Bali: Febuary 2010 Part 1: Kuta

I flew out for Bali on a cold, snowy Monday evening in February. I'd already spent 6 hours in Inchon Airport so I was ready to go. Due to weather and that it was Lunar New Year I hadn't been able to take a later bus or train to Seoul. I had a direct flight from Seoul to Denpensar, Bali, Indonesia. By the time I'd landed in Bali after a time change and 8 hour flight it was 1am Bali time.
The initial steps off the plane were wonderful as the hot and humid topical air assaulted my winter ravaged senses. I could smell incense and spices in the air and feel my dry lungs and skin trying to suck the water out of the air as fast as possible. I think most of the flights in and out of DPS are in the middle of the night because the lines to get your visa were backed up. I managed after learning how to deal with lines in Korea find the line that was hidden behind a cashier where you paid for your visa and move through the Visa and immigration lines fairly quickly after making friends with two Korean families who defended our place in line from several groups of Japanese tourist who were trying to cut in. Then finally I grabbed my bag and headed out to figure out how to get a taxi to my hotel around 2:30 in the morning.
The next morning dawned way too early and I decided that after 24 hours of traveling I was allowed to relax and not do much the first day. I did get moving in time to get the free breakfast at the hotel. I then spent the day taking a relaxing walk up the beach, a stroll through Kuta and ending up with reading a book by the pool.
I made plans to hire a car for the next day to go zip lining after I'd found out that the wind and surf reports weren't looking good for para-sailing or kite boarding.
My second full day in Kuta I spent with a really nice driver who took me all over and made sure I got to see more than what had been planned on the itinerary. Once he found out I was interested in taking pictures he made sure to stop some extra places so I could get good shots of the valleys with the rice terraces.

From Bali

He also made sure I got to see one of three monkey forests on Bali. The one he took me to had bats also. These weren't your run of the mill little fruit bats either they were about a meter across when they had their wings extended. I had fun taking pictures of the macaques. The only problem that I seemed to develop while there was that I got overwhelmed with how many monkeys were there and trying to cut down the 600+ pictures of monkeys to a reasonable size has been a bit of a task.

From Bali

From Bali

From Bali

From Bali

My last afternoon in Kuta I rented a boogie board and attempted a little surfing. Then I headed off about mid morning day 3 to Ubud up in the Central part of Bali. (I'll cover Udud and Candi Dasa in the next post about Bali.)