DAY 5 Today being Nyepi Day - Balinese Hindu New Year begins with a full day of silence, between the hours of midnight 10 March until 6am 12 March all forms of activities that permeates artificial light and creates noise is strictly forbidden except to meet basic human needs.
So today it was a good day to recharge, laze around , swim, more lazing more swimming, it gave us a chance to meet others staying at the hotel that you would not normally have time to speak to so this was nice and we decided that once a year we should all have a day of silence to do nothing.
The restaurant at the hotel was open for meals , we opted for the night buffet and just managing with poolside service all day...darn it was hard ......!!!!!!!
It felt strange not to hear traffic, the beeps of taxi horns, or music playing form the beach and once the sun went down there was to be no lights on at the front of the hotels anywhere as they covered the front of the hotels with black sheets, this is to prevent the evil spirits from thinking that the island was inhabitated so they continue on past the island onto other areas.
Stay tuned for Day 6.
DAY 6: Well as you can imagine for 2 shoppaholics we are ready raring to go today after recharging our batteries from Nyepi Day. Once out amongst it all we found nothing was open again today, and the local village police were making sure that no shops opened their doors today as a sign of respect.......hummmmmmmm
Wait I see people..........Kuta Beach markets were raging........................
This was another experience of aggressive hawkers, touching you as you walk past, then if you stop to look at anything there are about 5 or 6 of them around you, it was hot and sticky and so many people as you can imagine, but what bargains.
2 large size wooden masks 100,000 = $14
1 silver/shell rings 50,000 = $7
1 silver/moonstone/topaz pendant 50,000 = $7
2 paul frank bags 70,000 = $10
cds best range I had seen so far - 10,000 = $1.40
2 prs earrings made from wood/snake skin - 20,000 = $2.80
If it wasn't so bloody hot we would have stayed there longer but no we had to go and seek air conditioning at McDonalds....everyone else had the same idea so it was working overtime and didn't make any difference.
Went back to hotel to swim and get over the morning..........gees lifes hard...........
Tonight we went to a forum favourite Indo-National Bar , very busy had to wait for seats but we didn't care as we sat at the bar with cool towels and cold bintangs. Seafood mornay, chicken snitzel plus heaps of drinks - 183, 000= $25 , got caught in the nightly rain again but we don't care actually we loved it jumping through puddles our clothes soaking wet, but by the time we walked back to the hotel we were dry.
Will we get to do any tours......don't think so...we are on a mission to shop...this will give us an excuse to come back to see more of the beautiful country side.
Day 7 next episode.