:30 and buy our SkubaSkool t-shirts as mementoes, and head to the hotel for naps. We are both exhausted after two days of driving n’ diving. We have plans to meet Errol and Joan, two ex-pat Australians who we met through Bev and Janet from our hotel, at “The Bush”, a local Aussie watering hole for some beers and dinner. Our heads are nodding at around 9 and we say goodbye to these guys and head home to the usual chorus of “Yes, Boss, Taxi?” and “Transport?” and are asleep by 11.

Tomorrow is our last day in Bali.

We are picked up at 7:00 this morning at our hotel by Sophie, a charming young Frenchwoman who owns a dive shop just up the street call Skubaskool. We are off to Tulamben, on the northeast coast, to dive. But before the dive, there is the drive: from here to Candi Dasa, we redo yesterday’s journey. We stop in Candi Dasa to pick up our tanks, and Fabrizio, from northeast of Venice and I run off in a desperate search for coffee. Then we continue on our merry way. By 10:30 we are on the beach at Tulamben.


The beautiful Sophie Lejeune, our Dive Master; terraced rice paddies

Along the way, we see the same banners for the various political parties that we have seen before. Today, however, in every village and town we pass through, we also see numerous flat-bed trucks parked in the streets with men of all ages getting on board. Hundreds, in each town, all dressed in red shirts printed with the bull logo of Megawati’s party. We are told by our driver that they are all going to a rally for President Megawati, who will be there in person. The town is on the north shore – a drive of many hours in each direction.


Cow in old Chinese cemetery; chickens for sale

Tulamben is the site of the USS Liberty, sunk by the Japanese during the 2nd World War. She is not more than 20 metres offshore, perfect for novice divers, because a great deal of her lies above 20 metres in depth.

We walk in – our 1st dive where we didn’t jump off a boat. Although I go through that initial moment of panic, I have done this often enough to recognize that the 1st dive of the day always starts with a brief moment of panic. I get through it, and we go on to a glorious dive – beautiful corals and multitudes of fish. Many of the fish are as friendly as dogs – they swim along beside us, eyeball to eyeball. The wreck is not as obvious to us as a ship as we had expected. It is not just a huge ship sunk and resting on its side in the ocean. We see the coral and life on what appears to be a reef but think there is something else lurking just around the corner.

This is our first tropical dive outside the Great Barrier Reef, and we realize as we swim how damaged the Great Barrier Reef is – we do not see any dead corals today, there is a multitude of life everywhere we look. It is amazing diving – visibility is probably in the 30 metre range, and the colours are vibrant – neon blue, yellow, pink, fuchsia.

After a brief stop for lunch, we are back in for our 2nd dive. It has clouded over, and the tide has changed, so the colours are not as bright and the visibility is reduced. But I feel elated to be here, diving off this wreck, hoping that I have not created bad karma for myself by diving at what I am certain is a graveyard. We have a better look at the wreck and get a better sense of the layout of the ship and its final resting spot.

We head back to Seminyak and the heavens open. The amount of rain is significantly less than yesterday, but the lightning show is spectacular. It is late afternoon, and we pass truckloads of people heading home from seeing Megawati, all of them drenched from the rains. When we get to Seminyak, we are dropped at the dive shop, walk 3 or 4 doors down to what we have been told is the best warung for Indonesian food on the street. We are absolutely soaked by the time we get there. We have a feast, delicious tempeh (hot! for me, medium for Greg), tofu, and garlic spinach. We have a couple of beer each, and the entire bill is about $10 Canadian. By the time we are done, the rain has finally stopped, and we walk home, exhausted, exhilarated and happy.

Gadeh, who drove us to Ubud last week, and then back via Tanah Lot, arrives at 8:30 to pick us up. We are off for a day of touring Bali.

About 8:50 we arrive to see the Sari Wisata Budaya performance of the Barong & Kris Dance. The theme is the never-ending fight between good and evil, this time personified by a Rangda (boo!) and a Barong (yay!). It is presented in 5 acts, and has a particularly Shakespearean sequence involving the servants killing and then abusing the dead body of the monkey – as gruesome as it sounds, it was very funny in the same way as the night porter sequence in Macbeth is very funny.

In Act 5, 4 young men dance in a trance with their krises, and they attempt to stab themselves. However, the power of the Barong is so strong that their krises could do them no harm.



The Barong and Kris Dance

After the performance, we set off for Besakih, a town mid-way up Mount Agung and home of the Mother Temple, the holiest site on Bali and home of the high priest of Balinese Hinduism. There are 18 temples in the complex (not including private family temples – we felt like we were in Santa Croce in Firenze) and as we begin our spiritual and physical climb to the top, the rain starts to fall. We are offered umbrellas all the way up (at a price, of course) and sarongs at 10,000 rupiah if we do not have our own for these holy grounds. We, of course, do.

The temple was in the process of being decorated for a major religious feast that begins this weekend, much to our luck. Everywhere, women are carrying offerings – mainly flowers and food – on their heads. The decorations already in place were quite stunning, and we were able to watch (from outside – only believers are allowed into the temples proper, but being Bali, the demarcation between inside and outside is not very rigorously observed, so the temples for the most part do not have walls or roofs) the high priests, in their beautifully embroidered crowns, perform a service.



Around the Mother Temple

We hired a guide to show us around the temple – more to put money in his pocket than for any other reason. Although there are many tourists around in Kuta-Legian-Seminyak, we know from talking to people outside this main tourist area that the tourism fall-off since the bombing in the fall of 2002 has been harder away from the main tourist area. Indonesia has a policy of putting industrial development on other islands, and preserving Bali as a pristine island with tourism as virtually its sole industry. This has meant that the downturn in tourism in Bali since the bombing has reduced the island’s GDP significantly, and everywhere we go outside the main tourist area there is clear evidence of the recession.

At the exit from the Temples, we see a striking sight – Ganesh, the god of education, who has an elephant’s head, dressed for the holiday.


Ganesh in holiday garb

We end up glad of our guide, having learned a great deal about the temple, Balinese Hinduism, Bali generally, and having practiced our French for an hour, because we discovered that our guide, Mahdeh (the name given to the 2nd child born into the family) spoke quite good French and was interested in practicing it. Not that we’re the best people to practice French with, but the 3 of us were quite pleased with ourselves after our hour together.

Gadeh drives us down the mountain to Candi Dasa, a beautiful town on the south-east coast of the island, for lunch in a restaurant overlooking the Indian Ocean. We watch the freighters go by, savouring our curries.

It is pouring rain about 4 km out in the ocean. and indeed it has been rainy all day, but at lunch the skies open wide. Unlike other rainstorms we’ve experienced here, this one does not abate. We drive back through flooded roads, feeling quite sorry for the scooter riders. The people planting the rice paddies we drive by and the only ones who don’t look put out by the rain – they are used to being wet.

We took a shortcut this morning down a road under construction, and had to go over a bailey bridge at one point where the new bridge wasn’t complete. When we get there on the way back it is pandemonium – the earthen road down to the bailey bridge is pure mud, and on the other side a truck has jackknifed and blocked traffic in both directions. We quickly realize that it will not move until the mud has dried – which won’t be today – there aren’t a lot of tow trucks on Bali. We backtrack, and take the old main road through village after village. At one point, we are behind what seems to be everyone in a village walking the village shrine to the village temple for purification.

Everywhere we see banners – red, white, green and yellow – for the various parties in the upcoming national elections. Red – the colour of Megawati’s party – dominates everywhere we go. Despite the torrent, the banners flutter in the wind – and we say a prayer that the best person wins on Monday. We have come to really like the people of Bali, and to feel very sorry for them – the bombing has not been good for them, and the government does not appear to know how to do anything to improve the situation.

Today is a day very similar to yesterday. Go back, read yesterday. Change these few details:

Restaurant: Antique, a beautiful Asian fusion restaurant with wonderful food.
Time: An earlier start: 7:30 p.m.
Who (at dinner): Gavin, from Toronto/Vancouver via Australia; Jim from Illinois
Who (later): Gavin, Jim, 4 Aussies – 3 males and 1 female; 1 Aussie living in Jakarta; 2 Canadians living in Jakarta; 1 Mississippian living in Jakarta
Time home: the dawn is breaking

And the street is just as busy with pedestrians and taxis as it had been a few hours earlier the night before.

Happy Birthday to Pam, John’s sister, on March 28!


Today starts early – it starts at dinner last night, to be precise.

