Lia’s friend Popie flew out from Jakarta on a later flight and arrived in Bali the same day as us. She had her own reasons for wanting to travel to Bali and Lia made a convenient excuse to travel there.

We had breakfast in a food court facing onto the beach at Legian and discussed what we wanted to do that day. Lia had plenty of things she wanted to see, although I would have been happy just staying at our hotel and relaxing.. And just the occasional shopping trip.

Now Bali, as any tourist knows, is a mecca for shopping but when you are familiar with places like Mungga Dua in Jakarta it just doesn’t seem quite as cheap.

So it was decided that we were going to go up to the art markets in Pasar Sukowati and then head to Tanah Lot to watch the sunset. Popie had hired a car and we were going to pick up her nephew who was going to drive us around.

We were taking photos at the beach when we got approached by a Balinese guy who wanted us to select ticket to which we promptly “won” prizes.

I was sceptical about anything he was saying but, to give the benefit of doubt I drove him back to his office where we could get the details. Scepticism is a good thing because we won vouchers, you know, the type where you win $300 worth of stuff but only if you spend $3000! To claim the prize we also had to sit through a two hour investment seminar…

Yes, it seemed like a really good time to bale!

Popie’s nephew drove up to the art market, which I had been to on my last trip to Bali. We got some clothing for the kids, and I got a really nice timber carving of Rama and Sinta for a very good price.

Art Market

By this time it was already getting quite late into the afternoon so we decided we should head west and get to Tanah Lot.

It seemed to take ages to get there and Ari, Popies nephew kept stopping and asking for directions. We made it but were nearly late.

Stu and Lia at Tanah Lot

Tanah Lot Sunset

Rock Climbing

Stuart, Lia, Popie and Ari

After sunset we rang my friend Evi to catch up for dinner. She said it should take us about an hour to an hour and a half to travel from Tanah Lot to where she was however it took us considerably longer than that and I’m convinced that we spent a good hour going around in circles. Especially as I kept seeing signs to the Denpasar museum for a good 45 minutes, all pointing different direction.

Eventually we made it and had something to eat in a small traditional restaurant well away from the tourist centre.

Stu and Evi

After dinner we headed back into Legian and this time Ari knew where he was going so it only took us about 20 minutes.

Bomb Memorial in Legian.

When I was working as a courier my mobile phone was my most important means of communication. As I started to develop my web design business I started to use my fixed line phone a little more than previously. 

To make it easier to distinguish between personal calls and business calls I set up what Telstra call a duet line. It is good value as, for just $6 a month, you get a separate telephone number which piggybacks your existing phone line.

By dialling a code before the required phone number it diverts the outgoing call to that line. Incoming calls have a different ring tone.

I also got call ID which normally costs $6 a month but on the Homeline plan they combine two features for $6.

This arrangement worked fine for me until two years ago when I moved my mobile phone onto a cap plan. The advantage of the cap meant that my phone bill was reduced but I got a lot more call time for my money. My $49 cap gives me $200 worth of calls. I then started using my mobile phone for all outgoing calls as it worked out cheaper for me.

I kept the duet number for a number of reasons and after a while Telstra gave me a new reason to start using my land line again with 50 free local calls a month because I had my mobile phone and fixed line combined on one bill.

Everything was working for me and I was happy until my printer died and I upgraded to a multifunction machine.

I suddenly found myself with a fax machine so I decided that my second number could be my fax number. I used a special splitter that is designed to pick up the special ring tone and redirect the call to where it was required.

Except it just didn't work!

And that's when I found out that the duet number doesn't work with this fax splitter device because it listens to a completely different ring tone called a faxstream.

My next call was to Telstra to convert my existing duet service to faxstream which they arranged for the next day. For some reason it disconnected my ADSL Internet service, although only for a couple of hours.

My next phone bill was very confusing with credits from previous bills and debits for this bill and the next bill so it wasn't until the second bill that I realised what they had actually done. 

As well as converting my duet number to a faxstream they also converted my homeline account to a business plan, removed my 50 free local calls and started charging me $6 for the faxstream AND $6 for the call ID.

