OK, one more video update here from Seoul before we jump on the airplane back to SFO.
We spent the last 4 days of our Bali trip in Kuta, the main beach area of Bali. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel, right on the beach in the heart of Kuta.
Here’s some video from the Hard Rock Hotel, featuring the biggest swimming pool in Kuta:
Here’s some video from the beach in Kuta, right across the street from the hotel:
And here’s video from two meals we enjoyed in Kuta, at Made’s Warung (one of the oldest and best known restaurants in Kuta) and at Papa’s:
Our next update will come upon our return to the U.S. We’re both really looking forward to getting home!
OK, so we’ve traveled through the night (here in Asia anyway) to arrive in Seoul — first a 2-hour flight from Bali to Singapore, then a 6-hour flight from Singapore to Seoul. Now we’ve got an 8-hour layover before our 10-hour flight to SFO. It’s a long layover, which stinks, but on the bright side, it is good for 3 things:
(1) Brent can try to pop one ear that’s been plugged since the last hour of the flight to Seoul. Thank you, head cold!
(2) We can watch the NFL Sunday night game — live — online. Props to NBC for streaming all of their Sunday night games live over the internet!
(3) We have a chance to upload some of our last videos, including the long awaited installments from our whitewater rafting and elephant riding adventures near Ubud. So without further ado:
Well, tomorrow is Sunday — our last day in Bali. It’s been a great two-week trip, other than the inconsistent internet access, which has meant we haven’t been able to upload as much video and photos as we’d like. So we’ll be catching up in the next few days — including during our 8-hour layover in Seoul — to wrap up our travel blog this time around.
As usual, we’ve had a terrific time, but at the same time, I think both Larry and I are really looking forward to getting back home. Always good to be away and recognize how lucky you have it right in your own backyard.
Our flight leaves Denpasar Sunday night at 8pm local time (about 4am West Coast time), and after about 28 hours of travel (including that 8-hour Seoul layover), we’ll be arriving at 8am Monday morning in SFO.
I’m sure we’ll be checking in from Seoul, but for now, as we get packed up, we’re signing off from Bali!
– Brent
P.S. We’ll fill in all the gaps from our travels over the next week or so, so stay tuned!
Today, we arrived in Kuta — the last stop on our 2008 tour. Kuta is the main beach area along the southwest coast of Bali. Unfortunately, we’ve also arrived in the midst of a lot of rain and wind — so hopefully it will clear up for these last 4 days of our trip!
In the meantime, we wanted to catch you up a bit more from our stay in Ubud, which we thoroughly enjoyed. For those of you who read our travel blog in 2006, we found Ubud to be a lot like Hoi An, Vietnam — a small community with lots of arts, music, and culture.
But, unlike Hoi An, Ubud also features the Monkey Forest — home to 4 troops of more than 340 long-tailed macaques! (We found this particularly amusing, on the heels of our work with Jim Webb in his race against George Allen two short years ago.)
Video from our encounter with our macaque friends at the Monkey Forest here:
In addition, video from our breakfast at the amazing Komaneka Hotel is here:
As time and bandwidth allows, we’ll be bringing you more from our last day in Ubud (Wednesday), featuring whitewater rafting down the Ayung River, as well as riding a Sumatran elephant named Roxie! Plus, we’ll bring you up to speed on what we’re doing here in Kuta.
Two posts in one day? You betcha! So if you’re checking the blog for the first time in the last day or two, scroll down for more action-packed updates!
Immediately after finishing our diving in Tulamben on Sunday, and then driving back to Padang Bai to swing by our hotel and pick up our stuff, we continued on another 90-minute drive to Ubud, in central Bali. Ubud is the artistic and cultural center of Bali, so we’ve really been looking forward to getting here.
Upon arriving at our hotel, the Komaneka Monkey Forest, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that we’d been upgraded — to a villa with its own private pool. SWEET!
