Micki's trip to Bali: Sunday trip to Batukaru and rice terraces

You’ve probably been wondering what I’ve been doing during the last couple of weeks. Well, I’ll tell you: I’ve been enjoying life on my beautiful tropical island. You know, it’s hard to go to an internet café and write your Blog and upload pictures when you could sit on the beach, hang out with fun people or party at the same time. But a promise is a promise, so I try to give you a little update here – THREE new entries! Enjoy! ;-)

Last Sunday, Thomas, Martin and I went on our weekly trip (we’re trying to make at least one trip with our motorbikes every week to explore the island; so far, Martin and I have been on every trip I guess, the other people keep changing). The road took us to Batukaru this time, which is pretty much in the middle of Bali. It was the first time that we didn’t get stopped by the police or got lost big time. The streets were good, the weather was ok and the after-effects of the night before slowly disappeared the later it got. We went to the temple in Batukaru first and stopped at a smaller rice terrace on the way. The temple in Batukaru belongs to the best known temples in Bali. Besides us, there were only a handful of tourists there. The temple is surrounded by deep rainforest which created a great atmosphere. After some photo shoots, we decided to follow the hints of our travel guide and started driving towards the big rice terraces. That was probably one of the best ideas ever. We’ve already seen a lot of rice fields in Bali, but these were just huge and green and beautiful and….. The pictures we took look great, but I can assure you that it even looks 1,000 times better in nature. On our way back, we stopped at some hot springs. Unfortunately, this was the first time I didn’t have my bikini with me… L. But the boys went in there and told me how nice it was. Great. I just had the job to take the pictures. While driving through some villages, Martin saw some kids playing table tennis and badminton near the road (you gotta know: he loves kids and can’t pass them without joking around with them). So we stopped again and decided to play with them. It always fun hanging out with these kids. And they get all crazy about our digital cameras!

The time here in Indonesia really reminds me of why I started working for Unicef in Germany. And now I know why I wanna go back to working there again. The kids we were playing with were really cute and they all seemed to be ok. But when we go out in Kuta at night, we see little kids going up and down in front of the clubs at 4 o’clock in the morning, begging for money. Many of them are on their own, no Mums to see. And it just doesn’t feel right: on the one hand, you wanna give them money or food so they can eat and go home, but on the other hand, there are so many of them that it’s impossible to always give something! I wanna try to change the world… just a little bit – step by step!!!

Well, those were pretty much the most important things to say about our trip. I’m always glad when Thomas is with us – he’s got the best camera and takes fantastic pictures!!!! Thanks a lot, Thomas! :-*