Dancing with the Dolphins - Lovina BALI

For some reason the world has always portrayed dolphins as this magical creature that frolics through the ocean being majestic and squeaking in their language that we are so desperately trying to de-code.

Children dream about them, adults have them permanently tattooed to their bodies and there are teams of people who stand in the busy streets and fight for their very existence but quite frankly I never saw what the big deal was.

My mother on the other hand is obsessed with them. She screams bloody murder when they swim through the passage that we can see from our balcony and when I run to her side I am usually disappointed when she tells me it’s just dolphins and not an intruder looking for our non-existent diamonds.

So on our second trip back to Bali I was sure that by traveling with both my mother and grandmother, dolphins would definitely feature in our travels. I did not expect to be traveling across the spine of Bali in order to see them.

We had a beautiful 6 hour drive from Kuta Beach to a small town in the very north of Bali called Lovina. I am definitely a road trip person so I enjoyed the blaring music and the tropical sceneries as we wound around the country side. My mother on the other hand did not enjoy seeing her lunch for the second time.

The weather was beautiful and the signs along the way were stunning. There is something about driving through the country that I find really therapeutic. It was so easy to lose track of the hours passing by staring out at the endless rice fields and dense forests that inhabit monkeys and birds and maybe even elephants although that hope might be a bit steep.

I was glad to finally have pulled into our hotel and basically slipped into a mini coma as soon as my head hit the pillow and it was just as well because the next morning would be an early one. I am not so much a morning person so it took me a solid hour of waking up and about 4 coffees before I felt I was awake enough to safely sit in a boat without dozing off and falling over board.

We met our tour guide who was a local resident of Lovina and his name was, get this, Dolphin. I’m sure that’s not what was scribed on his birth certificate but he insisted we call him dolphin, so we did. He took us out on a beautiful wooden canoe that he explained to us was carved out of a thick tree trunk and I could easily see the hard labour and work someone had once put into this almost sculpture. The paint flaking away and the small areas of splintered wood was only and indication to the life of the canoe well lived.

We did see dolphins in the oceans but seeing as every other tourist in Lovina had the same idea that morning it there was a large congregation of canoes on the water so it was hard to get close enough to the dolphins without ourselves or others scaring them away.

When we got back and had pulled up and parked the boat on the sand I jumped out and brushed my hands together as if to say ‘Job done.’ We had seen dolphins, (not our tour guide) and they had been in the wild and I thought that this experience was enough to fulfil both my mother and nana’s dolphin needs for the trip but no… it wasn’t.

The next day we, and by ‘we’ I mean my nana and mum had planned a trip to this really cool place which I could only describe as half hotel half zoo. It was a hotel down the road from us that had bird aviaries, snakes, monkeys in enclosures, the best lizard I have ever seen and you guessed it… dolphins.

This hotel stood out from all the other not only because it was a safari park but because you could pay to swim with the dolphins. And I’m not talking about like paying to feed a dolphin and pat in from the side of the pool and maybe if your lucky you can get a fishy kiss from the dolphin and a cute photo to take home to your friends, but I am talking about a giant pool that you could bomb dive in and in return be shoved around by some dolphins.

My mum and nana jumped at the opportunity but seeing as my sister and I weren’t fussed we decided to not pay the ticket price and have lunch together in the hotel instead. I even walked around the pools when a man asked me if I wanted to swim with the sharks instead and because I am an adrenalin junky I almost screamed ‘Yes!’ back at him and I don’t think he was expecting that kind of response because he paused, looked around and said ‘Well you can’t, but you can feed them.’ Which I thought was equally as cool so I did. It was a rock pool type thing with a million baby sharks that looked cute enough to cuddle and I grabbed a fish head and chucked it into the water. For a second none of the sharks ate it and I wondered why until a 2 metre long shark just glided over the others and slurped up the fish head. ‘That one’s name is King’ the man said, and I laughed. ‘No one eats before him.’ I laughed again.

When my mum and nana had finished with their swim neither of them could A) string a sentence together which B) not shutting up about it rather annoying. They raved and raved and my nana really pushed the experience on me so I threw caution to the wind and said I would do it and let me tell you it was one of the best experiences I have ever had.

