I never saw it coming. When I separated Ang from her beloved Starwood, I figured she would eventually come around and one day be comfortable picking random places from the Internet, despite the look on her face when she moved into the Diggler Room. But just one day later, I think there will be a little wetness around the eyes when we check out tomorrow to move to our next destination.

As we’ve come to find from our brief time here, there is an incredible story behind this hotel that highlights the kind of unexpected things that can only be found by stepping off the beaten path. Until recently, we’ve learned, this wasn’t even a hotel at all, but a retreat built from scratch by one old Japanese man (whom I’ve come to call Master Ugway, from Kung Fu Panda fame) who set out to build a place where he could bring different cultures together and introduce them to the local village people. At one point, over 80% of the villagers worked on the site, constructing buildings and managing the groups that came to visit for seminars, festivals, and the like.

The fall of the markets hit hard here, as much of the funding for the project came from the owner’s personal portfolio, to the point that the primary mission had to be abandoned and a new one implemented in its place. To make the facility self-sustaining, it was reborn as a hotel, staffed by people from the local village, who would have in it an opportunity to learn new skills and earn higher incomes. Slowly, the word is leaking out, and people are finding the place the same as we did, through positive reviews online. In our short stay, we have met people from Denmark and Victoria with the exact same story of how they came to stay.

We also learned that the story behind the themed rooms is that each one represents a place that the owner has visited and a culture that he wanted to recreate here. And while it has been a unique place to stay in its own right, understanding some of the history only adds to the charm. Indeed, none other that my trusty sidekick raised the question of whether we should stay longer.

After breakfast, and a brief detour involving locking ourself out of our room and having to call a locksmith, we headed back to another part of Ubud to see a few more galleries and, most importantly, find some reliable Internet. We also laid out plans for out next stop, which is going to be Lombok, the next island of consequence from Bali. It is supposedly even more mellow than what we have experienced so far, and we’ll be staying on the beach, so it will be the part of this trip where we can do a whole lot of nothing. The travel plans are still a little up in the air (not sure if we are going by boat of flying), but we’ll figure it out in the morning and get there one way or another.

With most of the plan in order, we headed off to dinner at our hotel (since it seemed far too involved to take the car back to Ubud). The experience, I can safely say, was totally unexpected. One of the staff had told us earlier how the owner, as part of his interest in mixing cultures, sent the cook off to places like India and Thailand, with the result that in an odd little hotel in the middle of nowhere, we had one of the most spectacular meals not only of this trip, but in a very long time (granted most of our meals out these days are at Olive Garden or Red Robin, but still, this was amazing). Had I known what we were in for, I might have agreed to forget about Lombok and spend the rest of the time in Bali right here in the Diggler Room.

Despite our increasing attachment to the Michi (we can’t say enough good things about it, and the kindness of Master Ugway in particular), the wheels are in motion for an early start tomorrow as we head for Lombok. We are also made the decision to day to skip Cambodia and focus only on Bali and Vietnam this trip. We’re loving it here, and in choosing to spend a few extra days to see more of the country, we realize we just can’t fit three countries into one trip. Missing Cambodia is sad, but the good news is that we’re already talking about next year’s trip to Cambodia, Laos and Northern Thailand.

We said goodbye to Tanah Lot this morning and headed of to Ubud. The drive took a little over an hour, passing through some interesting little villages and nice scenery. One particular thing I’ve noticed here is that they grow rice everywhere. From other stops in Asia, we’ve seen terraced rice fields, but here, there doesn’t seem to be a free acre of space they haven’t put them. It’s one of the harvest seasons, now so a regular sight on the edges of the roads (the few flat spots that haven’t been converted to rice paddies) are big blue tarps covered with rice drying in the sun.

Pulling into the hotel, we quickly realize that we’re not at the Meridien anymore. The description online of this place was that it was “eclectic”, but that doesn’t even come close. Some pictures may help, but these can only provide a taste. Looking around, there doesn’t seem to be a surface that isn’t covered with broken or mirrored tiles, all with no discernible pattern. Each room has a theme, like an Asian version of the Fantasyland Hotel in Edmonton. We started off in the Chinese Room, but they decided to move us to the India Room so we wouldn’t have to hear the construction by the pool (I’m guessing they got a good deal on another load of broken tile, so are clearing a new surface to put it).

