LifeInContrast.com

Denise and I went to Bali last week, with our friends Lonnie and Eve. We visited Ubud, the artistic heart of Bali, and watched a traditional Barong dance, and feasted on world-class food. We also took a chance on Nusa Lembongan, an island off the southeast coast of the Bali mainland. The [...]

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We just got back from an epic beach trip to Batu Karas with six of our friends (who are also teachers). It took me months to plan and involved considerable stress and negotiation. In the end it was totally worth it, as we spent four full days and had a blast.
Batu Karas is [...]

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In the second half of this week, we’ll take the annual trip to Singapore.  It’s nice, because we get a couple of free days off work.  And we’ll get to have some food that you can’t get in Bandung, like good Indian curries, Middle Eastern kebabs and falafel, great Chinese dishes, etc.  And I believe [...]

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A couple of weeks ago we began our adventure in Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) by flying into Banjarmasin, the largest city. We discovered to our dismay that there were NO flights at all to Pangkalan Bun, the starting point for the jungle river journey that we were planning. The only other [...]

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We’ve got a lot of traveling planned in the next few months.
Next week we’ll head to Kalimantan (aka Borneo) to take a multi-day journey up the river on a boat, into the heart of the jungle!  Hopefully we’ll see crocodiles, orangutans, gibbons, and perhaps even clouded leopards.  We also hope to see some of the [...]

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Several months ago, while visiting the beach towns of Pangandaran and Batu Karas on the south coast of Java, we learned about the legend of Nyi Roro Kidul, the goddess who rules those seas. In the beach town of Pelabuhan Ratu, a local hotel has a room set aside for her, outfitted entirely in [...]

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So we finally took some time off work and went on a proper vacation last week, to Bali (which many people don’t realize is part of Indonesia).
First stop was Ubud, the cultural and artistic heartland of Bali. In Ubud we saw many mesmerizing paintings, impressive stone- and wood-carvings, metalwork, and jewelry. We watched [...]

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Just got back from the magical land of Singapore yesterday, and MAN is it different from Bandung. So much cleaner, more efficient, more entertaining, convenient, easier to communicate… and yet… a little “colder” than Bandung. Not colder in the temperature sense. In fact it was super-hot and we spent most of [...]

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Hello 13-hour flights! Yeah! Whew, that was a tough one. They had the air conditioning going full blast the whole flight. The seats were different on this Airbus, but our conclusion is that they were overall less comfortable. Slept in fits. Oh well.

Denise and I are [...]

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