This is the Captain speaking-Day 2 continued

Once back at the ship, we repaired to our rooms, to freshen up after a day in the heat and humidity of Bali, and meet, as usual, in the Observation Lounge for a pre-dinner cocktail, some appetizers, and musical entertainment. We had a lovely dinner and then headed to a show and then back to the lounge for more music and a nightcap. Around ten in the evening the words no one wants to hear, especially when piped into a lounge or one's room, "This is the Captain speaking" boomed from the overhead speakers: "to avoid some fishing vessels, we swerved and are now stuck in the mud, we will keep you informed".  We didn't feel a thing when it happened and most thought it would be a minor inconvenience.

The next morning we found ourselves tied up back at the dock waiting for divers to arrive to check for damage and Lloyd's of London surveyor's to examine what the divers found and tell us if the ship could continue it voyage. Well, we waited and we waited and we waited some more. One couldn't go far from the ship because no one had any idea of when it would leave if it would leave at all.

Our telephone rang at about 5:30 PM and our friend Leah asked us to come over as Wayne wasn't acting right. He was having trouble putting words together and moving. The ship's doctor and the emergency team arrived shortly thereafter and they whisked him down to the medical center. After about an hour it was clear something was very wrong and he needed emergency medical care. The ship called an ambulance and they took Wayne and Leah to the hospital. 

Things were uncertain enough with Wayne, but none of us had any idea when the ship might leave. The Hoover's were disembarked and given their passports back and the housekeeper and butler packed their belongings, but we were still on-board.

Since we didn't know if or when the ship would leave, we made the decision to disembark as well so that we could be with Leah and Wayne. That meant some different formalities for us since it wasn't an emergency and it took awhile for us to pack, get our passports back and disembark.

The ship's Executive Concierge was absolutely marvelous. She found us hotel reservations, somehow found transportation in a largely deserted terminal, and kept in touch with us throughout our stay. We made our way to the hospital only to find Leah checking in at a hotel next door. She told us Wayne was resting comfortably and we agreed to meet back at the hospital at 8 the next morning.

That began our five days stay in Bali. When we returned to the hospital in the morning we found out that Wayne had a growth on his brain and the pressure it was exerting was causing his problems. We made reservations at our hotel for Leah and each day we would have breakfast, get our Blue Bird Taxi and go the hospital and head back to the hotel in the evening. 

The hospital itself was quite excellent. It was spotlessly clean, with a caring staff and excellent doctors. Everyone spoke English and the care Wayne received was very good and on par with what he would have received in the States. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with a tumor and needed to return to the States for an operation.

As they relieved the pressure on his brain, Wayne started doing much better. Finally, they released him on Friday afternoon and we all went back to the hotel. Wayne and Leah flew back to the States on Saturday evening and we flew on to Singapore. We hated leaving them, but we knew he was in no immediate danger and they were flying back to be greeted by their son Tim at the airport with Matt and their daughters-in-law arriving the next day.

Wayne had surgery on Thursday and is now on the road to recovery. We ask that you all say a prayer for him.

Bali-Day 2 and Beyond

There's nothing like a few good cocktails, a wonderful dinner, and a Balinese Folkloric show to prepare one for the next day's adventures. The show was quite colorful, and while gamelan music can be hard on Westerner's ears, it was actually quite enjoyable, for awhile.

Well rested and eager to see what the day would bring, we left the ship and headed out to meet our driver and he had a surprise for us. Instead of the tiny little micro van we were shoeboxed into the day before, we had a spacious, full sized Toyota van for the day. It was going to be a good day.

While Indonesia has the largest population of Muslin's in the world, Bali practices the Hindu religion and there are temples of all shapes and sizes seemingly everywhere. Bali is often called "The Land of a Thousand Temples" and driving around one certainly can believe it. Here's a link for a much better explanation of the types of temples in Bali than I could do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_temple

Our first stop was a large village temple outside of the town of Ubud. It was early and the tourist buses had yet to arrive. Before we could go into the temple, we had to put on sarongs.

Suitably attired we were able to enter. Unlike the colorful temples we experienced in much of India, this one featured more stone carvings and buildings and was not adorned with figures of the many Hindu gods.

Not soon after we arrived, a swarm of large busses appeared and the Temple was overtaken by happy Japanese tourists endlessly posing for pictures, taking selfies, and generally occupying every nook and cranny, making shooting any more pictures pretty difficult unless one wanted happy Japanese tourists in them. Mass tourism is everywhere these days.

Leaving the temple behind, we headed out to visit a traditional Balinese house. It was more like a large compund with many small buildings and it's own private temple area. It was occupied by a multi-generational family, several chickens, cats and dogs. Given the very temperate climate, it epitimized open floor plan living.