Dolphins are in that group of animal that are so gentle but still have that element of risk to do great damage like elephants and horses and other things that scare me so getting into the pool I was a little apprehensive about my safety and whether or not that man dressed as a lifeguard was actually qualified to save my life in case of an emergency.

It was so cool to be pushed around by these creatures and just have fun with them. They swim around while you hold onto their fins and they push you along with their noses under your feet and I even danced with one of them. It was such cool experience that I can’t quite explain the emotion behind it but it really made me marvel at the animal kingdom and the sheer intelligence of these animals.  The only thing I was worried about was the thought that they are still wild animals and are really strong and could hurt me if they really wanted to but the more relaxed I was the more they reassured me of their playfulness.

Even though I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole thing I really enjoyed it and completely 100% encourage both going out on a boat to see wild dolphins and visiting this hotel. I am pretty sure most of the money they raise goes back into the care and feeding of the animals and it was a really powerful experience that I personally went through.

Along with the dolphin hotel there are heaps of things to do in Lovina and it’s worth the trip north to get away from the hustle and bustle of Kuta Beach if you are looking for some quiet time to kick back.

Hotel Info: http://www.melkahotelbali.com/

Showering in South America - The Horror Stories

Before leaving for a month long trip in south america my family and friends took it upon themselves to warn me of every danger that i would be facing from street riots in Brazil to the bite of a mosquito that could cause malaria so you can imagine bathing was the last thing on my mind. Turns out every single showering experience was a epic adventure and i would love to share these horror stories with you.

So firstly, Obviously, if your accommodation arrangements include 5 star hotels, your bathroom is probably going to be 5 stars as well so this post doesn't really count for those people who will be sipping cocktails by the pool so maybe just move along and enjoy you holiday.

So if  you are a student, backpacker, or like us, pilgrims you might find yourself stumbling upon these and i have 3 tips for you to survive the fall if you cant adapt in time.

Tip#1: 

Go in with no expectations.

If you have an open mind  you're not going to have a panic attack when you're faced with a communal bucket and a facecloth. 

Tip#2:

 Buy all your toiletries needs over there.

When you try and transport any type of bathroom product from place to place (things like shampoo and conditioner  and other liquid products) they are just bulky and take up unnecessary space in your bags. They add weight and unless you plan on washing your hair on the 18 hour plane ride its not necessary and its a pain to get through customs.

My friend 'M' and I bought about 2 liters of shampoo and conditioner once we landed and shared it between us. With our non existent care for personal hygiene it lasted us about 10 days.

Buying liquid products on arrival also eliminates the risk of them exploding in you baggage,  as one of us (M) know all to well that when the pressure in the cabin changes and with your suitcase in the ''gentle'' hands and trusted care of the luggage attendants who take there job very seriously in assuring your luggage is handed with care, we had a lovely experience that involved a baby power explosion. Personally I thought the whole thing was hilarious, M did not. I will assure you that after I was done laughing at her, my friendly instincts kicked in and i did help her clean it up.

Powder explosion = 5:23

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eHTDdPWAkE&list=UU_Tzs8SwFj5Twvrt7baujMA

IF you decide to travel with liquid toiletries in your check in bags then please wrap it in 7(000) plastic bags so that if / when it explodes, at least the liquid is contained to the plastic and not your clothes and other belongings.

Tip#3: 

Deodorant is your new best friend. 

While deteriorate has earned the street name of 'Shower In A Can', I would like to reinstate that it is 110% not!. It does not replace showers, it merely delays them.

Story time...

So on our trip as I said showering wasn't a thought in my mind, we had a total of 5 places to stay and each was very different from the last and out of the 5 places we stayed in we had one proper showering system and this was in Buenos Aries when we first arrived in Argentina. We only stayed in this hotel for 2 nights and had I known it was going to be the only decent 5 star shower I probably would have spent a little more than the rushed 3 mins freshen up before dinner one night that I had mistakenly made. 