The mise-en-scene: We returned yesterday to Seminyak, to the hotel we stayed in last weekend when we arrived in Bali. Our hotel is just off Jalan Dhyana Pura, also known as Drink Street or Club Street. Our last time here was over Nyepi, the Balinese New Year, when almost everything, and most certainly the clubs and restaurants, shuts down for 3 days. The first day that everything was back to normal we headed to Ubud – rustic, tranquil and beautiful, and did I mention tranquil: you could shoot a cannon down the main street of Ubud at 9:30 p.m., and not hit anything or anyone – even the ever-present dogs have disappeared.

The story: About 9:30 p.m., we head out for dinner. For the first time since leaving Australia, we are in the mood for something familiar. We stop in a restaurant called Santa Fe, and start with nachos, then Greg has pizza while I have chicken fajitas. Afterwards, we stop at Q, a club, for “a beer”. The price seems shocking – at 15,000 rupiah each for the local beer, it is double the price in the restaurants; this is, of course, until we do the conversion and realize that at about $2.25 Canadian, it is still a bargain. We arrived just after 11, and we were customers 4 and 5. At 11:45, there are still only about 8 people, other than staff, in the place. About then, a voice says “hello” – it is Gavin, the Canadian we sat beside in the internet café on Tuesday. We learn that he is on his way back to Canada, via Vancouver to Toronto where his family lives, after spending the better part of a year in Australia. We compare notes about Australia and Canada for an hour, and as he wanders off I realize that the place is hopping – probably a couple of hundred people. And as many, or even more, at Kudos, the bar right across the street.

The mix of people is probably about 80% Balinese & Javanese, with the remainder a mix of Australian, German, Dutch and Canadian; we have noticed what feels like a conspicuous absence of American accents all over Bali, and it is true again this evening. The atmosphere is relaxed – everyone is chatting with everyone. (Indonesians are compelled to attend school for at least 10 years, and English is a core part of their curriculum.) There is a continual flow of people back and forth across the street – over there for a drink, back here for the next.

About 4 a.m. we realize with a bit of surprise that it is 4 a.m., that that “a beer” was many beers ago, and that we are more than a little “tired and emotional”. We head home, and the street is jammed. The back and forth between Q and Kudos is still strong. We look down the street and it is a sea of taxis in both directions – it looks like Broadway after the theatres let out at 11 p.m. There are so many pedestrians that the taxis can barely move. We walk to the hotel much faster than we could have driven.

The rest of the day is spent sleeping in a variety of venues – in bed, in chaises both sunny and shady by the pool, and standing and walking as we perform various chores that don’t require any intellectual capability.

Ubud has a monkey (specifically Balinese macaques) forest. We had gotten different opinions on whether it was worth a visit. Eric, in Sydney, was of the view that there was no point: “dirty, nasty, vile creatures”; Bev from Adelaide thought it wasn’t worth the visit: “aggressive, grabby, they’ll go through your pockets and steal anything in them and bare their fangs and snarl at you if you try to get it back”; Jody in Toronto thought it could not be missed. Greg decided he could stay at the hotel and catch some rays and swim a few lengths of the pool while I went. After all, it was not even a 5 minute walk from our door, and admission was about $1.25. Jody’s advice included buying bananas at the gate to feed the monkeys.

For another $1.25, I buy a bag of bananas, and as a free-gift-with-purchase, I get a bag of dried sweet potato chunks. Barely inside the gate is a troupe of monkeys whose sole purpose in life is to prevent you from getting any further into the park while you still have food. But don’t make the mistake I made! Monkey Forest Lesson No. 1: don’t give them sweet potato first: if they see that you are giving them what is clearly inferior food, they will do the fang and snarl thing, and move aggressively towards you.

Quickly the bananas disappear, and a lot of fighting goes on between those who got banana and those who didn’t, and even between those who already got a banana (but were bigger) and those who also got a banana (but were smaller). Once the bananas are gone, the monkeys are quite happy to take the sweet potato.

I walk along, and without food any longer, the monkey are totally oblivious to me. They play with each other, and in the course of playing run right up to the humans, without quite touching. I am busy taking photos, and because it is very shady under the trees, I am using the flash. This is when I learn Monkey Forest Lesson No. 2: don’t take a photo of a monkey looking right at the camera with a flash. I happen to do exactly this, and this particular monkey, who was about 4 metres away at the time, starts screaming and running at me, fangs bared. I am not about to let my pride get in the way of a swift retreat, and while I am getting out of harm’s way, I notice that his demeanour is causing everyone else in the general vicinity to run in the other direction as well.


At right: the photo that caused Monkey Forest Lesson No. 2

Greg looks at me quizzically when I get back to the hotel after being gone a total of 25 minutes. But it was 25 well-spent minutes (not to mention the $2.50), having learned a couple of life-enhancing lessons.

We are returning to Seminyak today, and Gadeh, our driver, arrives at the hotel about 1 hour ahead of schedule. We decide to make the trip an excursion, in order to take in one of Bali’s major temples, Tanah Lot. After parking the minivan, Gadeh points the way for us. We recognize that we are now going to experience one of the major joys of Bali – the walk through the shopping street. Greg is almost ready to call it quits before we start – he is getting quite fed up with the “Hello – where you from?” routine that seems to be the inevitable prologue to “you come inside!” or “you need transport?” But I insist, and it is worth the walk. The temple is spectacularly beautiful, and like all perfect beauty, unattainable (at least at high tide).

From left: the temple entrance; 2 views of Tanah Lot

News flash from home: Sophia caught her first mouse, and to celebrate she caught 2 more. She is feeling very proud of herself right now.

Over morning breakfast:
The hotel is building two new bungalows next door to us and the buildings are erected but the finishing and terracing are all to be done. This is not a typical construction site with jack-hammers or bull dozers. There are about 6-8 men on the site, mostly brick layers at this point. Everything is being done by hand. Each brick trimmed by hand, cement and mortar being mixed by hand, the ground levelled by hand. The really menial work is left to two women, each carrying 3 slabs of white travertine, to be used on the floors and walls of the bungalows, on their heads back and forth for 4 days.

This morning we see the local women come to start to sanctify the new shrine being built with the bungalows. Every building in Bali appears to have a main shrine and smaller ones on the actual buildings. They are maintained by the women of the village and new offerings of food, flowers and incense are brought 3-4 times a day. There is also a water purification process that is part of this daily cycle. We wonder how these duties are assigned – which women perform these rituals. I learn from hotel neighbours Beverly and Andre that sometimes men are involved too, but it appears to me that the men have a secondary role in all of this.

There are perhaps 12 to 15 women who come to make offerings at the shrine. Some have specific duties; some arrive with a specific blessing, place it and leave. Others have more responsible tasks of praying and blessing. More women, both young and old, appear with more offerings for the new buildings. All are laden with huge woven baskets hoisted high, overflowing with smaller, hand-woven reed basket offerings of rice, flowers, sometimes sweets, always incense. The shrine is wrapped in white and gold textured cloth as are the other shrines around Bali. We are not sure of the significance of this. In many cases, the statues in Bali are modestly wrapped with a standard black and white plaid cloth, black symbolizing evil and white good.

Two priests arrive, one older, one younger. They are given a brief tour of the two buildings and the shrine to be blessed and the ceremony begins. We hear the women’s voices, mingled with the wind, beginning to chant. There is a small bell being rung as part of the ceremony. The smell of sweet incense wafts towards our room. The workers continue their hammering, spading and brick laying unabated. The blessings continue for over 3 hours and as the two priests leave, we wish them well.

So mystical and reverential for us but part of everyday life here in Bali.

We awake to a simple but beautifully presented breakfast of fresh fruit, freshly squeezed orange and papaya juice and eggs, toast and banana pancakes. We eat alfresco, with views of the morning rice field in front of us.

John heads up to the internet café—there are lots in Ubud, and unfortunately all have dial-up connections. After a little delay in getting up and running, he is set to go. I “head” out in search of a hair cut. This is a fairly easy task as there are “salons” every 30 metres or so, all offering massage, pedicures, massage or massage. Anita from Java seems to be running the show here and after a chorus of “hello, massage?” from the other girls in the shop, I step in and point to my head and shape my fingers into scissors, the international signal for haircut. They are having a sale today so everything is 10% off. We agree on a price of 25,000 rp. The normal is 35,000 rp. After a good cut, a lovely hair wash and a mini-massage, I guilt myself out and tell them that the normal price of 35,000 rp is fine with me and gladly pay them. It is, after all, only $6 CDN. John’s hour long internet session is was a mere 6,000 rp or $1. CDN!

We head back to our hotel and John opts for some pool time, and I decide to head up to the Ubud Market. Lots of touts touting their wares and I tire quickly of the sun and their haggling. I head across the street, following the strains of the typical Balinese temple music and find myself at the Palace watching traditional dancing classes. These kids are obviously here after school and are so darn cute.



