a Geek's Perspective

We had never really considered a holiday in Bali till recently when an Airasia promotion caught our eyes and before we knew it, we had secured ourselves a 4 day stay in Bali from the 28 Apr till 01 May. We got both for a very good price, accommodation at $75 per night at Novotel Benoa, and air tickets at around $75 per pax, tax inclusive. We didn't really know what to expect in Bali but gladly, it did not disappoint.
The first day started off with a mild hitch, the flight was delayed by around an hour. Luckily for us, Changi Airport had enough to keep us busy till then. Not much problems when we arrived at Denpasar Airport. It looked very dated, but it had a somewhat resort style feel to it. We hitched a cab from the Airport Taxi Stand to our hotel at around 105k RP. A guy helped us with the luggage to the taxi and he asked for a tip, which was the one and only tip I gave in Bali. After checking in, we explored the coast of Benoa, turned out that although it was presumably famous for water sports, there were hardly any going on in the late afternoon. We had a lunch at a push cart stall, of Bakso, a meatball-beehoon soup which was not too bad. Soon after, we quickly headed to Uluwatu temple to catch the sunset and Kecak dance. It was a nice view of the sunset and the dance was unique. It was a mini play telling the story of the Hindu Monkey God and it was a full house. We hitched the same taxi to Jimbaran Bay for seafood dinner on the beach. It definitely had the ambience and with great company, it made for a very enjoyable dinner! The restaurant was the typical pick your own seafood and cooked in the desired style, the difference and the fun was in having the sand at your feet, the starlit skies above and the cool ocean breeze. 
The second day, we met up with our hired driver, Made Kasa, whom we paid 500k RP to bring us around for 12 hours. Our first stop was Temple Taman Ayun. Next we went to Lake Bratan which had a temple there as well. It turned out that the Balinese are very religious, and their religion of choice was Hindu as opposed to the rest of Indonesia, interesting. We stopped at a nearby market for shopping and it was quite good actually, we got some cheap food and buys. I got cheated for a pair of slippers though, bought it for 50k RP and later found it selling at a supermarket for around 30k RP only. The 50k RP was after bargaining for a period of time too, with the stallowner initially quoting 150k RP. sheesh, haha. Next, we went on to Jatiluwih Rice Terraces. It was huge, with the rice fields spreading across acres of land and looked neverending. On the way to Tanah Lot, we stopped at another temple, famous for hosting many monkeys and fruit bats. Once again, another temple, not much to say about them, and I guess one should really visit when there is a ceremony going on else it is pretty much the same. Last stop for the day was Tanah Lot. We had wanted to time it for sunset but it was pretty early. Tanah Lot is located on the coast and part of the structure was isolated away on a separate cliff. We asked the driver to stop us at Legian / Kuta for dinner and some shopping as well. We explored the streets of Kuta and it was chock full of surfers and tourists. Very different from the place we stayed with definitely a more lively buzz. Taxis were honking at us at every opportunity to see if we wanted a ride and it was quite irritating but one does learn to ignore them. We had dinner at Kopi Pot and great food here. Besides, there was free WIFI and cheers to Pfingo, as we used the opportunity to make internet calls back home.
For the 3rd day, we woke up to soak in the suns at our hotel beach area. Turned out that the water sports took place in the morning and business was good. We ended up utilizing one near our hotel, who charged us 200k RP for a 15 min jet-ski ride which we took up. With that, we explored the coasts of Benoa until the guy called us back. Our hotel had a somewhat private beach with deck chairs and towels available which made it very convenient. No worries on security as well. We lunched at a nearby restaurant before returning to the hotel for a quick nap as I was not feeling too good after the morning activities. The hotel had a free shuttle to the Nusa Dua Bali Collection, a high end shopping mall village in Nusa Dua. It was a bit too upmarket and not very interesting. Just countless shops selling Polo Ralph stuff. We did a quick exploration before hailing a cab back to Kuta for shopping and dinner. Not much stuff to buy here, mainly beach / surf-related items and we went to sit by the Kuta beach to catch the sunset. There were neverending group of people coming up to us offering beach mats, temp tattoos, ice cream etc, really quite irritating actually. We ended up watching one guy having his surfing lessons and it was pretty interesting to see how they learnt and we cheered when he finally was able to stand for sometime. Well, the next time we come Bali, we will be coming back to try out the surfing. For dinner we ate at Kafe Dulang, famous for their Soto Ayam, which was quite nice. We walked around abit more and bought tidbits to bring back to Singapore. We ended up at Ocean Beach Club for drinks before heading back to the hotel. I can’t exactly remember what drink it was but the so-called drink of the century, some martini concoction was terrible!
The final day saw us crawling out of bed early at around 5:30am to catch the sunrise. It was fun! From seeing the gentle glow as the sun creeps up to the brilliant hue that it cast on the sky. We continued to laze by the beach and the pool till around 9 before heading back to our room to prepare to check out. Gosh, before we knew it, we were back in Denpasar and awaiting for our flight back to Singapore, which guess what, was delayed by an hour as well. Haha… 