Here’s a video tour of our swanky digs in Ubud upon our arrival Sunday night:
Here we are getting massages Monday morning, eating roast suckling pig for lunch, and then jumping in our private villa pool to cool off:
And here we are strolling around the streets of Ubud to do some shopping later Monday afternoon:
Later tonight or tomorrow we’ll post more video — including our trip to the actual monkey forest! Enjoy!
On Sunday, we did two more dives in Tulamben (about a 90-minute drive from Padang Bai) at the site of the shipwrecked USAT Liberty, Bali’s most famous dive site.
The Liberty was torpedoed by the Japanese in WWII, and the US Navy attempted to tow it to port. When it took on too much water, the Navy beached the Liberty near Tulamben. Then, after Bali’s Mount Agung erupted in 1963, the wreck slid further down the slope to its present position, where it has since become home to tons of marine life.
Here’s a video of our take on the diving at Tulamben:
Here’s a video of the beautiful drive from Tulamben back to Padang Bai after the dive, showing a lot of the rice terraces and lush countryside (caution, wind noise, so turn your sound down for this!):
Finally, here’s a short look at the waterfront area in Padang Bai, where we spent a lot of our time the first few days in Bali:
On Friday December 5th, we landed in Bali and headed straight to Padang Bai to serve as our base for a couple days of diving toward our Advanced Open Water certification. Too bad there wasn’t video of me when we arrived at our hotel, the Mustika Sari. It was, ummm, spartan/rustic/whatever you have to say not to be totally rude.
The next morning we went to WaterWorxx dive shop and met David the manager and Wayan our divemaster for the next couple of days. Our first dive was the Blue Lagoon and our second dive was around the corner from there. Can’t remember what it was called. It was odd to jump into the water for the first time in 2 years, but it came back pretty quickly. Here’s a video of before and after the dives. Sorry, we don’t have anything close to the skills to do underwater video.
After a couple of dives, we were starving. We went to the Puri Rai restaurant to have our first square meal in Bali. It was good. Not amazing. The martarbak, eggs and onions fried with what seemed like egg roll wrapper, was very good. Brent had beef rendang and I had nasi gaul, which was some kind of combo plate. Video of the food below.
Special Note: This blog post is dedicated for our frequent Las Vegas travel companions, Tom & Sarah. Tom, you’ll be happy to know that we almost couldn’t find craps or blackjack amongst all the baccarat tables in Macau casinos!
We spent Wednesday evening through Friday morning last week in Macau, the gambling capital of Asia. Andy Choy, a friend of mine from McKinsey days who is helping manage the Venetian Macau, hooked us up with a great room rate there. (Yes, the Venetian is run by Sheldon Adelson — an ultra right-wing wingnut, so normally I wouldn’t stay here, but Andy was kind enough to put us up, which is much appreciated!) The Venetian is huge — double the size of the property in Las Vegas. They’re clearly expecting huge growth in the gaming industry in Asia and have established a significant beachhead in Macau.
The following two video clips cover our time at the Venetian on the Cotai Strip (a new development area anchored by the Venetian, about 10 minutes south of Macau proper), as well as spending time in the “original” center of Macau, near the Grand Lisboa and new Wynn Macau. Enjoy!
After we had dim sum, we took the ferry across the harbor with Ramya to explore Central Hong Kong. We quickly got lost amongst all the freaking boutiques in the confusing enclosed walkways. It’s like they’re forcing you to buy designer clothing or else…
We finally emerged out of the financial district and ended up in SoHo, which is a very cool arts and antiques area. If we had more time, we definitely would have hung out there for happy hour (it seemed every place had food and drink specials). Checked out some art including a Vietnamese art gallery. They were charging absurd prices for things we saw in Vietnam for 1/4 of the price two years ago. Pretty sure the Vietnamese art market hasn’t gone up 400% in two years.
Then we walked to the tram to go up the peak. It was a long walk there, and I (Larry) was not pleased. We went up to the top. I was finished with the view in about 15 seconds. Brent needed more time to take it in. Anyway, here’s the video of our day in Hong Kong:
