tiistai 31. joulukuuta 2013

Happy New Year from Bali!

This blog has been quite quiet lately as I promosied in my previous posts. I've been spending my Christmas holiday before the new semester starts... And it actually does start already next Monday, crazy! It's really fun to meet all the new students :) Unfortunately I can't spend the whole semester with those guys because I have to go back to Finland already in the enf of January.

As you may remember, I promised in my earlier posts that I'm going to post a couple of articles about the last semester before Christmas but I wasn't able to do that because I've once again had a little bit problems with technology here in Bali. Luckily my computer should be working again this weekend so I'll try to post those articles before the new semester starts :)

I also try to write something about my Christmas holiday and especially about the places where I've been. I spent the previous week in Perth, Western Australia and it was really great place! I really recommend visiting Australia to all of Asia Exchange students in Bali/Phuket/Bangkok/etc. because the place is much more closer here than in Europe and it's really a worth visiting. Hopefully I'm writing more about Perth in the upcoming weeks.

And yes, today is the last day of this year. When I'm writing this, it's half past 4 here so there's only 7 and a half hours before the year changes in Bali. I'm spending my new year in Ubud which is located in the central Bali and is well-known as the cultural centre of this island. I hope there's going to be some really cool celebrations this night that I hopefully can share with you later :)

But yeah, that's all about my Christmas holiday and New Year so far. I'm going to be back with more pics and info about Perth and Ubud and New year in Bali but now I wish happy new year to all of you! Here's a couple of pictures from my holiday.

Christmas Eve in Cottesloe Beach in Perth
A wild kangaroo in Perth
Evening scenary in Perth
A happy elephant in Perth Zoo :)
A wild penguin in Penguin Beach in Perth
A monkey in the monkey forest in Ubud... Lots of animals in this post, huh.
The view of Ubud while bicycling there, yeah.

perjantai 20. joulukuuta 2013

Videos from Bali

Yesterday was the last day of Autumn semester and yesterday was about partying and saying goodbyes. Now it's time for Christmas break and holidays! Next semester starts in the beginning of January so before that I'm probably not writing that much here because there's nothing to say about the student in Bali before the new semester starts. Anyway, I'm trying to post a couple of articles here during the next week, maybe on Monday already.

Before that here's a couple of videos that I've made with the students of this semester during the last couple of weeks.






So, this is almost it about this great semester :)

torstai 19. joulukuuta 2013

Closing Ceremony

During the last couple of weeks I've been already writing about the fact that the end of autumn semester is really near. Still only a couple of days ago I still thought that there's a lot of time before the closing ceremony will be upon us but now the time has come and actually already gone: the closing ceremony was held this morning. Most of the students are leaving Bali soon. It's really hard to understand all of this because it feels like the students would've just arrived in Bali. In overall this semester in Bali was an exteremely great experience and that mostly because the great students of this semester :)

So yeah, today the semester got as good ending as it deserved when the closing ceremony was held in Denpasar campus. One of the most memorable part of the closing ceremony was a great traditional dancing show in the beginning of the ceremony but maybe even better part was in the end of ceremony when the dancers came to the stage again and took some of the students to dance with them. Even I had to go the stage which was quite an interestin experience as I've never trained that traditional dancing like the students did in their workshop.

Besides of dancing shows there were also a lot of other programmes in the closing ceremony. For example the head of BIPAS program Made Rajeg held an speech in the beginning of the ceremony. Made Rajeg wasn't the only one to have a speech: also Saara and Jukka of our exchange students had amazing speeches. Also, the role model of this semester was declared in the closing ceremony. Johan was chosen as an role model student and I truly think that he deserved that :) After the ceremony was over, everybody said goodbyes to the university personnell: luckily most of the students will still meet of each other in tonight's party that we're having in Kuta.









keskiviikko 18. joulukuuta 2013

Padang Padang Pictures

Today I added pictures from my time in here to my Bali Folder in Facebook. Check that folder out, it's probably the easiest way to find at least some of the pictures I've taken here. Of course there isn't all of the pictures (maybe I still have to add some pictures from the first week to Facebook because I seem to have forgotten that) but still that's the most organized form of my pictures so far. And there's still going to be more pictures in January, when the new semester begins!

When I was adding pictures to Facebook, I noticed that I didn't remember to post pictures of Padang-Padang Beach to this blog after we visited there. Padang-Padang is one of the most beautiful beaches here and it is located in the southern Bali in Uluwatu. Padang-Padang is quite small place but it's really cool and you have to go there through a cave. Because of Eat, Pray & Love movie, Padang-Padang is nowaday really popular among tourists but it wasn't that crowded at least when we visited there. Padang-Padang is also one of the best surfing places in Bali.









