Bali, beautiful Bali

I can't believe I'm actually in Bali.  It's one of those places that I've always heard about but never thought was possible to visit, like it's some exotic tropical place that only exists in books or something.  And I'm actually here.  I've always heard that it's amazing but nothing I heard even compares to how great it actually is.  

But before I get into that...Kuala Lumpur.  Michole and I spent all day on the 4th of July galavanting around the city.  First, we went to see the Kuala Lumpur Tower which is a super tall space needle thing...like with the observation deck towards the top and a revolving restaurant above that.  It was really cool because we could see the entire city from every angle from there.  After that, we went over to the Petronas Twin Towers.  They were amazing and ridiculously tall.  We couldn't go up to the top or anything, but we were able to stand downstairs and take nine million pictures.  There's actually a bridge connecting the two, and they call that the observation deck, which is where people are allowed to go, but the problem is that they only give out a certain number of tickets a day and if you don't get in line at 7:00 in the morning, then chances are you will not be going up to that bridge.  Hence why we just stood outside.  One day, hopefully, you will all be able to see the photos that we took but the last two computers I went to just decided not to acknowledge the presence of my camera.  This is why I continue to not be able to upload photos.  Maybe I'll get lucky next computer.  Anyway...after the photo op at the twin towers, we were hungry (me, hungry?  crazy!  :) ) so we decided, it being the 4th of July and all, that we would celebrate by eating lunch at McDonald's.  I mean, how much more American can you get?  So after an absolutely fabulous meal, we wound our way around the city and went to a bird park.  Yes, a bird park.  Don't worry...I have a million pictures of funny birds that will one day make it onto this blog.  It was actually really cool.  Apparently, it's the largest covered bird park in the world.  Most of the birds are free to just roam around, because the whole park is covered with like a net.  Some of the birds were in secluded areas, such as the ostriches.  Those things are mean.  And ugly.  We walked through a section called "Parrot World" that had some cages, but mostly just various types of parrots flying around your head.  We were almost dive bombed a few times, but it was entertaining.  Everywhere we walked there were peacocks.  Everywhere.  It's like they just threw a few peacocks around the entire park just to entertain you wherever you went.  We actually saw one with full plumage shown trying to woo a female, but I think he got intimidated by the massive amounts of people snapping photos of him.  Or was embarrassed that said female was zero percent interested and kept walking away.  Either way, he lowered the feathers.  But he was really pretty when he had all those feathers out.  (Again...photos will be posted hopefully soon.  After the bird park, we took the monorail to the train station (yes...we conquered the monorail in a foreign country.  Nice!) and bought our train tickets for July 12 when we'll be travelling by train from Kuala Lumpur to Thailand.  It's a long train ride, but we bought tickets for actual beds, so that'll be nice.  To round off our day in Kuala Lumpur and celebrate for the 4th of July just a bit more, we went to Hard Rock Cafe and ate our weight in BBQ.  It was heavenly.  We both figured if we were at home we'd be eating BBQ, so it was only appropriate.  

All in all, Kuala Lumpur was really nice.  It was a cool, modern city with definite Moorish influence in the architecture.  The people...not so awesome, but we were only there one day so it didn't really matter.  Although we will be sitting at the KL train station for eight hours on the 12th before our train takes off.  Eh...what can you do?  

On the 5th, we flew to Bali!!!  Ohhh Bali.  Where do I even begin?  Thanks to Michole's amazing hotel researching skills, we are staying at the Aston Bali on Tanjung Benoa (one of Bali's beaches) which happens to be a four star hotel.  And we're only paying $65 a night...total.  Which seems super expensive to us considering the less than $20 dollar nights that we've been paying for at most hotels, but we decided, hey...it's Bali.  Let's do it right.  The hotel is truly breathtaking.  Seriously...this is an amazing vacation spot.  It should be considered in the future for your vacations.  Our room is HUGE, the pool is HUGE (equipped with waterfalls and a swim up bar), and the beach is gorgeous.  It's really interesting because in the morning, the tide is really high and goes all the way up to where the lounge chairs are on the beach.  Around 3:30 every day, it recedes way back and leaves small lakes of water surrounded by sculpted sand dunes from the waves earlier in the day.  We walked through where the water receded and saw some random marine life that looked like it was just hoping that the makeshift lake it had been deposited in wouldn't recede.  I took a picture of a really cool starfish I saw.  You wanna see it?  Oh just kidding...computers here hate my camera.

I digress...so the hotel is really great.  We're having a blast.  The other night, they had a Japanese BBQ buffet outside by the pool which also featured traditional Balinese music.  Which was weird because I could have SWORN they were a mariachi band.  Balinese mariachis.  Crazy.  They walked around to tables like a mariachi band and the music actually sounded kind of similar.  Needless to say, Michole and I left our table just in time because they were walking towards it to serenade us.  Today we took a cab to Kuta Beach which is the more touristy beach.  We're glad we didn't stay there.  We like our quiet beach, but it was nice to go over there for the day.  Kuta is a surfer's paradise.  Really big constant swells that are all pipelines.  We just sat on the beach and stared at all the surfers for a good hour while trying to avoid the nine million people trying to sell us temporary tattoos and pineapples.  Then, we found a book store, which was the best find ever considering we had both run out of books and needed more.  I bought four and will probably finish all of them before I head home...lots of travelling time equals lots of reading time.  So we're back at the hotel, about to eat dinner, and then we'll probably go sit in one of the many sitting areas in the hotel and read.

We'll be at this hotel until July 9th, and then we head more inland to Ubud.  It's apparently the cultural hotspot of Bali.  It's surrounded by rice terraces and is rumored to be one of the most beautiful places on earth...so we hear from the people here.  Who probably haven't seen much of earth.  But they are basically the happiest people I've ever seen.  Always with huge smiles on their faces and more than willing to help you with anything.  They are by far my favorite of people that I have encountered on this trip.  Anyway, we'll be in Ubud for three nights and then on the 12th, back to Kuala Lumpur to an 8 hour wait at the train station.       

Again, I really hope to get some pictures up here soon.  Hold tight!  Other than that, we're still having an amazing time.  I can't believe we've already been gone for three weeks.  I miss you all and hope all is well!