You Can Do Southeast Asia With Friends
It Takes Planning and Work, But It’s Worth It
In the summer of 2016, the Stone Family (party of 2) went to Peru, roadtripped approximately a gazillion miles across the Andes, and wrote about our trip, and how you can do it too. Well, 2017's summer vacation scored passport stamps in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. And to make it even more exciting, fun, and challenging to plan… we went with 6 of our best friends in the world! Here’s our crew, labelled for your convenience by name and profession:
Fun group! The four guys have been best friends since days of yore, and all married awesome women who like each other too. And since this is the last summer all four couples will be childless (Brian and Callie are adopting an awesome kiddo from Korea!!!), we figured NOW IS THE TIME to do an epic adventure.
Now, before we get too far into this, let’s take a candid look at what this trip was like.
Comedy of errors from the get-go! But actually, that video is already several days into the trip. So let’s re-wind and see where this all began.
Day 1: Where’d That Day Go?
We headed out early to the Dulles airport, dropped off by Lyman’s sister. Here we are just before leaving, pumped and chipper for the trip!
Our itenerary was long. We had a 13 hour flight to Dubai on Emirates, then a 4.5 hour flight to Sri Lanka after that, then a 23 hour layover, then a 4 hour flight to Singapore where we would collect our bags, hang out and sleep for 12 hours in the world’s best airport, then catch a short flight on to our final destination, Bali, where we’d meet our crew.
Trip Tip 1: The longer your flight is, the better it is to plan long stopovers. We had no serious jetlag problems because we got to “catch up” at midway stopovers in Sri Lanka and Singapore. Yes, it added tons of transit time. But as you’ll see below, it was worth it to us, and it meant we arrived in Bali ready to roll.
But we hit a snag right away. We didn’t realize Emirates has a 15kg weight limit for combined carryon baggage. Given that our plan had basically been to load tons of stuff in the carryons to keep our checked bags underweight, we had to do some hurried repacking while waiting in the Emirates checkin line. Which leads us to…
Trip Tips 2 & 3: The Emirates checkin line at Dulles is crazy slow and you should show up waaaaay early, and also be aware of the 15kg combined weight limit for all carryon items. We were cutting it close even arriving almost 3 hours before our flight!
But finally, we got on the flight. It was 13 hours of flying yielding 21 hours of time change, so we arrived at about 8 AM in Dubai. Flights are for movies, so we caught up on our B-team Marvel movies (the new Thor, Dr. Strange, etc) and a few others (Lyman finally watched Arrival, Ruth had a nice cry-fest over The Gifted). But because we brought along some Ambien, most of the flight was as you see at left.
Trip Tip 4: Ambien is always a good choice for flying. This is especially true if, like Lyman, you are a large person who doesn’t easily fit into airplane seats.
Trip Tip 5: Guys Emirates airlines is amazing. Good food, awesome service, they even gave stuffed animals to the kids. And they give you these little tags to put on your seat to indicate what things you’d like to be woken up for (meals, duty free, etc).
We finally got to Dubai. The Dubai airport is brand new and manifestly terrible. Why is the water in the bathrooms all hot!?!?! I do not need a sauna for my tush while taking care of business. Why are all the drinking fountains hot water!?!?! Is there some energy shortage that prevents cooling? Why are the food options so bad!?!? Three full circles around the terminal and not so much as an Auntie Anne’s in sight. How did the emirati billionaires spend so much money for such an abysmal airport!?!?
Trip Tip 6: Emirates is a great airline cursed with a terrible home-base airport.
Anyways. We only had a few hours there before we were on to Sri Lanka!
Day 2: Using Your Stopovers Well
Experienced travelers know that well-placed stopovers can add enormously to the value of a trip. They can help you cut costs on tickets (as was the case for us), allow you to visit places you might not otherwise, and help you keep your travel much more restful. Our Sri Lanka stopover was hands-down one of the best logistical choices we made for the whole trip. By the time we landed in Sri Lanka we’d had over 20 hours of transit. We’d had some plane-sleep so were still functional, but we would need some real sleep.
But first, we had friends to visit!
Trip Tip 7: Always check in with friendly local contacts! Both for your own safety and security, and because it’s good to keep up relationships, you should always make a point of finding local connections where you are traveling, and checking in with them upon arrival. And if they’re willing to help make your visit memorable, even better!
Those who read our Peru blog will recall that we are big believers in visiting and supporting Lutheran missionary efforts when we travel. Well, Sri Lanka has a sizable LCMS mission presence, and in fact our church supports one of the missionaries there directly! We’d gotten in contact in advance, and so we were picked up at the airport, which was great, because sometimes developing-world airport pickups can be overwhelming and, as it turned out, we weren’t totally sure where our AirBnB was.
But we got more than an airport pickup! Pastor Nauman showed us around quite a bit and brought us by the mission HQ itself so we got to hear about all the good work being done in Sri Lanka. We were interested to learn that while Sinhala is the main language in Sri Lanka, most Lutherans there are Tamil speakers… interesting because when Ruth lived in Malaysia, the little Lutheran church she found was also a Tamil-speaking congregation. Apparently Lutheranism is very Tamil-heavy in south and southeast Asia!
After that, we went to meet the rest of the family at Gale Face Green, a public park area right by the ocean in Colombo. We got there just as the evening flag ceremony was ending, but were immediately SO PUMPED to see tons of kites flying.
For those who don’t know, kites turn Lyman into a small child again. As soon as we saw the kites, we realized a trip tip we forgot to follow…
Trip Tip 8: When you go to Asia, bring your kite!
We had a wonderful dinner on the beach, accidentally lost one of our host’s 5 kids, but thankfully found him shortly after. A scary moment to be sure, but also a reminder how different developing countries are: nobody around us seemed to think it weird that a kid might just wander off, and people pointed us towards where he had gone. That’s something we always love about the developing world, they just see every child around them as their responsibility to care for and love in a way most Americans don’t.
After continuing the evening with drinks and good conversation back at our hosts’ house, we then caught a cab to our AirBnB. Well, kind of. We got a cab, and it took us to the street our AirBnB was on, but we really did not know the exact location. Lyman usually streetviews this stuff, but he hadn’t been able to conclusively establish this AirBnB’s location in advance. Luckily, because we had cell service and data, we were eventually able to locate it.
Trip Tip 9: Make sure you have cell service and data as you travel. We use the AT&T Passport plan. It is expensive and sometimes a bit glitchy, but it has saved our butts on more than one occasion. If your phone is unlocked, just getting a local SIM card may be better.
Having arrived at our AirBnB after a long 2-ish-days, we turned on the AC, showered off, and crashed into bed, ready for sleep.
Day 3: What Do You Do In Negombo?
Our flight out wasn’t until the afternoon, and we were located right in the historic part of Negombo, a city north of Colombo where the airport is located. Let’s talk a second about our AirBnB. Our hosts were reasonably communicative, spoke fairly good English, and helped us arrange an airport taxi when we needed it. The room was spacious and the bedroom AC worked pretty well. The WiFi did not work, which was frustrating. But honestly, that’s not a bad thing, because it meant we had nothing to keep us from getting out and exploring Negombo on foot!
Trip Tip 10: Use jetlag to your advantage; start your days early to get a jump on the heat of the day. By 10 or 11 AM it will be getting excruciatingly hot for American tastes, so a 6 or 7 AM start time for your day in Negombo is not a bad choice.
We only knew a few things about Negombo. We knew on the north side of the town there were popular beaches. We knew it was a mostly Catholic city. We knew there was a historic core. And we knew there was a fish market somewhere west of us. We decided to walk west and find the fish market. And find it we did!
It’s a market. Where they sell fish. So… that’s cool, I guess. We were immediately disappointed by a place that Google marked prominently as a thing to do, and which Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet also suggested. Maybe we hit it at the wrong time or on the wrong day, but we were not impressed. But just outside the market was this little food stall…
Run-down? Frequented only by locals? Looks like an ideal place to get food poisoning? Smells kinda bad? Thick with flies and has stray animals wandering around? That all sounds like a perfect place to get an authentic, Negombo-style breakfast, whatever that may mean!
We’d been told by the missionaries the night before that “hoppers” were a popular thing. So we asked for hoppers. A guy in the shop spoke English, so he helped translate our order. We ended up with hoppers, eggs, fish curry, and daal, as you see at left. A pretty big breakfast, really tasty, all for the price of about $4. And that is why we do developing-world tourism, folks.
Trip Tip 11: Let’s talk about food-borne pathogens. People think you’ll get sick from local food, but that’s not usually the case. The biggest risk factors for food safety are usually uncooked, fresh fruits and veggies, or else ice in beverages. Undercooked meat is also a risk, but usually only if you’re eating food cooked using a non-local cooking style. i.e. you won’t get undercooked meat in a Sri Lankan curry, but you might get undercooked meat in a Sri Lankan Burger King. If you stick with cooked foods, bottled water, and eat exclusively local food styles at places where locals eat, you’re usually safe from the nastiest food-borne pathogens. Lyman, for example, travels a ton for work and has only ever gotten food illnesses twice, both times from airport food in Latin America on his way home, and never from local food. At the same time, in our group of 8 people traveling for 2 weeks in numerous developing countries, we had one or two people get what may have been food-borne illnesses, which leads us to…
Trip Tip 12: Take out a prescription in advance for an antibiotic that’s good for traveller’s illnesses in the area you’re visiting. For Latin America and Africa, that means ciproflaxacin. For Southeast Asia, that means azithromyacin. Do not skimp on this. Get the prescription. This is just part of one of the major Stone Family Travel Sayings: Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it!
After breakfast, we walked on down the road. We had assumed the guy who spoke English at the breakfast place worked there, and after our meal he had offered to take us on a boat tour of “the lagoon.” We turned him down but, as we walked down the road, we began to reconsider. Well, as chance would have it, we then saw him by a boat near the road, and asked if the offer of a tour was still on the table. He said yes, brought us to a boat where they were still unloading fish from the day’s catch, told us to get in, and off we went!
Our guide’s name was Jude Fernando. He spoke very good English, apparently because he’s worked internationally in the oil fields for many years, so he speaks lots of languages. The lagoon boat tour was fun. We saw herons, and mangrove forests, and got to just chat with a local about life in Negombo for a while. Jude was incredibly friendly. And all the brightly colored boats in the lagoon were beautiful, though pictures don’t quite do them justice.
Our boat tour was maybe $10 or something like that. It wasn’t the world’s greatest boat tour, but it was fun, and it made us feel that we got something out of Negombo. Between visiting friends the night before and a nice boat ride, we did things that were worth our time, that made our stopover an actual activity, not just a logistical necessity. And this leads us to the most important of all trip tips!
