We got the wrong impression of Bali.
For the first two weeks, the weather was sunny. Then it started raining …
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Here’s this week’s question: Has bad weather ever ruined your vacation? I’m talking rain on a ski vacation or a hurricane when you’re trying to visit the beach. Please share your tales of woe. We’d love to commiserate!
Balinese are deeply spiritual people. Here’s a local woman leaving an offering for the gods at a busy intersection near our rental. Why leave an offering at an intersection? It’s said to prevent accidents.
We got this picture of this Balinese temple between the raindrops. You can find temples, large and small, on almost every street corner.
Here’s an example of the Bali bubble. It’s a private villa at the Bulgari Resort overlooking the Indian Ocean. It’s the most expensive hotel in Southeast Asia, and one of the most beautiful. If we ever came back to Bali, we would go here.
Don’t forget this week’s question: Tell us about the last time bad weather ruined your vacation. We love getting your comments.
Iden Elliott 0:00
UHello, everybody. Welcome back to the Elliott confidential podcast. My name is Iden Elliott. I'm joined by my brother, Aren Elliott. My father, Christopher Elliott, and my uncle, Dustin Elliott. Are you guys doing today?
Christopher Elliott 0:16
Hello, hello!
Aren Elliott 0:17
We are doing good?
Christopher Elliott 0:18
Yeah, awesome.
Aren Elliott 0:19
So, over the past two weeks, we've done a lot of stuff in Bali. But last week, we weren't able to get to the podcast, unfortunately. But we have a lot in store. We've done a lot here in Bali and can't wait to share that all with you. But unfortunately, it has been raining, basically, constantly while we're here.
Christopher Elliott 0:41
You can even hear the rain right now.
Iden Elliott 0:43
It is currently raining very hard out.
Christopher Elliott 0:45
We should add some sound effects to the podcast with rain and maybe some thunder. Just for dramatic effect.
Iden Elliott 0:52
You don't need to add it, you can already hear it.
Christopher Elliott 0:53
Yeah, okay.
Aren Elliott 0:54
Yeah, yeah. But I'm trying to think well, we've been staying mainly in Canggu lately, and we've been sort of eating at the restaurants and making our own food while it rains outside. So, but we've also explored some other things. There was a full moon and we were able to see the ocean at high tide, which is really scary.
Christopher Elliott 1:17
That was today and it had been raining. And it was the tide was so high that we could not walk on the beach. Yeah, it was that you could there was a little stair that you walk down. And if you walk down to the bottom stare, you get hit by the water. Scary.
Aren Elliott 1:33
Very crazy. And Dustin, you went and did stand up paddleboarding? How was that?
Dustin Elliott 1:38
Yes, I did. It was very, very fun and enjoyable, but also very scary. If you don't know how to deal with the waves. Yeah. And it, it's hard. If you don't know how to surf for you don't add it, like keep your balance on a board. So I'm most of the time I was kind of on my knees trying to get around,
Christopher Elliott 1:58
We should mention that Bali is still a developing Island. And that when it rains, the sewage goes from the rivers into the ocean. And you can't really swim in the ocean because there's a lot of runoff.
Dustin Elliott 2:15
Yeah, there's a lot of sewage that goes into the water.
Christopher Elliott 2:17
So it's yeah, this is something that's new to us is like, you know, don't after the rain, don't go into the hole.
Dustin Elliott 2:22
Well, it's new to us, because we're not really ocean dwelling people that are around the beach a lot. But for most people who are around beaches, they know that when it rains, don't go to the beach, you want to make sure that you probably don't even get in the water. Or if you do get in the water, make sure you don't have any cuts on you because you can get sick really quickly.
Aren Elliott 2:40
And Dustin, you do have an old you got an open wound from the coral, how's that?
Dustin Elliott 2:46
It's good. I mean, well, it's not really that good. It just has to be careful when you're going to these Island destinations. If you don't know the topography of the ocean or of the beach, the the bottom of the sea is mostly coral and that coral is really sharp. And then you have these large waves that are crashing over you and potentially pushing you on to the coral. And it's all razor sharp. So I got my hands and feet and whatnot got shredded.
Christopher Elliott 3:11
So here's a pro tip. Before you decide to go in the water, go to the beach at low tide and look to see where the coral is. And then when you come back, you know exactly where to go and where not to go. And if you do go there. Make sure you have a pair of booties on. Yeah, those are really really useful.
Dustin Elliott 3:28
And they're hard to find to get here, but.
Christopher Elliott 3:30
They've got them at the grocery store here.
Aren Elliott 3:31
Surprisingly, yeah, they have them at the grocery store of all places.
Dustin Elliott 3:36
Is it expensive?
Christopher Elliott 3:37
Uhh, yeah I don't know.
Hey, guys, can you hear that? That is the rain. It's coming down pretty hard out there. It's monsoon like it hasn't stopped since this morning. And it brings us to this week's question, which is.
Aren Elliott 3:53
This week's question is: has bad weather ever ruined your vacation?