Later this week I'm going to write something about the closing ceremony (held today) and probably post a couple of videos.

tiistai 17. joulukuuta 2013

Articles: Homestay and University

Alright, yesterday I wrote about the charity thing that Jessie had organized so there was no normal Monday articles. This time I'm posting them today and even though the semester ends this week and also my holiday strarts at the same time, there'll be a couple of articles also on next Monday :)

This time I'm posting two articles. The first is about homestay accommodations in Bali. There has been a lot of questions about them to Asia Exchange. Since now I've been writing mostly just about villa accommodations because most of our students are living in villas. It's still good to remember that there also other options if you want to know more about the local culture. A couple of our exchange students choose a homestay accommodation instead of a villa which means that they're living with a local family in their home. I've interviewed Saara and Johan who are living in a homestay right now and they tell about their experiences in the article.


Picture: Saara Atula
The other article is about the head of Udayana University's BIPAS program Made Rajeg and the secretary of that same program Sri Rahayuni. All of AE students are studying in BIPAS program so they'll get to know with Rajeg and Rahayu who are really great people and who care about our exchange students. In the article Rajeg and Rahayu tell about their backgrounds etc.

maanantai 16. joulukuuta 2013

Charity Monday

The last school week (the exam week) of autumn semester 2013 began today. The closing ceremony will be held on Thursday but there's still a couple of days before that so don't rush there yet. I bet there's still a lot of things happening during the last week before the closing ceremony in the campus of Denpasar and before the evening party that night.

Normally I've posted articles on Mondays but this time I'm going to spare them for tomorrow and other longer posts also for the rest of this week. That's because I wanted to started this week with a short post about how awesome it was today to come to the university and see how excellently the charity campaign, organized by one of our students, has started.

 
One of our students, Jessie, has been volunteering in Seeds of Hope during the autumn semester. When the end of the semester came close, she got an awesome idea that our exchange students could donate extra clothes to the children's home. The truth is that almost every one of us has gotten too much stuff while staying here and can't bring all of them back to home. Throwing those clothes away would be the most stupid thing to do because those same clothes can be a great help to others. So, Jessie arranged a collection point to our university and students can bring their extra clothes there. There's still possibility to bring clothes to the university tomorrow, after that Jessie takes clothes to the children's home :)

All in all, this is extremely awesome thing and great thinking by Jessie. It was great to see that so many of our students had actually brought their extra clothes for the good measure. This is exactly the way things should work. 

perjantai 13. joulukuuta 2013

Besakih Temple

This week we had the final excursion of our semester. Huh, sounds really depressing when I write it down but it's the truth. The semester really is almost over. Luckily there's still one more week to go and before that we had a great final excursion that was maybe the best one of them all :) This time we visited Besakih Temple which is the biggest temple of Bali and it's located really near to Mount Agung which is the biggest volcano (and mountain) of Bali. Agung has a really important role for the religional culture of Bali: even some of the beds in Balinese houses may be directed towards Agung. So it's no surprise that Besakih Temple (located in the slope of Agung) which is hundreds of years old is a really important place for Balinese culture and religion. In overall there's thousands of temples in Bali but most of them are small house temples. Besakih is something completely different.


 
Besakih ja Agung are located quite near to the north-east coast of Bali so the trip from Denpasar to there takes two to three hours. Hence our excursion started already at 8AM when we hopped on to our bus and started traveling towards the temple. We were at the destination about 11AM. Right after we had arrived, the whole exchange student group had to change their clothing. You can enter the temple only in a clothing that respects the Balinese Hinduism so everyone dressed up their Balinese traditional clothing that they had purchased during a traditional costume workshop in the beginning of October.

Men and women have a different kind of clothes when they're wearing a traditional Balinese costume. Men have a udeng (a headdress), a safari (a shirt), sarong (a large piece of colourful material wrapped around the body like a skirt) and a saput (another skirt which is placed in front of the sarong). Women doesn't wear udeng but instead of that they wear a kebaya (a blouse), a selendang (a scarf that is wrapped around a kebaya) and a sarong without a saput. I'd say that our group of exchange students look really different compared to a normal day at the campus area.





After entering the temple area we had a great opportunity to take part of a Hinduism praying ceremony. That was a great experience which I'm probably not getting ever again at least any time soon. Before the ceremony started, every one of us got an incense and a kind of a praying item made of palm leaves and containing different kinds of flowers. When the ceremony (lead by a local priest) began, whole group sat down to a ground. With the instruction of the priest we were praying while holding all the different kind of flowers. In the end we drank and washed our head with a holy water and then the priest put some kind of special rise to our forehead. After that the ceremony was over, in overall it maybe took 15 minutes. In overall this is a really fascinating tradition and the local people really take part of this kind of ceremonies every day so these really are a big part of their everyday life. This is also really different compared to most of the western religion traditions.


