Lovina, Bali, Indonesia

We had an amazing past few days in Seminyak but we were ready for little road trip. While hanging out with our new local friend, Henry hooked us up with his friend’s car rental company and scored us a great price on the car. Thanks Henry! We headed three hours North to a beach town called Lovina that was recommended to us by a few folks along our journey. We drove way up into the jungle and at the very top of one of the ‘mountains’ is a town called Strawberry Hill that overlooks endless fields of tiered rice terraces.

During the drive we kept finding ourselves in awe of the views and how much different it is than anywhere else we’d ever been. Definitely not in Kansas anymore, that’s for sure. On the top of the mountains, there were tons of monkeys on the side of the road and plenty tourists handing them food. They are VERY curious and not afraid to come right up to you and take whatever you have in hand. The entire drive took a little over 3 hours to go from the South of Bali to the far North and Tyson napped for about two of those hours. The rest of the time was filled in with snacks, singing, and sightseeing.

By the time we arrived in Lovina it was around 1pm and we hadn’t booked a hotel for that night, although I had found a hotel online that we were planning to drive to and see what happened from there. We’ve figured out that you tend to get a better price if you negotiate directly with the hotel rather than booking online and have stuck to that for the most part. We’ll stop at random places nearby as well and see what they’re all about, but this time all the others were either too expensive or too dingy for our taste. So we ended up going to the hotel I had found online at about 30% less after negotiating.

I still wasn’t feeling very well and wanted to relax in the room for the rest of the day so Marshall took Tyson for a walk on the beach and to grab dinner while I napped and watched Mr. Bean on the ipad in the room. Marshall and Tyson had a lot of fun playing on the beach and talking about dolphins which is a popular attraction for this area. Dogs run around just about everywhere in SE Asia from what we’ve noticed and Tyson absolutely goes crazy when he sees one. It’s a highlight of every stroll to hear him say DOOOOOG and WOOF WOOF when he sees them. He’s been pointing out things way before we see them lately. Some other of his favorites are NEIGH for horse or ELEE for elephant and of course BALL.

After strolling down the beach for about an hour (which took them maybe a quarter mile) they stopped to watch a volleyball game being played by about a dozen locals near some restaurants. They ordered dinner then saw a kid about Tyson’s age kicking a ball with his dad near the volleyball area, so they went over there to play with them for a bit. They are Aussies and the boy was just over 2 years old, but already on his 3rd trip to Bali! The kids played for a little bit then the waiter called Marshall back when their food was ready. Marshall said he had the best pasta and garlic bread in SE Asia so far. He guessed he probably ate a bulb of garlic and I don’t doubt it. I could smell them coming before they got in the door and made them both go straight to the bathroom to brush their teeth! After a nice bland pancake for me we all got ready for bed and hit the hay.

Tyson has become somewhat of a monkey himself since we got to Indonesia. Anytime we happen to find a place that has a crib, Tyson has found a way to climb out of it. Some are small cribs for babies that we don’t even attempt to use, but he seems to find a way out of the bigger ones too. We may have to get him used to a big boy bed sooner than we thought!

The following day, we figured we might as well use the car we had so we started following the coastline East of Lovina to see where it’d take us. While driving, we passed several groups of school children marching single file in the street. The boys and girls would march in separate groups and would stay in two rows taking up the entire lane of the road so cars had to swerve around them. These kids were serious too. They had chants they would say, keep their pace by walking in place while waiting for traffic to get out of their way and we even saw them march through red lights. Crazy kids.

By the way, what makes that even more insane is that people drive absolutely crazy in Bali (as compared to other countries we’ve experienced) and there are hardly any stop lights and no stop signs. So major intersections are chaotic because everyone’s trying to go at the same time and it doesn’t seem that anybody really has the right of way. There are more motor bikes than cars in Bali and they love to drive on both sides of you passing whenever they want so you have to be super cautious if you are turning so you don’t side swipe them. We learned that the hard way when one bike started to pass us and we accidentally gave them a little love tap which knocked our mirror in. Oops! The streets are so small that when people parallel park on the streets everyone folds their mirrors in because if you didn’t you surely wouldn’t have one the next day.

After driving for about 45 minutes we figured it was time to turn around and head back. Tyson had fallen asleep from the get go so we just let him take his full nap in the car that day. Once we got back to the hotel it was lunch time and we thought it would be nice to go to the five star resort we checked out the day before to eat lunch and hang out by their pool. We drove about five minutes over there and walked straight out to the pool and beach area. We sat down at a couple of beach chairs and ordered some lunch while Tyson played with some of his toys next to us in the sand. Then we look over at another family a few chairs down on the beach and recognize the same kid Tyson was playing with the day before at dinner. How random is that? Turns out they were staying at that hotel. We packed up our stuff and moved it over to a table by the pool so we could sit and chat with them (Neil and Kara) while the boys played. Tyson was showing Billy how to turn the outdoor shower on and off and they were having fun splashing around in the water. We had such a great time chatting with Neil and Kara that we exchanged phone numbers. We were both planning to drive to a town called Ubud the next day so we thought it would be fun to meet back up there.

Tomorrow we’ll be driving three hours south to a town called Ubud, which is the most popular destination in Bali. Can’t wait!