I watch the little ones for a while and then move across the court yard to the older girls and their teacher. They certainly mean business and we will see the fruits of their labours later this evening.




Across the street are the boys and their dance master is a lot more rigid with his teaching. He is carrying a large stick that he keeps time on the floor with and occasionally uses to prop up or correct one of the boys. It is very obvious that the girls are a lot more dedicated (and talented) than the boys are. But there are a few that stand out from the others.



We head out this evening to attend the Balinese Frog dance presentation at one of the temples up the street from us but find the temple in complete darkness. Ahhh, Bali. Sometimes there is a ceremony, sometimes not. We quickly decide to head for dinner and a leisurely stroll home afterwards. Not two blocks away we stumble upon another temple, the Padang Tegal, presenting the Kecak and Fire Dance. We purchase our tickets for the 1.5 hour performance and arrive at our seats about ten minutes in. We are seated in a big u shape facing one of the temple doors, which serves to frame the performance beautifully. The small crescent moon and a tag-along star are just rising over the Padang. It is very magical.


The conquest of good over evil

These dances involve much story telling and interpretation and space doesn’t allow me to describe everything. The first was about the fight between good and evil involving fights between the Golden Deer and the King of the Monkeys. Our favourite was the middle dance which is called the Sanghyang Dedari Dance and involves a ritual cleansing by driving evil spirits away from the village. It is a trance ceremony where two underage girl dancers who are virgins and considered holy are inhabited by a divine spirit and dance until they drop. They move simultaneously and with their eyes closed the entire time. Each time they drop to the ground, two female members of the village stand them up again and they continue. When this is over, they are removed from the trance by the pemangku, or priest, who prays beside them and blesses them with holy water. The 3rd dance involved a horse that dances on a bonfire.


The horse dance

A full day of dance. Very interesting indeed.


Our Balinese sunset

The street today is full of people – dramatically different to anything we’ve seen since we arrived. Nyepi is definitely over. We walk along and find an internet café to do web and email. We know what happens if we don’t update the web often enough. A voice says “is that a Canadian accent” and the guy sitting beside us turns out to be from Vancouver.

We head back to the hotel to check out, and about noon we head off to Ubud, mid-island and on the mountainside. It takes about an hour to drive up here, and it is like driving from Toronto to Burlington – you never really leave built-up area. A few people have told us that when they were in Bali they rented cars and really enjoyed exploring the island on their own. After today’s drive, we have no desire whatsoever to do this.

We check in to our hotel – a recommendation from our friends Jody and Dan – to discover that it is beautiful. Our room is on the edge of a rice paddy, with a beautiful veranda. They bring us tea and coffee and we sit and enjoy the view.


From left: our view; our porch; the pool

We head off to begin exploring Ubud, and immediately there is a downpour. We take refuge in a temple, and after 5 minutes the skies clear and we go off. We pass many artisans’ shops – Ubud is famous for its artists. Everywhere there are temples, and although it is not a feast day, there are ritual offerings being made.


Temple offerings

We pass stores offering high quality forgeries of Italian designer goods – some cheeky enough to actually have the designer’s names as the name of the store. Another downpour, much heavier and more sustained, starts just after we are comfortably seated for a late lunch.

We wander along Monkey Forest St. We have been told that you cannot carry anything in to the reserve, not even in your pockets, because the monkeys will take your sunglasses, your camera, and will even go through your pockets and take your wallet – and that if you try to take them back they will bare their fangs and hiss. We are not prepared for this, we have our sunglasses and our camera, so today at least we take a pass on visiting the monkeys.

We head out for dinner and choose a restaurant based solely on its appearance – it would not be out of place in downtown Toronto. After entrees of tabouleh (Greg) and arugala and parmesan (me), we have Indonesian curries as our mains, and they are magnificent – we cannot get over how good they are, qualitatively different from any we’ve had before.
The bill, including our beer, the taxes and the service, comes to a staggering 145,000 rupiah, about $22 Canadian.

After dinner, we head out for a walk and it feels like Nyepi all over again – the streets are deserted. We gather that this is the norm in Ubud, at least on Tuesday nights.

Happy Birthday to Donna Lapointe (March 23)!

The hotel is deserted this morning – everyone is out early after the enforced stay-at-home of the day before. We are also of a mind to get out and do more exploring, and head out as soon as we finish breakfast. Although it is still the holiday, the 3rd day is a day to be out, visiting family. Many of the people we have talked to tell us that they will go today to visit relatives in distant parts of the island – it can take 3 or more hours to get to some of the more remote areas on this island of 3 million or so people.

We walk down to the beach – past more percalang, still on the job for the final day of the holiday. We walk north along the beach, past the vendors selling everything – watches, jewellery, clothing, chess games, kites, sodas, beach chairs, beach massage, pedicures – until we are away from the hustle. As we walk farther, we approach a resort that we know will be the Oberoi, the first big hotel built in this area.

Just after the Oberoi we turn toward land, and walk along the street that goes out to the main road – our intention is to walk a big square, ending up back at our hotel. We understand that this street is nicknamed Eat Street, and we pass many restaurants, most still closed for the last day of the holiday. At the main street, we turn south and walk past shop after shop, almost all still closed.

Around Bali

We finally get to the street our hotel is on, which we have now figured out is nicknamed either Club Street or Drink Street, and turn onto it. We are hot and hungry, but again we find that most of the restaurants are still closed. (We had already discovered that there are many internet cafés along this street, but they were closed for Nyepi on Saturday morning, and are all still closed today.) We know, having passed it earlier this morning, that the restaurant right at the beach, Gado Gado, is in fact open, and so we make our way to the beach, to sit on their deck and enjoy the view as we dine. We have a wonderful meal, and with everything in, it runs to 260,000 rupiah, about $40 Canadian. We linger on the deck, savouring the view, long after we have finished our meal.

After swims and visits with Bev and Janet, who are leaving this evening, we head out at about 8:30 to find some dinner. Little is open, but we pass a café full of people and so decide to give it a try. The menu is limited – the only item they will make tonight is nasi goreng, a noodle dish. We order beer to go with it, and have quite a pleasant meal. The price is certainly right – 2 nasi goreng and 2 big beer, for 58,000 rupiah, about $9 Canadian.

The Day of Silence – Happy Nyepi!
And Happy Fall – or Spring, Depending on Your Location!

We were warned via email from Steve (a friend of Eric’s, who recommended the hotel that we are staying at) who lives in Jakarta, that we would be here for Nyepi. So we sort of knew what we were in for. But we don’t really know what to expect today – we have been told that the hotel will offer minimal services today, but as we go up for breakfast, it seems fully staffed. As we look around, though, we realize that many familiar faces are not here. We learn that everyone who is working at the hotel today is either Javanese or Sumatran, and so not celebrating Nyepi – Bali is predominantly Hindu, while the rest of Indonesia is predominantly Muslim.

In our room is a notice from the hotel management advising us that we will not be allowed to leave the hotel premises today, and that if we do, we will be escorted back to the hotel by the percalang. And so the restaurant is full – people have nowhere to go even though they have finished eating.


Around our hotel

We grab chaises by the pool – there are not enough to go around. The day is hot and humid, and we are in the pool more than we are out of it. The bar is open – the only noticeable difference is that there is no music coming from the speakers. There is a brief, but heavy, downpour, early in the afternoon, and musical chaises ensue. We guard ours closely, and spend the afternoon as we spent the morning.

Dinner tonight is a special buffet, and is served only until 6. We retire to our room for a nap, and make our way to the restaurant about 4:45, which still feels too early, despite having skipped lunch. We start talking to the 2 women at the next table, Bev and Janet, who are Aussies from Adelaide and Melbourne. We compare notes on Australia, and then they start downloading advice on Bali – Bev has been here many, many times.

After dinner we hit the pool, and as the sun goes down we realize that the hotel will not be turning on any lights this evening. We knew that the Balinese are not to use electricity or fire today, but we had understood that hotels and hospitals were exempted. Apparently, the exemption is only for interior lights. So the evening darkens into total darkness. We feel alone until 2 people join us, and we realize that they are Bev and Janet.

At about 9 we are asked to leave the pool, so that everyone can go home, and so we head to Bev and Janet’s room, to continue our Nyepi celebrations. We are very conscious that behind the bar by the pool is a big open hole that would not be fun to fall into, but the rest of the going proves tougher than expected – the steps and the paths that are easy to negotiate with light are treacherous in pitch black. We had thought everyone had left, but as we try to get from here to there without killing ourselves, flashlights suddenly blind us and it turns out that there are a number of security people around, presumably to prevent people like us from breaking our necks.

