Ubud, Bali – Day 41

This is our last full day on holiday and at the moment we are relaxing by the pool in 28 degrees of heat trying not to think about the four degree temperature in Scarborough. We arrived at the Samaya Hotel in Ubud yesterday morning, since when we have been soaking up the atmosphere and shopping. Ubud is a touristy town about an hours drive from the capital Denpasar and the port of Benoa where our ship docked. It is a touristy and busy place with inadequate roads choked with traffic, particularly mopeds. However our hotel is an oasis of calm, consisting of little bungalows each with their own pool on the side of a river valley.

This morning I arose early to take a guided walk around the area of the hotel. It was fascinating to see the intensive agriculture taking place almost in the middle of the town. The principal crop is rice grown in well-irrigated paddy fields.

There is certainly no shortage of water here. The more well to do houses are in the form of walled compounds where the extended family all have there own smaller houses. Integrated into the compound is a Hindu temple for festivities and a graveyard for your ancestors, truly cradle to grave living. Evidence of Hinduism is all around with temples, statues, and small shrines.

After a lovely breakfast we went shopping, first for coffee particularly the Lowok coffee that is famous here. Our guide probably described it best as poo coffee; yes the beans have been digested through the gut of an animal and then excreted.

Sounds horrible, but is tastes really good, although it is fairly expensive. The normal Balinese beans are also good so various purchases were made. Watch out when you next come to Throxenby Lane, you will maybe be drinking poo coffee.

Then it was onto a batik shop where Marion was in ecstasies over the material on show, particularly the hand designed cotton batik. Even to my untutored eye it looked lovely. Having made our purchases we toured some of the rural country around Ubud, particularly looking at the rice fields and the terraced agriculture. Unusually it has not rained.

All is left is our final dinner and to pack tomorrow morning before the journey home and a farewell to what has been a lovely holiday. We hope to return to the southern hemisphere sometime soon. I will sum up our feelings about the holiday when we are settled in in Scarborough on Monday or Tuesday. 

Photos - Day 41

We are now back on land in Bali so I will post some photos representative of the time we spent creasing from Sydney to Bali.

Leaving Sydney at Night

Brisbane Skyline

Encore docked in Brisbane

River ferry - Brisbane

Kayaking - Moreton Island

At Sea

Whit Sunday Islands

Rainforest

Mangrove Swamp - Cairns

At Sea

Timor Leste

Snorkeling

Coral

Komodo Dragon

Last day on Board – Day 40

We docked in Benoa the port of Bali at 10am this morning. This is an unscheduled stop as we were due to visit Lombok, but because of the recent earthquake damage have been unable to visit. So we have had a relaxing day on board in high heat and humidity. The temperature in the pool was around ninety degrees so it was great to get in there and do some exercise this morning.

Lunch was our new favourite sushi and then it was down to some packing, with promise of some ice cream at the end of it. 

So here we are at the end of our cruise on the Seabourn Encore, we have had a great time. We have met some interesting and friendly people, had great food and some fantastic experiences. I think the best was seeing Marion’s smile after she had been snorkelling in Timor Leste. Only two days to go before we fly home, but I am sure that our exploration of Bali will be very interesting and enjoyable.

If we have a reasonable Internet connection tomorrow I will try to post some of the pictures that we have taken over the last few days since we embarked on the cruise.

If you wish to see the official blog of our cruise and compare it to my amateur offering follow this link https://my.yb.tl/encoreventures

Slawi Bay or Komodo Island – Day 39

We anchored in the most beautiful bay off Komodo Island, one of the over 17,000 islands that comprise Indonesia. `In the bay many islands rose up from the waters while mountainous hills formed a ring around the bay. Those in the know tell me that the bay resembled Halong Bay in Vietnam. However the principal reason for our visit was not the fabulous scenery, but the famous Komodo dragons, which are the largest lizards on earth. 

Our visit started with a short tender ride to a long jetty. At the end of this was the entrance to the park where we were divided into groups. Each group had a guide and two rangers with long poles, reputedly to protect us from the dragons. Apparently they are very dangerous because their saliva is highly poisonous, containing sixteen different types of bacteria. The first dragon we saw was a young one about three feet long, just walking across the beach.

