Pi Bani pi Bali - Part 3

The first few days in Bali were packed with ICAAP activities during the daytime, and so we didn't really have the time to go shopping or jalan-jalan except at night. At least it was good that we stayed at the Tuban-Kuta area, which is THE area for shopping.

But I'm not really a shopper, and by the end of the Congress, all I had to bring home were the items collected at the various booths during ICAAP. Among them were these...

Hehehe... I had always been giving talks telling people about female condoms but was never able to show them how it looked like... now at least I have samples to show...

Well, anyway, our group would usually go out for dinner together at night but I guess it wasn't easy for the others in the group always having to opt for halal food when they easily had so many choices around! During dinner on Wednesday night, while we were discussing our programme for Thursday (ICAAP ended at noon), I suggested "free and easy" for Thursday after the closing ceremony. Let them do what they want to do and go where they want to go. At least I didn't have to feel guilty about the others having to keep me in mind when deciding where to eat. Besides, I'm a big girl... I can take care of myself...

So yep, after we got back to our hotel on Thursday afternoon, the others went off in 2 groups... while I went back to my room for a while for my prayers and then immediately I went off to ronda-ronda Kuta. Walking around alone had its advantages... I simply walked at my usual fast pace without having to think if there was anybody else in the group needing to walk slowly. I walked and walked until I reached the other side of Kuta, looking around at what was available and only had my lunch on my way back to the hotel.

Souvenir items were definitely cheaper at the area nearer to my hotel. So yep, bought them on the way back too. Didn't really buy much, but at least I had something else in my luggage other than the condoms... :-)

I didn't bother to go far for dinner, there was a nearby warung selling halal food, with lots of paintings decorating the place. The food wasn't too bad either.

As for Friday's programme, since I had booked the Saturday flight back to Malaysia, together with my room-mate, while the rest were to stay on until Monday, I had pre-arranged for a van & driver to bring me around Bali on Friday - on my personal account. And since the van could take 8 people, I offered the rest to join me if they wanted to. And so they did. One of the gang however had gone to stay with his friends in Bali after the ICAAP closing ceremony on Thursday, and so there were only 7 of us. But a friend from Nepal joined us for the ronda-ronda Bali and we were back to 8.

Our driver/guide was very helpful. Although I opted for the Kintamani tour, we didn't really follow the usual itinerary for the said tour. We skipped what we didn't want and went for other things which weren't included in the original itinerary.

We stopped to see stone carvings...

Wood carvings...

We then went to Tegallalang (not sure if this is the right spelling) to see their beautiful rice terrace.

Then off to the Holy Spring Temple...

Saw these ducks at the temple but it was the white duck that attracted us... nice hairdo don't you think?

We also stopped by a coffee & spice farm where amongst others, we were shown the luwak coffee or the animal coffee. The animal coffee? Well, luwak coffee begins like any other coffee as a small red fruit on a coffee tree.

The coffee then gets eaten by the luwak...

This fella (the luwak) was sleeping when we visited.

The coffee then comes out from the luwak's rear end, looking somewhat unclean, but still retaining the skin surrounding the coffee bean, preventing the bean itself from coming into contact with anything else in the stomach of the luwak.

Having said that, no, I didn't try the luwak coffee although my colleagues bought a cup to be shared just to get the taste. I did however try the other drinks offered free by the people at the farm - the cocoa, ginseng coffee and ginger tea. The luwak coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world, so they didn't offer that for free tasting.

Then off we went to Kintamani, to see the beautiful sceneries surrounding Mount Batur Volcano.

Buffet lunch at Kintamani with Mt Batur in the background.

On our way back after lunch, we saw a ceremony going on and asked our guide to stop for a while, just to have a look...

After that we did stop at an Art Market, but didn't buy anything. They were too expensive for us cheapskates.

Our Nepalese friend needed to get to the airport by 6 pm to catch her 8 pm flight, so we then headed straight to the airport to send her off. We didn't want to be caught in the jam and decided it was better to be early. So yep, we got there by 5.30 pm.

And after checking with our guide/driver that he wouldn't charge extra if we wanted him to bring us to Jimbaran for dinner before sending us back to the hotel, off we went to Jimbaran after sending off our Nepalese friend.

We could see the airport's landing strip from where we had dinner...

No, the plane wasn't THAT near to our place. I zoomed in to get this pic.

I also took 3 pictures of sunset at Jimbaran, using 3 different modes...