Size-wise, it’s hard to complain about the India Room. Its actually a two-stroy, two bedroom apartment, so we’ll only ever really use part of it. Did I mention it was eclectic though? In case I didn’t, here’s a representative shot of the bathroom. Because of all the mirrored tile, I’ve come to affectionately call it the Dirk Diggler room, although that probably applies equally to any of the rooms here. Ang, on the other hand, hasn’t quite made the transition from Starwood mode, but I’m sure with time the Diggler Room will win her over.

After checking in and spending an hour trying to get Internet to work (unsuccessfully, so if you’re reading this it means we hauled the laptop into town and found an Internet cafe), the driver took us the last few miles into Ubud. The town’s reputation as the artistic center of Bali is well-deserved, as street after street is filled with galleries and we spent a good part of the afternoon just browsing through. The styles are mostly Balinese (go figure) which doesn’t really hit home with us, but fun to look at nonetheless.

We closed the day off with a fire dance show at one of the local temples. No matter how many times we see one of these “made for tourists” events and swear we don’t see one again, we always sign up for another everywhere we go. This one consisted of 100 chanting Balinese men grouped around a fire where a handful of very elaborately dressed dancers acted out a story of some sort. It actually made for an interesting 30 minutes, which would have been perfect had the show not been an hour and a half.

The hotel driver picked us up at the gate and whisked us back to the Diggler, where in the absence of Internet, it was time to turn it, secure in the knowledge that the snake head above the bed would keep us safe.

We’re on a single mission today – shopping. The morning was still a little slow as we took full advantage of our last bit of time in the villa to catch up with the kids and soak a bit in the pool. After some breakfast and a quick move of stuff back to our regular room though, its game on.

Our main destination is Kerboakan, where we saw a long string of “factories” making furniture and other outdoor things. It’s about a half hour from the hotel, so we arranged for a metered cab to take us there. After talking to the driver a little, we changed the plan up a little and decided to keep him for the day for 350,000 rupiah (about 32 dollars), figuring it would speed things up a bit and probably not cost that much more than just the ride in and back.

Three hours later, we have a fist full of business cards and a bunch of pictures of some really amazing (and unbelievably cheap) things. For anyone wondering a few months from now why a 20′ x 20′ container is sitting in our driveway, this is where it all started. From teak furniture, to handmade mosaic tiles, to complete, hardwood gazebos, we looked at it all.

From Kerboakan, we headed back down to Kuta to a shopping mall Ang wanted to spend more time in. First though, we broke for dinner at a nice little restaurant on the water. The view was fantastic, and the food probably the best yet. It sat above a beach club that I’m sure gets hopping later in the evening and probably provides for some pretty good people watching on a day we could stay longer (there is a good story about a person I’ve dubbed EuroChad, but no time to tell it today), but with the clock running down on the driver, Ang is off to cram as much shopping as possible in 20 minutes and I need to find a bank.

Dealing with the money here presents an interesting challenge. Currently, a dollar get us about 11,400 rupiah, which, in practice, makes it hard to keep in some context. Prices for everything run in the tens of thousands, so you end up peeling off 50,000 notes like they were singles at the Deja Vu, and pulling a million out of the ATM is just a regular day. I guess its good practice for Vietnam, where a dollar gets 18,000 dong (a lesser man might jump on the cheap joke there, but today I’m sticking to the high road).

Tomorrow we’re headed for Ubud, which is the art and craft center of Bali. We’ve heard good things about it from people that have travelled here, so are looking forward to something a little different. It is also out of the reach of Starwood Hotels, so we’re flying by the seat of our pants when it comes to accommodation. The concierge here was able to get us booked at a place we found online that looked okay and had positive reviews. $50 for the room and breakfast, plus they send a car to pick us up (about an hour drive).