Bathroom #2

The next 3 nights we spent in a school doing our mission work and as we were sleeping in a classroom on tables (as sleeping on the floor would have risked hypothermia) I should have expected what was coming and that was a communal bucket and a BYO washer.

They filled the basin up with boiling (yes boiling) water and the heat and cleanness of the water maybe lasted about 5 people. There were 30 of us and as I was the 2nd out of our group of 5 the water was about 1000 degrees and I might as well have poured lava all over my body and stared in a Paul Anderson film called Pompeii ... too soon?

Anyway my justification for the deadly hot water was A) Stop being a baby and B) It's probably going to kill all the germs my washcloth couldn't reach so stop winging about it. There is something very unsettling about standing naked in flip flops and bathing from the bucket, i'm sure the mental imagine is just as unsettling. Anyway once I was finished with my polish bath I deemed myself a true pilgrim. (I even have the shirt to prove it) 

Bathroom #3

The farm - This is where o fell in love with the country. We slept in cabins and the showering facilities were defiantly an upgrade to the giant saucepan . The boys had a separate bathrooms to the girls and they were basic showers nothing special. There were 2 showers in each bathroom and due to the time management and the challenge of getting 16 people showered we put the buddy system into place - and before you have an anurisum let me just reassure that the buddy system is not as bad as it seems. Its 100% separate showers with walls and curtains in between them, I just mean 2 people use the bathroom at the same time and while it was risky it was necessary. M and I were used to being shower buddies due to school camps and retreats and stuff so we kind of all ready had a system worked out.

So the only downside to the "sharing is caring'' system was that if both showers were running then it was a gamble as to who would get hot water. You had a 50/50 chance of either luxury or Antarctic dribble.

Now with the buddy system, much like any relationship that you want to work, communication is the key. Talking to each other was absolutely necessary because there was no way either of us was moving without the other knowing about it. I would say that our communication was perfect except the part where we picked out our clothes because we both left wearing the exact same thing. I wish I could say that it was a rare thing... it's not.

Bathroom #4

This 4th place loured us completely into a false sense of security with it's comfortable beds and hot water,  it turned out to be unforgettable. Okay so there is no way to say this without the WTF reaction that it very much deserves so i'll just go ahead and explain...

So there i am, alone, door closed, in the bathroom  taking a nice hot shower. I was washing my hair and shaving the small forest that was inhabiting and taking over my legs. Enjoying the heat and final privacy until maybe about 7 mins in when M knocks on the door and sticks her head in. I couldn't think of what she possibly wanted and why it couldn't have waited - what- 5 mins i mean seriously.

I could only just hear her over the water but i could have sworn she said "I don't mean to alarm you..." And then I heard the word ''fire''  and before I could turn the taps off to question her she was gone and for a second  I wondered if running out in a towel was necessary but sure enough there was Ben in similar attire to me freaked out trying to explain what had happened to Horacio who was translating it to the manager I guessed.

Now what I am about to say might cause you to scratch your head and trust me I too have pondered on this for many minuets but what had happened was Ben's shower.... caught fire. IT CAUGHT FIRE!? It was someones great idea to heat the water electrical and so when the shower head leaked it shorted on the wires. WHAT!?

 Assured of Ben's safety I stormed my way back to the bathroom and huffed as I put clothes on and excepted defeat from the showers this time.

Bathroom #5

Rio De Janerio. 11 Days. 35 Degrees. 4 Girls. 1 Bathroom. Yep.

So the thing about this hotel was that the weird design of the building included a void space directly in the middle of the building. For some ingenious engineering someone decided to put all the bathrooms backing onto the void space and so all the bathroom windows. It was basically just a big vertical hallway of echos. At one point I was in the bathroom and Shannon, downstairs was singing in the shower and I was able to shout out to her and maintain a conversation through the hall way.

It was good fun then but not so much fun when people started finishing work at 1 am and decided to have a good old chat which included everyone in the hotel.

The WORST part about this hotel and the echoing hallways was that Shannon singing and pointless conversations between workers weren't the only thing we could here.... yep .... it got weird.

