After three nights (if you count arriving at the hotel at almost 2am a night!) in Jakarta, we flew to Bali where I will be posted for most of my Fulbright fellowship. We were met at the airport by Professor Tirta. This is a pretty amazing thing. In 2016, the International Education Committee at Hawaii CC invited Prof. Tirta to speak on his work with micro biogas for small farmers. He also visited my environmental science class and I took him on a tour of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park so that he could see our volcanoes. At some point during his stay, he told me that he would invite me to work with him in Bali on a Fulbright. One of those things people say. Yet...here I am. Six years later he invited me and here I am!
We were worried about traffic and got to the Jakarta airport really early and had a lot of time to kill. Once again, we goofed on the taxi. The driver said I needed to pay for the highway tolls so I gave him cash for that, but it turned out he also added them to my credit card. I learn a new lesson every time I get in a cab...
For the first three nights we stayed in the Jimbaran area. Our hotel (Bali Paragon) was really nice and the included breakfast was even more amazing than the one in Jakarta. The hotel is actually on Universitas Udayana property but the lower part of the campus is rented out to businesses as part of the income of the university. We got to meet several people on campus including the Vice Rector and the head of research and laboratories as well as the international office staff. Professor Tirta has been so helpful and worked on getting all the needed letters for me so that we could move on to Denpasar and our "KITAS" registration in a timely manner.
In addition to all of the official business, we got to explore town a bit. Professor Tirta took us out to a seafood restaurant (fresh from the sea fish, ika, clams and shrimp) that was flat-out amazing. The restaurant had an open front that connected restaurant to beach. Tim and I walked down to Jimbaran beach the first morning before our meetings (and got a bit lost, so our 35 minute walk ended up being over an hour and we had to find a taxi to take back). The beach is really beautiful and I love the karst formations on the land.
On Thursday, Professor Tirta had to go to the Banjar to get an official letter of invite for our registration packet so Tim and I took a taxi out to Uluwatu Beach. The area is drop-dead gorgeous but makes me so sad. There were almost no signs in Indonesian and nearly everyone there was a tourist. Russians and Australians dominated. I guess at least here it isn't the ugly American that everyone is trying to avoid. We tried to walk from the beach to Uluwatu Temple (but Google failed us) and ended up taking a cab there as well.
The temple is at the southern tip of Bali and is supposed to have amazing views of the sunset. But it was a bit overcast and we were worried about not being able to find a ride back after dark so we left an hour or so before the sun went down. The temple is very important to the Balinese and I think I understand that it is the place where Uluwatu achieved enlightenment and his body became one with the universe.
In addition, the forest around Uluwatu temple is home to about six macaque troops and there are monkeys everywhere. Prof. Tirta had warned us about them so we had our belongings safely zipped into bags. But not all tourists were so lucky. One guy lost his glasses to a trouble-making monkey and the guard had to trade a hard boiled egg for the glasses (monkey had to drop stolen glasses in order to grab offered egg and the glasses could be retrieved at that point). There were lots of newborns and it was fun to watch the caretaking (mothers, siblings, other females all groomed and cared for the babies, pretty cool).
Also, during Covid, an albino adult male macaque just appeared. Since this temple is partially dedicated to Hanuman, and since in Bali, Hanuman is white (not orange like in India) this is considered very auspicious and we were able to visit the white monkey (who, I think, would be much happier if some less important monkeys were added to his cage or if he were allowed to roam free).