Pan Pacific Nirwana, Bali

We cut out Sidemen stay short before we even arrived to head back to the luxurious 5-star resort of Pan Pacific Nirwana. It's like the Japanese-owned version of Four Seasons, and it's got one of the best, if not the best, golf course in Asia. I'll spare you the description since I've posted on it here already, but I'll share a few new pics!

Sidemen, Bali.. The countryside

We headed out to east Bali in a small village town known as Sidemen for our next stay, a first for us.  Sidemen really captured our hearts. 

After an hour and a half of a curvy, mountainous drive from Ubud, we checked into Sawah Indah Villas.  We were in awe of the scenery! Sawah Indah is at the foot of the mountains amongst rice terraces, crop fields and the most beautiful gardens. The best thing to do there besides relax in the infinity pool and take in the beauty is to walk around the country roads and check out the villages.  We had the best time walking around the rural town.  Everyone was unbelievably friendly!  Farmers would throw up their hand to say hello while working in the fields, and the children loved practicing their English with us.  After a rain shower the village kids stream raced little palm leaf hand made toys, and I think we had just as much fun watching as they had playing.  On our way back, a small girl around 4 picked a frangipani flower and held out her arm from across the road for me to come get it from her.  It was the sweetest gesture from the sweetest smiling face.  

While we really loved the little town of Sidemen, we cut our stay short to head to Pan Pacific.

Slagle's are back in Bali!

After a 29 hour long journey, we landed safely at Denpasar Airport in Bali, Indonesia...otherwise known as heaven on earth to us. I arranged to have a driver pick us up and take us to our hotel, Saren Indah.
We started our Bali stay in Ubud, central Bali, just like last time, but we opted for a different hotel for possibly a different experience. And that we had! Saren Indah is about 100 yards from Monkey Forest, a forest inhibited by monkeys, of course. Those little boogers are everywhere! We could hear them running over our roof at night. We saw them in the rice fields surrounding our place, on our balcony, and running and playing all over the hotel grounds. The workers have to carry sling shots, and for good reason too! One morning at breakfast, the monkeys were in full force, and one jumped on a table while a family was eating and stole bread. It was pretty hysterical! Needless to say, we really enjoyed the stay.
You all know how much I love our driver, Wayan, from a previous post, so of course we had him take us around the glorious island again. This time we wanted to see totally different things from the last. We toured Gunung Kawi, a temple surrounded by the most magical landscape..hills, creeks, waterfalls, and the very important banyan trees. It took our breath away. Next, we went to Jatiluwih which is a Unesco World Heritage site. Jatiluwih is acres and acres of hills with rice terraces. Their irrigation system is actually what got Jatiluwih on the Unesco list. Next, we stopped by the Batukaru region and toured the Pura Luhur Batukaru, a very tranquil temple. Joshua got to have a small cleanse with holy water from a natural spring in Batukaru. We also had a few stops with beautiful landscape views with Wayan. Sadly, we only used him for a day because he had a very important house blessing ceremony for the new construction of his home. Each time a new building is constructed, the Balinese have a house blessing ceremony where a priest draws a blessing picture to hang on the very front of the structure. Things like this are very important to the Balinese culture so we knew this was Wayan's priority.
Along with walking and exploring all of Ubud, we went to a cooking class in a real Balinese home and learned how to cook with real, quite primitive, Balinese coking equipment. The kitchens are all in covered outdoor areas, and there is nothing electric..at all. Everything is blended by hand, no electric blender. The stove is a wooden stove outside where coconut wood is used for the fire, and coconut husks are used for charcoal. The experience was nothing short of amazing! We started with a tour of the local market to see the fresh fruit, veggies and spices, and ended up cooking 8 different dishes. We made friends, learned a lot, and we ate some of the best food we've ever had.
We also visited some pretty amazing restaurants. The food in Bali is so fresh, and the style of the restaurants is just so unique and beautiful. We started our first meal to celebrate my 30th birthday, which was actually the day we landed in Bali. The restaurant is quite unique in that the front faces the main strip, but the back faces rice fields which is exactly where we sat! Lots of restaurants look normal from the front then have an amazing rice field view once you go inside. And all restaurants are open to the outdoors as are most building in Bali, including the airport. We also ate at a really trendy vegan spot where you have to take off your shoes to enter, and everything is served up vegan or even raw. Actually, lots of vegetarian, vegan and raw restaurants are in Ubud because it's a big yoga town with lots of yoga centers and retreats. And every single menu, no matter where, has a vegetarian section..not as easy to find in the beef-loving state of Texas.
We both feel bittersweet about leaving Ubud. We are so grateful to have gotten this special experience twice in our life, and we aren't sure when we'll get to come back as there is so much of the world we hope to explore. But Ubud has made a deep impression on us, and we are changed by the sweet people and depth of spiritual life that thrives.

Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok is really probably the most interesting city we've ever been.  It gets a bad reputation for being dirty, but it's no worse than New York.  It actually even smells better than NYC, unless you happen to pass by a dried fish and seafood stand.. then that's probably the most foul smelling odor you could ever imagine.  They don't have the trash system of a first world country, but the Thai do take pride in their space.  I saw many of them sweeping their storefronts with interesting brooms, and they don't wear shoes inside many places.

Thailand is known as the land of a thousand smiles, and I think that name quite suits it.  They are all very friendly and welcoming and even stop to offer help when you look a bit lost.  This is the only place we've ever been where language was a tiny bit of a barrier, but we were still able to communicate. 