Ok, have slept through the first night in Utah, doesn't seem to be suffering from jet lag which is a good thing. The long flight here was indeed a pain, with quite a bit of wait in between, shall need either reading material or some entertainment on the way back home a few days later. Utah's a nice place, and the place I'm in is definitely self sufficient, with lots of shops round the corner. Staying in the base itself has its perks, with food / groceries / shops all available but have not really explored yet. The room itself is fantastic for the price we are paying so no complains, with the usual works...

I love the weather here. Its a bit chilly in the morning and nights but other than that,  feels great. But that also means I definitely overpacked, haha, bringing way too much warm clothes. Oh well, since I'm here already, no complains, shall only suffer on the way home.. It's 7 in the morning now, and I'm feeling great. Shall head out for a walk soon :) cya.. just realised might not be appropriate to bring a camera ard the base.

SAT 13SEP DEP SINGAPORE TERMINAL 3 0915
SQ 16
VIA SEOUL INCHEON INTL
ARR SAN FRANCISCO 1230

SAT 13SEP DEP SAN FRANCISCO TERMINAL 1 1631
DL 3916
ARR SALT LAKE CITY 1919

WED 17SEP DEP SALT LAKE CITY TERMINAL 2 1456
DL 3909
ARR SAN FRANCISCO 1601

THU 18SEP DEP SAN FRANCISCO 0120
SQ 1
VIA HONG KONG
FRI 19SEP ARR SINGAPORE 1140

Taiwan Grad Trip! An event to mark the end of 4 years of my education and to symbolise the friendship that has been forged during them. Not all were able to join us for our graduation trip and off goes the 3 of us as we embarked on our trip together, Linghuey, Me, Andy!


There was to be no luxury of service, drinks, or movies on board the 5 hour budget flight, and had to survive on a solitary can of Pepsi which was gulped down shortly after it landed on the mini foldable table. That cost me $3! Well at least there were quite a number of us, the ME group, Sheerine, + us = 10, to entertain ourselves. Liwei had a nifty thing with cards but the real fun started when Andy took out his PSP, and choice of game was some word hunt thing, similar to the Yahoo! games, and first there were only 2 challengers...




Grand Champion: Andy! Can't beat the speed at which he is able to spot and link up the words, hack. CHEAT.

At CKS Airport, our first stop was to get the Youth Pass, which we didn't use at all! Haha, guess we still do very much look like students after all so didn't had to show it, not like there were many opportunities, hmm. It was then a 1 hr ride to the city on the Guo Guang bus. First glimpse of the sheer number of bikes in the city and their many face masks. We had to collect our train tickets that had previously been booked in Singapore and along the way grabbed some bread as we were already starving by this time. It was some extra large green tea bun along with a standard pork floss bun, done 'breadtalk' style. Yummy?

What followed was our first attempt at navigating the streets of Taipei and it was a failure! Luckily though, through it, we had a brief glimpse of the Taipei Underground Mall which we will not be revisiting.


Our hotel, Keyman Hotel was quite near the Train Station, really a quaint little hotel, very much non-descript but the room was ok, clean and bright. We managed to get through to Ivan, Andy and LH's friend, luckily! He was more familiar with Taipei and our unofficial 'tour guide' of the night. Oh at the train station we also purchased the EasyCard which is the equivalent of our Ezlink and we started "t-teeing" our way to Jiantan MRT for our first travel stop.


