Bali - I think I will just let the pictures do most of the talking. I really didn't get a great feeling for Indonesia because the transportation system for travelers is pretty much non-existent, the country is a series of very diverse islands and it seems much of it is very crowded. Spirituality, Black Magic, Voo Doo and a bunch of other weird stuff seems to be infused into daily life and people say it takes a lifetime to understand just a little bit of the real Bali. Me? Kind of spooked out with all of the carvings everywhere of mean scary creature gods. Very few of them are happy types and so much of the garbage around is from the thousands of offerings left for these gods...everywhere. You see people lighting incense, sprinlkling holy liquids, making ritual offeriengs and putting them into the street, wrapping the carved statues in fabrics and just doing a lot of activities I don't understand. Some towns are Muslim but most of the places I visited are predominately Hindu and faith and ritual is a part of everyday life.
I kept seeing people with grains of rice stuck on their foreheads and neck so I asked an artist painting a picture in a gallery why he had the rice stuck on his face and when did he put it there. Kind of funny really - he looked at me and when he realized what I had asked , he was perplexed. He told me he wasn't sure why he did it, but he did it every morning for luck and was worried to take the chance not to do it. Simple story but I think it reflected a lot of Bali and Lombengan that I saw. The belief in the dark and the light is strong and the evil spirits are truly feared. All so complicated and spooky to me. It seems the first few days everyone I met was either a 'healer', an author, or someone who had come to Bali to either be healed or to study how to become more spiritual. The book  ''Eat, Pray, Love' has quite the following and there are many middle aged women here on a spiritual quest emulating the women in that book. Yoga and meditation, ashrams and retreats are everywhere and it just wasn't my thing.
The physical beauty of the country side is significant. I hired a motorcycle driver, well actually I hired the bellboy, bellman???, from one of the hotels I was at as he asked me if I needed a drive somewhere. I told him I did want to see the island and wanted to hire a guide. He jumped at the chance to take a holiday day from the hotel and drive me around. Nice man, 46 with two high school kids and a stay at home wife', struggling to pay the kids tuitions so I was happy to give him my business. I told him I just wanted to drive around and see as much of the island as I could in one day as there are no scheduled buses. They have mini vans that troll the roads looking for passengers which means nonstop negotiations as well as the inability to be sure you are going to arrive anywhere specific as the van goes where the crowd wants and usually not until full.....anyway, back to my guy. He was so eager he told me he came at 5 am even though the plan was for around 8. Long story....as always with me.....every day more long stories....turns out he hadn't been to many places in Bali and also didn't know how to drive a bike very well so we ended up seeing most of the sights together for our fist time and with me walking up the steepest hills because the bike couldn't make it as he wasn't so great at shifting.
In a type of heritage town we stumbled upon a large crowd gathered - a large crowd of men, up in the Temple compound. I could hear roosters crowing and even though they have truly been the bane of my existence this trip, even I would not have wished upon them what I saw. My guide told me it was probably a c*** fight and he stopped in his tracks in the town street and wouldn't go any further. He told me it was a dangerous place and to be careful of the knives!!!! I told him I needed to see what the action was about so I trundled up to the gate, paid my 5000 Rupiahs and went to my second c*** fight of my life. I had been to one in Mexico years ago, but there they simply sharpen the talons of the birds. In this little town, in the middle of nowhere, were hundreds of men, circled around a big ring, yelling and shaking their hands in a weird voodoo way - cheering on the bird they bet on. The birds, as much as I could see, had nasty shanks attached to their legs and they fought to the death, match after match. Before the match, individuals would come and feel the birds, sizing up their readiness and it seemed the owners really loved their roosters: stroking and chatting them up. They would force them to meet other roosters right before it was their time in the ring, I guess getting them riled up and ready to go. The money that was flying around was ridiculous, considering the wages in this country. I was snapping pictures everywhere and getting growls and dirty looks from some, leers and hisses from others and thought nothing of that. I walked around the crowd and found a big betting area - a tarp with squares painted on to make a type of roulette table and the betting there was fierce with all different styles of money folding and placement on the tarps. When I returned to my guide with my report - he then told me it was highly illegal to gamble or have c*** fights in Indonesia. In fact - the prison sentence is 4 years if caught......nice......no wonder pictures were not welcome and in fact, non-players were not welcome in any fashion. I just thought they weren't up for my sunny disposition!!!!!
Back onto the bike - Bali is a volcanic island and there are some pretty steep roadways around the volcano - perfect countryside to travel by motorcycle, but perhaps one with more poser would have been better. Beautiful sights but incredibly hot and humid. Everytime we stopped in traffic it was melting hot.
Most of the time on BaIi I simply chilled out at the special little place I lucked upon in Sanur. Flashback's - a guesthouse with only a few rooms around a lovely secluded courtyard with pool. Think Melrose Place, even though the others residents who spend a lot of time living and leaving there, hated that cheesy term for their little slice of heaven. It was really nice to be part again of a little community of interesting characters and I made a few good friends again which led to this place being my Bali highlight.