The Balinese love to keep birds and this house had several as well as some fighting roosters. While outlawed in the country, rooster fighting is allowed in the tempels. Go figure.









One thing we did learn during out time in Bali was how friendly the people are. There were smiles from everyone and a gentleness and grace we have only experienced in a few other places.

 

After we visted the house, it was off to the Uluwantu Temple, which just happened to be in the oposite direction from Ubud about an hour away. We stopped for lunch at a satay place along the way and encountered this sign. One wonders why it was in English first.

The Uluwantu Temple is perched 70 Meters high on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The site is spectactular, but the temple is actually pretty spartan.

There are monkeys all over the place and they love to steal sunglasses from the visitors. The monkey police then chase them down and offer them candy in exchange for the sunglasses.  It's a system that works well for the monkeys as one can tell from the size of this guy.

We left the temple and the monkies behind hoping to visit one of Bali's storied beaches, but it was not to be. A tremendous rainstorm hit and we decieded it was better to head back to the ship, since it was leaving soon and forgo the beach. Little did we know what lay ahead.

Bali-Day 1

Bali was to be one of the highlights of this trip. Kathy had visited it twenty years ago and had wanted to go back ever since that time. We often looked at the pictures she had taken and dreamed about how great the photography would be.

Well, dreams often come up against reality and in this case reality was a lot different than our dreams. Now perhaps doing temple and artisan tours aren’t the way one should see Bali. Plenty of people go just for the beaches, clear blue water, and abundant nightlife, but that’s not what we signed up to do.

Once the ship docked, the Hoover’s and us met our private guide Benya, cousin of Bali’s Number One Tour Guide Panji, and off we went toward Ubud to see the famous craft villages and ran smack into Bali’s always moving, somewhat chaotic, crowded, motorbike teaming, two-lane

roads. Along these congested arteries were more stores selling stone carvings, woodcarvings, furniture, art and other sometimes outrageously large objects that seemingly could not possibly all be sold, no matter how many tourists came to this island.

In quick session, we visited a batik factory, a silversmith, a wood carving establishment, a stone works and finally an art gallery. The drill was the each in each: demonstration of how it’s done and then into the gallery. Now don’t get me wrong, all of the places had quality goods and fantastic workmanship, but after a while, it did get repetitious and how does one get a three hundred pound stone Buddha home?

After the craft villages, came the terraced rice patties. Beautiful yes, but instead of vistas of terraced rice patties we were greeted by hundreds of tourist joints selling everything imaginable on both sides of a crowded two lane road. One had to pay a fee to get to the rice patties and was restricted to narrow views sandwiched between various restaurants and full of fellow tourists all trying to get a selfie or the perfect shot. This was not the paradise Kathy remembered. We did manage to get some good shots although Leah hit the bridge of her nose on a steel bar trying to get between shooting locations and had a cut and bruise for a few days.

We survived the rice patty ordeal, had lunch in a quite nice little hotel nestled in all of the tourist havoc of Ubud, braved the Ubud market and headed for the highlight of the day, the Tanah Lot Temple for sunset pictures at this most spectacular set of temples perched on high cliffs overlooking the sea.  One is accessible all the time, the other only at low tide. Well it is spectacular, but to get to the views, one has to walk through a few blocks of more tourist shops and eateries. Once there, a cloudbank moved in and sunset shots were out.

We stayed for a while and then climbed back into the van for the 90 minutes drive back to the ship. Hot, sweaty from the humidity, tired from the day’s activities, we laughed all the way back about the days travails. Bali wasn’t the paradise we thought it might be, but little did we know what lay ahead.

The Komodo Dragons

Komodo Island and the dragons have been linked since the early 1900’s when tales of fire-breathing dragons were told by Dutch seamen. Finally, in 1910 a Dutch Naval Officer lead an expedition to the island and discovered not a fire-breathing dragon, but the Komodo Dragon, which while not breathing fire, is the largest lizard in the world. Adult males can easily reach 12 feet in length and can weigh up to 300 pounds.  They can run up to 18 miles per hour for short sprints and their saliva contains various bacteria that can kill a water buffalo three days after being bitten. In short, one doesn’t want to mess with them.

The island itself is a verdant green with high mountains in its center. There are no roads, telephones, and only one small town is on the island. Dirt trails are the only way to get around except by boat. It is an island with the sole purpose of keeping the dragons from becoming extinct. There are ample herds of deer, wild pigs and water buffalo for the dragons dining pleasure. There are also plenty of fish in the waters surrounding the islands and the dragons are good swimmers. One wonders why anyone would scuba or snorkel in these waters, but they are promoted for their clarity and variety of fish specimens.

