Unfinished Business

We've spent the last five days relaxing in Ubud, Bali. We were only planning on staying a day or two, but we're having a hard time leaving this place. This was just what we were looking for after the chaos of Kathmandu and the grueling trek where we were roughing it in the cold and dirt for two weeks. Here in Ubud there is little to do besides relax, read, shop at the insanely cheap local market full of great items, and waste away the days at any one of the countless cafes in town. We have yet to eat at a bad restaurant here. Almost every place has a beautiful, lush garden with pools, fountains, and waterfalls. The food has been delicious...fresh squeezed fruit juices, banana pancakes, tuna sashimi, seared tuna, pork satay, nasi goreng (a spicy fried rice with pork & egg), and suckling pig have been the highlights.

Our second day here we found a small roadside "warung" (the name for the local open-air street-food restaurants) that had amazing suckling pig. Ibu Oka is the second restaurant on this trip that has been so good we've ate there on three separate occasions. The other was Fergburger in Queenstown, New Zealand. With all of the cheap, excellent food here, and the lack of other activities, we've been eating about five meals a day. Needless to say, we're in heaven after the bland food found in Nepal.

Just to show we haven't only been eating, here's a couple of pictures from one of our walks through the rice terraces and jungle on the edge of town:

Since we have all of this time on our hands (between meals), we figured we'd write about a few things we didn't get the chance to talk about in previous posts.

Some interesting facts we learned about Nepal:

• 80% of the villages in Nepal are not connected to roads...which means everything is carried in by yak, or more often, porters. Imagine having to carry everything you need to live on your back for miles, always up hill of course.
  
• 90% of Nepalis eat dal bhat twice a day, every day of their life. (Dal bhat is a bland meal consisting of rice and beans that we were tired of after eating twice.)
• 82% of Nepalis live on less than $2 per day
• Despite the harsh living conditions, the people were extremely friendly and welcoming.

Here we are with our friend we met in Nepal, Dhana Lama (in the white shirt), along with his wife, brother, and cousin. Rachel's wearing the traditional Nepali hat that Dhana Lama's wife gave her:

Our thoughts on Singapore:

• We really enjoyed our time in the city. Since there is a mix of Chinese, Malaysian, and Arab cultures residing there, the food is delicious and diverse.
• The streets are clean, there is very little-if any-crime, they have an excellent train system, and the people are friendly.
• As far as sights go, there's not a ton to see in the city. Eating is definitely the highlight. Here was one of our favorites, chili crab:

Thoughts on traveling:

• We definitely miss our family and friends back home, but we're having a great time so far and aren't ready to go back yet. We've seen so many neat places and met so many interesting people it's made us want to explore as much as we can. We've already been talking about places we'd like to visit once we get done with this trip...Central America, Mongolia & Russia, Brazil, Scandinavia.... Anyone want to join us?
• We have both always loved food, but as we travel and taste so many new types of food it's developing into a passion. (As you can probably tell from the prominent role food has played in many of our posts.) So I guess, in addition to surfing, hiking, and fishing our way around the world, we'll be eating our way around the world too. Does this make us foodies?
  

2009 - The Lost Year in Sports: (by Dustin of course)

• I've realized that 2009 is going to be the year that never happened as far as sports go. Ever since my first year in college when I had regular access to the internet and ESPN, I've followed the Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, and Gopher sports almost religiously. Besides following the local teams, I've always kept up on all the major sporting events...NFL playoffs, March Madness, the Masters, NBA playoffs, etc, etc. I'd watch SportsCenter regularly...maybe not daily, but close. If something happened in the world of sports I knew about it. Since we left in January I've been completely removed from the U.S. sports scene. I have no idea what's happened in the last four months. I haven't watched SportsCenter once, I've rarely checked sports scores online, and baseball/football/basketball games are never on TV anywhere. We already wrote about how we were only able to watch a little over two quarters of the Superbowl, supposedly the most watched TV program in the world. In New Zealand and Australia I resorted to cheering for the Hamilton Chiefs of the Super 14 rugby league. We went to one of their games while in Hamilton, I watched another on TV, and I regularly followed them in the newspaper. Once we left Australia and arrived into Asia, I found the ONLY sports on TV or covered in the newspaper are soccer and cricket...I haven't got that desperate yet. I guess the good news is that, from what I can tell, I haven't missed much from Minnesota sports this year. I guess it's a small price to pay in order to travel for a year. But who knows, maybe this fall will finally be the Vikings year....

Cheering for the Hamilton Chiefs:

And lastly, we finally got the pictures from our swim with the whale sharks. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Here's a few of them: