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The island of Bali

Few things to remember about Bali; it’s an island, depending on where you stay on the island it’s more or less touristy, but no matter where you go, there will be tourist. Indonesia is Muslim country except for Bali, they have a religion closer to buddhism. Something we observed and got told about a lot, Bali have a “mafia” problem. If you want to do something you will need to pay. If you want to get to a beach, even if it’s a public beach, someone will have set up a table to charge “entrance” fee for tourists. We heard a few horror story regarding the volcano and being forced to visit with a guide, but since we visited Bromo, we skipped it. From what I could deduce, Bali is still a very beautiful place but it’s no longer the “traveler” lost paradise. It’s more like a big resort crowded with an endless amount of tourist and motorbike.

Now on the bright side, we stayed for a very long time in Bali we even extended our stay (Here's more info about extending your stay). It was the perfect place to just relax and enjoy the sun a little bit. Also, since our accommodation had a kitchen we were able to cook and enjoy local food market.

During our stay we mainly visited different beaches around the island, just because, why not try them all! One of them was pretty impressive since it had deep dark sand that was almost glittery.

Apart from biking around in traffic, we also visited a temple lost in the middle of the forest. We were really happy to have found that place since it was empty. The road to get there was incredible and once we arrived there was that amazing feeling of being lost in the juggle.

Nature had slowly taken back its right over the place. It was still a place of worship where nature and religion coexisted marvelously.

To visit this temple they lent us (with the ticket price 40 000 rupee) traditional clothes to wear in the compound. I got a lot of picture of Alexis, that to my delight, had to wear a weird hat. The mixt with his banana shirt was incredible.

The most important thing that happen for us in Bali wasn’t to rest, the beach or the temple visit, it was that we found what we were searching for. We left Canada not only because we wanted to visit Asia, but also because we wanted more. More from life, a different life, it was something we didn’t know how to get and we needed some time to detach ourselves from our routine and the monotony of the everyday life. We were at a point in our lives that we finished school and were working but we weren’t going toward a goal and we needed one. That’s what we found in Bali, I say Bali, yet we have been thinking about it since the beginning of our trip. We left Canada telling ourselves that we are traveling until we are broke or until we found what we were looking for. And since we have reached our goals we booked our plane tickets back to Canada for a month later. We were eager to move forward with our new goals.

We stayed about 2 weeks in Bali and then left for the Philippines. I don’t know if you remember that I told you that when we got in Indonesia, it was too easy and it will cause us problem later. Well the later was now! We got a plane ticket to get to Palawan (Here’s more information about how get from Bali to Palawan) and the problems came once we got to the immigration at the Bali’s airport. Both of us went through immigration at the same time but at a different booth. The immigration officer opened my passport saw the stamp and told me that it wasn’t readable (which was through the immigration guy in Batam and they did a pretty shaky job…) He could not read if I stayed more than a month since we go in the 9th and got out on 6th of the next month, the exact date was pretty important. I proceed to explained to him that the custom officer in Batam wrote in my boyfriend passport the proper date. He then asked me to go get him. As I was walking toward Alexis he turn to me a said my custom officer want to see your passport right now. We started feeling a bit trapped. None of our passport where stamped correctly and the custom officer didn’t believe us that their coworker in Batam wrote directly in our passport the date. (over the stamp). At that moment they proceeded to call their supervisor. When the supervisor arrived, he asked us if we had proof of our arrival. Fortunately for us we had an e-ticket on our phones. The supervisor then ask us to follow him and told us to sit on a chair and left the room with our passport and our phone. We sat there for 10 very very very long minutes. Eventually the guy came back told us there’s no record of our entry in the country but since we had proof of entry and something resembling a stamp we were good to go. We were not trying to smuggle in the country since we were getting out… Therefore, he recommend us to ask for a second stamp if the first one is blurry… Well I don’t know if you remember, but the Batam custom were a bit pushy and felt like an expedited process. So we probably got the Batam’s officers yelled at. Nevertheless, we were allowed to go take our flight to the philippine’s !