Auto mode

Beach mode

Sunset mode

And this was our dinner...

Kena kira betul-betul budget sebelum order... ratus-ratus ribu wei... rupiah lah...

Headed back to the hotel after dinner. The next day my room mate and I were to leave for home while the rest were to check out from our hotel in Tuban and move to Ubud instead. And they decided to use the services of the same helpful driver.

All in all, it was a good trip to Bali. The Congress was beneficial, and although I didn't get to go to many other attractive places in Bali (we simply couldn't cover everything in one day!), it was a good trip anyway.

I must say that our group did manage to confuse a lot of people. Many simply had a hard time trying to guess where we were from. I could pass off as either Malaysian or Indonesian... a few of us could pass off as either from China or Korea or Japan or Hong Kong or Taiwan... a few others could pass off as either from India or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. And things were even more confusing for them at our booth during ICAAP, when we had people who could converse with them in Tamil, Hindi, Mandarin, Malay or English.

The best part was when one guy came over, struggling to speak to us in English, and there we were struggling to make him understand what we were trying to say, and then I suddenly said something in Malay to one of my colleagues, the guy asked, "Bisa bahasa Indonesia?" Duh... the guy was from Papua and was more proficient in Indonesian language rather than English.

Buat penat je cakap orang putih...

Pi Bani pi Bali - Part 2

The ICAAP programme book and delegate's photo ID

With the welcome and opening ceremony over on Sunday, and with the shuttle bus drop zone for our area being quite far from our hotel, we decided to rent a van to fetch us at our hotel and send us to BICC. We were charged IDR70,000 per trip, that's about RM24 or so, or about RM3 per person. The Congress was only for 4 days, so we thought might as well make our lives easier by renting the van for all 4 days. Besides we had to bring loads of Buddy Bears to be placed at our exhibition booth at the Asia Pacific Village. The bears may not be heavy, but they were bulky!

Welcome to ICAAP 9!

On the first day, after sending over our bears to our booth and putting up some posters, we rushed off to attend the opening plenary session; which was supposed to end at 10.15.

The plenary session

Since the opening of the Asia Pacific Village was at 10.15, we got out of the plenary session by 9.45 am and headed straight to our booth to get our Buddy Bears all ready for presentation and distribution.

Our booth at Asia Pacific Village

Since we had the same delegates attending ICAAP to man (or woman!) our booth, we had to take turns at the booth. I had wanted to attend workshops, symposia or oral abstract sessions on the topic of HIV women and children, and there was one such workshop at 10.45 am on the first day. But we were so busy setting up our booth, I lost track of time and only noticed it when it was almost 10.45 am. I immediately dashed off to the room where that particular workshop was supposed to be held, only to be told that it was cancelled. How frustrating!

But over the 4 days, I did manage to attend 3 plenary, 2 symposia and 3 oral abstract sessions - and in between I managed to help out at the booth, go round to see the other booths and even managed to sit down and chat with some new and old acquaintances; all certainly useful in expanding our network.

In addition to that I also managed to join a field trip on the first day. I had also signed up to join another field trip on Tuesday, but during my absence from the booth, someone from a TV production had come to our booth wanting to arrange for an interview with me. My colleagues had agreed for the interview to be held during lunch break on Tuesday. The field trip was also supposed to be during lunch break, so when told about the TV interview I had to cancel the field trip.

On Tuesday itself, since we wanted our booth to be full of Buddy Bears during the interview, we made sure the bears were only distributed after lunch, ie after the interview was over. And oh, I found out that the person who had arranged for the interview was none other than Anom. Yep, we finally met, of all places, in Bali, not Malaysia!

Our Buddy Bears all set to move to their new homes.

Having the booth (which we got for free) was indeed a blessing. More people now know about our Buddy Bears and we also managed to get lots of new networking all over Asia Pacific! Simply grrrreat! Some of the visitors even wanted to buy our bears but we remained firm with our NOT FOR SALE policy. Oh, I'm sure there would have been a few who actually lied by telling us they were dealing direct with HIV infected children and wanted the bears to be given to the children. But we didn't have any lie detectors to determine that - the bears which didn't land in the right hands, let's just say they were for promotional purposes.

My poster presentation was on Wednesday. I needed someone tall to put it up as the poster was big and the boards were quite high, so I got my tallest colleague to help me out. And before we took off the poster at the end of the day, we made sure we had a group photo in front of my poster.

