Playing With Wild Monkeys and Crossing Something Off Our "Bucket List"

Since the last travel blog post, we made our way through Singapore [for 2 days] then to Indonesia.

China Town, Singapore

Our original plan was to fly from Thailand to Singapore and spend two full weeks there. When we decided to travel through Malaysia from Thailand via bus en route to Singapore, we knew our time would be limited there. We were OK with this as it is MUCH more expensive in Singapore than it is in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia! We still were able to experience China Town and the beautiful Singapore waterfront.

On to Indonesia. Bali is an incredible place not only for the perfect weather, but the culture as well.

As we were walking along Kuta Beach, we noticed these beautiful temples and structures sitting on the sand. There were tons of people around and they started to burn them to the ground. Little did we know, this was a funeral ceremony we were witnessing. We asked our cab driver about it by showing him these pictures, which is when he told us it must have been someone very wealthy since they were burning the bodies on the beach to cremate them. Eerie and definitely a culture shock. What an interesting ceremony in celebration of someone's life.

Kuta Beach

Kuta Beach Funeral

We have been enjoying massages, exploring temples... 

Adam's Beautiful Flower Foot Treatment LOL

Capturing the offerings for the Hindu Gods inside a Temple.

In exchange for a donation, we were able to borrow sarongs and walk around a beautiful temple

Lotus flower inside the Temple

...exploring Art Galleries, volcanos,  and we even met a guy on the beach who took us fishing which was AWESOME. I just so happened to catch the monster fish of the day- my first fish, too!

At an art gallery where this man was working on this intricate piece

Fishing with Blake!

My monster fishy and the boat we went out on!

Lunch looking out at this awesome volcano

 

Us and Batur volcano...sort of!

We spent almost a week in Kuta and then made our way to Sanur where we currently are staying at another AirBnb location. $20/night with A/C and drinking water provided= perfect. Private bathroom and private entrance to our room. We love the cheap countries!!

Our room!

So.. remember the movie The Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman? Jack Nicholson loved his Kopi Luwak until he found out how it actually was made..

Production of Kopi Luwak: The luak, that’s a small catlike animal, gorges after dark on the most ripe, the best of our crop. It digests the fruit and expels the beans, which our farm people collect, wash, and roast, a real delicacy. Something about the natural fermentation that occurs in the luak’s stomach seems to make the difference.

Kopi Luwak is one of the most expensive coffees in the world, selling for between US$100 and $600 per pound in 2010. Some specialty coffee shops sell cups of brewed Kopi Luwak for US$35–$80.

Well, we got to enjoy a cup for less than $5 and boy...was it strong.

A cup of Kopi Luwak

This is what it looks like fresh out of the little guy below.

The money maker.

We also got to taste tons of teas and coffees while we were there...for FREE! :)

Today we decided to go check out Monkey Forest. Exactly how it sounds. There are monkeys EVERYWHERE. And they will literally jump on your back if they want to… which happened to both of us before we left! Yikes. We’ll let the photos speak for themselves!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also bought this awesome mask. They use these during the ceremonies and dancing productions- we bought one at a local shop which was 10x better than getting one at a touristy location.

We plan to head to Gili Island on Monday and hopefully get some diving in there. We are LOVING Indonesia! I know a few people have messaged Adam or myself with questions about the places we are visiting and we LOVE THAT. Please contact us if you want to know more about anything or comment right on the blog.

We love hearing from people who are following our journey- it means the world to us!