Shihlin Night Market. Ahh, just lots and lots of food, alot of must try, and with it being our first night and all, was probably the one where we ate the most! Shihlin's a huge place and after satisfying our initial craving of food, we did spend most of the night weaving in and out through the stores although we weren't interested to shop all that much considering our long journey ahead. Think this is probably one of the more interesting night markets, with a mixture of both food and shopping. We stayed there till around 11pm and although we did attempt to cover the entire area, didn't really succeeded with some of the portions left unexplored.

We will look back upon and think of this day, the day that will be forever etched in our memories, the day 2 of our trip, the one that made it great.

Having to wake up at 6+ to check out and catch our early train to Hualien, we were all very much zombified still and breakfast was settled at 7-Eleven (our first of many stops), before we went to grab the train, which was rather comfy and though we didn't look out much, there was quite a nice view outside. We managed to contact our tour guide who was very friendly and he picked us up at the train station for our Taroko Gorge Day Tour. He's like a mini celebrity on the TripAdvisor / Hardwarezone forums with many people raving about his services and all that was said was indeed true! But before that, a dabao lunch stop first "清淡又好吃". Well its good advice cos the food / COFFEE price up at the gorge was really not economical.


And off we go up the mountain! Hmm, sat in front, which meant, with a talkative Tour Guide, I had to keep replying him all the way! AH. Whole Day / Night! But haha, it was quite fun anyway,but my chinese cannot make it, so it was hard to both understand and be understood.


Our first tour stop was the 砂卡礑 trail, where we had to walk in for 20 min, could see the valley and the water formation underneath. It was quite beautiful and the fun started when we climbed down towards the rocky area.



Other than some oppurtune photo moments along the way, the next place should be the Swallow Grotto or 燕子口.


Alot of places for one to stop and look for the swallows, but they fly so fast, anyway, they aren't really very pretty haha.



Oh well, after that we made a stop. Mr Taxi Guide asked us whether any of us drink coffee and said the coffee here was their own brew or something, ahh, the stupid normal iced coffee cost us S$7.50. It did tasted a bit different, but ahem, expensive! Haha.. well, tourists are always meant to be chopped. We then had our lunch, which was the bento, soup with funny looking meatballs, and yakult!


Its suppose to be some 9 turn tunnel cave, where in times of darkness, goofiness reigns. And no, the entire 9 turn isn't like such, there's alot of breaks in between for you to look up and admire and realise just how bloody big the whole place is!


One of the attractions there was this rock formation. Its some fish jumping over the gates of hell / heaven to retrieve eggs or something. Haha. Gosh, the story they tell sometimes. But yup, initially I couldn't recognise how it was a fish, but it gets easier after staring at it for awhile. Guess that goes with most of things in life!


Oh there's a weird Planetary Museum somewhere along the way, its free anyway, and we stopped there for our toilet break, ermm.. well, just not something you would expect to find in the middle of like a mountain reserve haha. Imagine the person working there so sad, although slack, no transport, and so very very boring. Boring-ness in work is really a bad thing, I can vouch for it!


And finally, we arrive to the highlight of Taroko! The cave. Pitch Black. Cold. Damp. Equipped with raincoats and umbrellas. We started to move towards an unknown destination with only the trust of our Tour Guide.


This was really just a teaser for later, but having emerged from the dark tunnel, well, more rest and pictures ensued, as what followed was a long walk to the next point, which wasn't all that bad actually as we get to have a closer look at the mountains from here.


The next point was quite nice. As we walked closer and closer, the gushing noise of water grew louder and so did our anticipation as well, but it was still quite beautiful. Its erm, a vertically challenged waterfall! A suspension bridge connected it to another area where we could see more waterfalls in the background, but those were rather far away, and anywhere with a suspension bridge always adds some fun!


There was another tunnel and this time, there really was not a single light source as it was twisting inside also, so we were not able to see the light coming from the exit until we were nearer. Wah, haha, there wasn't a difference between opening and closing your eyes and really had to trust the person in front as well as the railing to hold. It was really quite fun! And then... finally we arrive at the 水濂洞 or Water Curtain Cave.