Exhibitions ended on Wednesday as Thursday was just the final plenary followed by the closing ceremony. So on Thursday we traveled light to BICC, without having to travel with the bears.

Performances during the closing ceremony.

The audience too giving the dance a try!

ICAAP volunteers given the much deserved recognition.

ICAAP facts and figures

Since we weren't told what time exactly the closing ceremony would end, we told our van driver to fetch us at 12.30 pm. We left the hall at 12.25 pm although the closing ceremony was not over yet. But we already knew that the next ICAAP will be held in Busan, Korea.

Overall, being a first timer to ICAAP, the whole thing was an eye-opener for me. Not only did I learn new things, I also managed to expand my networking and the experience was indeed refreshing. I do hope to follow up on things here at home so we Buddies can improve our services to the community, in particular the PLHIV community.

Coming up next... Part 3 - Ronda-ronda Bali

Pi Bani pi Bali - Part 1

Waiting for the Ipoh-LCCT shuttle bus, with our luggage... the bulk being our Buddy Bears.

As early as 2.30 am on Saturday, 8th August 2009, 7 of us were already at the at the Ipoh-LCCT bus station in Ipoh. Originally 9 of us were supposed to be going for ICAAP (International Congress on Aids in Asia and the Pacific) in Bali, but one had to back out at the very last minute as her husband was unwell. Another volunteer didn't have to take the Ipoh-LCCT shuttle bus as she was already in KL and promised to meet up with the rest of us at LCCT.

We reached LCCT at about 6.30 am. The counter for our check-in was not open yet and so we decided to have breakfast first. It was while we were having our breakfast that our other colleague came and joined us for breakfast.

Anyway, things ran smoothly, flight was on time and reached Bali on time. Upon our arrival, even before immigration clearance, there were already people there holding ICAAP placards so that the delegates would know where to go and whom to approach. Although there was quite a queue for immigration clearance (they only opened one counter for that purpose despite the many foreigners around), our luggage got through without a hitch despite our initial worries that our package of Buddy Bears could be rather suspicious looking.

Our transport to our hotel was arranged by the ICAAP organisers, so we didn't have to worry about getting taxis. The hotel that we booked was not in the list of ICAAP's official hotels (we cheapskates opted for a budget hotel) but there was an official hotel nearby so we were supposed to be sent to the nearest hotel in the official ICAAP transport.

Well, the moment we got into the van with our things and all, we managed to coax the driver to send us to our budget hotel - giving our loads of luggage as part of the excuse. The other excuse was we had a handicapped person on a wheelchair in our team. The driver didn't argue at all, he sent us to right to the reception of our hotel, and although he didn't ask for it, we gave him a small token.

Our hotel... quite comfortable I must say despite it being a budget hotel.

Inside the room...

Outside the room

Our hotel pool

Initially we wanted to go to BICC (Bali International Convention Center) on the same day to register, but by the time we checked in and went out to get lunch, it was already 4 pm and registration for the day was only open until 5 pm; and so we decided to register on Sunday itself.

The long queue to get our delegates photo ID. Our friend here on the wheelchair managed to skip the queue. One of the organisers helped him out.

After registration and familiarizing ourselves with the convention center (which was quite a task I tell you... where was this room and that room... where was our booth at the Asia Pacific Village... where was my poster supposed to be put up etc) we went back to our hotel. We needed to get ready for the Opening Ceremony and Welcome Dinner at the Garuda Wisnu Kencana park in Jimbaran. We decided not to take the official shuttle bus for the opening ceremony. Thank God for that. Imagine our horror when we got to GWK and saw that all vehicles (except for VIPs) were to park at the bottom of the hill and we were all supposed to climb up all the way to the park where the function was supposed to be held. Even our van was not allowed to go up initially but the driver helped to appeal to the security people, telling them that we had a wheelchair-bound person on board - how on earth was he supposed to go up the stairs all the way?

So yes, our van was given permission to go up; even then our friend still needed help getting around as there were still some steps we had to go through to get to the park. Luckily the security people there helped to carry our friend in his wheelchair.

Group photo at GWK before the opening ceremony.

A not so sweet looking Malaysian with 2 sweet looking Balinese.

The Buddies present chairperson and past chairperson in action... nice or not my body??

A group of delegates with their attractive red umbrellas.

Performance on stage during the opening ceremony. Notice the moon?

Coming up next... Part 2 - The Congress activities...