  
After the ceremony we had approximately one hour to just wonder around the temple area. When I was walking around the place, I truly realized how huge place that temple is. It's really miraculous how they have been able to build this up centuries ago. So yeah, this last experience was a great way to end excursions of this semester and I'd recommend a visit to Besakih Temple to anyone traveling in Bali :)

torstai 12. joulukuuta 2013

Shopping in Bali

I've been trying to write about some specific thing about Bali that would interest many future students. One of them is of course the question about shopping in Bali. What you can shop? Where? How much it costs? I wrote already about the prices earlier in this blog but I think it's still good to write a short collage about this subject :)

- Shopping Malls. There's quite many of them and almost each of them is located either in the centre area of Denpasar, Kuta and Seminyak or at least in the side of the main "highway" Sunset Road which connects these areas to each other. Discovery Mall in Kuta, Carrefour and Bali Galleri Mal at the side of Sunset Road and Beachwalk at the beach road of Kuta are the ones that are most familiar to me. The malls in Denpasar aren't that familiar because I'm not normally going there without some specific reason.

You can find stores of the most well-known brands, for example Billabong, Quicksilver and Converse, from at least one of these malls. There's also many of the big clothing stores (even Zara since this autumn) in Bali. The quality of clothes are precisely the same as in anywhere else. Unfortunately also prices are quite similar as the western prices so there's no reason to buy a lot of things here because it's not that much cheaper. You can't bargain the prices in malls.

- Street shops, booths and sellers. All of these things are going to become really familiar to you if you spend even a couple of hours in the centre of Kuta, the biggest tourist area in Bali. The main streets in Kuta have uncountable amount of street shops and booths and you can buy almost anything there. If the shopkeeper doesn't have something, then he's going to get it to you if you're ready to pay reasonable price. Unfortunately most of the shopkeepers can be really irritating and actually those guys are one of the biggest reason why I couldn't live in Kuta too long time. On the other hand it can be really fun to stop by at those shops and buy cheap sunglasses, flip flops, shirts etc. The most fun part is of course bargaining: you can get stuff with a really cheap price if you're a good bargainer and especially if you can speak Indonesian language.

Unfortunately most of the things that are sold in these stores are fake copies of well-known brands and the quality of these things can be really bad. I've been trying to avoid buying fake Nike/Adidas/etc. flip flops but unfortunately they're not selling any shoes that doesn't have some kind of fake logo in them. After all, shopping at these places can be really fun or then really irritating - depends on both you and the shopkeeper. Also be prepared for the fact that the same guys are trying to sell anything to you when you're hanging out at the beach.

- Buying food. First I have to say that I've never really made dinner here in Bali so I may not be the best person to write about this topic but luckily I still have gotten some kind of experience during three and a half months. There's numerous little or medium sized shops in Bali. You may call them grocery stores even though there's almost none of real food (like meat, vegetables etc.) sold in those places. Maybe they're more like a convenience store. Anyway, there's four shop brands that you can't avoid here. Those are Minimart, Indomaret, Alfamarket and Circle K. There's not any specific differences between these four. There's no 7/11 in Bali. In addition to those four there's also for example Coco Mart and Pepito stores. Especially the latter one sells real food etc.

There's also uncountable amount of tiny boutiques which sell for example petrol, credit for prepaid, drinks, small pastries and many other basic articles. The selection and prices may differ a lot. These tiny stores are mostly owned and run by one family. Then of course there's really big supermarkets where you can buy anything (also real food). Some of them are located inside of the malls that I mentioned earlier but there's also some others like Bintang Market (named after the local beer brand). You still may not want to buy meat or especially vegetables and fruits from supermarkets because you can get cheaper and most of the time better ones from local markets. There's many of markets all over in Bali.