Little to report today, as I don’t think we actually left the hotel room until 5, other than to go for breakfast at (gulp) 11. The downside of the deluxe room is clearly that there is absolutely no reason to leave it. I could easily see slipping in to a comfort zone sequestered inside the walls of this little villa and coming back to reality 23 days later realizing that we never actually saw anything of substance. That kind of experience I can have at a resort in Phoenix, so it’s back to the hovel that was our original room this afternoon, and hopefully some motivation to head back into Kuta.

We did take advantage of the laid back day to catch up on a few things. For me, unfortunately, that meant work. For Ang, some focused time spent on the phone. We have a pretty good setup this trip as in addition to the video chat we use to talk to the kids, we also have an internet phone that let’s us call anyone else. Together, they definitely make the distance seem much smaller.

Our only real activity of the day was an evening walk over to the nearby temple, both to see it at sunset and to wander through the maze of stalls in search of a green coconut – the latter we’d been told is a remedy for many of the ills that come with eating from street carts and drinking beverages of unknown origin (carbonated preferably – after watching Slumdog Millionaire, bottled water also seems a little more suspect). If the unpleasantness of drinking warm coconut water through a straw is any indicator of medicinal quality, we should be good to go – blah.

We did have grand plans for a nice room service dinner on the patio since it would be our last night in this room, but feeling a little worse for wear (green coconuts apparently take some time to work), we just didn’t have the energy to pull it together, which seems pretty pathetic now that I write it. Instead, we settled for a gourmet meal of Cup O’ Noodles that we bought a few days back, not totally missing the irony in sitting in a private compound at a resort half a world away and eating seven cents worth or soup (although we splurged and both had our own cup, to hell with the expense).

Up bright and early again today (not quite as early though so slowly getting used to the local time) so made the decision to take advantage of it and catch the early shuttle to town to search for furniture. Given how hot it yesterday around 2 o’clock, we figured it made sense to get our wandering around done in the morning and be back by the pool before the temperature got really steamy. In theory a good idea, but in practice I still sweat like a 400 pound man running a marathon.

We did have more luck finding a few places, and Ang got her first taste of a shopping mall (so yes, she had to be dragged back to the hotel under duress), so all in all a reasonably successful outing. We also fit in time for the all important one hour massage. $5 well spent. On the drive back, we passed through a big section of shops that appeared to have what we are looking for, so I think we will head back there one more day before we leave.

Back at the hotel we have switched rooms. Given that occupancy isn’t that high right now, we had the opportunity to upgrade to a one bedroom villa for a small up charge. We made the decision to splurge a little bit and take advantage of the upgrade for 2 days. We’ll take a few pictures and post them while we’re here, but suffice to say it is a little over the top. I’m sure it will come back to haunt me as the more places we stay like this, the harder it gets to check Ang into a Motel 6 when we travel at home.

Tomorrow I think we will stick close to the hotel and take advantage of the new digs. I’m tempted to play a round of golf mostly to just say I did. $40 gets a round, cart and a caddy to run into the bushes and find all the balls I’d spray in there, so who knows.

A less than auspicious start to our journey as our plans for an early, and organized, departure collide head on with an alarm clock that doesn’t go off. Fortunately, we wake up not too far behind schedule and hit the road only 30 minutes late. A few hours later, we safely board in Vancouver for Tokyo. It seems no matter where we go in Asia, we always end up going through Japan, but every time to the connections are the best there, and this is no exception. With only a 90 minute layover, we are quickly on our final leg to Bali. All tolled, flying time is about 18 hours. Add in the time to drive to Vancouver and change planes in Tokyo, and door to door, the trip is literally a full day of travel.

Our first five days in Bali are at the Le Meridien in Tanah Lot, which is about an hour north of the main tourist area and next to one of the most important Hindu temples in Bali. The hotel is spectacular, and as with all the places we have stayed on our travels to Asia, a bargain. The room is like a small apartment, missing only a kitchen, which honestly we wouldn’t use anyway. With my internal clock off kilter from the previous day’s travel, I have the chance to walk the grounds at the crack of dawn, long before things get busy and see just how big the place is.

As the day wears on, it becomes clear just how convenient Bali is to Australia, as the place is quickly crawling with Australians. Where, to me, traveling to Bali seems exotic, for those Down Under, it is just a quick trip on a discount airline. It makes me wonder if right now somewhere in Sydney, people are talking about the adventurous trip they are taking to Cabo San Lucas or Cancun. I’ll have to ask if I get the chance.