It was a wet wet wet place. The water level was around calf height and we finally get to don our raincoats. Shoes off, pants rolled up, raincoats on, which also means dangerous place for cameras. Ahh...


We really couldnt see much when inside the cave, but the water kept falling from the top and there was really alot, and very cold water too! We made friends with a Taiwan couple there who was also at the cave same time as us, they didn't know that it was possible to go in and well, comparatively more ill-equipped as opposed to us. They were very nice people and they gave us alot of suggestions on things to do later on at both Kaohsiung and Taipei.


We had plans to play with fireworks later on at night and our tour guide graciously invited them along also, so the 5 of us continued on for the rest of the trip. The return trip down Taroko was definitely not as exciting having just completed the highlight so we only stopped a couple of places, the 岳飞亭 and somewhere else with a place unknown, before we made a departure.


It was getting dark and wanted to see the sunset I think at 七星潭, but it was too dark by the time we reached so we couldn't really see much here. Its just a very normal beach, although one that is next to a cemetery, makes it a tad weird and discomforting.


Ahh.. Finally dinner, which was some wanton thingy, no noodles, just wanton, erm, I didn't really liked it, but its supposed to be quite famous in Hualien so oh well, haha, which was actually quite filling so wasn't too bad.



Our taiwan friend bought for us some weird cereal oat thingy, which also had pearls inside, or didn't, ermm quite weird ah, like drinking oatmeal, very filling and thick! Our taxi driver then picked us up again after dinner and off we went to 鲤鱼潭. Once again, cannot see anything at night, but that was not what we were here for and the main purpose is to play with fireworks! Our taxi driver had kindly sponsored us some to play and he had drove all the way home earlier while we were having dinner to take them.


Fun!!! Never had the chance to play with fireworks before and this was quite exciting. Scary, ahem, no thanks to Andy who couldn't plant the stick properly leaving it stuck in the ground. Ended up, it stayed there and exploded! LH and me were left staring at it in shock and ears still ringing as we were closest to the blast. Haha, but it was still fun nonetheless!

With that, we moved off to another area where there were fireflies! One more not available in Singapore moment!


Haha, quite cute! Didn't know fireflies keep switching on / off their lights and there were quite a number of them, managed to catch a couple too but they are equally good at escaping as well, haha. Firefly actually looks like a giant ant, hmm, abit more friendly looking though, make up your own imagination! If you wanna see, then go catch your own!

Last stop. Ali Ba Ba 民宿. We had booked this room based on the pictures we saw and seriously, for one of the rare times, the pictures did no justice with the rooms looking better in real life! The owner's mum offered us a quad room as we had 3 people but we had initially booked for the normal double room which was 500-700 NT cheaper, and so we asked if we could stick to our original plan of the double room. She said she would check for us but wah, when she came back, it was with her son (the owner) who wasn't in too good a mood. He was FURIOUS. Haha.. somehow, the message that got across was that we wanted the quad room at the double room rate, and he was extremely crappy, haha, said he was worried that we could be some criminals, murderers and the like, and was about to chase us out, then since we are students, etc, then ok. Haha, his mum was like constantly hitting him lightly, asking him to tone down etc. Anyway, after that unpleasant moment, the mum came back and offered us the room at 1300NT, cheap! We were more than happy to pay 1500NT for it already, but hey, more discounts = good!


We had full access to the house and this was the downstairs which was well equipped, and that's us after shower and off to find our supper!



There wasn't much food left by that timing, so we trooped off to 7-Eleven and Andy and I being less adventurous, stuck to classics like cup noodles, which wasn't cheap, around 2 dollars, but it had meat, and large chunks, not the crappy dehydrated sort. LH was definitely more brave, she tried some food on a stick, abit like yong tau foo.


Taroko had so many things to see, its all just so serene and beautiful that many of the pictures here, each can tell its own story. Then the multiple experiences at night, many of them being the first time, also made for good fun. Well, and to conclude it, we all had a nice room to get much needed rest!