Once on the island, one meets their guide and two guards. This intrepid chap was one of our guards.

They are armed only with these sticks and they are supposed to use the fork of the stick to insert it into the sensitive nose of the dragons warding it off.  Hard to believe, but it must work as no tourists have been bitten, but several guards and some unlucky natives have succumbed over the years.

We were thusly briefed on staying together, not straying from the path, no sudden movements or loud noises. On the ship, we were told no red color and no open wounds, as they could smell blood from seven miles away. So off we went through the dense foliage each one of us probably playing out their own fantasies should dragons suddenly appear.

Whatever fantasies were being played out, most of the trek was a botany lesson on the plants we were seeing. Then we arrived at the waterhole and there they were. No walls, no fences, moats, iron bars or anything keeping one from becoming a snack for the dragons except men with forked sticks.

It all seemed staged and the dragons lethargic until a large one quickly got up and started to move.  The sound of air being sucked into everyone’s lungs and the silence from breath holding was instantaneous and then the clicking of shutters took over. It is quite an exciting experience to see one of these behemoths move, hiss and grunt. They are agile and very quick and if they made up their minds to attack, I really doubt the men with sticks would stand much of a chance.

So how close did we get? How's this?

After viewing the dragons, we were lead to the local craft market and were made to run the gauntlet of vendors trying to sell us carved Komodo Dragons. In many ways, that experience was more terrifying than being a few feet away from the dragons.

Only 20,000 people a year visit the island and we were honored tobe part of that group. It was quite an experience.

Off to Australia

Fifteen thousand miles, thirty plus hours of travel time, four airports, three different aircraft and we made it to Perth, as did our luggage, the latter being almost as important as the former. This first leg of our trip just eked out our trips to South Africa to become the longest journey in both time and distance we’ve endured. It also, surprisingly, turned out to be one of the easiest.

I booked this one so that we could fly the longest leg, fifteen hours, on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This airplane was supposed to be designed to make long distance flying easier on people and reduce jet lag.  I must say it did. Kathy and I both had the longest, uninterrupted sleep we have ever had on an airplane and we arrived in Sydney as fresh as we could be. Which was good because we had a three-hour layover and another six hours in the air to get to Perth.

Sometimes the travel gods smile on one and we had a great flight to Perth. Once landed, our driver quickly whisked us to our hotel and soon we were checked into one of the nicest suites we ever had the pleasure of occupying.

 All we had to do now was to wait for our friends Wayne and Leah Hoover to arrive and the fun would begin. Dinner was set for Long Chim, a world class Thai restaurant by David Thompson of Nahm fame, at 6:00 PM. Needless to say, the food was fantastic Thai street food washed down by an equally fabulous Aussie Riesling.  Facing a 7:30 AM departure the next morning for an all-day trip to the Margaret River Wine Region, we retired to our respective rooms satiated and looking forward to the next day's trip.

Fortified by an amazing breakfast, we met our driver Ed and headed south for the three and one-half hour drive to our first winery, Vasse Felix, the oldest in the Region.  I don’t know if it’s part of a Divine plan or if Bacchus was really a location scout for the wine industry, but it seems wine regions are always in the most beautiful areas of any country we have visited.  Margaret River was no exception. After Vasse Felix, which disappointed, we visited Cullen, excellent, Will’s Domain, very good and were served an amazing lunch and finally ended up at Leeuwin for a tasting of their Art Series wines, which were all fabulous. After that it was a quick visit to the amazing Southern Australia Coast and a quick trip through the small town of Margaret River, think Calistoga in the ‘90’s.

We arrived back in Perth at 8:00 PM and were just in time for our dinner reservations at Post, an Italian restaurant, in our hotel, which was again excellent.  In case you are wondering, food and wine play an important part in this trip.

The next morning we were to do a tour of the Perth and its surroundings, which the Hoover’s did do, but Kathy and I saw a different side of Perth.

Suffice it to say that the emergency room at the Royal Perth Hospital was not in our plans the evening before, but things happen. I awoke that morning with a gastrointestinal issue that couldn’t be solved with over the counter preparations. So our driver Ed took us to the Royal Perth for a close-up look at a side of Perth the Hoover’s would not see.

Suffice it to say that it was not life-threatening. The folks in the emergency room were wonderful and things worked out in the end.

We were able to meet the Hoover’s in time to be transported to our next hotel and another wonderful dinner later that evening at Rock Pool.  There we all dined on different varieties of Aussie fish all cooked over an oak grill including the difficult to pronounce Dhu fish, but that’s a story for another time.