Trip Tip 13: Do the thing that the people do in the place. This may sound odd, but the point is, trust the market! If folks who visit Negombo do a boat ride, maybe you should try the boat ride. If a local offers you a service, your bias should be towards participation rather than rejection. Don’t let the Internet-driven, planning-created pretense of knowledge delude you into thinking you know everything there is to do or see about a place. Let yourself see the unplanned sight, allow yourself to be dragged along to the thing you didn’t expect. Even if it sounds kind of lame at first, just do the thing that the people do in the place. You’ll see more relevance to this later.
After the boat ride we returned to our AirBnB to shower off, get changed for travel, and pack up. So we put on our travel clothes.
We both made sure to look our best.
By 9 PM, we were in Singapore. And by 10 PM, we had picked up our bags, and were psyched to check them back in, get our boarding passes, enter the Singapore airport, and enjoy a good night’s rest somewhere in that luxurious bastion of civilization.
Oh how we were disappointed.
The AirAsia desk closed at 9 PM, meaning that we could not check bags. And since we could not check our bags, we could not go through security and enter the gate areas. Which meant we couldn’t get to the places where there are nice 24-hour amenities and good spots to sleep. Instead, we had to find a random quiet and dark-ish spot on the floor somewhere and try to sleep until the AirAsia desk would open at 5:30 AM.
It wasn’t what you’d call, “fun.” But luckily, the KFC had a free wifi connection (our good ol’ Kentucky home away from home), and there was a good ice cream selection at the convenience store, so we weren’t totally deprived. But needless to say, not our most restful night of sleep ever.
Trip Tip 14: When changing airlines, make sure you’ll actually be able to check in when you want to, and won’t be stranded in the airport lobby all night.
Day 4: Making #Mal8sia + #Str8BALIn Happen
We “woke up” (as if we’d really slept much), checked in our bags at the AirAsia counter, got in the airport, ate some curry puffs for breakfast (because why not), and were ready to roll. And after a miserable 2-hour AirAsia flight later, where they failed to give us the food we paid extra for, we arrived in Bali.
Trip Tip 15: Even if you pay extra for food on AirAsia, you may have to hunt down the staff and demand it be given to you. AirAsia is cheap but there is a very good reason for that cheapness!
Finally. Bali. We arrived in the Bali airport, cleared customs, then waited for the next couple to arrive.
The Whelchels (Sharayah and Zach) and Pugels (Josh and Hayley) had arrived the evening before us, met up the morning we were in flight, and drove together inland to our AirBnB. The plan was for us to arrive in Bali when we did, pick up our rental car, wait for the Troyers (Callie and Brian), then drive with them to the AirBnB. Let’s start with the rental car.
Trip Tip 16: We had an excellent experience with our rental car company! Despite having multiple accidents during the trip (spoiler), they were helpful, understanding, and had a very easy to understand liability policy that they stood by even when disadvantageous to them. They were cash-only which was kind of sketchy BUT gave us tons of confidence that they would not fraudulently bill us since, after all, they had no way to do so. The guy who seems to run the company speaks passably good English too. We would highly recommend this service if you are going to rent a car. But we’ll let that choice be yours.
Once the Troyers arrived and we’d exchanged some money, we loaded up in the car, and set out on our way. Which is when the video you saw at the beginning happened. Again here:
Trip Tip 17: Driving in Bali is pants-wettingly scary. The Stones are experienced road-trippers. We drove thousands of miles across Peru, a country with an abysmally bad road safety record and Ruth had driven a stick around Malaysia during her year of teaching. We aren’t wusses when it comes to driving in the developing world. But never have we been somewhere as nerve-wracking as Bali. Many blogs talk about Bali traffic but actually the traffic was not the bad part at all. The bad part was the narrowness of the roads. There are no shoulders, the lanes are sometimes not wide enough for a car, people block traffic regularly, and sometimes there is just a huge dropoff on the side of the road. Only drive in Bali if you have a very confident driver who has done developing-world driving before. Also keep in mind, they drive on the left side of the road in Bali.
At last, we arrived at our AirBnB. And HOLY COW THIS PLACE WAS AMAZING. Some pics.
Guys we could go on and on about our AirBnB. But the summary is basically we each got a whole villa to ourselves, we had an infinity pool that spilled into a jungle valley, we had massage beds on an open air balcony rooftop, and the whole place was pure magic. And it was a bit under $40 per night per couple.
Trip Tip 18: Driving in Bali is stressful; invest in making sure your time residing in Bali is not. Because accommodations are very cheap in the interior of the country away from the beaches, you can get fabulously nice rooms for very low rates. It is well worth it.
So we should note here, when most people visit Bali, they stay near the famous, white sand beaches in the south. If you google tourism in Bali, you’ll find a never-ending chain of pictures of southern beaches, southern temples, and thatch-roof resorts near those beaches and temples. And that’s all great. But the problem is, that part of Bali is so tourist-heavy that its prices are bid up nearer western levels, its traffic is insane, and at this point it’s substantially less recognizable as “Bali” has traditionally been conceived. So we went inland.
NOTE: This is an exception to our “do the thing the people do in the place” rule. We make exceptions where “the thing” is just “the same thing you can do at any beach destination in the world.” In this case, don’t do the thing the people do; do the thing we did. You won’t be sorry!
So right here you’ll see one thing very different about this Bali blog and 90% of Bali travel blogs. We were not staying on a beach. We were up in some jungle highlands, complete with…
Rushing streams! Tiny frogs! Giant snails! Oh My!
We finished out the day with some Indian food at a nearby restaurant and just hanging out around our rainforest villa… but the next day would begin the real activities.
Day 5: Of Monkeys and Massages
We all woke up early thanks to jet lag, watched the sunrise, and then the Stones and Whelchels went for a walk. Because, naturally, our wonderful villa was surrounded by beautiful trails.
Trip Tip 19: We had a hard time finding information about hiking trails in Bali. There just isn’t much out there. We were excited to find trails near our house but, still, no map or info was available online. We don’t know how far these trails went. This was a routine problem in Bali: the whole island tourism infrastructure is designed for managed, guided experiences. For folks who want to do their own thing, there’s not really any information or support. So you have to just make your own way. There’s no shortage of beautiful or interesting things to explore. Don’t be afraid to just go wandering down the path or road to see what’s down it!
And when we got back, we just went for a casual swim in our valley-view swimming pool. Soon enough, everybody else was up and in action, we made some breakfast (we’d gone to the grocery store the night before), and then piled into the cars for our first real activity of the trip. The Monkey Forest!
Now, the Stones have dealt with southeast Asian monkeys before in Malaysia. We knew they could be aggressive. But oh. my. goodness. The monkeys in Bali are terrifying. And since one member of our group already was a bit afraid of monkeys, that made the Monkey Forest, eh, adventurous.
The Monkey Forest is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a forest and it’s full of monkeys. And they have expectations of humanity. The sign at left gives you some helpful warnings on what not to do. But if you look at them… it actually is more like rules about what monkeys shouldn’t do to you. Don’t get shouted at by monkeys! Don’t get your bag snatched by monkeys! Don’t get attacked by a big monkey for petting a small monkey! Don’t let a monkey be sad about your material possessions!
In hindsight, I’m fairly sure these were rules for the monkeys, not for us.
Trip Tip 20: There is free parking at the Monkey Forest. And it’s in walking distance of downtown Ubud too. If you’re driving as we did, it’s a good spot to drop the car for a day in Ubud.
At the entrance to the forest is a stand selling these little banana clusters. So we bought some, thinking we’d pass them out to friendly monkeys along the way. They were only a couple of bucks, so why not? What could possibly go wrong?
Well, it turns out that monkeys like bananas. Monkeys really like bananas. We didn’t get a picture of the fate of that first bunch of bananas. We had it for, oh, less than 2 minutes before a gang of aggressive monkeys approached and jumped on us, I mean literally on us, we panicked, and threw the bananas at the monkeys in order to save our own lives. It happened too fast to document.
But there was no shortage of aggressive monkeys.
Trip Tip 21: Monkeys love bananas. If you are nervous about monkeys literally climbing on your body, then do not buy bananas. But if monkeys all over you sounds fun, then bananas are the key. Don’t just hold a whole bunch; break them up, and hold one in your hand up high so they have to crawl up your body. But if you play “hard to get” or “keep away,” be aware that the monkeys will get seriously annoyed.
But soon enough, we were done with the monkey forest, and it was time for the next thing: the much-vaunted art markets of Ubud. We headed northwards into town!
Trip Tip 22: Ubud is walkable. In fact, walking it is lots of fun, as there is no shortage of fun stores to duck into. Our experience was also that the post-haggling market price of souvenirs was not that different than the retail price in stores on the south end of town near the Monkey Forest.
Along the way we stopped for food near the monkey forest. It was fine, nothing to write home about. Which brings us to…
Trip Tip 23: Bali has a reputation as being a “foodie” place. Our experience was that the food was unimpressive. It did not have the uniqueness, the boldness of flavor, the diversity that you find in true foodie hubs such as, for example, Penang, Malaysia (more on this later). The food was fine, sure, but honestly, unless all the food was in Denpasar, I have to say that the food scene did not totally wow us. Go to Bali for the experience, the scenery, the low prices, but maybe not for the food.
Once we got to the market, we explored… and shopped… and some people bought souvenirs, but the Stones actually did not. Make no mistake, the sarongs were pretty. The carved wood stuff was neat. We got a few small items as gifts for others (spoiler: we will have the White Elephant gift this year to crush all competitors)… but we came away not quite ready to do our shopping. The art market in Ubud just didn’t do “it” for us, whatever it is. Others bought and were happy with their purchases.
Trip Tip 24: Haggle in the markets! Have no shame! Don’t buy the silly line that because you have higher income you ought to pay a higher price! If a merchant isn’t making a profit on the item, they won’t accept the price you’re offering. If they accept, it means they made a profit, which means it was a fair deal for them. Haggle on price. We found merchants routinely cut 30% off the price and, at one comical point when we walked away from a negotiation over the quality of an item rather than the price, a merchant cut his price by 90% from list. Understand that the list price is not a fair or just price for you. Even if it’s cheaper than what you’d find in the US, haggle! Be ready to walk away! Don’t reveal your real price point! Don’t immediately reveal the item you really want! Be strategic. Public marketplaces are the cutthroat heart of capitalism: embrace it.
After the art market, we grabbed some ice cream, walked back to the cars (stopping for a few shopping opportunities along the way), went to the grocery store for dinner items (ramen for everybody!), and went home to enjoy an evening at our palatial abode.
There are no pictures of the event that occurred once we got home. See, Bali is known for its massages. But better than going to get massages… is having a villa with massage spaces in the house, and staff who can arrange to bring in professionals. So for $7/hr, all 8 of us got massages without even leaving our AirBnB.
Trip Tip 25: Bali has a lot of massage parlors, and it’s well worth taking advantage of this resource! However, be aware that sex tourism is a thing in Bali, and massage parlors can be fronts for prostitution, or simply places selling “happy endings.” We were told that excessively cheap massages can be a warning sign. But also be aware that western-level prices for a massage are ridiculous. The best bet is to find a local who can advise you about the best massage option. In our case, our AirBnB host had an arrangement with a local place, so at least some members of our group got massages almost every night. Having a recommended masseuse come to your group is a great way to avoid the awkwardness and uncertainty about how to get a reasonably priced Balinese massage without accidentally supporting the commercial sex industry.