After walking along a dusty track for some minutes we were told to be quiet as the next part was extremely dangerous!! I think this is like every Australian guide telling one to look out for snakes and deadly spiders, of which we have seen none. Any way we came to a dusty looking waterhole where there were several dragons torpidly lying around, flicking their tongues in and out. I was able to get one shot in which the dragon looked fierce but apart from that not a lot happened. One of the cynics in our party thought that they had been drugged, who knows. An interesting experience.

The sail away from the bay was beautiful in the late afternoon sunshine, with rain clouds hovering over the mountains. We then played the final team trivia game, our team had much fun and surprisingly came second. It was then time for the crew to be thanked and recognised at a deck party. Finally we had dinner with Kathy and Fred from Pittsburgh, the discussion was wide ranging. Surprisingly he thought that the English legal system was more expensive and cumbersome than that in the US.

Tomorrow we dock in Bali for our last whole day on the Seabourn Encore.

A lovely evening – Day 38

Today we have been cruising between Dili and Komodo Island in flat calm seas thinking about the cruise so far and enjoying new friendships. The Ventures team shared their photographs with us; the ones of Marion snorkelling in Dili were spectacular. Hopefully when we have a good Internet connection in Bali I will be able to share them. This afternoon we watched flying fish scud across an absolutely flat ocean.

This evening was all about what we like about being on a Seabourn cruise. We had pre-dinner drinks in the Observation bar where we met two friends from Medicine Hat in Canada. We then had a lovely dinner with our trivia team, a multi-national group of eleven from the old-Commonwealth, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and of course ourselves from England. We spent three hours laughing and talking over a lovely meal. Then it was on to see the late show with a comedian, he was very funny, Marion was rolling around. Unfortunately his humour was probably lost on the Americans in the audience. I will see if I can recall any of the jokes when I arrive home.

Tomorrow we risk life and limb seeing the Komodo dragons.

Timor Leste – Day 37

Marion taking over from Nigel:  Well what a day! We awoke on a beautiful morning to see the beautiful sight of the hills of Timor Leste rising through the mist and the sea sparkling and shimmering. After breakfast we took a Zodiac ride round the bays and stopped on Cristol Beach where Nigel joined a short hike uphill to the miniature Christ of the Andes-type statue, which overlooks the bay. I flopped under the shade of a tree for a while and when Nigel got back we both tried our hand at snorkelling. The Ventures team from the ship were so encouraging and I found it a joy to be in the wonderfully warm, clear water and eventually, with the help of one ventures team members, felt able to snorkel round the coral reef. It was great to see the many varieties of coral, some still, some moving gently with the movement of the sea. They were less brightly coloured than I had imagined but there was a huge variety. My mentor was diving around and under me, photographing the different corals and an eel that we saw. She also took a snap of me snorkelling to prove that I did it!! Sadly, Nigel missed this experience because without his glasses he just couldn’t see the coral and tiny fish.

At Sea – Day 36

Today we sailed out of Australian waters and are now in Indonesia/Timor Leste. We land in Timor Leste tomorrow, and today we learnt some interesting facts about the third newest nation in the world. Only Montenegro and South Sudan are newer. It is also one of the poorest nations in the world. It was a Portuguese colony that suffered a postcolonial struggle to become independent from Indonesia. Quite unreasonably I feel I should write to my MP for an explanation as to why I have to pay a $55 visa fee, while almost everywhere else in Europe is exempt.

We have had a great day today, after a late breakfast we talked to the Ventures Team, these are the knowledgeable experts who are on the ship. They are so willing to impart their considerable knowledge. They also reassured Marion that she would enjoy the zodiac trip to the beach tomorrow. There was then a caviar party where unfortunately even though it was before midday Marion and I drank a little too much. I think it was the strawberry daiquiri that did it. We and the other teams were thus well lubricated for trivia, how was it than one of our team knew the exact date that Disneyland opened?

We had and agreeable lunch with an Australian couple, he is a former Cathay pilot who regaled us with several “tall” tales, including the one where the pilot hung a pair of fluffy dice in the windscreen of a 747. After the Timor lecture there was a classical concert on deck, very relaxing. I then cleared the swimming pool by doing aqua-robics; the water temperature was just less than 90 degrees.

Finally we watched the sun go down and then had a lovely dinner. We are ready for Timor Leste tomorrow.