We spent a good part of the day just lounging by the pool before working up the energy to venture away from the hotel. Our first stop was the temple next door, where we figured we could find a cab into town for cheaper than the car service the hotel offered. As it is the weekend, the temple is very crowded, which is not lost on the local merchants who have set up a long sting of shops selling pretty much any kind of trinket you could imagine, and quite a few you probably couldn’t. Falling squarely in the latter category are wooden bottle openers, carved in the shape of certain male anatomy. I’m not sure what the theory of these are, perhaps they keep people from stealing your beer because no one wants to use the opener.

After a few pictures and a quick snack, we decide to wait a bit and just take the free hotel shuttle into town (free being just the price I was looking for). Its late in the day, but our goal is to find some furniture shops and a good place to eat. That is not to be as we quickly find ourselves wandering aimlessly through streets of mostly closed stores and very few restaurants. I am sure that somewhere here there is an area similar to the night markets in Phuket, but on this night we don’t find it. Many (and I mean many) blocks later, we come across a restaurant that looks crowded, and decide to jump at the chance. By the time the shuttle gets us back to the hotel, it is just a little after 10 pm. No more than five minutes later, I’m drooling on my pillow.

Well, once again it’s that time. Tomorrow we head off for return trip Southeast Asia. And keeping with our general philosophy of not visiting places we have already seen, this year’s itinerary includes some time in Bali, Cambodia, and Vietnam. While all three are high on our list of places to see (which is why they are all planned stops) there is definitely some concern that we are trying to see too much in too little time. Of course, the counter to that is we never know when we’ll get back to Asia, so best to take advantage of the opportunity while we have it.

Other than some general concept of which countries we want to visit, the only plan we have going in is for the first few nights in Bali. After that, we’ll just roll with it and see where circumstances take us. Over the coming days, we’ll do our best to keep this page current with our whereabouts and share the highlights of our travels.

Many thanks in advance to our parents, who in split shifts make sure our kids are in good hands.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and so it is with the trip to China.  We left the hotel for the airport with mixed emotions – sad that our vacation was over, but excited to get back home to see everyone.  The flight back to San Francisco was quite pleasant, and with the help of a little melatonin I managed to sleep most of the way in hopes of shocking the system back to a local time zone.  From San Francisco, Angela and I parted ways, with her heading back to Redmond, and me on a flight to Chicago for a few more days away.

As vacations go, it would be very hard to complain with any occasion that provided for three weeks in Asia, so from that perspective it was fantastic.  How did China compare to past trips?  That one is a little harder to answer, since the game plan was so much different.  Unlike past travels, China involved moving around a lot and day trips to different sights (like the Great Wall). So in that regard, we saw a lot more that we will take away great memories from than may have been the case in Thailand or Malaysia.  The flip side is that we were a lot busier, spent more time in planes trains and automobiles, and were on beaches nowhere as nice.  I don’t think that makes any one trip better than the other, just different.  Our only regret of this trip is that with the demonstrations, we didn’t get to see Tibet.

So what did we learn?  Well, a few things that we’re happy to share.

1. Nothing can prepare you for seeing the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army. Make the effort, it is well worth it.
2. China ten years ago would have been much different than it is today. Ten years from now it will be different again.  See it soon before it is just a polluted, hectic, Westernized shell of its former self.
3. Count your change before you get out of the cab
4. Unless you are in a fixed-price place like a department store, prices will start 3 or 4 times higher if you look like a tourist (which you will). Bargain relentlessly to get a price that you will be happy with and ignore that a local still probably only paid half of what you did.
5. Hire English-speaking guides when you have the option, it makes the places you will see much more interesting and it doesn’t cost that much.
6. Go west. The further west you go, the more of old China you will see.
7. If you plan on spending time at the beach, skip China. There are far nicer beaches in Asia.
8. Be prepared to eat things even though you’re not sure what they are.  Unless you stick to tourist restaurants, you’ll end up ordering by pointing at pictures of things you think you might recognize but really will have no idea about.
9. You will get ripped off. A lot.  If you know that going in, it will bother you far less when it happens.
10. Take time to explore. You need to see the famous sights like the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, but don’t miss the "road-less-traveled" experiences like walking through the Hutongs in Beijing, or visiting the  countryside in Yangshuo.