We don’t have pictures of our time just laying around the house, playing games, catching up, and having time together. But we actually spent a lot of time doing that; to be honest, some of the best time! Finally, after a day of hikes, monkeys, shopping, and massages, we hit the sack, ready for an adventurous day when we awoke.
Day 6: Do the Thing the People Do — SNORKELING!
The Troyers had been assigned to figure out the logistics for a day of snorkeling. And boy did they succeed: they found an all-day snorkeling package off of Nusa Lembongan for less than $80, including pickup at the house, the ferry ride there and back, and lunch. We woke up bright and early, piled into the van, held on for dear life as our Balinese driver honked and dodged and wove his way through traffic, and got us to Sanur Beach, where we waited around for 30 minutes or so before hopping on a “fast ferry.”
Now, before we get into this experience for real, a note. One member of the Stone Family (coughLymancough) was not enthusiastic about snorkeling. For a variety of reasons, the Husband Stone has not developed a strong love for swimming or for animal life, least of all for a combination of the two. But, as we said earlier, we have a Stone family trip motto: DO THE THING THE PEOPLE DO IN THE PLACE. And when people go to Bali, they go snorkeling. It’s the thing to do. It’s worth noting that the same member of the Stone Family was perhaps skeptical of getting a massage as well, but was converted on that topic.
Trip Tip 26: Anyways, the point is: when you go to Bali, don’t skip the snorkeling. It’s worth doing. However, it turns out that Bali isn’t necessarily a great place to snorkel. Rather, the islands east of Bali are much better, whether you visit the Gili Islands off the cost of Lombok (the next big island east), or the Nusas (Lembongan and Penida) southeast of Bali, as we did.
In good time, our ferry started boarding. But this isn’t western-style boat-boarding. None of us got pictures so I can’t show you, but basically the crew pulls the boat as close to shore as they could, you wade out into the water, and just pull yourself up onto the back. Each boat seated probably 40–60 people below deck, and another 10–20 on top.
Now, a boat of that size might normally have one large engine at the back to propel it with all deliberate haste. But not the boats in Bali. Not “fast ferries.” Holy cow! They had clearly jerry-rigged these boats with extra engines; ours had 6 outboard motors on the back, all bolted on in a row. And when the boat got going, the prow lifted several degrees up out of the water, and the engines at the back were close to submerged. But since we had a smooth surf in the morning, we thought little of this. We’d have more cause to consider the boat upon our return journey in the afternoon.
After a 20 or 30 minute ferry ride to Nusa Lembongan, we disembarked (again, meaning basically just jump off the boat), met up with our guide company, piled into the back of a truck, and were taken to their launch point. Finally, we were ready to go!
And go we did. Snorkeling was AWESOME! Some in our group had GoPros, but honestly their videos don’t even fully capture how much fun we had. The water was so clear, and the areas we were swimming in so rich in marine life, that everywhere you looked there was a seemingly infinite variety of fish.
As much fun as it looks like above water, it’s the underwater world that was so great to explore!
When we had tired of snorkeling there, our guide took us on to a different part of the island where we were the only swimmers. He told us we would go look for manta rays. That sounds cool, but you know, there’s just big fish, right? So we got to the area where mantas often swam, and our guide looked around for a minute, then suddenly yelled, “Now! Jump now! There it is! Swim fast!” gesticulating wildly. So we all dove overboard and swam in a totally random direction. Every minute or so, our guide would yell out, “It’s over there now! No, it’s over there now!” We started to get a little suspicious.
But then, all of a sudden, there it was. A full-size manta ray swimming straight for us.
Trip Tip 27: If you can swim with manta rays, swim with manta rays. They are majestic, terrifying, beautiful creatures. And even though they are incredibly docile, social creatures that love to play with humans, when they swim straight at you with that gaping maw wide open, it feels like you’re going to be swallowed right up.
We did another round of snorkeling elsewhere after that… but the manta ray was really a highlight. That’s not something you can do just anywhere. And for the snorkeling-skeptics among us (*ahem*) getting to stare down a giant sea creature pretty much settled the debate that snorkeling is the best!
After snorkeling, our guide took us back to their launch point, where we had a pleasant buffet lunch of Indonesian food. It wasn’t gourmet, but it was good, and, best of all, prepaid. Then after lunch, we hopped in canoes and went paddling around the mangrove forest of Nusa Lembongan… which basically meant ramming each others’ boats and throwing mud and sludge at each other, because we are serious professional adults.
When we’d showered off from that and collected our things, we piled into another truck, returned to the island dock, boarded our fast ferry, and set out back to Bali. But this time, the waves were rougher. Way rougher. And where a sane, rational crew would slow down, our island-hopping Indonesian crew apparently had a schedule to keep, and gunned it across the channel the whole time. Now, high waves plus big boat plus incredibly excessive horsepower means… airtime. Our goal here is not to exaggerate. But by the third time our stomachs about came out our mouths, Lyman turned around and looked out the back end of the boat… and saw the engines at the back come out of the water before the front of the boat had hit the surf. In other words, we got pretty darn close to a boat with at least 60 passengers on it getting airtime. Was it actually airborne? Probably not. But the incredible noise that we made every time we crested a wave and slammed into the next wave was pretty exciting.
Trip Tip 28: If you struggle with motion sickness, Bali may be hard for you, and the “fast ferries” will be especially so. Get the motion-sickness patches you put behind your ear. They are compact, cheap, and work pretty well. And if you have high safety standards, then boy-howdy, the fast ferries are not going to be your cup of tea.
Picked up by our driver, we returned home and, along the way, passed what looked suspiciously like a Chinese night market to the Stones. With only the tiniest amount of cajoling, we got the group loaded into our cars, drove down the road, parked in a field and, lo and behold, it was a Chinese-style night market!
There’s nothing quite like southeast Asian street food. It’s the perfect combination of abundant variety to please everybody thanks to many different stalls, but knowing every food item is somebody’s specialty, since each stall only does one or two things. It’s cheap, it’s delicious, and it’s constantly innovating, as every stall competes to differentiate itself from the other stalls.
Trip Tip 29: We’ve already talked about food safety, but it’s worth repeating: street food cooked in public over an open flame, or fried before your very eyes, or served out of a pot of boiling water, is not a serious sanitary risk. Go hog-wild eating the weird street food, as long as it’s hot! Avoiding the stuff wrapped in banana leaves isn’t a terrible call, unless it’s very hot.
Trip Tip 30: But seriously eat the street food. Southeast Asian food is not done best by fancy restaurants, but by street vendors who are actively combining different food cultures together all the time.
Ultimately, pretty well the whole group loved the night market food, even some initially skeptical of it. Because who doesn’t love street food!?
Trip Tip 31: The greatest of all street food is, of course, Stick Meat. Stick Meat is a point of agreement across many diverse cultures, commanding more adherents than any world religion. Travel wherever you want in the developing world, and you will find stick meat for sale, and it is pretty close to the same everywhere. Finding stick meat is one of the true, unceasing joys of developing world tourism. So as you travel, take a moment, find some meat on a stick, and enjoy it. There is no food that can quite equal meat, stuck on a stick, cooked over an open flame, served straight from the fire into your mouth.
Well fed at a preposterously low price, we returned to Fortress America for the night, some folks enjoyed another round of massages, and then we went to bed.
Day 7: The Jump
We’d seen monkeys and we’d gone snorkeling. It was time to do something totally different. For Day 7, we loaded into our cars and drove northwards into Bali’s highlands. The map below shows our route:
Thanks to Bali’s rugged terrain as the volcanic highlands rise up towards the north of the island, it is actually extremely difficult to build east-west roads. Such routes end up with extremely steep descents into ravines and climbs out of them, or else numerous switchbacks. In consequence, Bali’s roads mostly run north-south. So to drive north, we first had to… drive due south. Because of course that makes sense, right?
Trip Tip 32: Google Maps does not predict drive times well in Bali. Add at least 5 minutes, maybe as much as 10 or 15 minutes, per predicted half hour of driving.
Trip Tip 33: The places on the road with liquid in colorful bottles are gas stations. You fill up by buying a bottle and pouring it into the car. You can also use conventional gas stations of course, and really probably should do so, but, in a pinch, the “bensin” stations will do.
As we drove, we rose higher. Finally, we rounded a corner and reached a truly remarkable view of the southern land falling away beneath us.
So naturally, we grabbed a random passerby and made them take our picture.
Oh. And did we mention that this roadside pullout… HAD A CORNUCOPIA OF EXOTIC CREATURES?
The fuzzy creature at top left? That’s a Luwak. We’ll come back to those guys. But yeah: giant bats, big owls, enormous snakes, this dude had it ALL. And we apparently had a very low fear of animal-borne pathogens.
After this pleasant stop, we carried on northwards to our first major destination of the day, Pura Ulun Danu Beratan! Which is a long name that’s hard to remember, so we’ll call it “Lake Temple” henceforth for simplicity.
The Lake Temple was beautiful.
But… we have to be honest. We expected to be seriously wow’d. The temple site is on the edge of a lake in the bottom of a volcanic crater. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site. It should be amazing. We were hopeful enough that we paid the relatively steep price of admission. We donned our sarongs, even the guys, and entered, ready for a really unique experience.
And it turned out to be… just a temple. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice. But there wasn’t really anything to do, and what there was to see was not that spectacular. We’re glad we did it since, after all, the Lake Temple is one of the things the people do when they’re in the place, but we feel no urge to do it again.
Trip Tip 33: Unless you’re a big Balinese temple aficionado, Pura Ulun Danu Beratan is more likely to under than overwhelm. Unless it’s very conveniently along your route as it was for us, your experience of Bali will not be seriously lacking if you skip it.
The one thing the Lake Temple did give was some nice couple pics. Don’t these look like nice people you’d love to vacation with?
Now, just as we were leaving the Lake Temple… we came across a playground in a state of serious disrepair. And suddenly, the Lake Temple had redeemed itself, because there’s nothing the Wilmore crowd loves more than a sort of sketchy playground.
And with that, we piled in the car and continued our drive north, ascending up and up out of the crater. And then, we passed some monkeys. So we stopped, hoping to get a second shot at those elusively endearing person-with-a-monkey pictures.
We had some degree of success, as the monkeys came to eat the bananas we bought (yes, we decided to risk banana-seeking aggression again by monkeys). These monkeys were clearly less socialized than the Monkey Forest monkeys. But the real winner of monkey-pictures came when Brian got out his GoPro:
Having captured the best monkey video we could, we carried on, further north and further up!