While we are welcoming the New Year it starts to pour. About 11 we head for home, and again the flashlights magically appear to help us. In the very short distance we have to travel, we get completely soaked. We drift off to sleep, unconsciously noting that the storm’s intensity has increased.

Heat and humidity greet us this morning as we pull open our wooden Balinese doors and step out. We head up to the main pavilion for breakfast and see staff preparing for the start of the holiday. Small hand woven reed baskets of food offerings and flower petals are being prepared and placed at the two shrines that are on hotel property. These are laced with burning incense and the air is filled with a sweet smell. More of these little offerings are made during the day, culminating with prayers later on. We finish our breakfast and head into the streets to do some exploring. At every door stop or entrance to a building are these baskets of offerings and beautiful hand woven hanging reed banners.


Offerings

Just outside our hotel we are stopped by an intrepid young salesman trying to get us to attend the opening of a new hotel in Jimbaran Bay. Every ten feet we are offered a taxi or are honked at for a taxi. A firm but polite no is all that is needed.

We peruse some shops (many shops and restaurants we pass on our walk are already closed for the holiday) and end up at a sarong shop and buy seven! All for the incredible price of $12 CDN. Our friend Eric in Sydney gave us two sarongs as gifts on our last night in AU and these will add to our collection.

We head back to the hotel, sweaty and hot, having walked for about 3 hours. We plan to rest and head out again after lunch, but the pool is so alluring that we spend the afternoon relaxing.

As part of today’s cleansing celebrations, there would ordinarily be noisy parades designed to scare evil spirits away for another year. These parades feature huge carved sculptures of various gods and spirits, called ogoh-ogoh, with everyone banging a drum or somehow making noise. They have been banned this year for fear that, with the upcoming Indonesian general election, they will end in riots. After dinner we do head out anyway, hoping that although the parades are cancelled there will be some celebrations to observe. We are lucky – just as we get to the main road miniature ogoh-ogoh’s are gearing up outside the temple. We watch and listen, fascinated, and take some photos – everyone happily poses! We join the procession with the other foreigners, following the tail end – for about 50 metres, where it heads into the grounds of another temple and quickly dies. We hang around waiting for something else to happen, and when it becomes clear nothing will, we head back to our hotel for a swim and a beer.


Ogoh-Ogoh

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Getting to Denpasar was very easy. A cheap cab ride to the airport, easy check in (thanks to Raffles Class on Singapore Airlines), some quick duty free shopping for Absolut and Clinique and we’re away. I haven’t even mentioned the great lunch and drinks they provide in the Raffles lounge.

Our flight is a mere 2.5 hours from Singapore to Denpasar and other than having to face the unexpected $25.00 US each for visas (only required as of Feb. 1) coming into Denpasar, we are home free. We even have the luxury of having a driver meet us at the airport (as part of our hotel package) to drive us to the hotel. We clear customs and walk out into the arrivals hall to a sea of signs welcoming Mr. This or Ms. That and Family So and So until, scanning the crowd, I see “Welcome, Mr. Mountain” emblazoned on a sign card. We are whisked away by our escort “Made” and his trusty driver and told that we have a 30 minute drive to the hotel, “depending on traffic”.

We have landed on the eve of a major Balinese holiday weekend called Nyepi, the Balinese Hindu New Year. This occurs on the darkest night of the new moon, and is a time of balancing good and evil. From dawn on Sunday to sunrise the following morning, the entire island will “play dead” in observance of the holiday. All harbours will close, as will the airport, vehicular traffic will cease, and everyone will remain in the confines of their homes/hotels.

The festival actually goes for 3 days – the day of silence is only 1 of those days – and many ritual purifications take place even before it starts. As we drive from the airport we see sarung-clad “percalang”, Bali’s religious police, redirecting traffic away from temples where celebrations are taking place.


Percalang

We arrive fairly on time, after detours around celebrants of Melasti, who have been performing ritual purification of religious paraphernalia such as Balinese cloth umbrellas, statues (and there are a lot!), spears and other sacred objects kept in homes or temples. We are a little overwhelmed and unsure which direction we are heading, watching and hearing the cacophony around us. We check-in to our Balinese oasis, strangely cut into the back alleys and roads of Seminyak, and settle into our simple room. The grounds appear to be beautiful and a shimmering pool beckons us to have a swim. We grab a beer and I dangle my feet while John jumps in. The staff is quietly gracious and always there, beaming smiles and all. We appear to be the only ones here this evening. It is gloriously quiet except for tree frogs and some other undecipherable small animal noise.

Our time in Singapore ends - and we are off to Bali this afternoon. We arrive on the eve of a major religious holiday, Nyepi, that we understand virtually shuts down the island for 36 hours. From what everyone who has been here tells us, whether their trip was years ago or recent, we are really looking forward to the next 2 weeks.

It is a very hot day today with the sun beating down through slightly hazy skies. No real schedule planned for the day but we walk down to Marina Quay and across to SunTech City, which is a huge shopping and office complex comprising 5 towers and miles of underground shopping malls and boutiques. More shopping! We are amazed that the Singaporeans all have long pants and shirts on. We are dripping in shorts and t-shirts and are happy to stick to the air-conditioned underground. We stay in the underground mall all the way back to Raffles, and use the washrooms in the hotel lobby. This is the closest we will get to staying here. But despite the fact that we are obviously outsiders, everyone is friendly and helpful when we go in to check out the lobby – no attitude whatsoever. We grab a quick sandwich at DeliFrance, which hosts the wireless network we are using and eat as we update the web, then head back to the hotel for naps. Huge thunder boomers roll in and a spectacular thunder and lightning storm drenches the city for about an hour. Perched in our room on the 17th floor with a clear view over Fort Canning Park, we have front row seats for it.

Singapore lies just 1 degree (about 80 kilometres) north of the equator, and as a consequence has days and nights of equal duration all year long, about 7:30 for sunup, and 7:30 for sundown. The Singapore Zoo has taken advantage of this and has built a 2nd, separate zoo, right beside the regular zoo, that houses only nocturnal animals and that opens at 7:30 every evening. We have been planning on going each evening we have been here, but have been frustrated by the rains. Tonight is our last chance, and by 6:00 p.m., the rains have cleared, cooling the day off. We head off shortly after, by MRT and then bus. Who knew that Singapore was so big? It takes us about 1 ½ hours to get there, by which time we are cranky.

We start our walk and quickly become wide-eyed. The Singapore Zoo calls itself “the open zoo”, as it does not use cages to hold the animals, and this is carried over into the night zoo. We walk along, coming face-to-face with a rhino, red pandas, leopard cats, fishing cats. We get to the leopards, who are located behind a glass wall, and one of them walks back and forth rubbing against the glass. Everyone touches the glass, hoping somehow to feel its fur. We pass the hyenas, actively watching the humans walk by, and we know that except for the moat they would be happily chowing down. When we get to the lions they are alert and posing – unlike their daytime sprawled-out sleeping. The giraffes are amazing – wolfing down their dinners while watching us intently – afraid we may be interested in them for dinner? The bat house door has signs saying “don’t provoke the bats” and “if you fear bats, consider not entering” – we enter and the bats are right there, hanging from trees, stretching their wings and preening. Someone slightly taller than us would need to duck to avoid brushing top-of-head to top-of-head.

Finally we emerge back at the entrance, and make our way back home, glad the rain happened earlier today, glad that we have done this. Somehow, the ride back to central Singapore goes faster as we talk about the things we’ve just seen.

The newspaper this morning, full of the aftermath of bombings and the fallout from the Spanish election, tells us that Indonesia, our next stop, has declared that its Dengue Fever epidemic is over – after close to 500 people have died. The paper also informs us that Singapore has been averaging 89 cases/week through 2004, although recently this has declined to an average of 81 cases/week. Deaths from Dengue in Singapore were not stated. We observe that insect repellent has replaced sunscreen since we got to Singapore. We also learn that the US NIH has committed significant dollars to finding a vaccine for Dengue, which has to be good news.

Every contact we’ve had with mother recently has included the advice to go to the Orchid Garden, and so we do. We take the MRT and then a bus and walk through the lush grounds of the Botanical Garden to the orchids. Families and schoolchildren are everywhere, and as we pass Swan Lake, many children are fighting to feed the lone swan in evidence. The koi and the turtles (grown up versions of those we used to keep in bowls when we were children) are the beneficiaries of this excess of zeal.