Christopher Elliott 3:57
And by ruin? I mean, like, there's no way that you could actually go through the vacation. I'm talking about like, going on a ski vacation and it rains and there's no snow. So you can't ski on it something really, really bad like that, which has happened to us before. Before.
Aren Elliott 4:12
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Elliott 4:13
We're at a ski resort and it's raining and there's no way you can go out there.
Dustin Elliott 4:17
Yeah, like in Salzburg, Salzburg!
Christopher Elliott 4:20
Yes, it Dustin and I. And I had been on these family vacations before we're just you know, didn't happen. So tell us about yours. And in just a moment, we will go over your comments from last week.
Dustin Elliott 4:31
We're really excited.
Christopher Elliott 4:32
We're excited to be reading your comments.
Aren Elliott 4:34
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, finally.
Christopher Elliott 4:36
Um, one thing that we did that I'd love to talk about is we went out and bought some musical instruments. Now the Balinese have several types of instruments that are really unique to Indonesia to Bali. There are flutes. I mean, Aren, you really did some research. So I'll hand it off to you tell us about the flutes and maybe we could do a little show and tell.
Aren Elliott 4:57
So, we bought these flutes. So there's something called the Gamelan, which is basically the Indonesian orchestra and there have a Gamelan for every island almost generally in the Sundanese islands. So if you're looking at Sumatra, Java, Bali, they all have their own Gamelan. And they, they're able, well, they have their own unique music that they play with the Gamelan. And the Gamelan has a lot of unique instruments. So for example, there's the suling, which is a flute basically made out of bamboo. And we were able to find a nice shop that sold these suling flutes to us.
Christopher Elliott 5:39
Yeah, and they were these this shop was just like, it was on a farm. They didn't speak any English. They only took cash. And they had these these "samal..." they're called "samalons"?
Aren Elliott 5:51
No, no, no, the suling, suling
Christopher Elliott 5:54
They had these, they had these sulings on the wall, some of them were just pipes that they hadn't really you know, they're just bamboo that they hadn't really done anything with it. But then we found it and it has such a beautiful sound. Let me see if I can play some.
Sounds beautiful. Anyway, hours of enjoyment. Hours of fun. And you know, I'm personally I'm looking forward to staying at a hotel that has one of those big stairwells, and going sitting in the stairwell and playing with the acoustics and playing one of these Balinese, flutes, they're and they're very sturdy, too. So I'm not worried about them getting harmed in our luggage. But it's just something very therapeutic. Like when you when you need a little bit of time and a little, you need to unwind, you can play one of these Balinese flutes, and they're they're very, they're beautiful.
Aren Elliott 6:55
And the great thing is that if you ever come to Bali on a holiday, all you have to do is go over to any one of the temples. And they're going to have a Gamelan there, and they play great music. It's really inspiring. Yep.
Christopher Elliott 7:09
So guys, since this is our last podcast from Bali, and we're all gonna go our separate ways soon. What did you think of Bali? Let's start with Aaron.
Aren Elliott 7:21
Bali is a very interesting destination from I liked some parts of it. I like Indonesian food. I like the temples. It's a beautiful destination once you get outside of the city. And there are a lot of amenities. It's very inexpensive, too. So those are all positives, negatives. Of course, you can't walk on the streets, very polluted in some areas. And also, sometimes you can be a little bit predatory towards the tourists. But that's not goes without saying,
Christopher Elliott 7:54
Well, we should also say that we've all been to some hotels, Are n, I have been to a lot of hotels, the other guys have been to some of the hotels, but the hotels here are really are very beautiful. And they are their own world. It's like a little bubble, where you don't have to deal with any of the pollution, the lack of sidewalks, the crazy scams that you run into in town, and it's all very, very nice and sanitized for the Western visitor. But you don't really get a good idea of what Bali is really like by going to one of these resorts. It's just very kind of pre prefab. I don't know. Very. Yeah.
Aren Elliott 8:34
It's not the real Bali.
Christopher Elliott 8:36
It's not the real Bali. Iden, what did you think of Bali?
Iden Elliott 8:39
It's pretty good.
Christopher Elliott 8:43
I mean, would you come back?
Iden Elliott 8:44
No, no, I'd go to Jakarta. Yeah, back to Indonesia, but not the island of Bali.
Speaker 3 8:52
So Dustin, I'm curious because you know, you didn't really choose Bali. It was chosen for you. Yes. We invited you out here. What did you think?
Dustin Elliott 9:02
I liked it. I would have liked to seen Bali 20 years prior? Yeah. I think before all the tourists came. I think Bali was probably really nice. Like if it was just been us here with the islanders like that. I think that's what makes a vacation special is you get to hang out when you get to hang out with local people, instead of with 1000s and 1000s of
Christopher Elliott 9:24
Australians and Russians.
Iden Elliott 9:26
Australian with lip injections.
Dustin Elliott 9:29
Yeah, everyone, partying.
Unknown Speaker 9:29
Lot of lip injections. It's crazy.