At no point did I ask them to change all my services, something that effectively cost me an extra $11 a month in service charges and $13.60 in local call charges for two months.

I have organised with them to change it to what I wanted, which will occur tomorrow but to do that they will have to disconnect and reconnect my phone line which will cause my Internet to go down again

Seeing as we had to go to Jakarta to sort out some paperwork, and seeing as it’s usually cheaper to fly Garuda Perth – Denpasar and then catch a local flight to Jakarta we decided to do exactly that and include a break before heading home again.

Basically, due to timing we put the cart before the horse and had the honeymoon already!

As it happened Garuda were offering cheap flights to Bali via Jakarta so we didn’t need to organise the local flights in either direction, and it was cheaper still!

It was cheaper because, for the tourist it means longer travel time. 4 hours to Jakarta, 1 and a half hours to Bali, plus the transfer times while a direct flight to Bali from Perth is just 3 and a half hours. However, as we wanted to go to Jakarta and, because we were able to delay the transfer from an hour to 4 days it actually worked out better for us.

Lia has been to Bali once before but it was a long time ago, where as I have been twice before this time and was much more relaxed about the whole thing.

For example, Lia was looking online for various hotels, weeks before we were going and I kept telling her that we didn’t need to do that because we’ll organise the hotel when we arrive in Bali.

As that’s what I did the last time, I had no issues with it but it was Lia’s turn to have a panic attack. She didn’t need to worry because, on arriving back in Denpasar we walked out of the terminal, went straight up to a booking agency kiosk outside and asked them what they had available around Legian or Kuta.

They showed us a nice hotel which would have cost around $35 a night but I knew that we could get something cheaper than that. So the second choice was what we went with, saving us around $10 a night but still including Air-conditioning, restaurant and swimming pool.

Thanks to Lia, we did so much in Bali. I would have been happy to do maybe one cultural or touristy thing and then relax at the hotel or browse the markets for a couple of days but that didn’t happen.

We arrived in Bali mid morning on Wednesday, settled into the hotel and then explored the local shops, one of which was a tour booking agent.

An hour later we were picked up from our hotel and driven to a popular but isolated beach called dreamland where I got to drink baby coconut juice from the actual coconut. I can now tick another life goal off my “to do” list, it’s a simple pleasure i know :)

I always say that I deserve to be on a tropical island, drinking from a coconut!

We left the beach after a short while and headed to Ulluwatu, where we visited an old temple before sitting down to watch the Ramayana (kecak dance) as the sunset.

Bali Sunset

Kecak Dance

Next we headed to Jimbaran beach for dinner. The beachfront is enveloped by lots of restaurants, each putting tables out on the beach where people can dine. Of course, seafood is the main menu item at these restaurants.

We sat down and ordered our drinks and perused the menu. Then, when we decided what we wanted to eat we went up to the restaurant to select the seafood. You choose what you want from either the live tanks or off the ice and tell them how you want it cooked, they weigh the selected seafood and let you know how much it will cost and then serve it to your table.

I didn’t select live seafood because of religious and conscientious objections but we did choose a nice fish, some king prawns and some squid.

We weren’t the only ones heading to Jakarta from Australia. Lia’s father flew out from Sydney as well and he wanted us to go to the island where Lia was born to visit the cemetery where her mother lies.

He insisted on paying for our journey but due to the short amount of time we had, we only could spend a few hours there. In fact we spent most of that day in the airports.

As the old saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch and we soon discovered that the trip over was paid for but not the return trip. Still, it was nice to visit even though it was for such a short time.

We visited the cemetery, had lunch and did some shopping for foodstuffs at a local market and got some local powdered fish and fresh ground pepper which we bought back to Australia with us. We then went back to Lia’s uncle’s house.

We were there for a little while and I was keeping an eye on the time because I was under the impression that our flight left at 1pm and as it got closer to 12, I started to panic.

OK, so I am normally pretty good at just letting things happen and not planning too much into it but there are some things you just shouldn’t leave to chance, and when you have a really tight itinerary, travel is not something to mess with.