The orchids are startling in their variety and coloring – some are so pale whilst others are so bold, some are tinier than the fingernail on my little finger, others are bigger than my hand, some are single blooms, others are bracts of multiple blooms, some are scented, most are not. Having tried a few times to keep orchids at home, we are amazed at the profusion of blooms – until we realize that most of them are actually in well-disguised pots, and are brought out at the right time, then whisked back into hiding until their time comes again.


Orchids (mostly)!

The day is again threatening rain, and is much hotter than yesterday. The heat and humidity means that the simple act of walking through the Orchid Garden has left us drenched in sweat and enervated. We head to another hawker street, Newton, for a late lunch, and have noodles with giant prawns for about $3 each. (We admit that we are guided in our decision about which stall to patronize by the cleanliness rating each stall, and restaurant for that matter, has been assigned by the government.)

After lunch we nap, then do the internet thing. It finally starts to rain just as we are heading out to dinner. We decide to walk anyway, and head up to Little India. We walk through market after market, all thronged with people shopping. Shopping must be the national sport of Singapore. According to the map, we are in Little India, but it doesn’t look like much – until we turn a corner and it is like a curtain has gone up. There are the shops, the restaurants, and the crowds we had anticipated.

We spend an hour walking around exploring, before deciding on a particular restaurant. We take it as a good sign that most of the clientele appear to be of Indian origin, and settle in for a delicious feast. The couple across the way, very well-dressed, catch our eyes, and we exchange a few words. They guess we are Australians, a change from the more normal “where are you from in the US?” The husband is describing what a Blackberry is to his wife, and we all agree that he must resist as long as possible. He doesn’t think it will be possible much longer – his office is Blackberry crazy.

Happy Birthday to Jeffrey George in Afghanistan, and to Suzanne Johnston, both on March 18!

The day starts with the ritual of finding an internet café where we can plug in our laptop. According to those we talk to, this is simply not done in Singapore. Finally we discover a wireless zone, and we’re off to the races.

Multiple coffees later, we head out to explore Singapore, despite the threatening skies. We walk around Fort Canning Park, past a huge and elaborate Hindu Temple and Istana, the Presidential Palace, to Orchard Road. We’re not sure what to expect, but we’re not quite expecting this – high rise shopping mall after high rise shopping mall. The closest we’ve seen is North Michigan Ave. in Chicago, but this isn’t quite the same – for along with the Pradas, Burberrys, and Vuittons (and there are multiples of each in different malls up and down the street) there are also the discount malls. Although we’re not really shopping, we take refuge from the intense thunderstorm that starts just as we arrive on Orchard Road, and we watch in fascination. This does not appear, based solely on appearances, to be tourist shopping – it has the look and the feel of daily life.

At the far end of Orchard Road we grab the MRT (the subway) back to our hotel. The subway is sophisticated and clean, once we figure out that the only way to get a ticket is to pay a refundable deposit on the ticket itself, in addition to the cost of the ride itself.

We walk to Chinatown and have dinner on Smith Street which is considered as one of the best hawker streets in the world. Hawkers are street food vendors, and Smith Street was teeming with families out for a cheap dinner, young professionals coming from work and, like us, the odd tourist out to see the real Singapore. Red brightly lit Chinese lanterns and strings of multicolour lights festoon the street. The atmosphere is almost delirious as we grab a spot to watch, listen, smell and observe the spectacle of the street.

We talk about obesity and wonder why no one here, unlike North America, is overweight.

The importance of social and family time evident in eating together appears so vital to Singaporean and South East Asian culture. Groups of parents, grandparents and children find time to sit down, even here, in the street at a not so fancy table, and enjoy the ritual of food and togetherness. The freedom to let your kids run around in the blocked off street and be kids amazes us.

The folding, wooden tables are set out in the street with small, movable stools, and cleaners come and clear and wipe down the tables, readying them for the next group of people to sit down, sometimes with others, sometimes without. You go to the stand of your choice and peruse the limited menu and your food is made in front of you. Dinner for two can be as low as $11 Singaporean dollars, which is the equivalent of $8 CDN.

Our conversation shifts at times to health and sanitary concerns but we see nothing that makes us overly concerned. Smith Street appears to be a common one way street during the blaring heat and light of the day. But for us tonight, it is what we expect Singapore to be – vibrant, magical, brightly lit and in its own way, strangely familiar.

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Australia’s Best:
Eric, Graham, Leanne, Michael, Brian, Lynne, the woman at the Maui Campervan return who didn’t charge us extra, Graham’s Mum Elizabeth, Miss Pastie DeKline, Guy, Mark, Robert, and the generous citizens of Sydney. (Oh, did we mention Eric and Graham???)

Art Gallery: The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Beaches: Bondi; Coolum, Back Beach, Southwest Rocks.
Beer: Draught Schooners of VB or Carlton
Bookstore: The Bookshop Darlinghurst
Bars: Manacle, The Columbian Hotel
Department Stores: David Jones, Sydney; Gowings, Sydney
Disco: Midnight Shift (Video Bar)
Dive Instructors: Leanne; Chris
Market: Central Market, Adelaide
National Park: Kangaroo Island
Pool: Cook + Phillip Wave Pool, Sydney
Restaurants: Adelaide: Lime + Lemon; Melbourne: Red Orange, Gluttony: It’s a Sin; Sydney: Yipiyiyo; Trinity Beach/Cairns: Trattoria L’Unico
Suburbs: Waterloo, Surry Hills, Mossman
Wine: All of them!
Wine Tour: Yarra Valley with Victoria Winery Tours in Melbourne

Books we read in Australia: Wicked, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire; The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories, by Henry James; The New Yorker and the World It Made, by Ben Yagoda.

I find it difficult to believe that we are no longer in Sydney and Australia. It feels like we are just out for the day and will be back at Francis Street this evening or meeting Eric or Graham for dinner or drinks. Or finishing off our Sydney must see list before we go. But we have left and are jetting off to Singapore for phase three of our trip.

Singapore Air gets the “best airline so far” award hands down. I mention to John that it doesn’t feel like we are in an airplane at all. Incredible service, beautiful staff and wonderful diversions to keep you busy. The eight hour fly just “flew” by. We arrive to low, threatening thunder clouds in Singapore and 36 degree temperatures. Yes, we are in the tropics again. Singapore is well manicured, lush and very cosmopolitan. We are preparing ourselves for the weather forecast of rain and thunderstorms for the four days that we are here. Our cab (clean!) drops us at the Peninsula- Excelsior Hotel and our room is a retro 70’s tribute to a by-gone era of splendour and luxury. We are only here for four days after all and it is air conditioned. We head out to do some exploring and shopping. We buy two Polarized lens filters for our camera we had been eyeing in Sydney. With the exchange rate, they are less than 1/4 of what they were in AU. We find a Szechwan restaurant inhabited by the locals and have a wonderful, spicy meal and a pitcher of Tiger draft for less than $40 CDN. We are going to love SE Asia!!

One final note on Sydney: We cannot thank Eric and Graham enough for unselfishly looking after us so well in Sydney. They never expected anything in return and their generosity and friendship will always be one of the incredible things that we will remember about our time in Sydney.

Our Last day in Australia

We sleep in a bit this morning but have the suitcases and gear out by 10:00. We have made a few phone calls home and in particular to Stratford, using up what’s left on our calling card, although we just seem to can’t get the total left below $5. We are downloading and offloading books and whatever we can before we leave

Our time here has been exciting, fun and inspiring. We have met so many great people and feel unable to thank them all properly. We have had a wonderful time here and we hope to return as soon as we can.

Look for Greg & John’s “Best of Australia” coming soon to a web site near you.

See you next in Singapore!

Through our drive from Cairns to Sydney, we had stopped in various places known for good diving, and had been frustrated in our desire because of the weather. We had booked dives upon arrival in Sydney, but these had been cancelled because the seas were too rough to dive. Today is our last chance in Australia, and we have booked to dive in Botany Bay with our friend Lynne.

To do this, we need to be on the train at 7:03, and 6:50 sees us sitting there reading the paper. An hour later and Lynne’s smiling face greets us at the station – she lives in Caringbah, near where we will dive. We head to the dive centre and gear up – this is a very different experience that up north. The water here is only 22 degrees, so thick wetsuits, hoods and gloves are the routine.

Then out to the boat for the short ride to the first dive site. We get there, and our captain, Don, decides it is too rough to dive here, so we go off to a more sheltered location. In we jump, and I immediately get claustrophobic – I hate the feel of the hood and the gloves and the wetsuit. I fight the feeling while I wait for the others to swim to the anchor line, and by the time they get there I’ve decided to bail and, swimming back to the boat, I lose one of my fins – different technology than I’d used before, and I hadn’t tightened it properly.

