Amazing Bali

My first impression of Bali – I’m in a taxi (taksi) and there’s another taxi with no driver blocking our path.  My driver gets out and single handedly pushes the car away.

This is going to be an interesting place.

Within 10 minutes, I knew I was going to come back here – I had a good feeling about this place.  Twice have I ever felt this feeling – once in Las Vegas, then here.  And both times I’ve been extremely mesmerized.

While on the taxi ride to our villa, Bali reminded me of Cambodia a little bit, but a much more developed version of Cambodia.  You can also tell there were tourists left and right.  In fact, there was traffic even at 9:30pm – 10:00pm ish on a Thursday.  Even Hong Kong and Los Angeles doesn’t have this type of traffic at these time intervals.

In a way, it also reminded me of Phuket.  All the villas and stuff… but there were much nicer stores everywhere.  It felt much more urban and international.  You keep coming across Japanese and Chinese restaurants and the roads are very nice and not bumpy at all, very smooth (unlike Johannesburg and Cambodia). Continue reading Amazing Bali

Yunnan, Where The Pictures Are Prettier Than Reality Part One

I hate to say this, but I found Yunnan to be one of the more overrated travel destinations I’ve been to (another one being Venice, Italy).  I was incredibly looking forward for this trip as I heard many good things about the scenery and I have a passion for spicy food, but Yunnan did not live up to its expectations.  I must make a disclaimer though that the time spent for this trip was relatively short, and I would suggest at least a week to visit all the scenery provinces in Yunnan.  Instead, we ended up spending 5 days (4 days of sightseeing, the last day was just getting to the airport) at Lijiang and Shangri-La. Continue reading Yunnan, Where The Pictures Are Prettier Than Reality Part One