So it’s getting even closer to 12 and I’m starting to mention to Lia that we’re supposed to be at the airport an hour before the flight and she’s not seeming that worried but I’m starting to really get panicked. I’m thinking that if we don’t get on this flight we won’t be able to get back to Jakarta until tomorrow, thus missing our flight to Bali. We also had to get to the Mall near Tomang to pick up our wedding rings and Lia’s wedding dress was also being delivered to her auntie’s house that evening.

So midday comes along and I’m starting to find it difficult to breath but finally we start say good bye to Lia’s family and head back to the airport.

It’s there that I discover that there was actually NO booking to return to Jakarta and there was talk about the flights for the rest of the day being booked out.

Luckily we did get a flight, one that was supposed to be boarding in half an hour so I started to feel a lot better.

Of course, being a domestic flight in Indonesia, it was delayed meaning we sat in the airport for another two hours.

Arriving back in Jakarta we got picked up by a dodgy taxi which turned out not to be a taxi at all. As we were leaving (after being stung about rp6,000 more than if we’d waited at the ranks for a real one) I noticed that the meter was not connected and in fact the usual identification tags were not there.

The suave smooth talking young man who originally picked us up was replaced by an older guy who clearly had a death wish as he flew down the Jakarta expressways at 130km an hour weaving in and out of the traffic.

Possibly the most annoying thing was that, as we got close to Lia’s aunties house he pulled off the expressway and cut through the impossibly heavy Jakarta peak traffic, basically to avoid paying the toll and effectively adding 40 minutes to our journey.

In the end rp 6,000 is nothing for us. It’s pocket change, less than a dollar, but that really isn’t the point and while I really didn’t worry too much after we got back to Tomang, Lia was still really pissed for a couple of days after.

And thus ended our free trip to Bangka, the free trip that wasn’t!

Welcome in the year of the Rat.

Peace everyone. 

The great thing about Jakarta is the shopping is cheap and the malls are abundant. We took the opportunity to get things for the wedding, including both the dress for Lia and for Emily.

We went to a market mall called Mungga Dua which is just massive and crammed with all sorts of things and even more people. If you’re familiar with the various art markets in Bali think of something about 10 times bigger, then multiply it by seven levels (8 if you count the food hall) and you’re starting to get an idea how big it is. Now double it as that’s just one of two buildings next to each other.

Mungga Dua is the place to go if you are hunting for a bargin but even shopping at the other, more expensive malls are still very cheap compared to shopping in Perth. I was in a bookstore, although I guess it’s more of a “media” store as it takes up 5 levels and sells everything from books to electronic media, cameras to music, and I found a nice tripod for my camera that set me back around $12.

The trouble with falling so far behind in my blogging is that I have quite a few things that I want to write about but some details can be hazy, the dates can fall out of chronological order and catch-up posts like this can get long winded. I’m going to try and break it down as much as possible because if I don’t I just won’t complete it. So here we go..

When I was studying, the lecturer who taught the design units suggested that we should (amongst other things) have some stock images of clouds. As we live in a city that sees more hours of sunlight than any other Australian city this makes quite good sense.

She was correct, of course and eventually a client required clouds for part of their graphic work for their new website. The only problem being that he wanted moving clouds.

It was nearly two weeks before we actually had a break in the clear blue skies so yesterday I took my camera outside, set the pixel rate to the lowest setting and snapped off one shot roughly every 5 seconds. I took nearly 500 photos before coming back inside.

Even though I had set the camera to the smallest setting the photos were still too large and Flash was having a hard time coping with that many large images (it's a RAM issue that I really need to sort out).
Because of that I set up a macro in Photoshop to resize all the images and then imported them into Flash and exported the output as an AVI file.

Back to Flash, I compressed and embedded the outputted AVI into a new Flash movie.

While I was at it I also did a streaming version of just the clouds so I could put it on here.

Download AVI file (5.2mb) – Copyright restrictions apply, see the Creative Commons License link on the left menu. 

I may have to experiment in this field a little more!