I don't know who they were perhaps a couple on a honey moon but there little escapade forced an unexpected trip to the beach for M and I who couldn't sit around and listen to that kind of hanky panky. Running out of the hotel one of our group members stopped us to ask where we were going. a little bit scared neither of us could give a straight answer so we just said 'Out of our room.' and bailed, never speaking of the indecent again. 

So after all these challenging, personality growing, story telling adventures, all I could repeat to myself is "i'm not a tourist i'm a pilgrim'' and imagine the hours I would spend in the shower when I got home to Australia.

In he end it was the best experience ever and I had the most amazing time and lets be honest these stories are so fun to tell and I wouldn't have wanted it any different. (Except maybe a shower that didn't spontaneously burst into flames.)

Kelsey Marcella

5 Tips to keeping a travel journal.

5 Tips to keeping a travel journal

Tip One

Book or Blog?

Decide before your trip weather you want to write your travels in a book or on a blog. If you decided to join us in the 21st century then make sure you have enough time to create a blog. I know that there is something romantic about a pen and paper and if that's the way you want to go then run out and get yourself a heavy duty notebook. I am a book person. (Even though your reading this blog post haha) There is something wrong with my brain where i will not for the life of me remember anything unless its written down on paper with a pen. I don't know what it is, its a burden but its also a blessing. I have a good stack of notebooks filled with stories and photos which i love to look through. Though if you do choose to go online make sure you remember passwords and usernames and don't loose your laptop. Remember that a blog is also public so if you want to keep your stories a little bit private make sure you set it up that way. (I'm sure there is a button or setting which will help with that.) Its so easy these days to find an internet cafe and sit down and blog so hats off to you if you can do all that in a foreign country. I know i wouldn't be able to.

Tip Two

Don't pressure yourself. 

Keeping a travel journal can be a challenge at times and for me when i tell myself to write every single day it becomes a chore and its no longer fun like it should be. Remember that traveling can be spontaneous and crazy and may often land us with limited time or space to sit down and focus on a journal entry every single day. Expecting this from yourself might just became disappointing and annoying to think about so remember don't pressure yourself, you don't have to write in it every day.

Tip Three

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Unless you plan on writing a novel about our day and describe everything you did in tiny detail like : Today i woke up and walked down the street and got coffee and then went out to the city blah blah blah... Yawn! Summarize what you want to say by recapping your day. Perhaps choose the best part of the day or record down every time you laughed or whenever something exiting happened. Also if you're like me and sometimes get writers block, no matter how hard you try to form a sentence or try and explain in words your day, don't stress if your pages end up blank. Words don't always have to tell a story. Save your bus tickets, movie stamps, photos, napkins anything and stick them to the page for those days when the words wont come out let the photos do the work. After all a picture speaks thousand words. 

Tip Four

Use travel time to write. 

In south america particularity we were always on the move. always someone to meet, something to see or somewhere to be. If we weren't physically moving we were either eating or sleeping. So i cant stress enough the difficulty of finding time to sit down and write in a journal or blog. Half the time whenever we got 5 mins we would rest our brains and our feet and often left the journaling to a couple days later if not giving up all together (like me). Throughout our trip we had 4 plane rides and about a gazillion bus trips through the country side which probably totaled a traveling time of  50 hours. That's 50 hours of writing or gluing or doodling or whatever it is you do in your travel journal. 

Tip Five

GET LOST!

The most important part about any traveling experience is getting lost. I got lost countless times in the busy city of Rio and let me tell you they make the best stories. But most importantly get lost in your writing. Get lost in the world your in right then in that very moment and be present. if you rush through things your going to regret it and it will one day all out of your head so quick, get it down on paper. 

Hope this helped you out at all. Don't forget to share it with your friends on Pintrest and Google Plus :)

Kelsey Marcella

4 Steps to surviving the traffic of Bali, Indonesia

4 Tips to surviving the roads of Bali

Usually the go in Bail is that you have a driver, they are reasonably priced and are about every 5 meters so you wont ever find yourself stranded. If you ask your hotel for one they will just go down to the street corner and hail one into the hotel for you. The drivers are pretty willing to take you anywhere as our driver (bless him) once took us from Kuta to Lovina, which is basically from the south of the island to the north shore. It only took us 6 hours but can you imagine asking a taxi driver to drive from Brisbane to Rockhampton. Yeah, i don't think so. (These steps don't really apply to those of you who plan to biking or riding on a scooter)

Step 1

Fasten your seat belt its going to be a bumpy ride. 