Our last full day today before heading him (or Chicago in my case).  There are some touristy things to do in Hong Kong (like the tram up to the Peak), but after three weeks, we’re a little burnt.  Even though it is our only full day here, we still only managed to straggle out of the hotel around 11:30.  With nowhere in particular to go, we walked a little deeper into Kowloon to see some of the city away from the tourist center (and all the touts pitching suits, handbags and watches).  Even there though the volume of people was oppressive.

After lunch we took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. For about 30 cents it is a great value as the trip is fairly quick and the view from the water going across is great.  The Hong Kong side is home to more of the financial district and foreign companies so it has a different feel from Kowloon.  In a lot of ways is feels like a cross between London and New York, and if the population were about half what it is, I could see it being a fairly reasonable place to live.

Wandering around we spent some time looking at old furniture and artifacts.  There were a few things we found interesting, but knowing know what they cost in Beijing it’s harder to justify paying the up charge just to get them here.  I fear for the most part we are going to return home empty-handed (save for the piles of gifts for the kids).

For our last dinner here we met up with some old classmates from Stanford at a very good Mexican restaurant (or it may have just seemed very good after 20 days of sometimes suspect Chinese food. It was good to see some familiar faces and to have a conversation in English with someone other than ourselves.

About this time tomorrow we’ll be touching down in San Francisco.  This has been a wonderful trip with many memories that will not be soon forgotten. But there’s something special about home, and after being gone for so long, it will be great to be back.

Final attempt on the great carpet quest today. Armed with the addresses of two stores we found online, we set off this morning to try and end this once and for all.  What we came away with though was more of the same.  Jumping out of the cab at the first address, a building of about 5 floors with shops on the bottom, nobody seemed to recognize the name of the store we were looking for (that the concierge had written on a card in Chinese).  Slightly frustrated (and $6 poorer after being shaken down by a Buddhist monk who we’re pretty sure wasn’t a Buddhist monk), we chalked it up to maybe the concierge translating it wrong and flagged a cab to the second place on the list.

We were cautiously optimistic pulling up in a neighborhood of higher end stores and figured this one would work out better. Even when the driver couldn’t find the actual building we gave him the address for, we were confident we could just walk the street a little and find it.  About thirty minutes later, and after some help from a local (who we of course thought was on the take somehow but was really just being friendly) we found the address led to a really sketchy door in a 6 story apartment block well off the main road and surrounded by stores selling things like chicken feet. It seems that in both cases, what we found online were people that worked out of small offices (or their apartments) taking orders and then, I assume, catching a train up to Beijing every so often to buy some products and send them.

Finally admitting defeat, we headed back to the hotel to check out and on to the train station for the 2 hour ride into Hong Kong.  The ride was very uneventful, with the only excitement coming at immigration where I got pulled aside to have a thermometer stuck in both ears.  I don’t remember licking any raw chickens, so I don’t think I’m carrying the bird flu, but I suppose I’ll find out in another day or two.

Hong Kong itself is a little surreal to us. It’s kind of like a big city (like Beijing) all compressed down into something a fraction of the size.  The buildings are all tall because land is so expensive, and there are hordes of people on the street.  Our hotel is on the Kowloon side with a view of the water so we can see all the buildings on Hong Kong Island (it is a very spectacular view).  Because we got here close to dinner time, we didn’t very too far from the hotel and plan on taking the ferry across the water tomorrow.  At night, they have a light show they put on where a bunch of the buildings on the island light up to music.  It was interesting to see and the people here really seem to like their lights (everywhere we have been buildings have had flashing lights up and down the sides).

Life in general here seems quite a bit more expensive than elsewhere in China, which in some ways makes sense, and in others makes me wonder why you would buy something here for 4 times the price when a 2 hour train ride or plane flight can get it for you much, much cheaper.  Maybe if you live here its harder to get back and forth across the border than I realize, or maybe people just prefer the atmosphere and comfort of Hong Kong.