Dustin Elliott 9:32
Yeah, a lot of umm.
Iden Elliott 9:33
Cheek injection, cheek implants too.
Dustin Elliott 9:34
There's a lot of lip injections these days. Yeah, I think it's, it's called lip injections. I call the duck people.
Speaker 3 9:39
Well, my thoughts on Bali are it is a nice place to visit if you want to go to one of the big hotels, you know, for example, the Kempinski was really really that was the last hotel that we went to I don't even think we talked about it in our last podcast because we hadn't seen it. Beautiful and huge. It has lots of pools. But it's its own world, you know, it's not like the rest of Bali. That's one thing you can go and do that. If you want to see authentic Bali, really be prepared for Bali as a developing part of Indonesia. It is. It is. You can't really walk along the streets because there's no sidewalks. There are trash fires from the construction sites. You wake up in the morning and you smell you get a lung full of smoke. And honestly, it is not the kind of place where I will go for a vacation. Well, I think that if we had gone to Ubbud which is in the mountains, far away from the beach, it would have been a different experience. We've been to Ubbud a couple of times, it's probably you know, attracts a different clientele. Canggu, which is where we are now is for younger people. And it's very it's lots of parties.
Dustin Elliott 11:03
Every day. It's like there's people.
Iden Elliott 11:06
You can hear the music.
Dustin Elliott 11:07
Like loud yeah, You know champions? Every night that restaurant plays we are the champions.
Christopher Elliott 11:12
I think it's better. If you're young, and you're listening to this podcast. In the unlikely event, you're very young, you should go to Canggu. If you are a little bit older, and maybe you're not the nightlife type of person, go to Ubbud or maybe go to a different island. I wanted to put in a plug for our next destination. I'm not telling anyone what our next destination is. But it's going to be really interesting. It's a place that a fair number of Americans go to so you'll it will be familiar to some of you. It is not Indonesia. But we won't tell you where it is excited to be reporting from there next week.
Aren Elliott 11:50
Last week's question was, have you ever done something on vacation that you regretted? William says renting a VRBO on price alone, pay a little more and avoid ending up in a dump. And I have to say we have made that mistake one too many times.
Speaker 1 12:07
When we were in Los Angeles. We got the cheapest place we could find and it was a total dump. Seriously.
Christopher Elliott 12:13
This was West Hollywood, yes
Iden Elliott 12:15
Hollywood, they got a rundown place didn't fix it up. The floors had to the floors were not floors. So they had to redo the floors. They had to redo the walls they had to the kitchen was not a kitchen, and they just stuffed it with beds. We were like Oh, four beds. And it's only well here's the thing is even even though it was a rundown place, it was still like 6k Because that's the hot price of all of West Hollywood. And so like paying that much for a bed stuff dump crazy.
Unknown Speaker 12:50
Well, I have a different recollection of that place.
Aren Elliott 12:52
It was 4k, correction.
Christopher Elliott 12:54
It was $4,000 for a month.
Which is a really good deal.
Iden Elliott 13:00
The 6k Place was in Studio City.
Speaker 3 13:02
That was that was 5k in Studio City. And and we were it was a really vintage place. We were the last people to rent that they tore it down and they built apartments there.
Iden Elliott 13:13
Vintage, that's a good way to put it.
Christopher Elliott 13:15
It was real vintage.
Aren Elliott 13:16
Lynn says I took a windsurfing lesson in St Maarten while on a Royal Caribbean cruise. The water was calm but it was very windy. I never got on the board and fell over so many times. It was not fun. Luckily, the company let me change the waterskiing after telling the driver of the boat not to go super fast. I had a great time.
Speaker 3 13:36
That's a really good resolution. We were surfing. This was last week, and I couldn't even get out the waves were so high. I couldn't even get my board out into the water. I tried a couple of times. That was not good. But I swam in the ocean. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Always, you know, if you're gonna try something like surfing or windsurfing, get a good instructor. But there but before you do that, always ask if it's a good day, I used to be a diving instructor. And there were days when you didn't want to take any newbies out into the water because it was too too much current too many waves, etc.
Speaker 1 14:13
Well, this has been the Elliott confidential podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We hope to hear more from you next week. Remember our question of the week is has bad weather ever ruined your vacation? We can't wait to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening. And this is Aren signing out.
Christopher Elliott 14:31
And, and Dustin. We're gonna miss you.
Dustin Elliott 14:34
I'm gonna miss you guys, too.
Iden Elliott 14:35
I'm gonna miss you.
Christopher Elliott 14:36
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 14:37
I think that I think that he might end up in one more podcast.
Christopher Elliott 14:40
No.
Oh, that's right no, nevermind.
Dustin Elliott 14:43
This is when I die.
Christopher Elliott 14:44
Yeah. We'll see you in a year.
Dustin Elliott 14:47
Next year, we'll resume next year.
Christopher Elliott 14:49
All right. Take care everyone, bye.
Iden Elliott 14:52
Bye bye, everybody.
Bali Confidential: One final dispatch from rainy Indonesia!