The roads of Bali are basically a dirt path that someone one day came and poured bitumen on it from a rusty old bucket they had lying around. Its patchy and bumpy and though it may have possibly once resembled a smooth road it no longer holds the reputation as the 1.76 million cars and scooters have driven a path into the road that now consist of pot holes and wasted paint. I'm pretty sure there whole road system wasn't really thought through clearly enough as its basically just a big mass of chaos and defys every law of physics. Somehow it all just works.

Step 2: 

Blast the music. 

Weather its an iPod or just the radio make sure that shit is loud. Bali is a natural loud place with people yelling, cars honking there horns every 5 seconds and just the general festivities that involve loud music, singing and occasionally dancing on the sides of the roads. (Don't be alarmed if your driving along and then suddenly there is a parade dancing through the streets.) Like a frightened puppy you want to shelter yourselves from the strange noises until you are used to the chaos.

Step 3: 

Close your eyes. 

(Unless your are the driver then please , God, don't close your eyes.)

You know that saying 'ignorance is bliss'? This differently apply to any driving done in Bali. Trust me when i say its better not to know who or what is running across the road in front of the car, it will just freak out out by seeing the car skim people and the heart sinking feeling of running something over and no matter how many times my sister yells 'Little dog' the driver wont slow even a bit. Cows walk on the side of the road close enough to pat - if you were willing to risk your arm out the window - and i guess we will never know why the chicken crossed the road because the dense traffic either keeps them to one side of the road or takes them down the highway to hell, or perhaps the stairway to heaven. Either way they never fully cross.

Step 4: 

Go to your happy place.

 Whilst your eyes are closed and you are basking in the loudest music just imagine yourself in your happy place. Something that worked for me was imagining me in my destination. For example if we were driving from the hotel to the beach i would just imagine myself laying on the beach under the sun, or if we were on our way from the beach to the hotel i would just imagine all the things i would do when i got back to the hotel room. Like maybe take an hour long bath to distress after the psycho drive from the beach to the hotel room.

Top Tip: 

Just enjoy it.

The craziness is apart of the culture and its scary but that's the best type of fear. The kind that has you on edge with excitement. Its an awesome experience and if you can laugh your way through the fear you will be fine.

Kelsey Marcella

Click here to watch the Bali vlog: Day One

(If your interested in having a driver for the entirety of the trip i highly recommend our friend and driver Abong. Comment for details)

Hello there...

So i'm not going to worry about the proper way to do things and even though its the middle of the night and even though i don't know how to even set up this blog i'm just going to drive straight into the deep end and hope to god i remember how to swim.

So here we go.

My name is Kelsey and currently as of today (August 31st 2014) i am 19 years, 3 months and 13 days old.

At this stage in my life i don't know weather to feel old or young. My 25 year old sister reminds me of my immaturity as she constantly tells me to grow up (she doesn't get my humor) but my 16 year old friends bask in my wise ways as i make the "adult decision" not to eat the whole packet of doughnuts as dinner is a merely 2 hours away.

I wanna say i am here because i'm an alcoholic and ready to change my bad habit but seeing as i don't drink to often and since stating my name i have accepted that this is not Alcoholics Anonymous.

I guess i am here today writing because i have a passion about traveling. I have been to 17 different countries and i do like to consider myself as a professional traveler (Or gypsy, if you like), even though ever single time i pack my suitcase its basically backed to the brim of things i wont even uses and although deemed necessities they really didn't benefit me in anyway. You will come to learn about my packing skill and everything else that follow in this blog. I thought it would be a cool way to share some of my horror stories and my moving moment to random people i have never met. There has to be someone out there who cares and if there isn't then this can one day be my memoir or perhaps a journal or even a memory to me and those around me when we are to old to scrape our brains for the real memories.

Anyway i leave you will the mystery of getting to know me and post again soon.

Kelsey Marcella