The city really is spectacular- monsoon and all!  We never knew it could rain so hard, but it would only last around an hour, and we were lucky enough to never get caught directly in it as you can pretty much tell it's coming.  We were enamored by the beautiful temples, the strong Buddhist culture, the malls, the food, and even the size of the city.  The Chao Phraya river is a unique way to get from place to place either by river taxi or traditional longtail boat, and the canals run off the river and through the city.  The sky train is also very easy to get around which is what we took most of the time.  Monks are everywhere, and seats are marked on the sky train that should be offered to a monk if one happens to hop on. 

The first day we got to Bangkok, we went to the Chatuchak weekend market which was HUGE.. 27 acres!  It really had just about any and everything you could imagine... clothes, dishes, plants, jewelry, home decor, pets and tons of street food which is what Thailand is known for.  That night we met up with our friend, Masa, who just happend to be in BKK at the same time.  What are the odds?  He introduced us to a lady, Kaori, that works at the same company as and he and Joshua, and we all 4 met up at her husband's restaurant for dinner and lots of cava sangria.  We had the giggles all the way back to our hotel in the taxi.. a bit too much sangria.  The other days were filled with temple visits to Wat Arun, Wat Phra Kaeo, Wat Pho and the Grand Palace.  Everything was amazing and so ornate, and it was fascinating to watch the locals in action at the temples.  Lotus flowers, holy water and incense were available to all that wanted to worship.  On our last night, we went to Sirocco Sky Bar on top of Lebua Tower which is the big dome seen on Hangover 2.  The view is very worth the overpriced drink at the top!

I'm not much of a city girl, but Bangkok is pretty high on my list of favorite places.  The culture is just so totally opposite of what it's like in the states.  We were both mesmerized by everything Bangkok had to offer and agree we will go back one day!

Phi Phi Islands, Thailand

One of the main reasons we went to Phuket was to get to see the Phi Phi Islands.  The Phi Phis are about 45km from Phuket which takes about an hour or so by speed boat.  Ko Phi Phi Don and Ko Phi Phi Leh are mountainous limestone islands in the Andaman Sea which were made famous from the movie The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio.

We booked a sail tour with Phuket Sail Tours because they had a very high rating on Trip Advisor, and we were very happy we did!  Our guide, Sampong, was great, and the crew really knew their jobs.  On our tour we had several stops with the first being Maya Bay. This is the exact location The Beach was filmed so it gets very crowded, and an early morning visit is a must to beat them.  Maya Bay is truly breathtaking as cliche as it sounds.  The sand is pure white, the water is aqua blue lined with traditional longtail boats, it's surrounded by lush, green, limestone mountains.  We got to hike up the mountain a bit to check out a lookout point, passing by campers along the way.

Our next stop was Monkey Beach... and that's exactly what it was, a beach with lots of monkeys.  Sampong brought lots of Southeast Asian fruits for us to snack on during our sailing adventure, and he made sure we had plenty to feed the monkeys too.  You just hold the fruit out, and those little things come right up and grab it.

We got to snorkel in two different spots that were very shallow with sea urchins all around, and we went by a really strange cave where birds make their nests out of their spit.  The nests are collected and made into bird nest soup, a delicacy in China, which costs around $1000/kg.  They claim it's the most expensive food in the world.

The last stop was Bamboo Island, or Ko Phai.  I have never seen a more beautiful beach.  It was prettier than a post card. 

During our journey, we had lunch on Ko Phi Phi Don at a really neat outdoor restaurant overlooking the Andaman.  They kept bringing dishes and dishes, and they were all so amazing!

On our way back, we had to go through a monsoon.  Yep, in the middle of nowhere on a boat in a monsoon.  It was a bumpy ride, a bit scary, but it was also pretty exciting.  Luckily, I had taken a motion sickness pill prior to getting on the boat.

Our sail tour was the highlight of our trip to Phuket and one of the most beautiful places either of us have seen.

Phuket, Thailand

Phuket (pronounced poo-ket) has been a dream of mine for years.  Luckily, visiting Thailand was also a dream of Joshua's too!  We flew on Air Asia from DPS to HKT, got a taxi in Phuket Town, and finally arrived at Sawasdee Village at Kata Beach.  There are several different areas of Phuket- Patong is the crazy, party area, and Kata is much more chill which is exactly why we chose it. 
Our hotel was rated one of the best in the area on trip advisor, and I'm so happy we booked it!  It was absolutely gorgeous!!!  The pool was beautiful, and the restaurant was decorated in an elegant Thai style and had fantastic food. 

Phuket is a really neat place!  Street food galore! The beaches are beautiful with very soft sand and are surrounded by lush, green limestone mountains.   You can rent chairs on the beach for the day for around 60 Thai Baht which is about $2 USD, and bars are set up all along the beaches for tropical cocktails or Singha or Chang beer anytime you please.  Joshua loved trying all the different Asian beers. 

We mainly just relaxed at the beach and ate street food, except for a rainy day which called for a spa visit.  There are spas everywhere, all along the streets with ladies yelling 'massage' over and over.  One night, we got pedicures and one we got the traditional Thai massage which made me feel like I was going to vomit and then die.  It was the most painful thing ever!!!!  On the rainy day, we opted for the fancy spa in our hotel and went with the regular Swedish massage... no more Thai massages for us!

We also rode a tuk tuk over to Patong to check out the Quick Silver pro surfing competition which was pretty cool to see.   We went during monsoon season so the waves were crazy high.  Not only did we see some pro surfers, but Patong is also full of prostitutes and lady boys.. and I'm sure some lady boy prostitutes.  Patong was just a day time visit for us, as we had no desire to experience the nightlife. 

To sum it all up, Phuket was a great experience.  Would we want to go back?  Probably not.  We definitely plan on exploring more of Thailand in the future, but Phuket was quite touristy and slightly dirty.  I think we'll island hop next time.