Category: Uncategorized
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Bali, Borneo and Beyond
Post No. 5: If it’s Sunday, this must be Seminyak. Sunday, March 19, 2023 Yesterday (Saturday) we left Ubud for Seminyak, a beach resort town located on the southern tip of Bali. Our stay was geared to avoid being on Bali during Nyepi on March 22. Nyepi is the Balinese Day of Silence. It’s a…
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Bali, Borneo & Beyond
If it’s Thursday and Friday, it’s still Ubud. Thursday, March 16. The first item on today’s itinerary was to visit the establishment of Mr. John Hardy, a Canadian who set up a jewelry-making business in Bali (with a store in Soho). We saw the many artisans creating works of silver and gold out of wax…
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Bali, Borneo & Beyond
Tuesday, Wednesday: This must be Bali Tuesday, March 14. Last night, after dinner at “The Genius Cafe”, we took our last stroll of Singapore. They take this 20% greenery stuff seriously, viz., Arriving in Denpasar, Bali, in Indonesia, some difficulty with the Customs Declaration. The online system was not user-friendly, and some of our phones…
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Bali, Borneo and Beyond
If it’s Saturday, Sunday and Monday, this must still be Singapore. Saturday, March 11. Saturday morning, a short walk over the Cavanagh Bridge to the Asian Civilizations Museum. The most striking things are (1) the wealth and breadth of Asian culture and artistic expression, and (2) our abysmal ignorance of it. Each exhibit would give…
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Bali, Borneo & Beyond
If it’s Thursday and Friday, this must be Singapore Thursday, March 9. The 18-hour flight on EVA Airlines went quite smoothly. We watched the sun begin to come up over Taiwan. On the descent into Singapore, the in-flight announcement was careful to note that we shouldn’t dare bring any weed or other substances into the…
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Bali, Borneo and Beyond
Preview Okay, fellow travelers, wanderlust has kicked in again. I turns out that Stef’s high school classmate, Ellen, organizes tours to lots of places in Asia. She posted on Facebook about a tour (Trails of Indonesia/Asian Odysseys) planned for this month to Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and we signed on. Till now, we’ve never been…
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“The Antidote to Civilization”
From the Sublime to the……Self-Indulgent? When we last left Stan and Stef, they were taking their leave of the Loire Valley, the epitome of sublime. Currently at Club Med Les Michès, Playa Esmeralda, in the Dominican Republic. This is a Thanksgiving family trip organized by Stef’s daughter and son-in-law (Rachel and Neil). Other attendees are…
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Row your boat
At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers the whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in which the sound of the falling showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly—now here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the seamen along the whole west coast of a…
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Gently down the stream
The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks sprinkle…
Something to Declare 