Honeymoon in Bali

These past two weeks, my wife and I were on our long-overdue honeymoon in Bali!  We actually got back last Wednesday, but it turns out there’s this thing called “jet lag”, and when you fly halfway across the planet, you experience it something fierce!  Now that it’s mostly passed, I’d like to share with you our experiences. 

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It takes a long time to get to Bali.  We had a 13-hour flight from the US to Qatar, followed by a 9-hour flight to Denpassar, the capital city of Bali.  Bewildered and sleep-deprived, we were picked up at the airport by a driver from the Kayumanis Private Villa and Spa, the place where we stayed for the first half of our trip.  And it was wonderful!  Just look at these pictures.  

We had our own pool, as well as 24 hour room service!  Here's a picture of prawn porridge and Nasi Goreng, as well as the nice man who brought us these foods and replaced our daily fruits.

Kayumanis also had a private beach.  Here's a little fact about me:  I don't always get along with bodies of water.  I've almost drowned, like, six times.  But my wife was very encouraging, and I decided to throw caution to the wind.  

And as sure as I'm sitting here writing this blog post, it went ok!  I didn't drown once! Not even once!  I did get sunburned, though.  

The first half of the trip, my wife and I went to various sites around southern Bali.  One of these was the beach of Jinbaran, where we ate barbecued seafood at the Made Bagus cafe.  

That's my favorite picture of me on this trip because it was the greatest day of my life, maybe.  Look at me being surrounded by seafoods.  All of which were delicious!  Barbecued: shrimp, fish, clams, squid, and crab.  Heaven!  

These are some photos from the beach of Jinbaran.  

We also took a trip to the Sukawati Canyon.  This was a bit of a harrowing experience for me.  We had to hire a (very athletic) guide to help us navigate the many rocks and obstacles.  It was worth it for the pictures we got, but I did suffer a bit of a mishap.  

I fell into this pool.

Here is me immediately afterwards, wondering what the long-term health risks are of falling into a pool of standing water in a Balinese forest on the other side of the planet.

But all's well that ends well!  

Plus, I got to meet this giant bat.  

On our way back from the canyon, we met this woman carrying a big basket of rice.

We also went to see the Kecak fire dance at Uluwatu Temple.  

The Uluwatu Temple is inhabited by a pretty large group of macaque monkeys.  They're notorious for stealing bottles of water, flip-flops, sunglasses, and basically anything not tied down or zipped up.  They're pretty cute, though!

More monkey business.

My wife really fell in love with photography on this trip, and she is so good at it!  All these photos were taken by her.  And, unlike me, she loves taking pictures of people!  

This concludes the first half of our trip at Kayumanis.  After this, we went to Ubud.  Stay tuned for complete coverage of that whole experience!  Sneak preview: more monkeys.