Unfortunately, one member of our group became ill. Fortunately, we found a roadside bathroom for her to use, and even more fortunately, she had prudently taken out a prescription of azithromyacin, which she’d taken in the morning as she began to feel bad. Guys, this is why you get drug prescriptions! Without meds, we would have lost a whole day to somebody being sick. With meds, we chilled out by the road for an hour while one person addressed the needs of nature.
Trip Tip 34: See Trip Tip 12! Drugs are good!
But, while we were waiting, it began to rain quite hard.
So we had a sick person, and now heavy rains, and still nearly an hour to drive to our final destination. The group had a decision to make. Do we press on, or turn back?
It is a testament to the group we were with that, despite adverse conditions, the group chose to press on. #Adventure!
That potty break was the ridgeline of Bali, and we descended the north slopes from there. As it was lunchtime, we stopped off at a restaurant that, again, was fine, but nothing special. Soon enough, we came to our destination: the Aling-Aling waterfall!
We’d read up on our Bali waterfalls. There are options. But Aling-Aling was reputed to have a natural waterslide, which sounded great to us. We never read any real guides about how to do the waterfalls… we just figured we could probably show up and figure it out from there! Well, we pulled up to the parking lot… and found that we had to pay! The injustice! Why should we have to pay to go to a waterfall!? We don’t need no guide; we can do it ourselves!
We just about turned back right then. Few things are more annoying than being forced to pay money so somebody can hold your hand and regulate your experience. But finally, we decided that we’d regret it if we didn’t do it, so we paid the ~$10-$15 per person, hired the guides, and walked down to the waterfalls.
Yes, waterfalls. We thought we got just one waterfall. Oh no. There were four. And you can jump off 3 of them, and one is a waterslide. See, this is why you pay for guides.
Trip Tip 35: Pay whatever the Aling-Aling guides ask for: it is so worth it! They know the safe places to jump from, have life jackets for the waterslide, and are an absolutely essential part of the experience.
Guys. Aling-Aling is amazing. If you go to Bali, doing Aling-Aling is an absolute must.
Here’s the waterslide:
Here’s one of our number doing the waterslide:
Actually, it was good. The waterslide was awesome.
But there were plain jumps too. The first one, the training jump, was 15 feet.
No problem. Both Stones took that jump without a problem.
Then we went to the second waterfall. 30 feet.
Well. You know. There’s a limit. But hey, one Stone made the 30-footer jump, which means, from a certain point of view, really we both made the jump. #Marriage
And then we were on to the 3rd waterfall: whopping 45 foot jump.
This one was terrifying. From the top, it just didn’t look like the kind of thing a person might jump off. It was just too high. So high in fact that Ruth actually said her farewells before making the leap, which, to be honest, was a little bit unsettling:
But regardless of how many jumps each of us made, Aling-Aling was awesome, and yielded our favorite group photo of the trip.
So Aling-Aling was incredible. It blew our expectations out of the water — or off of a cliff, if you will. We expected to slide around on a little waterslide for a few minutes. Instead, Ruth checked off a long-standing bucket-list item (cliff jumping), and we got the adrenaline pumping.
The waterfall conquered, we loaded back up in the cars and drove back to the Palace of the 4 Couples in Ubud. There aren’t really any pictures of these long drives, but honestly some of the most precious time of the whole trip were the hours we got with each of the other couples just talking and catching up on each others’ lives. Especially since the Stones are geographically distant from the others, this was really wonderful for us.
Trip Tip 36: For any group trip, you’ll spend a lot of down time with your traveling partners. The important thing is inviting people you have enough social capital with that your group can quickly and efficiently make decisions together, and also ensuring that everyone you invite is somebody you’d be fine riding in the car with for 6 hours. If your group doesn’t meet these criteria, traveling together will be hard.
Back home, some folks stayed in to cook dinner, and others (Stones included) hit up the night market again. But soon enough, we’d all hit the sack, as we had another full day ahead of us once we woke up!
Day 8: Actually, Let’s Rest
Yes, lots of activities! Let’s plan lots of things!
Or, maybe, let’s rest. One person had gotten sick the day before… and we woke up on Day 8 to find that Callie, who had bravely conquered a fear of heights to make the 15-foot jump and do the waterslide, had a pretty painful ear infection. And, truth be told, we were all exhausted.
Trip Tip 37: Healthcare outside the United States is cheap! It may not be quite the quality of care, and especially of service, you expect in the US, but it’s affordable. Don’t hesitate to go to the doctor while traveling. Your US-based price expectations will greatly exaggerate the likely cost given that in most of the rest of the world, taxpayers are footing a big part of the bill even for foreigners via indirect subsidies. If you get sick and don’t have the right meds, go to the doctor. If you were able to afford the plane ticket, you’ll be able to afford the doctor’s visit, no problem.
So while the Troyers navigated the Balinese healthcare system (quite proficiently, I think), the rest of us just stayed in and enjoyed the Jungle Palace we’d rented for ourselves. We played board games, swam, and generally just enjoyed some leisurely time together.
And once the Troyers were back, we loaded up and drove west. The Jatiluwih rice terraces are a UNESCO “World Heritage Landscape,” and every travel account we’d read for Bali suggested that they were well worth the haul to go see them. So, though the day got a later start than we expected, we still piled in the car and drove out to’em. After one minor road incident (a motorbike rear-ended us then fled the scene), we made it to the rice terraces.
Folks. It was worth it. The Lake Temple may have been a bit of a let-down as UNESCO sites go, but Jatiluwih was genuinely cool.
The rice terraces have some genuinely mind-bending feats of irrigation going on. The extent to which the Balinese farmers have figured out the exact necessary slopes and levels to keep all the water flowing the right way, all the fields flooding at the right times, is an agronomical marvel. The fact that they figured it out so long ago, even moreso. There are quite a few irrigation channels that, if you didn’t know better, you’d think were flowing uphill, against gravity, so finely-tuned are the irrigation channels.
Now, in fairness, if you read our Peru blog, you know that the Stones have strong feelings about pre-modern irrigation technology. And perhaps one Stone has a particularly strong interest.
Trip Tip 38: Jatiluwih is worth the drive and the entrance fee! It’s best if you have several hours to walk around on the trails and enjoy the scenery. There’s not much shade, so a cloudy day can be nice.
But alas, our time at Jatiluwih was short. We’d had a late start to the day, and we had dinner plans with friends based in Bali who run a tourism business (and perhaps also live their lives in a Christian fashion in an area with few Christians). So, after spending much less time at Jatiluwih than we wished, we got back in the car and drove home.
Our friends showed up with Mexican food from the only Mexican restaurant within a several-island radius, and we enjoyed an evening hearing about their time in Indonesia, and of course we also delivered them some items they’d requested from the US. When they left, we all went to bed, because on Day 9, we really would have a long day.
Day 9: Exploring Eastern Bali
We’d gone snorkeling in Nusa Lembongan, flown in through Denpasar, driven north to Aling-Aling, driven west to Jatiluwih, had a day driving around near Ubud… it was time to turn our attention eastward. Some of Bali’s oldest and grandest temples are in eastern Bali on Mount Lempuyang. We found the Lempuyang hike on accident: Lyman had been clicking around random Google Streetview pictures and found one that was a striking vista from what looked like a paved path. One thing led to another, and he’d found what looked like an awesome hike!
You drive to a lower parking lot, park your car, and hire a motorbike to drive you up to the first of 7 temples as you ascend the mountain. It’s one of the most beautiful temples in Bali. Then you start hiking up literally thousands of stairs, passing through progressively smaller temples, until you reach the shrine at the top, often shrouded in mist or cloud by the afternoon. Between parking, temple entrance, the pushy guides who force you to hire them, and the motorbike fee, you end up paying maybe $10-$25 per person. We were ready to do that.
But we got directions to the wrong place. Lempuyang is several hours east of Ubud, and the drive can be confusing. Especially since “Pura Lempuyang,” meaning the Lempuyang temple, refers to 7 different temples. And it turns out, we went to the wrong one.
How were we supposed to know we were going to the wrong Lempuyang?
But as it turned out, sure, we missed the big, scenic, epic temple at the bottom of the mountain. That’s unfortunate. But we got to drive up an incredibly narrow and sketchy mountain road to a random parking lot where a nice old lady only made us pay $2 for parking for the whole day, and then we wandered up a barely-marked path to meet up with the main trail. So we cut our expenses by about 90%! We’re always a fan of that.
Here’s a video of the road we drove up.
Super narrow! All of Bali’s roads were narrow, but this one really took the prize home.
But when we reached the parking lot at the end, the view was nice.
From there, we hiked up! Well, first we got confused and wandered through the nearby temple trying to find the path. Then a local pointed us the right way, so then we hiked up!
Lots of stairs. In the jungle. And of course, since the entire mountain was a giant temple, we were wearing sarongs the whole time.
Along the way, we had some nice views, good conversation, solved a few riddles, and enjoyed the misty breeze through the jungle mountainside. But then, all of a sudden, we rounded the corner into one of the higher temples and bam:
We’d seen Mount Agung in the distance several times. A few times while driving around, a sustained view of it while snorkeling, on clear mornings we could even see the summit from our balcony at the house. But not until that view had we seen it so pronounced, clear, and imposing.
That moment decided the next day’s activities. See, we’d been debating whether to climb Mount Agung or not. The guide fee was kind of steep: our recollection is that it was at least $20 per person. And to do it, we’d have to wake up phenomenally early, drive hours away from our AirBnB, and, besides, several members of the group didn’t want to even try it given the length and intensity of the hike.
But as soon as we saw the mountain, staring at us like that, in naked challenge, we knew what had to be done.
The mountain had to be conquered.
Suddenly, Lempuyang changed from a good hike to enjoy some views, to a good warm-up hike for the climb straight up Agung. But it was, nonetheless, a warm-up hike with some striking views.
When we reached the summit temple, a thick fog had rolled in so there were no views, and a worship service in progress. So alas, few good pics from there. But having ascended literally thousands of stairs to the top, we now had to descend. And hours later when we reached the bottom, all of our legs were quietly spasming, which the physical therapist assured us was perfectly normal, even if kind of disturbing.
Trip Tip 39: Whether you do Lempuyang the normal way, or take our accidentally-cheaper route, it’s well worth doing. The views are wonderful, the climate cool and refreshing, and it’s some good exercise. We got on the road by 7:30 AM, drove the 2.5 hours from our AirBnB, and then did the whole hike, and were looking for lunch by about 1:30 PM.
So we drove down the mountain and scanned the roadside for a place to eat. We wanted somewhere that would have good food and, crucially, parking for 2 cars. That second criteria was actually kind of tricky. But we did finally find a place, and guys, it was the jackpot.
The “Juice Corner” had a large menu, and the food did not disappoint. Honestly, it was some of the better Balinese/Indonesian food we had while on Bali, and also some of the cheapest. But besides the food, the smoothie bowls were awesome.
These bowls of fruit smoothies were incredibly colorful, and genuinely delicious. And we topped it off with our first sampling of Luwak Coffee.
