I admit to not being a beach aficionado, so it takes an extraordinary beach to whet my appetite for sun, sand and salt. We visited: A short stretch of the northern coastline from Singaraja to Seritit, the eastern and north eastern coastline from Manyar to Padangbai and from Candidasa to Amed. Thank goodness we made it there. It allows us to generate a certain intensity of enthusiasm for Bali’s shores…. On many of the beaches we visited, there was so much garbage-

Planning a trip to Burma? There's a new round-up of our experience with budget lodgings in February 2013 on the Relax pages

A tour up into the mountains promised cooler temperatures, and Scenery. My focus, once again, was  on plants- at the (surprisingly undersold) Kebun Raya Eka Karya, also known as Bali Botanical Garden. Following the directions on travelfish.com, we drove right past the seriously-hard-to-know-what-to-look-out-for big corn sitting on top of the big cabbage in the middle of Candikuning. Anyway, once you’ve found the turn off, paid your 18’000 IDR foreigner entrance fee, plus a modest 3000 IDR for scooter parking, prepare to

Sometimes there’s nothing left to do, but dance in the downpour. It was a week like that.  

True to an unwritten and unspoken law of my own creation, I never buy chocolate outside of Switzerland. (Okay, I might make an exception in Belgium - or Paris). With three chocolateless months behind me, I was pretty excited to discover that there’s a chocolate factory just outside Ubud, Bali: An online article kick-started my curiosity- an equatorial chocolate factory, lodged in the largest all-bamboo commercial building in the world?? Let me in! The reply to my exploratory email was prompt-

The line up of Balinese sacred days at this time of their calendar is astonishing, as is the dedication with which they're celebrated. We already got to experience Nyepi, a once a year treat, if you like peace, introspection and moonlight. Two weeks later the 10 day Galungan celebrations start. They end today, with Kuningan: During Galungan, the spirits of the ancestors revisit earth, and at the same time, the triumph of Good over Evil is commemorated. These celebrations involve serious, intricate preparations, and take place

I’ll probably never even begin to understand the intricately structured tapestry of all that goes into being a practicing Balinese Hindu . On an island catering unapologetically to tourism on a big scale, there still seems to be no question of anyone cashing in on the many, carefully guarded religious rituals and ceremonies that define Balinese life. By carefully guarded I don’t mean invisible, quite the opposite: For one, when the time is right, colorful offerings are placed literally anywhere- in driveways, on walls,

Confession- we snuck off to Bali, Indonesia, specifically to uber-hyped Ubud, only a few days after getting back to Bangkok from Myanmar. We smoothed down our hair, put on socks and were rewarded with two fifty dollar two-month visas from the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia a few days later. We landed on a steamy island draped in rich shades of green There’s no overlooking though, that at some point in its past, serenely beautiful Bali was flooded by a touristic monsoon