- Special stores. These are completely own area and of course I don't know every specific store from Bali. One of the biggest type of special stores is of course surf stores. You can buy surf boards, surf shirts, surf shorts or anything else connected somehow to surfing especially near to the beaches but there's also some big stores selling surfing stuff. The most popular may be RipCurl. Besides of surf shops there's for example electronic stores, art shops, furniture stores and even DVD stores. Unfortunately, once again because of Indonesian way of doing things, the authenticity of DVDs is really questionable. And these are only some examples. For example, we found even one costume rental place before Halloween.

maanantai 9. joulukuuta 2013

New Week, New Article

It's a new week once again. During the weekend we for example celebrated the Finnish Independence Day in Balinese style and went paintballing, both were great experiences. Still it's a little bit sad because the weekend was the second last that we're going to spend with this exchange student group: some of us are leaving Bali straight after the semester ends in 19th December so that they'll make it to home for Christmas. Of course some of the students are going to stay in Bali/Indonesia longer and some are going to explore Asia. It feels so weird that this school week is the last normal school week. Next week there's only exams and the closing ceremony in Thursday. New students are coming here only in a couple of weeks and luckily I have a chance to meet them all because by job here in Bali ends only in January. Still, I feel a little bit sad right now.

But let's still focus on the current semester. Because it's a new week, it's also time for a new article that I've written :) I interviewed Saara a couple of weeks ago. She is one of our many exchange students in Udayana University. Before arriving in Bali Saara had been traveling around Indonesia for a couple of months and she's going to continue traveling after the semester. After the semester new students also can contact Saara with their questions because she's going to be our new online ambassador.

Saara has enjoyed the exchange student time in Bali really much

Traditional Healing Workshop

As I wrote about the sicknesses in Bali last week, it's good to write now about the traditional healing workshop that we had last Thursday. There really is a strong culture of a traditional healing in Bali. Many Balinese still think that normal doctors can't heal all the illnesses and that's why they still may prefer going to a traditional healer's place instead of visiting a doctor.

Asia Exchange students had a rare opportunity to learn a lot about this culture which is really interesting and completely different compared to for example the European healing culture. All of the information that was told in that workshop was completely new to me. The culture of traditional healing includes the belief that every person has own aura and seeing that aura is an important part of healing. I got an opportunity to go standing in the front of the class so that others could observe my aura, quite interesting experience. With the traditional healing you should be able to heal both physic and mental problems.

The workshop started with the lecture of a local healer who spoke about the theory about traditional healing. After the lecture the students got a chance to try to practice the right way to see things (that ability is needed if you want to heal someone). After that they practiced seeing an aura and even breathing in a right way. Finally a couple of lucky students got an opportunity to get healed from their headaches. At least there wasn't any results instantly but the healers told that for the first times it may take a day before the healing affects - maybe the headache has gone during the weekend :) Who knows.

Of course this all may sound really silly if you're thinking this only in the aspect of western medical treatment but at least I think it's much more interesting to respect this tradition. This has nothing to do with cheating people or making them pay for nonsense: this is a real tradition and many Balinese people are still believing in it. So, once again our students had a great chance to get an information about a special area of Balinese culture that normally tourists doesn't have a chance to know.

And here's a couple of pictures from the workshop:





torstai 5. joulukuuta 2013

Stay Safe in Bali

I've been asked to write about possible ilnesses and accidents in Bali. Of course it is true that in Indonesia and overall in South East Asia there's many kind of ilnesses and possibility of accidents that aren't that usual e.g. in Europe. Still I want to stress that anything can happen anywhere so worrying too much about safety is the worst thing you can to do yourself.

I've been living in Bali now for over three months and nothing really bad hasn't happened  to me. I've hurt my legs for a couple of times but that could've happened in Finland also. Sure, some of our exchange students have had severe injuries or ilnesses that have made them to go a hospital but everything has been fixed. In the end Bali is pretty much safe place (compared to some other areas in South East Asia) as long as you keep your head clear. Still, there's a list of things that you should be prepared for when you come here.

Bali Belly is the first thing that should be mentioned about sicknesses in Bali although it's almost never dangerous to your health. It may take some time before your stomach can stand spicy food and in overall different kind of foods and that may cause some stomach problems. Normally they go away in a couple of days. Symptons may feel quite rough at first but normally rest is enough to make you feel better. If situation doesn't get better, you can get some medics from a pharmacy. A food poisoning is a different thing and possibility for that is of course in Bali as in any other place in the world. Normally people are first too afraid of what they're eating here. Most of the warungs (little food places) and restaurants are completely safe but of course it's good to check that everything that you're eating seems to be fine. That way you'll avoid problems pretty surely. If you get a food poisoning, you may have to go to a hospital.

Tropical diseases. It's easy to prepare for most of the tropical diseases already before coming here. You need vaccination at least for a hepatitis A (and B) but vaccinations also for typhoid and Japanese encephalitis may be a pretty good choice. There hasn't been much of malaria recently in Bali but in other parts of Indonesia it's more common. You can buy medication for malaria also from here (and you can also get vaccinations here if you want to do so). Then there's some diseases like dengue fever for which you can't prepare in any way but they're pretty rare and there's a good treatment for example for dengue.