Luwak Coffee is… a very unique product. There are these animals called Luwaks, kind of like a possum (see pictures from day 7). They are fed coffee beans. They cannot fully digest those beans, so when they poop them out, the bean is recoverable. If that bean is then taken, cleaned, roasted, and ground, it can be used to make coffee. But the Luwak’s digestion will have stripped the coffee of much of its acidity, creating a deliciously smooth flavor.
And also creating, as it happens, a coffee that can run into the hundreds of dollars per pound; or, if you buy straight from the source, about $50 per pound.
Trip Tip 40: Drink the Luwak coffee, and buy tons of it to bring home. It is valuable, a fun souvenir, and quite tasty. We regret not buying much, much more of it, as we quickly gave virtually all of ours away as gifts to friends and family.
When we finished lunch, we drove south to a town called Padang Bai. There, we’d heard about a beach on the south side of the bay that was not too crowded, and that was pretty. Creatively named the “White Sand Beach,” we plugged it into google and headed on down.
It did not disappoint! The water was crystal clear, and rather wavy, and we swam out in it… although it turned out that the sand vanished not too far out and was replaced with rock, which made it a bit hard to swim, especially given the strong waves. But nonetheless, we enjoyed a few hours in the sun.
Off to the right, you can make out some rocks. We decided to explore those rocks. And, after looking around the tidepools and finding lots of crabs, and urchins, and other sea-creatures, we found a SECRET BEACH! Ruth and Sharayah literally climbed down a 30 foot cliff face as the tide was coming in (not advised) to explore what they had hoped to be an untouched, never explored cave. After safely arriving, and discovering several remenants of other visitors, their dreams of being first explorers were sadly crushed. But it was beautiful nonetheless, and totally fed their love and need for adventure.
Of course, the girls had to commemorate their adventure with friendship shells.
Back among the rocks, Brian decided to see what the ocean was really made of. And it showed him (and Callie).
Trip Tip 41: And that, friends, is why you always travel with band-aids, topical antiseptic, and topical pain reliever. The Stone Family’s preferred brand is Lanacane.
Soon enough, it began to get dark. But just as we packed up to go, we had to take one more obligatory picture:
Everybody’s airborne.
Naturally, we had to get a picture of The Stone Family as well. Aren’t we cute?
Once we’d packed up, we went looking for dinner. We drove into Padang Bai and looked around a bit, and landed on a place that, once again, was good enough, but nothing to write home about. We had heard that Padang Bai sometimes had bioluminescence and briefly looked for it, but soon gave up. We needed to get home soon… because 5 of us would be waking up early (2:30 AM!) to climb Mount Agung.
We were nearly home, just 10 minutes left to drive, when the narrowness of Bali’s roads finally struck. Alas for the other car’s mirror, and thank goodness for a really generous rental company insurance policy and no deposit or credit card on file! Luckily, the guy we hit was pretty nice about it too. We got it sorted out and, while we had to pay the $100 collision cost per our agreement, it coulda been a lot worse.
Trip Tip 42: Buy the insurance and make sure you know what it covers. You will not regret this decision.
Day 10: The Mountain
Five of us woke up at about 2:30 AM, loaded into one of the cars, and drove east to Pura Pasar Agung, a temple that also serves as the trailhead for the shortest, most direct hike up Mount Agung, the dormant volcano that dominates eastern Bali. The Whelchels, the Stones, and one of the Pugels were ready to conquer the mountain. Lyman and Josh stayed awake for the 2-hour drive in the dark to the trailhead while the others slept.
We had debated doing Agung. We’d read wildly varying accounts of the hike: it was the hardest trail someone had ever hiked! Or maybe actually, if you paced yourself, it was easy-peasy. If you don’t take a guide, you will surely die! But according to other sources, people do it guide-less all the time. Everything from pricing, to how to hire a guide, to how hard the hike was, were hard to discern.
So let’s lay out some basic facts about Mount Agung. There are three routes up the mountain. One starts at the famous, sprawling temple complex of Besakih on the south side of the mountain. It is a strenuous hike which includes a long scramble up a steep, sandy, volcanic ash-field. It takes 8–12 hours. Another trail, the one we took, starts from Pura Pasar Agung, a smaller temple on the southeast side of the mountain. It takes 3.5–8 hours, depending on your pace. It is a straight-up hike and is strenuous. A third, and the least traveled, is a 2–3 day hike coming from the flatlands on the north side.
Most of the blog posts characterizing Agung as impossibly difficult reflect woefully unprepared people who attempted the Besakih route, or else people who attempted the Pura Pasar Agung route as a sunrise hike. The Besakih route is hard no matter your pace, but let’s elaborate on this timing question.
The sunrise views from Agung are reputed to be quite majestic, and pictures we’ve seen confirm that reputation. But, in order to summit for sunrise, you have to start no later than 3:30 AM. Since it’s pitch darkness, you will absolutely need a guide. The trail through the forested part of the mountain is easy to follow in the darkness, but the trail on the upper slopes is utterly impossible to follow in the dark without a guide. You will get lost and die.
Trip Tip 43: If you are doing the Agung sunrise hike, hiring a guide is absolutely non-negotiable. Suck it up, pay the fee, don’t complain. Without a guide, picking out the trail up the mountain in the dark would be phenomenally difficult.
But here’s the trick. Guides lead groups, and want the group to make it to the top for sunrise, because disappointed groups who miss the sunrise leave bad reviews. So the guides on sunrise hikes will push you hard to make it to the top in time for sunrise. The guides do this hike every day so don’t expect sympathy for your pain as you heave and gasp and your heart is bursting out of your chest. You chose to do the sunrise hike. You will get what you pay for: summit by sunrise at any cost. Or, sometimes, the guides will make you stop at a lower place, because you’re holding the group back and the others deserve to make it for sunrise.
The result is that even the “easier” trail from Pura Pasar Agung becomes extremely strenuous, because it becomes practically a time trial. Add in that most people doing it are taking their one “inland Bali” day away from beaches, resorts, and cheap fruity alcohol, and that they chose it because the advertised start time is 3–5 hours later than the Besakih trail, and you’ve got a recipe for travel bloggers breathlessly proclaiming Mount Agung the hardest hike this side of K2.
Trip Tip 44: If you are doing the Agung sunrise hike, be aware that it will be extremely strenuous and not for the faint of heart. Muscle up, start early, bring energy-dense foods and plenty of water. Pack a headlamp. Psychologically prepare yourself to be hassled and harried to get you up the mountain in time for sunrise.
Our group read enough Agung climb accounts, and was sufficiently devoted to our sleep-time, that we decided to just forego the whole summit-sunrise experience. We rolled into the parking lot around 4:30 AM, met our guide, Nyoman, and got on the trail.
Trip Tip 45: We can highly recommend Nyoman as a guide. His email address is nyoman_mukti@yahoo.com. We paid $25 per person for a summit breakfast and 2 guides. Had we been just 4 people we could have used just 1 guide and cut costs, but we were told the rules require 1 guide per 4 people. That may or may not be true, but honestly, while $25 was a bit steep for Bali, it’s not that bad of a price, and without the guides we probably would not have found the place we were trying to get to at the crater rim, so it was worth shelling out for.
It was dark at first, so no pictures to be taken. We stepped off the trail a few times to answer nature’s call early in the hike, and took a while to get a pace, but basically the early part of the hike is just a very dark walk through a jungle.
The guides figured out pretty quickly that we were in no rush at all to reach the top, intended to take lots of breaks, were going to make many photo-stops, and really didn’t mind to spend the whole day on the mountain. They restrained their frustration with us with admirable self-control as, in hindsight, we were terrible customers. Thanks for dealing with us haggling down the price then burning through your entire day, Nyoman!
But finally, it began to get light, just as we started to near the treeline.
And as it turns out, the treeline was also the cloud level. Mount Agung rises so steeply, from such a low elevation, that basically as soon as you clear the trees, you’re in or above the clouds. We knew this going in on a theoretical or conceptual level, but hadn’t really mentally prepared ourselves for how striking it would be.
And soon enough, we were above the treeline… and into some of the most surreal and extreme terrain any of us had ever hiked.
It’s hard to represent in pictures just how incredibly steep and dramatic this rocky slope was. We were frequently on all-fours leaning into the mountain to hike up it. Turning around and looking out could give you vertigo. As we got higher, even the light vegetation gave way to barren rock and, below us, a sea of clouds, momentarily broken here or there by a glimpse of the ground below, or the ocean, or, off in the distance, the mountains of other islands.
Trip Tip 46: The Agung hike is hard, but totally worth it. Pack plenty of food and at least 2 liters of water per person. Make sure to include protein; a large summer sausage is a good option. The Stones are very fond of Larabars as well. Hiking poles could be of some use, but there are enough places where you need your hands that you might not use them as much as you’d expect. If you’ve ever done any hiking of any of the mountains in the Rockies, you can do Mount Agung, provided you do not try to make it for sunrise. Let the sun come up, take your time, enjoy the hike.
Trip Tip 47: We realized as we went up why none of the hiking blogs have pictures of the trail: for the sunrise hike, it’s pitch dark on the way up! The benefit of doing this hike in the daylight is that you get tons of good pictures as you ascend because, let’s be honest, taking pictures during the descent is not gonna happen given how exhausted you’re likely to be.
Finally, after several dogged hours of hiking at a pace that was good exercise for us but sluggish for our guides, we reached the summit. What wonders God has made!
Having hiked in the Rockies and the Appalachians, we rather expected to get to the top and have a defined summit. Nope. Not so. You get to the top and bam it’s a cliff falling off into the abyss, hundreds of feet down. We got out the snacks, tried to find a safe-ish place to sit, and ate, as Nyoman got out some additional snacks he’d brought up for us, including hot tea and eggs that he made for us over a little fire. And of course, being Stones, we had to have some on-the-spot self-narration of our activities:
Then came the group photo:
And then more pictures!
And then we were on our way down!
The hike down was probably harder than the hike up. The constant pull of gravity makes your knees hurt and your legs shake. The mountain was so steep that falling was a real risk, so we often resorted to getting down on all fours, or the “run down the slope fast and hope you find something to break your momentum” strategy. And, of course, lots of falling. You could call Ruth an expert at the graceful yet frequent falling strategy (sadly no videos).
As we descended, the sun rose higher and higher, and it got warmer and warmer. By the time we neared the treeline, it was hot. And we realized that, whoopsee, we didn’t bring sun screen!
Trip Tip 48: If you plan on doing Mount Agung in the daylight, be sure to bring sunscreen, or else you will get a nasty sunburn.
We kept hoping that we would reach the clouds where they hit the mountain. Once we were in the clouds, we’d be shielded from the sun, and get some relief from the heat. But much to our chagrin, even as we made our way down the mountain, the clouds seemed to recede before us! Not until we were well into the treeline did we get consistent cloudcover, and by then we were in the shade so it didn’t matter.
