Bali: Day 11

Day 11 of our trip was our last full day in Bali. There was a theme of our trip in Kuta if you didn't notice- beach and pool. We started our morning with a long two-hour walk along the beach, exploring the town next to Kuta, Legian. Legian is much quieter that Kuta. We wandered through some streets, got a little lost, emailed our hubbies and still made it back for breakfast.

After breakfast, we laid out by the hotel pool and read our books. So relaxing. So wonderful. Krystal decided she wanted to buy a dress she had seen a previous day so she went out in town and I went back to the room and relaxed and cleaned up.

For the evening, we were headed to Nusa Dua, a town about a 20 minute drive from Kuta. Some other girls from Atsugi base were staying at the Westin and had arrived a few days earlier. We met up with Kari, Alyssa and Tori for dinner and a Balinese dance show at the Westin. A perfect ending to our trip!

We got to Nusa Dua around 5 and the dinner show didn't start until 7 pm so we headed to a near by shopping area first. I stocked up on a few souvenirs for my English students although Krystal and I noticed that in this "nicer" part of the island, every souvenir we saw was priced much higher than in the markets we had been too. Even though the items were all the same!

We were able to catch a Kecak show. Here is a blurb from Wikipedia to describe this type of dancing:

Kecak (pronounced [ˈketʃak], alternate spellings: Ketjak and Ketjack) is a form of Balinese music drama, originated in the 1930s and is performed primarily by men, although a few women's kecak groups exist as of 2006. ^[1]
Also known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant, the piece, performed by a circle of 100 or more performers wearing checked cloth around their waists, percussively chanting "cak" and throwing up their arms, depicts a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince RamaRavana. However, Kecak has roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism fight the evil King dance.

There was a sheet on our table that described the story that ws taking place between the demon king and the monkey army. We were confused for a bit, but enjoyed it all the same.

While we watched the show we enjoyed a huge buffet of all sorts of yummy Balinese food!

 After dinner, we headed back to our hotel because we had to get up very early to catch our 6:55 am flight to Singapore!