Bali, Sidemen

G,day Mates!

The place of this story is Sidemen, the village it self isn't worth coming for but the surrounding is magnificent. Actually it is not a real attraction on Bali and the reason we came here had to do with Ubud, a very popular place.

Approx. 17 years ago, of course we still lived in the Netherlands, we both had good jobs so we did a lot of travelling (yes, also in the past), we went with Djoser, a travel agent, with a group to Indonesia and also Bali. We stayed a few days in Ubud and had a great time. Now we went to Ubud with the Tari family because a family member lives there where they had to go and we had some time to explore Ubud. Well for us Ubud wasn't Ubud anymore, much too crowded and busy and we decided not to go there what we actually were planning to do.

Then Elly said, "if you want to experience the same old Bali it use to be, then maybe Sidemen is something for you", and so we did. Just feel the pictures!!

So from Amed we went to Sidemen and this is our "resort", called "Sawah Indah Villa";

Restaurant were we had breakfast in the morning....

or a beer in the afternoon....

A little movie of the place;

The swimming pool....

Can you imagine that we paid approx. $ 135.00 (Eur. 95.-) for this for three nights, including breakfast !!

There is not much to do and Sidemen is not at all tourist attraction but you can do a guided walk through the rice paddies and actually we were planning to do that but....... maybe I ate a bit too spicy and I didn't dare to do that walk as I wanted to stay a bit near a toilet as you know what I mean pfffff.

But we did our own little walk and the surrounding is just amazing, look at what we all passed;

We also passed people working very hard, sometimes you wonder if they can't do it simpler;

these women are filling buckets with sand and not just to the rim, no with a huge hump, must be very, very heavy....

and then they walked these steps up to a temple, isn't this amazing.....

And then I made a little film of women who were very busy with rice, unfortunately I thought I was filming a cutting woman and at the time I thought I stopped filming, I actually started the film so there is a little producing mistake; I could have cut it out though but I just show you a bit.....

(don't laugh!)

 

Picture this, we are sitting on our veranda in front of our little cottage, the surrounding rice paddies normally bright green (see below's view) are now covered by the black sky. We are just minding our own business listening to a free concert of frogs, grasshoppers and what more thing we couldn't see when a bright green grasshopper jumps up and lands on Fred's glasses, playing who is watching who.

When something like that would have happen to one us in the past, we would have screamed our heads off but hey, living in Australia for 6 years with all these creepy, dangerous, scary crawlers around we have become real tough! Isn't that amazing!

Our view during day time;

After Sidemen, totally relaxed, we went back to Sanur for the last few days. We just wanted to be on the beach, reading books, watching people, having nice meals and in that all, we succeeded....

Cute isn't he!!

Enjoy the last few hours on the beach of Sanur;

My next story will be the last one of Bali and I'm sorry to say, you won't like it!

Curious?? Just wait and see....

Cheers!