We have arrived! This is Bali, or first stop in Asia! Our plan is to stay here as long as 30-60 days. Since the visa is only good for 30 days we'll have to do a visa run (leave the country and come back). It feels a little like smuggling, but you're smuggling yourself! Weird! This is where you cue the sitar music and psychedelic colors. This is where we wanted to settle, relax and try living a little. It's certainly not anything like Australia or New Zealand. 

We arrived and noticed right away all the different languages at the airport. They have a lot of Chinese, European, and Russian tourists. Lots of Russians here. We arrive and notice that they're very nice and accepting people, but if you get caught with drugs, it's the death penalty! No exceptions! DaDaaaa! We got in no problem and had to get a taxi. There are hundreds of taxi drivers here and they all are anxious to meet you. All of them! They will follow you everywhere until you say no at least five times. We found a Bluebird taxi and negotiated a fair to the hotel. Basically whatever they propose we settle on half or so. They thought we lived here! Only our lack of tans gave us away.

We arrived at the hotel and absolutely loved it! So beautiful and dramatic. Fountains everywhere, large courtyards (hence the name "Courtyards") palm trees, and an amazing pool. The hotel is in an area called Nusa Dua, which is basically a secluded resort area of Bali. Our room was right on the pool. Given our hectic schedule for the past month, we needed to diffuse for at least a week. And relax we did! Breakfast buffet, pool, lunch, pool, dinner, happy hour beers, pool with cool lights at night. We did this for about the whole week.

On occasion we did go to the mall to do some shopping. It's called Bali Collection. Nice large mall with lots of restaurants and a huge collection of carved wooden penises. If you are looking to bolster your wooden penis collection, this is your place! Every wood carver has a wide selection of penises to choose from. Large, small, knotted wood penises and smooth penises. You can get high gloss or matt finish too. I imagine you can even commission an artist to carve a custom one for you, but we haven't gone that far. Our collection is doing okay. Lays has some really cool flavors of chips like Seaweed , BBQ Chicken, and Glazed Salmon. Mmmmmm. There are also a lot of different restaurants here with Indonesian cuisine as well as Western, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian cuisines as well. Lots of beautiful clothes, fabrics, and linen clothing to choose from. It's really nice, but the prices are very similar to Canada, so we decided to hold off.

Walking to and from the hotel is fun. The taxis love to honk at you….a lot! You will not go 10 seconds without a honk, and that's not an exaggeration. The best part is there's nowhere really to go so I don't know where they plan on taking us.

Back at the hotel, we realized that Bruno Mars is like one of the only artists they love to listen to. Every 10 minutes it was one of his songs playing everywhere we went. I like Bruno, but whoa guys! He's just one man! Give other artists a chance!

The beach in Nusa Dua is very nice. The hotel has their own portion of the beach sectioned off. They have a shuttle that will take you to and from the beach. We noticed it was nice and clean with all the same services as the hotel. The beach though felt way hotter than the hotel. I think the lack of trees is a big factor in such things. Nice sand, waves, and great for tanning.

Try the Balinese and Indonesian food. It's really good. Especially rice since the grow a lot of it here. Breakfast buffets are interesting, especially if you decide to explore the Chinese section of the buffet. It's very different. I'm not ready yet to try fried noodles for breakfast, but I'll get there! If you love to be entertained, you have to watch MTV Asia. It's hilarious! The videos are pretty over the top and loaded with oodles of cheese. Also, not going to find apples here. The fruits of choice are Dragon fruit, Sour sop, and Snake fruit. I call it "Kung Fu Fruit Collection". It's like real life Fruit Ninja!

That's week one. It's a lot of learning about the new culture and settling in. Week two will have more eventful stuff….which isn't saying much since it's a vacation, but no, we're not planning on renting a car and crashing it. The drivers here are nuts! Especially the scooters! They drive like a swarm and swarm around all the cars. Scooter is the best form of transport for the locals. They're like SUV's back home. You will see whole families riding them all around.

CIao!