Bali round up

Whilst Fran and I were together there were lots of things we kept noticing that were quite unusual (to us) about Bali and we kept saying I should write these down so I don’t forget. These weren’t really interesting enough to fit into the daily diaries so I’ve just randomly scribbled them all here!

- the traffic is SO bad. To the point where we decided maybe I would retrain as a town planner as we had some many ideas on how to make it better! There are seemingly no rules of the road, with pedestrians, mopeds, cars and busses just randomly passing each other, sometimes at the narrowest margins. The roads clearly weren’t designed for this much traffic and so are not coping very well at all. Canggu and Ubud were by far the worst, to the point that I think it could start really putting people off coming- for one the pollution in Ubud when you just want to wander around really isn’t pleasant. There also seems to be no public transport system which clearly doesn’t help.

- The ants are massive. Especially in Ubud. The size of actual spiders in the UK!

- Bali in Hindu and they have temples everywhere. Our driver to the rice terraces told us each village has 3 temples for the 3 gods (xxxx) and as well have that they have little family temples and these little tower things. On each of these and also just outside of shoes restaurants etc they leave daily offerings, which are essentially a banana leaf folded to make a square with things they enjoy inside, as well as incense. They usually had flowers insides but also things like biscuits, cakes and cigarettes

- The limes are tiny! I would say about the size of a strawberry. So small. But very limey.

- We had the most delicious tomato we have ever eaten at a cafe in Ubud called Simply Social. God knows what they did to it but we’ve never tasted anything like it. The only way to describe is the most tomatoey thing I’ve ever eaten. I realise this isn’t an amazing description but there really is no other way!

- Getting picked up from the airport was interesting- it was midnight after an 18hr flight and we had a transfer from the hotel. The problem was that there were about 200 people there to collect people so we had to walk up and down this long list trying to find our name! I know this usual practice but I’ve never seen so many before. Of course ours was at the very end!

- they have a WH Smith in the airport. Why?

- Petrol is sold by the bottle at the side of the road from re-used bottles. So we saw bright blue petrol being sold from an Absolut Vodka bottle. Very confusing, looked too much like WKD!Læs mere