Speaking of the treeline, it had been dark on the way up, remember? Well, it turns out that walk in the dark was basically through Jurassic Park. The jungle was phenomenally beautiful.
And remember how we had wandered off the trail a few times in the dark to answer nature’s call?
Turns out that was super unsafe. None of the pictures seem to show it, but it turns out that about 2 feet off the edge of the path in many places, the ground fell away into a 30 or 40 foot deep chasm down into a jungle ravine. Honestly, the jungle part of the hike was probably the narrowest part of the entire hike, with some of the steepest drop-offs if you fell.
Finally, we arrived back at Pura Pasar Agung around 2 or 3. It had been a long hike, a hard hike, but an enormously fun hike that I would highly recommend to anyone. At the end of it, we may have been beat, but we’d conquered the mountain.
Trip Tip 49: Mount Agung is totally worth the time, body-ache, and money, and you can do it! If you have extremely severe fear of heights, don’t go; but at least one member of our group gets pretty severe vertigo and still managed to do the hike and enjoy it. We had a very wide range of physical fitness. One member of our group is a regular marathon-runner who quite literally jogged up the last half mile or so, then back down, then back up. Others of us (um, Lyman) only exercise once or twice a year, if that. As long as you have an average level of fitness, are in no terrible rush to summit, and have the right supplies and mental preparation, you will be able to complete and enjoy the Pura Pasar Agung trail. You will be in pain for a few days afterwards, but a good kind of pain.
We then drove back to the house, met the others in our group who’d done some shopping and got dinner at a nice Indian restaurant. Then we all went to bed early because, to catch our flights, we had another 2:30 AM wakeup call for the next day!
NOTE: Since we wrote this section of the blog, Mount Agung has erupted, for the first time since the 1970s! We do not know if this might change which trails are usable going forward.
Day 11: Goodbye Bali, Hello Malaysia!
There are two types of people in the world: morning people, and people who haven’t yet ascended to the moral status of morning people. The Stones, whether by inclination or necessity, are morning people. We wake up before the sun almost every day.
But even for us, the last few days in Bali were challenging. For the day we hiked Lempuyang, it was a pre-6 AM wakeup, and a nearly-11 PM bedtime, then a 2:30 AM wakeup for Agung, and a 9 or 10 PM bedtime, then a 2:30 AM wakeup to drive to the airport on Day 11.
The one downfall to having an AirBnB in the interior was indeed the time to the airport. We had an early morning flight out of Bali to Malaysia. So we needed to wake up with time to load the cars, time to drive to the airport, time to get through security, etc. That meant losing a lot of sleep.
But, everybody did it. And even folks who weren’t naturally morning people managed to pull it off with admirable good humor and a stiff upper lip. Our rental car guy met us at the airport dropoff, we paid the fee for our accident, and just like that we were done. Easiest rental car dropoff we’ve ever had.
And, although perhaps one member of the Stone household was extremely worried that we would miss our flight due to “the delays that always happen” (coughLymancough), ultimately the whole group got their bags checked, tickets issued, and we boarded our flight to Kuala Lumpur with no problem.
After a layover in Kuala Lumpur to get lunch, we flew on to Penang, our destination in Malaysia. We picked up our bags, had smiles on our faces, went to exchange money…and then realized that one person who had packed a nice camera in his suitcase now had one less nice camera.
First we went to the AirAsia baggage people: they took no responsibility. However, they did give us documentary proof of the theft: they did an official re-weighing of the bag and found a weight differential versus the initial customs weight, and signed a form for us declaring as much. Then we went to the airport police and got an official police report explaining what had happened. Conveniently, we found a sticker on the opened bag telling us where it had been opened: the customs station in Kuala Lumpur. Needless to say, some Malaysian airport worker made himself an immoral bonus at our expense.
Somewhat surprisingly, the airport police did not make any attempt at extorting a bribe. They were clearly not highly motivated to file an official report, but they were helpful at making sure we at least got enough paperwork filed to make an insurance claim.
Trip Tip 50: If you’re flying with a camera, be aware of the stupidity of the rules. You cannot usually pack a laptop battery and a camera battery both in a carryon; the camera battery is supposed to be checked. But putting the camera itself in the bag apparently, so we’ve now learned, often leads to the bag being pulled out of the customs scanner and “hand searched” and, whoops, where’d the camera go?
Trip Tip 51: Shame on the low-quality Malaysian customs workers, the poor quality enforcement offered by AirAsia, and the ludicrously sparse coverage of Tune Protect Travel Insurance. Our friends were denied any payout under their travel insurance because apparently cameras are only protected against “snatch” not against theft from baggage. This, to be clear, is ludicrously stupid. If an insurance company won’t insure you against the very thing you want to insure against, i.e. lost baggage, then it’s worthless. Yes, these services are cheap, and you get cheap service for a cheap price, but this wasn’t “cheap” quality. We know exactly where the camera vanished. We know, broadly, who took it. We have confirmed documentation from the airline and the police verifying what happened. And yet, absolutely no payout. And sidenote: if you’re wondering why so few pictures are attributed to the Pugels, it’s because of low-quality Malaysian customs workers, the poor quality enforcement offered by AirAsia, and the ludicrously sparse coverage of Tune Protect Travel Insurance. Shame on them all. Join the modern world you backwards, bad-quality companies, and learn to provide the very most basic protections for the property your customers entrust you to transport.
Trip Tip 52: If you’re reading this, I urge you to express your sympathy for our friends to these companies and entities using whatever social media you have available. These firms deserve to have the economic value of their brand diminished if they cannot provide the services they advertise.
But the truth is, we were traveling with a good group. I don’t just mean fun, but folks who have their priorities straight. The couple whose camera was stolen took it with far more dignity than we Stones might have, and it didn’t spoil the rest of their trip. Folks, life is more than stuff, and vacation is more than the pictures: it’s the people, the only truly eternal things in our lives, that matter.
So, we made it out to the pickup area, hailed two Ubers, and headed to our AirBnB. Which is when we met Patrick. He was the Uber driver for one of the groups. That’s his business card at left; he gave it to us so we could post it on our travel blog.
Trip Tip 53: If you go to Penang and need a driver, hire Patrick Tham.
Patrick spoke good English, was very friendly, and was always early to pick us up at the arranged place. He’s an Uber driver, but also drives privately. But what was great was that even when we privately contracted him, he would enter the route into Uber, get the price quote, show it to us, and that’s what he would charge us. When we needed two cars, he found a second car and driver. We called Patrick for probably 75% of our transportation needs in Penang, and can highly recommend him.
Having met Malaysia’s best Uber driver, we were quickly taken to our hostel, called Magpie Residence. It is one block outside of the “historic area,” which means it’s basically in the historic area, but is about 25% cheaper per night. We went there because it had family-style rooms, was affordable, was well-reviewed and, most importantly of all, was 1 block away from the world’s greatest breakfast place, but we’ll get to that tomorrow.
Magpie Residence ended up being a good spot for us. The owner was very friendly, the rooms were comfortable and clean, and the location, while a long walk from the very core of historic Penang, nonetheless afforded us easy access to everything we wanted to see and do. The WiFi was a bit odd and dropped out sometimes, but other than that we had no complaints.
As soon as we were settled in, we headed back out to look for Penang’s legendary Hawker stalls and street food. And we found’em! About a 15 minute walk south of Magpie Residence, we found a street packed with Hawker stalls (we think it’s called Newlane on magazine road). Hawker food is a fusion of Chinese, Indian, and Malay food, sold at stalls that usually only do one or two different dishes. So you don’t go to one place and get a whole meal; you get food at 3 or 4 or 5 different stalls; the original street food.
Trip Tip 54: Eat as much street food as possible. Whenever you see it, if you have stomach space, stop and eat.
From there, we wandered deeper into historic Georgetown, and specifically to Little India. Some of the girls wanted to get henna done, so we set out to find somewhere that would do it!
Trip Tip 54: Henna in Little India is easy to find and very cheap. If you’re interested in having it done, this is the place to do it.
After a long day of travel, we headed back to Magpie to sleep, and to get ready for the next day’s adventure, something Ruth had been looking forward to for years.
Day 12: Back to School
When Ruth lived in Malaysia, she lived in the small town of Parit Buntar and taught in a predominantly Chinese school there. Parit Buntar is about 45 minutes east of Penang. Needless to say, her desire to revisit Parit Buntar was part of the motive for going to Penang, and her year living in the area was the way we learned about Penang in the first place.
So as we planned the trip, Ruth made sure to contact everybody she knew in the area to try and make sure we could see old friends and, if possible, do a day at the school. Malaysian schools teach English classes, so we were able to set up a time to do a 1-hour interactive session with about 60 or 80 of the students there.
But before we could do any of that, we needed breakfast, and breakfast meant roti chennai and teh tarik (pulled tea)!
We chose Magpie Residence for one extremely simple reason: it was the closest affordable hostel with good reviews to the world’s greatest breakfast place. One block down Jalan Argyll from Magpie Residence was Roti Chennai Jalan Transfer; which basically just means, “Chennai bread stand on Transfer Road.” Not very creative. But Ruth fell in love with this place when she lived in Malaysia, and would often wistfully speak of this specific Penang Roti Chennai… so we had to pick a place close to it.
Trip Tip 55: GO TO ROTI CHENNAI JALAN TRANSFER! For under $5 (and under $3 if you get the simplest options), you can get a hunk of chicken breast or thigh in a curry sauce (spice or mild), a fried egg, a cup of Malaysian-specialty “pulled” milk tea, and a roti. “Roti” means bread in languages from Malaysia to Turkey… but it refers to very different kinds of bread! Malaysian roti is a thin, almost papery, oily bread, stretchy but with a little bit of a crisp to it, and it’s amazing. And the very best roti chennai, which just means “Chennai-style Roti” so roti with curried chicken, is at Roti Chennai Jalan Transfer. Seriously. It’s the best, it’s the cheapest, and they run out of food by about 11 AM so get there early. This place is incredibly popular even though it is literally just a big fry-cooker stand on the side of the road with some plastic tables. Your taxi driver or uber driver will probably know where it is.
By the time we were about done eating, we looked over and, lo and behold, there was our driver Patrick, getting his own breakfast before our scheduled departure! Again: this roti place is awesome, even the locals are big fans.
So we loaded up in two cars: Patrick’s and his brothers, and drove out to Parit Buntar, about 45 minutes. Again, guys, Patrick’s prices were totally fair, and incredibly cheap.
When we arrived at the school our activities began!
We were greeted by former school teachers and administrators who had been Ruth’s close friends and mentors when she lived here, but who had sense retired. Nonetheless, they were still involved with the school, and were proud to show us around, and especially to point out new construction since Ruth had left: a new cafeteria, a huge awning over the interior courtyard, and, most gratifyingly to the weak and over-heated American volunteer teachers for the day…
A brand new air-conditioned lecture hall!