Animals go a kind of into a same category than tropical diseases so let's discuss about them next. Mostly the animals of Bali are harmless and some of them (like geckos) are really interesting at least in my opinion :D Still it's true that there are a few critters that you may not find in your home country. There's some poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions but they're pretty rare: I've only seen tiny spiders and a couple of dead scorpions. In the sea there may be sea urchins, jellyfish or even sharks (the last are really rare). I've encountered with some small jellyfish while surfing but luckily their stings aren't dangerous, only irritating. Bali and Indonesia in overall have tried to get rid of rabies, there's still probably some dogs, bats or even monkeys that have rabies. Stray dogs are pretty usual here but they're not dangerous even though they might seem and sound like that. As long as you're not getting really close to them, there should be no reason to be afraid. Of course if you're worried about rabies, you gan get a vaccintion for that also. In overall I wouldn't be really worried about local animals. Most of them are interesting and from those that are not, most are only irritating (like flies and ants).

Traffic accidents are probably the most usual cause for accidents among our students even though I've been saying that the Balinese traffic is easier that it may look first. Luckily most of the accidents are pretty minor and they've been cleared without going to a hospital. Unfortunately there has been also some severe accidents which have cause a little bit longer trip to a hospital but students have survived from everything here so far. The most important things are to 1) always wear a helmet, 2) drive safely and 3) never drink and drive. Taxis are here so cheap and easy to get that there should be no explanations for drunk driving.

Alcohol poisonings (or luckily in this case only one poisonin) have been in news headlines during this week. Last week there was one really unfortunate situation where an Australian girl got so sick from her drink that she had to be flewn to Darwin where she got the best treatment and is luckily okay now. The problem in Bali is that there are some bad quality versions of the local liquor Arak (those versions are made home) which may contain methanol which is extremely dangerous. A drink with methanol may kill or make you blind. I don't want to underrate the severity of previous incidents but I still want to remind that there's millions of portions of alcohol served in Bali and almost every one of them are safe. You should be safe as long as you hang out in the big bars and nightclubs which have to keep their standards really high - although anything is unfortunately possible here. I haven't had any kinds of problems but I've also been pretty sure every time about what I'm drinking and I haven't left my drinks out of my sight even for a second. Of course if you want to be 100 percently safe, drink only liquids that are served in a bottle... Or then don't drink alcohol at all :)

Drownings are one thing that many travel guides warn about when coming to Bali. It's true that waves may be here sometimes really big, upstream may become really strong and there's not many life guards at beaches. Still in my opinion it's pretty easy to avoid even the danger of drowning. Always be sure about how much you can swim and always keep the shore in your sight. Same thing applies when you're surfing. There should be no reason for swimming really far away from the shore. So, be sure you can swim back from where you are and avoid strong upstreams. It helps if you're not surfing or swimming alone.

Natural catastrophes like earthquakes and tsunamis are possible in Bali as in almost every part of South East Asia. Still, Bali is in a kind of safe zone, meaning that there hasn't been any really bad disasters for a long time. There's also two active volcanoes in Bali but the possibility of dangerous eruptions is really small. It's almost impossible to be prepared for natural catastrophes and the possibility of them is so tiny that there's no reason to worry about them. If something happens, the most important thing is to follow the governmental instructions.

I really hope that all of our students can avoid violent situations like fights in the middle of a night but yeah, they're the last thing that I also want to notify. From my own experience I can say that some of the tourists may become really aggressive when they're drunk so it's really clever to avoid the groups of drunken people who you don't know and who seem to be in an aggressive mood. I hope that it goes without saying that you shouldn't try to pick a fight with the local people. Violent robberies are really rare here, instead of that there's unfortunately really many pickpockets who are intrested in your belongings.

So yeah, even though there's many different categories, I still want to remind you that in my opinion Bali is a really safe when thinking about possibility of ilnesses or accidents. It's been even surprising for me how normal the life is here. No big problems or anything that should be really afraid of :) But yeah, it's good to know about the possibilities. I hope they stay only as possibilities also in the future.

maanantai 2. joulukuuta 2013

Monday Articles

A new week has begun and it's once again time to publis one article that I've been working on lately :) Some time ago I posted two videos about internship in Bali and this time there's a written text about that same topic. You can read either one whole big article or the same one in parts:

Jana, Jutta, Jonas and Laura tell about their experience of doing internship in Bali
Asia Exchange intern Jana
Seeds of Hope intern Jutta
Bali Internshipsi interns Jonas and Laura
- Info about Bali Internships