We arrived in Bali just the night before a flight to Maumere to catch our diving boat:
Sadly, once we left Bali, we arrived in one of the crappy parts of indonesia where sadly some low life bastard managed to steal my travel pouch with my passport, main wallet, green card, and all the good stuff. Worse, because the next thing I did was go on the dive boat, I didn't realize this until about a week later :(
I will save you the long story of how incredibly hard it was to get a new emergency passport in a single day before a 4 day weekend and our flight to South Korea after we were departing Bali, but a lot of stars had to align for this to work (it did). As I write this, I'm back home and still dealing with replacing green card, passports and so forth. All in all almost $1000 in paperwork fees (thank you especially to the US government for charging $450 for a replacment green card, while I paid $2 for a replacement pilot's license).
After our excellent diving trip on the Waow, we disembarked in Bali for a couple of days there before flying out to South Korea. As we were heading out to visit a village, I got an SMS from the consulate that my overnight passport had arrived one day early (it arrived despite the national holiday), so we altered our plans to go pick it up:
Next, it was time for suckling pig lunch :)
Next, we went to Bali Bird Park again. We had gone before, but it was much fun with nice birds and worth going again:
We especially liked the friendly cockatoo that likes to be scratched:
They also had a Komodo Dragon and it was feeding day:
Next, we went to the zoo closeby
We could take pictures with animals:
We had an elephant ride after being assured that the elephants were being treated right, but in hindsight I regret it a bit. I'm pretty sure that their elephants were indeed not treated that well and had been separated soon after birth and were now living a mostly unhappy life in the zoo.
happy birds
poor thing was just begging
A bit of feeding:
BBQ for dinner
The next morning, we enjoyed our Uma by Como hotel:
Next, we went back to the Monkey Forest, just because it's fun:
Later, we went to a waterfall hike, and visit another temple (Pura Puncak Penulisan):
We then went to the volcano rim with a bit of a better view, lots of kids celebrating end of school:
those poor pigs were probably not going for a joy ride
Next, went to see a coffee place:
And time for lunch:
Then we went to see some art museums:
Then, the day was over, so we had time for dinner before going to the airport:
lots of manta shrimp to choose from
A random picture I took, cigarettes are good for you! (well, except for the bad drawings on the packs):
everyone smokes in Indonesia, despite this
Anyway, after this we went to the airport early for our night flight to South Korea, and I had to chat with immigration to get an on the spot exit stamp in my brand new emergency passport. While I was told by several people that this would not be possible, it turned out to be possible just fine, they simply looked up the copy of my passport they had when I entered the country, matched the dates and made sure I indeed did not stay more than 30 days. They then wrote something in my passport and let me out.
While we had a good time in Bali, having my 2 wallets, most of my credit cards, my passport and green card stolen in Maumere really sucked. Getting those replaced cost me almost $1000, not counting the time spent :(