Greg and the others do their dive, and Don tries to cheer me up – tells me that you should never dive unless you are feeling totally right about it. He also tells me not to worry about the fin – that with today’s currents, it will wash up in front of the dive shop in the next day or so.

The other divers come back and tell me what I missed – cuttlefish tucked under one of the ledges, and huge groupers that swam with them and were rewarded by Dermot, the divemaster, who fed them urchin, a delicacy they can’t normally eat because they can’t manoeuvre past the spines.

We go out on the 2nd dive, which I’ve decided I’m doing but without hood and gloves. In we go, and it feels great. No anxiety or worry – the wonderful sense of freedom that comes floating underwater. This dive is at the manmade breakwater protecting Sydney’s huge container port, which houses an amazing diversity of aquatic life in its small caves.

We get back to the dive shop and are cleaning our gear when I hear from the staff that my lost fin has already made its way home – someone found it on the beach and brought it back just after we headed out for the 2nd dive.

Up early – we are heading to see the Blue Mountains, a 90 minute drive west of Sydney. Eric has lent us his car for the day, and he arrives at our place to drop it off just after 9, and of course there is a hamper for our morning coffee break sitting on the back seat. Again, his generosity leaves us speechless.

We head off, not needing maps to negotiate our way out of town – we feel like true Sydneysiders at this minor triumph. Traffic is easy this morning. We wonder whether the air will be blue today or not – the weather forecast for the mountains is a high of only 13, and the air is turned blue when the sun heats the eucalyptus trees and their oil evaporates.

Our guidebook tells us of a scenic back road, and we turn off onto it, catching glimpses of beauty. We stop at a lookout, and craning over the trees, see a beautiful vista of the valley and the mountains. We spend some lovely minutes here, alone with the view. We realize that we will indeed see the famed blue air today.

We continue our drive, and shortly after arrive at Echo Point, the main lookout, with spectacular views of the 3 Sisters and the canyon.


from left: The 3 Sisters; The Valley; At Echo Point

We continue our drive on the scenic road, eventually ending up in Katoomba, the main city of the Blue Mountains. We stop for lunch, and are just nicely seated in the restaurant when it starts to pour. It continues to pour through lunch, and we run back to the car through the rain. We vote to head back to Sydney.

We make our way to Eric’s place for a pre-dinner cocktail, then we all head out to a wonderful hole-in-the-wall Eric knows, serving Japanese food, and crammed to the rafters with Japanese students studying at the nearby university. Then home to an early bed – we have to be up early on Saturday.

We sleep in, enjoying our Mardi Gras Recovery. After Tuesday’s intense heat, the rest of the week is turning out to be what is known in Sydney as cool, fall weather – mid-to-high 20s in the days, high teens in the evenings. (Some, not knowing better, might call this perfect summer weather. This may include us.)

There are 2 museums we have been intending to go to but have not yet hit, so today is the day. We head off first to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, perfectly located in the Domain, overlooking Woolloomooloo. On Eric’s instructions, we ring him at work just as we walk by Parliament House, and he comes out with a picnic hamper full of lunch goodies for us. What a guy.

The Art Gallery proves disappointing – although many of the pieces are quite wonderful, the place is full of school children, and they are unruly. We are surprised that there aren’t proctors in each room – we see many close calls as they run and scream and pretend to deface the art. We beat a quick retreat.

We head to the Austrialian Museum of natural history, located about 1 block from our apartment. In particular there is a special exhibit we have been looking forward to – the 2003 Wildlife Photographer of the Year winning photographs, a competition sponsored by BBC Wildlife Magazine and the Natural History Museum, in London. There are over 100 photographs, including both winners and runners up, and we spend an enraptured 2 hours studying them. One in particular fascinates me – a Dalmation pelican, staring out over outstretched wing, its eye looking so human that you would swear it was a photo of a person in a feathered mask. A perfect Mardi Gras image.

Happy Birthday to Doug Lean on March 12th! And Congratulations to our nephew, Nimi, whose hockey team won its Divisional Championship in a hard won overtime sudden death climactic finale!

Also…we are looking for a nice cliff-side hotel in Santorini, Greece for our time there in May…anybody have any suggestions?

Our time in Sydney and indeed Australia is unfortunately, coming to an end. We find it hard to believe how quickly two months has flown by.

Our last couple of days have been easy going and relaxed. On Tuesday the temperature soared to 40 degrees so we headed for Bondi for the day. We grabbed the first bus that came along and unfortunately it was not air-conditioned. Everyone is dripping wet after 5 minutes of travel and is fanning themself with whatever they can grab. It is only Tuesday but the beach is really busy, mostly with tourists. John tells me that a Japanese tourist had drowned here 4 days earlier while body surfing. We have a leisurely beach read and some swimming and head back to the city about 4 pm. Not much is planned for tonight. Dinner in and some Australian TV (what there is of it). We have no air conditioning in the apartment and plan for a restless, hot night. Shortly after midnight, the wind shifts and things start to cool down a bit.

Wednesday breaks cloudy and 16 degrees cooler than yesterday. Ahhhh, Sydney. The weather forecasters have the toughest job here. They never get it right. Today looks to be an errand and cleanup day. We are finishing books that we will leave here. Cooking food that has been purchased. Organizing hotels and travel for phase three of our trip.
John is on the phone with Olympic Airways booking the Greece and Turkey part of our trip. We have a very tight schedule in Greece. Our tour of Turkey has had two days tacked onto the end and it is right in the middle of our time in Athens and the islands. We have checked out ferry schedules and find that we won’t be able to do as much island hopping as we had hoped and with the schedules the way they are, we opt for flying. The other consideration was to do a 22 hour bus ride from Athens to Istanbul to connect to the first day of our tour group. I said no to that.

We had ordered some t-shirts with our followsummer logo on them and they are ready. I head up to Surry Hills to pick them up while John heads down to Olympic in Darling Harbour to secure our airline tickets. Our guardian angel Eric has graciously offered us his car to head to the Blue Mountains on Friday and we arrive back to the apartment to a phone call from him organizing the car drop off.

We are both craving pizza tonight and grab a bottle of nice red and head around the corner to Uno Uno for a quick pizza. We consider take away to flop in front of the TV again but once we get there, we settle in and order.

As fate and weather go hand in hand, Monday morning breaks clear, sunny and warm after a weekend of heavy constant rains. The numbers are in from the attendance at the Mardi Gras Parade and they are disappointing. Rough estimates put the crowd at about 300,000. This is down from years past and entirely due to the weather. The locals stayed away so it was up to us crazy foreigners to do all the cheering and whooping.

We are scheduled to do the BridgeClimb adventure today which takes us to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge about 134 meters above sea level. We have seen the climbers scaling the bridge several times during our trips to the harbour and today is our day to conquer the bridge. Grant Wedge has decided to join us and we meet about 11:30 at Circular Quay to make our way up to the bridge for our pre-reserved 11:50 check in. We are in the “12:05” climb and have been told we will be at the Bridge for 3.5 hours in total.

We arrive to a very organized production line. We are quickly divided into our “team” and watch a quick video on the process. We are then ushered into our debriefing room, sign our waivers and do our breathalyser test (Yup!). We then move to the dressing rooms and are given grey polyester one piece suits to wear on the bridge. Not very flattering but then everyone looks the same, thank God! For liability issues, we cannot bring anything up on the Bridge with us—no cameras, wallets, watches, loose change etc. They want nothing to fall in to the traffic lanes of the bridge. Our sunglasses are fine but are attached, as are our baseball caps and pretty well everything else, to our suits by clipping them on our backs.


It causes a moment of concern that one of the guides called these things “jumpsuits”

We meet our diverse team, young and old alike, and watch as the two or three teams ahead of us go through their paces before disappearing out the door and up the Bridge. Our team leader, who will also be our guide for the climb, is Big Pete. Pete is true Aussie and a big guy (hence the name) and is jovial and full of knowledge. Next up is our safety harness that attaches us to the walking line and the bridge for the entire trip. This is an ingenious piece of simple design that allows us to squeeze through some cramped areas and around some tight corners while still being safe and attached. Our final gear up is our headsets and radios so that we can follow Big Pete’s scintillating commentary throughout the process. There is a simulator on site and they make us climb the ladders with our gear before we get on the bridge. Note: The simulator doesn’t even come close to the ladder climb we will do!

We receive our final debrief and off we go! Everyone was told to strip down to our underwear under our suits today for the climb because of the sun and we are glad for it. As some of you may be aware, polyester doesn’t breathe that well and walking ten feet, we break sweat.