Ruth was a little disappointed to see this because, by reducing the suffering, it reduced the adventure. But the rest of the group was overjoyed to not be running around doing activities in blazing heat.
Our plan was simple. Students from several different grade levels or forms would show up. We would divide them up into 4 groups, one for each couple. Each couple, meanwhile, would plan an English-language-learning activity to engage the group they had for about 10 or 15 minutes at a time. We would each focus on a different kind of language usage, in a different context — “English in Action” is what we called it. After the time was up, the groups would rotate. We would grade each group on performance and enthusiasm, and then declare a winner at the end, who would get candy as a reward.
The Troyers did a “progressive storytelling” activity, where they assigned some random attributes that had to be included in a story, then had the kids take turns adding a word or phrase to tell a cohesive story. The results were as ridiculous as you might expect. The Pugels did catchphrase, making the kids think about ways to circumlocute around words that they might not always know. The Whelchels scripted a short film beforehand, and had each group act it out, delivering lines and telling a story together. Then, Zach assembled the video for each group and edited it on the spot. Finally, we had bought a small-but-powerful Bluetooth speaker, on which we played some Frank Sinatra, and we taught the kids a few basic swing dancing steps, encouraging them to work on active vocabulary and listening comprehension while doing other activities. They were bashful at first, but got into the dancing eventually.
Capping it off with a dramatic awards ceremony, all the kids had a blast, and the whole group enjoyed getting to share, for at least a moment, what Ruth’s life was like while she lived in Malaysia. Plus, it’s nice to visit a foreign country and get to have an experience that actually gets you interacting with locals.
From there, we loaded up into some of the teachers’ cars, and were taken to the house of Ruth’s former principal. There, we were in for a real treat: steamboat (AKA hotpot)! Usually only cooked for big family occasions or holidays, our hosts put together a big traditional Chinese feast. Basically, for this dish, you get some water and oil boiling, and then just dump in tons of stuff: fish, shrimp, beef, noodles, veggies, you name it, it all goes in.
That’s mantis shrimp on the left, and, yep, a whole fish of some kind on the right. And it was all awesome.
Trip Tip 56: As we’ve said before eat everything! But this is especially the case if you’re lucky enough to be invited into somebody’s house to eat: you’re probably going to be served different stuff than at a restaurant, and so it’s an even better chance to get some of the local flavor!
Trip Tip 57: If you have any local contacts at all, try to find time to meet up with them! Having friends locally is one of the most fun parts of traveling: you get to have a local’s help exploring a new place or a new culture. And hopefully, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to return the favor someday.
We ate for a long time. Then, as it was our host’s birthday as well (have we mentioned how incredibly hospitable they were?), we sang happy birthday to him. But as the afternoon passed, it was eventually time for us to go. So we called up Patrick, he came to get us, and we drove on back in to Penang!
We stayed inside for a while to cool off, rest, and avoid the worst heat of the day. But as evening fell, it was time for another adventure.
A fish massage.
There are these fish that will eat dead skin off your feet. So we went to find a place that had some. We did… and the results were amazing:
Trip Tip 58: Do the fish pedicure. Even if you hate pedicures. It’s weird and strange feeling and an experience you absolutely should not miss.
After that experience, we were beat.
Day 13: The Beginning of the End
Vacations can’t go on forever, and vacations where you have to coordinate schedules between 4 very busy couples definitely can’t go on forever. Day 13 (by the Stones’ counting; others’ travel began on different days) was the day the Pugels had to depart. But, not wanting to let the time be wasted, the group set out early to make sure we’d fully explored Penang!
And in the process, we found the most amazing drink ever!!
It explodes and you drink it. Isn’t that crazy? We thought it was crazy.
Walking through Georgetown, we were sweating profusely in the incrediblly oppressive heat… but also just struck with how well-deserved its status as a tourism mecca is.
It’s kinda grungy, yes, but it’s also beautiful in its way. That picture at left is one of the “Clan Jetties,” piers built into the water with floating stores and houses, traditionally occupied by Chinese clans.
Trip Tip 59: The Clan Jetties are some of the best cheap shopping in Penang. They’re selling tons of different souvenirs, and usually at great prices. The story on why is one that seems to have some basis in history, but maybe some mythology too. Basically, during British colonial rule, different laws and taxes applied to vessels on the water vs. on the land… and specifically, there were no excise taxes for products sold “on the water.” Well, some clever Chinese families set up floating houses apparently and ran shops where everything they sold was on the water, so tax exempt. And allegedly, the Clan Jetties to this day have some kind of tax arrangement that helps them charge lower prices. Allegedly. The prices did seem low, but I don’t know if the mythology is true. It’s a great place to pick up cheap batik fabric.
Trip Tip 60: Batik (pronounced bought-ay, apparently) fabric is a UNESCO-recognied heritage product of southeast Asia, so well worth buying. UNESCO primarily recognizes the Indonesian variant of batik fabric, but Malaysia has a rich tradition of fabric production and printing as well. You’ll know the batik fabric by its patterns: Malaysian batik is usually brightly colored floral patterns. Indonesian batik tends to be more geometric. Traditionally, batik was a cotton fabric, and you can still find cotton batik in most stores. But it will be substantially pricier than synthetic-fiber batik fabric. The cheapest stuff is all synthetics, though, to be clear, even expensive batik is fairly cheap by American standards: I think the most we paid was maybe $10 or $15 for a really high-end package that we could verify as cotton and had a pattern we really liked?
Trip Tip 61: You can haggle almost anywhere in historic Georgetown. You may fail as their prices are often already very competitive, but it’s fine to make the attempt.
After grabbing lunch at a hawker hall near the Clan Jetties, we headed on back to Magpie Residence so the Pugels could pack up and have Patrick drive them to the airport.
But after the Pugels left, the day continued on! We rested for a few hours to let it cool down outside, but then we had big plans for dinner. Two of Ruth’s favorite students from her time in Malaysia had grown up and gone to college, but were in town when we were, so we arranged to meet up with them at a huge, and distinctively Chinese, hawker area, the Sungai Pinang Hawker Center.
Trip Tip 62: Sungai Pinang Hawker Center is fantastic: tons of options, reasonable prices, and lots of stuff you won’t see at other hawker centers. We highly recommend it even though it’s a fair distance outside of the core Georgetown historic area.
Basically we just told the girls who we were meeting to pick out all the food for us. They did, and it was great. They led us around picking all sorts of stuff that we did not recognize or know what it was, and some that we did know, placing orders at tons of different stalls so we could try a huge variety. As the pictures above show, at one stall you actually pick out raw meat and they cook it on the spot, including cuttlefish!
But the best thing we ate was stingray.
Trip Tip 63: Eat some stingray if you can! It’s delicious; almost like the flavor of lobster, but with a consistency more salmon. And it’s big too: one stingray is practically a meal. While we were sad at first to eat even an extremely-distant “relative” of our beloved manta ray from Bali… we stopped being sad as soon as we tasted it. We will now be on the lookout for stingray any time we travel.
It was a great evening to hang out and catch up with people who, for Ruth, were old friends, and to enjoy the amazing food scene of Penang. But it should be noted, two in our party were by this time struggling in terms of their digestive tolerance for Asian food… so they sought out a bastion of Americana: Domino’s. For shame, Zach and Brian, for shame.
After we were completely stuffed, we said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, called an Uber, and headed back to Magpie for a relaxed evening, and to pack, since both the Troyers and the Whelchels departed the next day.
Day 14: And Then There Were Two
Day 14 saw two more couples leave. But, not to be deterred, we started the day off strong. We’d had roti chennai every morning up to that point… so we introduced a bit of diversity, and went and got roti pisang, which means roti with bananas fried into it. Then we decided to go on an adventure. Penang has a huge Buddhist temple called Kek Lok Si, which has been incrementally expanded over the last century, such that now it is supposedly the biggest Buddhist temple in Malaysia.
It was impressive as we approached.
And when we entered inside, there were some remarkable shrines and good photo ops, and some interesting architecture.
But the really striking thing… was that the entire temple was completely commercialized from start to finish, with a gift shop selling random stuff at literally every corner. Some pictures of things they were selling:
Every new chamber or hall we entered had another gift shop. Now, granted, it totally achieved its effect, and the 6 of us did a fair amount of last-minute souvenir shopping, getting gifts for friends and family. But the commercialization just felt like it really cheapened the experience.
Probably the most interesting part of the whole temple wasn’t even the temple… it was when we found a huge line of ants. This ant-column crossed the whole courtyard. We probably spent half an hour creating obstacles for the ants to see how they would re-form their ant-highways. We got some weird looks from other people passing by.
Trip Tip 64: Kek Lok Si is not worth it. If you’ve got a morning free in Penang, don’t spend it here. Try more shops and food in Georgetown. Go up Penang Hill. Visit a museum. Kek Lok Si will disappoint you.
From there, we had to head back to the Magpie Residence and get the Troyers sped on their way.
The Whelchels and Stones headed off for some lunch in search of Nasi Pataya, an egg-and-rice dish Ruth had been craving. We ended up finding the most cheerful Asian lunch dish we’d ever encountered. The cook had written little messages and drawn a star with as miley face on our food! Our smiling entrees helped console us amidst the sudden loneliness of not having all our travel buddies around anymore.
And then, alas, the Whelchels also packed up their things and, shortly after the Troyers departed, Patrick came again to get Zach and Sharayah.
After the Whelchels left, it was just Team Stone again. But we wouldn’t have long to be alone! Ruth’s students were around again, so we met up with them for ice cream down the street from Magpie!
Ice cream was a relief in the heat, and, again, it’s just a lot of fun to reconnect with people across continents, especially these girls, who Ruth was particularly close with when she was teaching in Parit Buntar. Then, we headed back into Georgetown to explore and enjoy the city for one last evening before we left.
We had dinner in Little India again, then went back to Magpie to pack up. The end of the vacation was coming. :(
Day 16: The End
We woke up on our last day determined to soak our remaining time for all it was worth. Ruth’s students had recommended us to a place that did, supposedly, the best breakfast in Georgetown, with traditional Chinese toast. We waited in line, excited for this unique experience, finally got a table, got the toast… and it was more-or-less just toast. Don’t get us wrong, it was pretty good toast, and some eggs and maybe another side item… but it was not hugely different from toast you’d get anywhere. Well… anywhere in the U.S. It could be that toast isn’t super common in Penang, in which case, the craze over this breakfast place would make more sense.
But then we made a decision. We were going to, in the 60 minutes we had before Patrick would pick us up to go to the airport, run to the Clan Jetties and buy a huge quantity of batik, then run to Little India to buy bulk spices from a wholesaler there. We had an idea maybe we’d sell nicely wrapped little spice-containers… but we didn’t quite research the customs rules enough on food products to make that one happen yet. Instead, we’ve made cute little spice packages for relatives for Christmas.
Whatever the case, we practically ran across Georgetown, in the sweltering heat, to the Clan Jetties, to get fabric. Then we ran back across to Little India for the spices, looking for spices that are harder to find in the US.
Successful, we then ran back to Magpie… and along the way realized we were hungry again! So we stepped over to Roti Chennai Jalan Transfer for maybe the 7th time that trip… and were so excited to find that they still had two more servings of Roti Chennai left. Having cleaned them out, we savored our last roti chennai in Malaysia.
Rushing back to Magpie, we threw our stuff in bags, and, while sad to leave, were happy to see our by-now close friend Patrick.
We got to the airport in the nick of time. The Penang airport is really slow on departures, we were checking bags, and the ticketing process was suffering from technical problems. Really, we should have left an hour earlier… but then how would we have bought 5 kilos of spices and 20 yards of batik fabric? HOW?
After making some dubiously ethical line-cutting moves and pulling the “I’m an idiot American please save me” card on the airline workers, we got to our gate just as they began boarding our seats.
Our first flight was to Singapore. We were pumped. Singapore’s airport has the world’s longest indoor slide. We’d missed it the first time through, we thought, because, as you recall, we’d been unable to clear security in the time we wanted to. This time, we would not be deterred. So we got off our plane and immediately checked in to our international flights, cleared security, and asked the folks at the information desk to please direct us to the world’s longest slide.
They informed us, oh, the slide?
It’s before security.
We were heartbroken, especially Ruth. In great sadness, we boarded our flight to Dubai, comforting ourselves with lots of movies and high-quality Emirates airplane food. After a very brief Emirates layover, we transferred through the absurdly intense new security required at some airports to connect to the US, and were homeward bound.
Finally, we made it.
Appendices
This post is one part narrative (to assist our aging memories), one part travel guide, as anybody who read our Peru post knows. So here, we’ll go through the logistics.
How did you get your friends to do this?
Well, we have awesome friends who needed basically no convincing. In fact, we had big FOMO because they had all gone with tons of other friends to Iceland last summer while we were in Peru. They invited us to Iceland about a month after we’d bought nonrefundable tickets to Peru… so we missed Iceland, and resolved that we would not miss the next group trip. So about a week after they got back from Iceland, we began informing our posse that summer 2017 was reserved. We all had different work schedules, vacation times, budgets… coordinating it all was hard. But the benefit of lifelong friendships is deep social capital which creates necessary trust that enables efficient coordination and cost sharing!
How did you decide where to go?
At first we wanted to go somewhere nobody had been. But our crowd was extremely well-traveled. The map below shows just the countries I was easily able to recall somebody had been to in red, and I think there were others as well. Then you have to cross of countries that one group member or another felt uncomfortable going to due to health, safety, war, or political reasons (political reasons being mostly Lyman, since he works for the U.S. government and must report all personal travel and have it approved), all marked in green. Then in blue is Latin America: there was an early group consensus that we were not keen on doing Latin America, not least since we had just done 2 weeks in Peru. Then in black, you’ve got countries that were just too inconvenient to get to on our schedules, or too expensive.
So we’re left with eastern Europe, Northern Europe, the Arab Peninsula, East Asia, New Zealand, Morocco, and Portugal.
So we got creative. Initially, we had a serious discussion of the Azores… but then it was decided they looked like a B- version of Hawaii. Then Lyman made an aggressive and protracted effort to pconvince the group that we should go to the small, post-soviet republic of Georgia, partly on the basis of extremely cheap flights that were then available: the group was not convinced (Lyman here: because they have awful taste!). We costed out several iteneraries to New Zealand, but none managed to hit the price threshold we needed. Eastern Europe was briefly discussed, then dropped. Portugal’s wine country seemed promising, but nobody was enthused. Finally, it became clear that this criterion-based method wouldn’t work. We needed somebody who was passionate about a trip plan to pitch it and persuade everyone (Lyman here: somebody was passionate about one country earlier in the cycle, *ahem*, but apparently the group is prejudiced against countries with the same name as U.S. states). So Ruth gave the group her hard-sell on Malaysia. Beautiful beaches in the Perhentian Islands, the jungles of Borneo, world-class food culture in Penang, deep personal ties, etc. The group was sold.
So we started planning a Malaysia trip. But we realized very quickly that there were tons of things we wanted to do in Malaysia (overwater bungalow! Hulu Cavern! Penang food! Elephant sanctuary! Perhentian Island snorkeling!) and they were all just too far apart. There was no one location that every couple could get excited enough about to justify the time and money. But we were resolved to make Malaysia happen, so we all bought tickets into various Malaysian or near-Malaysian airports.
Then we realized, (doh!) we hadn’t considered Bali! It’s a small island with tons of accommodations and tons of stuff to do. Mountains! Jungle! Beaches! Snorkeling! Luxury! Cheap!
So we bought el-cheapo airfares into Bali. This last-minute change created some costs for the group. But it was so worth it. As far as we know, everybody in the group got to check off almost all the things they were excited about.
Planning a trip like this takes friendships where you can speak frankly about what you want and don’t want. We did not want to go to a big city. Some folks did not want to do a grungy developing country. Some folks didn’t want Europe. Some folks didn’t want to do lots of driving, while some folks wanted to see a whole country. I honestly don’t think there were any two people who 100% agreed the entire time on everything they wanted. But by communicating clearly, we got it done.
We also kept thorough documentation. Any time anybody proposed a country, Lyman would plan out some example itineraries, costing out airfares, lodging, activities, transportation costs, etc, and he would produce hour-by-hour schedules. The end result was an infinite cascade of Google Sheets documents comparing dozens of itineraries across a range of metrics: cost, typical climate conditions, time spent in “core vacation activities,” time spent in air transit, time spent driving in country, etc. This all helped clarify what we would do… but in the end, we selected Bali and Malaysia, and while we had planned example schedules, we assigned each couple a day to plan in Bali, and decided on the final schedule the night before each day. Detailed scheduling in advance isn’t about binding yourself to a specific set of activities, but about helping you clarify what will be possible to accomplish, what the tradeoffs are, and what things will cost.
So, how much did it cost?
We wanted to keep costs reasonable. Each couple had different budget constraints, and multiple couples were very emphatic at needing budgetary costs to come in around $2000 or less for the whole trip. However, it’s impossible to estimate a single-couple cost for this trip, since we had numerous shared costs. So I’ll try to estimate total costs.
As you can see, our trans-oceanic airfares were the lion’s share of the cost, with local AirAsia flights making up a meaningful share of the remainder. Had we been less constrained by individual schedules, we could have gotten cheaper flights; off-season weekday flights to Malaysia routinely run for $650 or less on full-service airlines, but none of us were able to get ticket prices that good. I should also note, some of us used airline points to cover a portion of these costs, so the number I’m showing exaggerates the total cost paid in terms of actual cash. That is, I’m converting airline points to dollar value here.
So let’s drop the airfares and look at our other costs.
As you can see, the big expenditure categories were health, food, and the group lodging in Bali. The health spending includes necessary vaccines, pre-purchased antibiotics, probiotics, immune-boosters, motion sickness meds, allergy meds, bug sprays, other bug repellents, medical expenses incurred in-country, etc. Health and wellness costs are a substantial part of any responsible and comfortable travel. Food obviously is large, but truth be told, ~$800 for 8 adults over two weeks of vacation is not absurd. We ate well and enjoyed ourselves! And truth be told… given DC food prices and our eating preferences, the Stones very possibly spent less on food than we would have had we stayed in DC for those two weeks; we probably saved something like $25-$75 on food costs by going on vacation to a much-cheaper country.
Then we come to lodging. The Bali lodging is a big cost, as were other lodging purchases. But as you saw, the Bali lodging was very much part of the fun. We wouldn’t have had it any other way! And per couple, it came to about $50 per night… which, um, that’s super cheap for a vacation resort that you have all to yourself!
Local transport costs are substantial as well. Between car rentals, gas, Ubers, taxis, and paying for the damage we did to our car, the whole group paid about $1,000 in ground transport. That’s nothing to sneeze at! On the other hand, that comes to $250 per couple for two weeks. An average 2 weeks of local transport for the Stones adds up to about $150-$200 in economic costs once you include an imputation for mileage-specific car maintenance and depreciation. So for us, the net cost to this local transport was just $50-$100.
Activity fees show up substantially as well: that’s core vacation costs, like going snorkeling, paying admission to the Monkey Forest or Kek Lok Si, or hiring the guide for Mt. Agung. It adds up to about $700, or roughly $175 per couple. Again, it’s important to consider the baseline. We would probably spend something like $5-$25 on entertainment in a 2 week period anyway: going to a movie or some other activity with a friend, or buying something we wanted. Finally, we get to souvenirs, an expense that’s entirely optional, and which I think it’s fair to treat as 100% a marginal increase in cost.
So when we adjust these costs for the baseline of what we would have spent at home, here are the new bars:
The net cost comes to about $13,000, or about $3,300 per couple, on average.
That’s an expensive vacation! And 2/3 of it was airfares!
On the other hand, a cheap 2 week stay at Myrtle Beach in July for 8 adults wanting 4 rooms would run you at least $4,000-$6,000 in lodging, have more expensive rooms, etc. When you add up all the costs, an 8-adult Myrtle Beach trip is probably at least $8,000 for 2 weeks, maybe as high as $10,000. The story is similar throughout many conventional American vacation destinations. Put straightforwardly: going on a 2-week vacation with 8 adults costs money, and it’s hard to do it super-cheaply because not everybody will agree on which things are best to skimp on. All in all, keeping it to the cost we did seemed pretty good to us.
But doesn’t Southeast Asia give people food poisoning/general health questions?
Yes, there are health risks! We got vaccines updated. We bought multiple forms of bug repellent (you need DEET, and the repellent-bracelets are okay too!). We even bought new clothes that were more jungle-climate-friendly. We stocked up on antihistamines, antibiotics, stuff to help you digest, stuff to help you adjust to timezone changes, stuff to help you with altitude, stuff to help you sleep, all sorts of health stuff. It costs money.
And even with that prep, people got sick. Two or three people got digestive issues, one quite badly. One person got an ear infection. Several of us felt crummy at various times. Luckily, we had brought medicines. Got sinus problems? We brought mucinex, sudafed, multiple antihistamines, etc. Got digestive problems? We got drugs for that. Got bacterial stomach stuff? We got drugs for that. And the healthcare systems in Bali and Penang are fairly good and extremely cheap, so whatever we didn’t have, we could get locally without a problem.
We discussed some safe-eating rules in Trip Tips 11 and 12… but really, just understand: changing 12 time zones, entering a totally different climate, eating unfamiliar food, you are likely to feel like total crap at least part of the time. Rest as needed, don’t overbook yourself, and bring lots of your preferred medicines with you. We highly recommend taking Airborne tablets, antihistamines, and sleeping pills at least the first few days to ease your adjustment.
We did not do any anti-malarials, nor the Japanese encephalitis vaccine, which is crazy expensive for a fairly rare disease.
Fin.