The first part of the climb is getting to the pylon that will take us to the eastern arch. This is a very open walk and is a good warm up for what is to come. We are under the bridge right now on suspended catwalks and this is where, we discover, the waterfall effect fireworks on the bridge are let off. We continue across and over and get to our first ladder up. We must scale four 10-foot ladders. This is done alone as the climb rules state that only one person can be on a ladder at any time. Each ladder takes you up, up, up until you reach the top of the pylon, and there you are, at the bottom of the top arch of the bridge.

We are already quite high at this point and it is a beautiful afternoon with a lovely sea breeze blowing in from the North East to keep our “polyester” cool and comfortable. And we start up the arch. It is a very easy climb, the metal stairs spaced quite comfortably. We are heading north up the eastern arch and the views of the harbour and environs are spectacular.


Yeah! We made it to the top!

Big Pete has stopped us several times to take photos, which they try and sell to you at the end of the climb, and we stop at the top on the middle span and survey the world.


John and the City

We have now crossed over and are heading back down the Western Arch with views over the western harbours out to the Olympic site and the Anzac Bridge. It is interesting to see Sydney’s’ extensive harbour from up here. We get to the bottom of the Arch and have to deal with those ladders again – this time going down. Far below us is the commuter train that goes from Circular Quay to the north shore and I can hear and feel it rumble beneath me as I head down the ladder. This is the only difficult part of the climb for me. One more photo opportunity from Pete and it is just the final walk home and the de-gear.

It has been a more strenuous walk than we had imagined and we are thirsty and hungry for a late lunch. We end up at one of the local pub/ale house/hotels around the corner and give ourselves a congratulatory “cheers” for our hard work.


Well done!

Happy Birthday! Sabrina Gardin-Lawrence, mother of Benjamin Gregory and expectant mother of twins (today), the lovely Ms. Shannon George (March 7), and her long-suffering father, Gary (March 8)! Happy Birthday to You!

Mardi Gras! We wake to threatening skies.

Graham is having printer problems, so we go over to his place to try to resolve (success!) and then, Eric having arrived, we head to a local café for bacon and eggs: we haven’t indulged since we left North America.


Graham, Greg, Eric, John

By the time we finish brunch, the skies are no longer threatening – they have opened, and the rain is streaming down. We console ourselves that the parade doesn’t start till 8 p.m., and so the rain will stop.

In addition to sponsoring shopping sprees, the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation raises money for its HIV/AIDS work by selling reserved seats to the parade, which are at the very end of the parade route. We have bought these, not wanting to spend 3 hours jumping up and down to see over the heads of those parade-goers who lined the parade route starting at 8 a.m. to get good views. Grant and Bob, back from their road trip, have also bought seats, although we are sitting about 17 stands apart from each other. They arrive at our apartment about 5, sparking wine in hand, so that we can have a leisurely walk to the stands, about 2 kilometres away. Based on Pride Parades past in Toronto, we assume that if the parade starts at 8, it will be 10 by the time it gets to the stands, so after our champers, we wander at a leisurely pace, noting, with a bit of amazement, the number of people quite happily guarding their vantage point in the pouring rain.

We stop to ask a parade martial which side of the street we should be on – apparently once the barricades are closed, the only way to get to the other side is to go all the way past the end of the parade and double back. He tells us, but also tells us the parade actually starts at 7:30, and that it should reach the stands no more than 45 minutes later.

It continues to pour – we still are telling ourselves the sun will still come out before the parade starts. By the time we get to the stands, which are set in Moore Park, the evening is no longer simply wet, it is a mud-filled adventure as well. At the gates, the ticket-takers insist that each guest take a plastic poncho. These prove to be all the colours of the rainbow, and once donned render everyone into a democratic equality – there go the hours of primping and of choosing just the perfect outfit!

Despite the wet, everyone is determined to have a good time – Aussie spirits are clearly not going to be dampened by rain. I am disappointed only in that the rain means the camera will stay well hidden, and our readers will not be able to share in the visual treat of Mardi Gras.

We grab some food, and faster than expected, the parade is upon us. Every few stands there is a platform with 2 drag queens on it, who are entertaining us as we wait. It causes us to ask the question of how their faces have stayed on – surely they should have washed down the fronts of their costumes by now. The DQs will also do the colour commentary on the parade as it passes. The woman in front of us declares herself enforcer of the DQs’ request that umbrellas not be used in the stands, and we watch in Canadian horror as she proceeds to destroy a couple of umbrellas in furtherance of her quest. The rest of the spectators quickly understand the consequences of umbrella-up, and we enjoy an unobstructed view for the entire parade.

The parade is led by the Dykes on Bikes – a huge contingent, their headlights shining in the colours of the rainbow flag. The bikes are just gone, our enforcer is just telling us there will be a delay before the first float arrives when, in fact, the first float arrives (Toronto should hire Sydney’s Parade Marshalls!) and we have 2 ½ hours of sheer wonderful, sometimes pure, sometime propagandistic, entertainment – in which “W” is almost as big a villain as the current Aussie PM, John Howard. We watch in amazement at the costumes, some representing hundreds of hours of labour, the totality incalculable, and feel so sorry for the marchers, smiling and dancing their way through the downpour. We do miss out on another level of Mardi Gras as many of the lighting and other effects cannot be used because of all the water.

We wonder how the feathers on many of the costumes have avoided becoming bedraggled – we are covered in plastic and we have not avoided that fate. The rain stops literally as the marchers who spell out “THE END” walk by. The dance, at which 18,000 partiers are expected tonight, is just past the stands, and there are huge streams of people fighting through the mud in 2 directions – those going to the dance, and those leaving the stands. After much discussion, we had decided not to go to the dance – most Aussies told us that the dance shouldn’t be missed, but only because the sight of 18,000 people dancing in one room was worth seeing. Our reaction: “not at $150 each”. Bob, who suffers from a bit of agoraphobia, declares he’s had enough of the crowds, and goes searching for a taxi, no mean feat given the size of the no-car zone created for tonight – to administer himself a facial.

The street is a non-stop party as we head back towards Oxford Street. The casual Aussie attitude to alcohol in public places is very well displayed tonight – and we fully appreciate the oft-repeated advice to wear closed-toe shoes – there is a sea of broken glass. But the cleanup crews are out in full force, and by 2 a.m. things are mostly cleaned up.

About 2 a.m. the bars start kicking the patrons out – early by Aussie standards. We learn that they will reopen by 4 a.m., when the first dancers will start leaving the dance looking for places to “Recover”, and once reopened will not close until about 7 a.m. Monday morning – 27 hours away. Although many people seem content to stand and wait, we are not amongst them, and are at home sound asleep soon after.

Congratulations to Larry and Del, who are getting married today in San Francisco, after 31 years together!

I go to the internet café to post our journal entries for the last couple of days, and learn via email that Larry and Del, our hosts for the 1st 2 nights of our trip, are getting married in San Francisco today! We are so excited and happy for them, and raise our glasses of champagne – oops, sparking wine – to them! And we salute the courage of SF’s mayor, for doing the right thing!

Our social whirl continues unabated – Eric has arranged that Graham, Greg and I are lunching in the NSW Parliament Dining Room, where he is one of the chefs. Graham picks us up and off we go, in high style. Parking in the building has been organized, our names are on the right lists, and we are treated as though we were VIPs. Eric’s boss takes our orders, a bottle of wine appears, and we enjoy a fantastic meal. I try, finally, ‘roo meat. It looks like beef, but tastes a bit like venison. It is a very lean meat, and cannot be cooked to even a medium level – it will be like shoe leather, they tell us.

After 3 hours of lunch (no dinner tonight!), we are taken touring around the “public” areas of Parliament, including the kitchens and pantries. We end up in the parliamentary bottle shop, which is open to the public – or at least those members of the public who have been invited into the building. Wonderful wines stocked – we are assured that many of the wines being stocked are available only at the cellar door and the Parliament Bottle Shop! Although primarily to supply the bars and restaurants of Parliament, they are sold at cost to anyone with money to buy. Needless to say, we load up – we are here for another 10 days, after all.

The city is geared up for Mardi Gras – banners flying everywhere. The window displays in the big department stores downtown look more like Northbound Leather than Holt Renfrew. It seems like everyone feels that they are an honorary member of the “Gay and Lesbian Club” for the week: everyone everywhere is giving us helpful hints on how to enjoy the parade the most, and everyone everywhere says on parting “have a wonderful Mardi Gras!”

King Lear opens on Broadway tonight at 6:15. Merde, Lucy!
Happy Birthday to Jim Mountain (March 5)!

Graham has offered to take us up to the northern beaches today – an area that is very difficult to get to by public transit. We go under the harbour and head east, covering some the area we have walked to – Creemorne and Mossman. We drive past the Zoo, with its commanding position on the Harbour, past Obelisk Beach and across the Spit to Manly. We drive through to the North Head, which from this side we can see is much higher than the South Head, where we went last week.


From left: South Head and Tasman from North Head; Sydney and Manly Ferry from North Head

Manly is, of course, home of one of Australia’s most famous beaches. There are actually 2 beaches, one on the harbour side and, just a short distance away, the more famous beach on the Tasman. We pick up takeaway fish and chips for lunch, and sit on the beach wall watching the swimmers, the lifeguards and the tourists.

From Manly we continue on north, ending up in Palm Beach and Barrenjoey Head. I admit to having a good nap on the drive. Palm Beach was once a summer resort for the very affluent. It is now a far northern suburb for the very affluent.

Driving home we stop and meet Graham’s mother, who lives north of the city. At 79, she is still very lively, and a charming hostess. She offers us a cold drink 3 times, we decline 3 times, and she brings us our drinks. We note to Graham afterwards that she won’t take no for an answer, and he says she’s hard of hearing.

We get home in time for much-needed naps before the social whirl starts again. Lynne drops by on her way home from a job interview for a glass of champers. Then out at 7:30 to meet Graham, Jens, Jeroen, Simon and Christina at the Colombian for a quick drink before dinner. Jens and Jeroen are visiting from Amsterdam for Mardi Gras, Simon and Jens went to uni together back in the UK before Simon, originally from Wales, moved to Australia 4 years ago. Christina is a good friend of Graham’s who has flown in from Melbourne just to come out for dinner with Jens and Jeroen, who have visited Australia before and chummed around with Graham and Christina on their previous visit.

We move to the restaurant, and start with champagne – the real thing tonight, Veuve Cliquot – as Jens and Jeroen hand envelopes to Christina and Graham (Simon had already been given his). Inside are invitations to their wedding, next June in Amsterdam. Everyone cheers and cheers some more, and over a discussion of the wedding plans, dinner commences.

We are dining in RQ, another Thai restaurant, but of a very different quality than most. The menu is fixed, the quality superb, and the multitude of dishes with little tastings becomes very complicated, as we try to figure out what we’ve tasted and what we haven’t. Then the food stops coming, they clear, and we think it’s over; but they reset the table and start bringing out the mains. Absolutely delicious.

The gang head out for after-dinner drinks, but we are both beyond exhaustion and it is already close to midnight, so we head home to drop, marvelling at Graham’s stamina.

Another beautiful day – although most days you don’t know that it will be a beautiful day until midmorning, because you wake to a cloudy sky. By 10 the clouds have disappeared, and the weather is perfect.

Today we are doing another walking trip, this time to Balmain and Birchgrove. We take the train the 2 stops to Circular Quay and hop onto the ferry to Balmain East, which is literally a hop and a skip from Pyrmont, on the west side of Darling Harbour – although it feels like a million miles from the city.

This is not our first trip to Balmain – we were here a week ago for dinner and show at Café Tatu, but it is our first opportunity to explore. We walk past Victorian terrace after Victorian terrace, either recently renovated or in the process of being renovated, and in the process the working class neighbourhood is being altered beyond recognition.

As always in Sydney, the city’s unique geography means that we are amply rewarded in our little expeditions with amazing views everywhere we turn. Although we have been here long enough to know better, it still catches our breath when we turn a corner and there is the bridge, magnificently soaring out of the terrace rooftops.

The Birchgrove ferry stop is down a street bordered by beautiful old mansion, all renovated or in the process of being renovated. We aren’t sure why there are mansions on this street when the neighbourhood was obviously working class until recently, but as we walk, we realize that we are on a long peninsula, and the houses on both sides of the street back onto the harbour.

We get to the ferry stop just in time to see the ferry pulling out – and learn that the next ferry won’t come for about 1 hour – not enough time to walk back to Balmain. We are just nicely relaxed, lying on the grass enjoying the day, when the mobile rings: Graham wondering when to pick us up – we’re all dining at Eric’s tonight. We tell him where we are, after exclamations of wonder that we should have ended up in Birchgrove, Graham says he’ll pick us up in 15 minutes.

We stop at Graham’s place, which is actually quite close by, take a photo of the view, pick some wine to take to Eric’s – we pick up champagne – oops, sparking wine – at the corner bottle shop. Australians are all mad for sparkling wine, we’ve never seen so much champagne drunk as here.


The view from Graham’s balcony

Eric produces a bounty of information about Bali for us. Then Vicky and Ron arrive, and another feast is produced, with no visible effort by Eric.


From left: Eric and Vickie loading the dishwasher; Greg and Graham

Graham, Greg and I head off at about 10 – tonight is the Underwear Party, and that is our destination. We arrive and dance ourselves silly, enjoying the craziness. We meet some new friends, Robert and Mark. Mark turns out to be a talented DJ, and gives us his latest CD – our first new music since leaving home (we are carrying about 300 of our CDs, in MP3 format, on our laptop hard drive). We dance till the wee hours of the morning.

The weather this morning breaks cloudy with blue sky patches. It is days like this where we have to decide how to spend the day—beach, art gallery or walking tour. John has discovered a walking tour guide produced by Sydney Ferries that seems both reliable and interesting. This is our plan of action today.

Taking our cue from the Michael Jordans in Toronto, we have been trying to get back to the gym whenever one is available. Our building has a small but very serviceable gym that John has been actively engaged with. I had two days of easy treadmill and over-extended my left knee. This is what happens after 45, I guess. But I will get back at it. Gym time over, we head to Museum subway station and head down to Circular Quay for the ferry to Neutral Bay and Cremorne Point. This walk proclaims itself as one of the prettiest harbourside walks, with great harbour views, flora and fauna and lots of glimpses of history.


Neutral Bay and Cremorne

It also has some of the most expensive property in Sydney, beautiful Arts and Crafts mansions on the water with garages for their Rolls Royces. (One owner drove up in a RR Corniche (convertible) while another RR was parked in her driveway below).
Further on we head into the Cremorne Reserve on our way to Cremorne Point. There are a family about 20 paces ahead of us and I watch as the children flap their hands over their head and squeal with either horror or delight. As we approach we see huge spiders in large webs over the walkway, waiting. Further along, we watch in fascination as one devours what looks like a wasp for lunch.


Spiders, oh my!

We come out of the reserve at the Cremorne Wharf ferry dock just as the ferry arrives and we decide to continue our walk to Mossman Bay, which is another 40 minutes around. We immediately plunge into even bigger and more beautiful houses, priced in the millions of dollars with even bigger yachts moored in the bay. Our path winds its way between houses and apartments on one side and beautiful gardens and bush on the other. One garden in particular is the Lex and Ruby Graham Gardens. Lex and Ruby decided, in 1959, to clear up the public dumping ground that existed in from of their house—kitchen sinks, mattresses, refrigerators, whale bone corsets, you name it. It is now a beautiful, tranquil garden respite on the path to Mossman. (Bill Sumpton, you would love it).


Million dollar properties

We end our walk at the Mossman Ferry returning to Circular Quay and a quick train ride home to Oxford and College Streets. The next five nights out are booked for us. It is Mardi Gras after all. We spend a quiet evening infront of Australian TV again--Neighbours, Home and Away, old seasons of ER and CSI. Yawn…bedtime.

Everyone keeps talking about fall and indeed the temperature has dropped a few degrees. The high today is only 23 degrees and going down to a low of 15 tonight. The shops have all their fall and winter clothes out on display and in the afternoon we decide to go downtown and do some overdue shopping that we have be meaning to do. We head to David Jones--"Australia's most beautiful store" and buy---ok--my first pair of speedos. (John bought his earlier in the week with "Bondi" displayed on the bum). We buy our odds and sods and end up in the 380 bus back up Elizabeth street and off at our stop on Oxford street, head home and settle into the Oscars.

The Oscars start at 7:30 pm. and we plan to have a bottle of wine and a bowl of pasta at home tonight to get a dose of North America or more pointedly, America. We know all the winners, because the show actually started about 9 hours ago, but we watch it anyway. Yeah for Canada and the Foreign Film award. The entire Australian media is so caught up on Naomi Watts winning for best actress. They are really pro-Aussie here and the press and media was full of how Australia had been snubbed in the nominations...Nicole, Russell et al. As ususal, Billy Crystal saved the show.

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In a week and a half we will be onto the next phase of our trip---Singapore, Bali, Thailand and India. This will be very different from our Aussie experiences. I am really looking forward to it.

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