Bali, Indonesia

After a 2 hour ferry ride, 4 hours on a bus, a border-crossing, a 35 minute subway ride and a 2 hour flight-we finally arrived in Bali, Indonesia. It was late, we were tired and Angie’s legs were an itchy mess covered in swollen sand flea bites from Tioman, but we were happy to have made the trip in just one long day. We were so excited to find a huge clean room with a/c, hot water (a true luxury) and the place even had a pool! All for $30! We were loving Bali already.

KUTA

We set out exploring the Kuta, Bali area the next morning, taking in all that it was. Kuta is known as more of the party nightlife side of Bali and its main street is non-stop shopping in the day and non-stop music and clubs at night.  The beach was right there though and it was a good starting point to get acquainted with Bali.  We wondered down the small streets and took in some shopping and since the surf was up we set out to find some surfboards.

You are immediately introduced to the Bali culture with all of the offerings and the little temples and shrines located on almost every corner.  They practice a unique form of Hinduism and put on sarongs to make daily offerings to keep the spirits happy and safe.  You also see them carry everything on their head, its crazy the amount of balance it must take.  They carry everything from baskets of fruit to buckets of water around. Talking with the locals we realized they all had the same names and after asking we found out that they have a very unique naming system here.  There are no last names in Bali and each child’s first name is their number in the birth order (1st, 2nd)) and then an individual name.  So if you called out Wayan, everybody that was the first born would answer you. It is an interesting custom that is still followed.

We spent the next couple of days enjoying the good food (we found Mexican food again here) and finally enjoyed some good coffee; after all we are in Indonesia. We got out surfing a few days and Kelly scored some solid 8ft surf at a few famous Indo surf breaks including Ulawatu(this pic was from a 5 ft day).

We stuck around Kuta a few days longer than we thought we would, I think partly because we were enjoying our room and the restaurant selection so much! J  Eventually though it was time to move on again so we packed up and set off to see more of Bali.

UBUD

After another hair bending, white knuckle, please don’t let me die journey we arrived in Ubud.  Ubud is towards the central of the island of Bali and is known for being an artistic town with the Sacred Monkey Temple at the heart of it.  Yep, back to those beloved monkeys! We found another clean and luxurious room to stay in; we were really getting use to this. We unloaded our bag and fell in love with Ubud immediately!  The town has small streets with lots of little shops and the cafes were surrounded by rice paddies and lotus ponds.  It was a very serene and relaxed feeling, Bali at its finest.

Our hotel and pool in the middle of a rice field

We set out to explore the Sacred Monkey Temple which was just a short walk from our place.  Mind you though, the monkeys here don’t really just stay in the temple area, they are seen wandering around town and hanging out on power lines and rooftops. The temple area is of Hindu religion and actually has three separate temples within the area.  It has a very Indiana Jones feel to it, with lots of hand carved statues, stone walkways with vines growing on them and tons of grey-haired macaques roaming about.  We of course bought some bananas to feed the greedy little monkeys and they proceeded to climb all over us and even try to open Angie’s purse looking for bananas.  We loved it! We had to put on sarongs and sashes to get into the middle temple, since it is still used for ceremonies, and wondered about.  This one monkey took a liking to us and climbed on Kelly’s head for a ride around, he then began pulling on Angie’s sash trying to lead her around and get some bananas. He finally rested on a little pillar at our eye level and sat with us in the shade.  It was all Angie could do not to grab him and take him home!

 

Besides socializing with the monkeys (we stopped to see them every day), we also hung out in the little cafes, had daily $7 massages and just enjoyed a slower pace.  We met some people the first night and instantly formed a little network that met nightly for dinner and drinks.  We ventured out of town and went to see some of the terraced rice paddies that are so beautiful. The afternoons were spent  swimming in the pool and drinking afternoon coffee.  Really, we were kind of sucked into the Zen of Ubud and finally had to force ourselves to make travel plans or we might never leave.

LOVINA

Angie sadly said good-bye to her monkeys and we set out for the North coast of Bali.  It was a beautiful 2 hour drive through the volcanic and jungle center of Bali. We passed some more amazing country side and rice fields, took a steep climb between the volcanoes, stopped at a lake and then headed down the terrain to the coast.  It’s never really a peaceful ride due to the crazy driving, but it was about as peaceful as it gets while one is holding their breath.

When we arrived in Lovina it wasn’t really much more than a two street little town with the black beaches on one side and the green rice fields on the other.  Although there wasn’t much there, it was a pretty contrast and you got to see the more countryside of life here. We tried some of the weird looking fruit from a local, and it was really good. The first was a mangosteen. The flower on the bottom of the fruit tells you how many cloves there are inside and when you twist the outer skin off you see a bundle of what looks like a slippery garlic cloves.  The fruit  was really good, kind of a kiwi texture with a sweeter  taste.  The other fruit was the snakefruit, rightly named because the skin is dry and scaly. You peel the skin off and again there is a garlic looking fruit underneath.  The cloves have a small seed, but taste kind of like a strawberry with a pearish texture.  They were both really good.

We met up with one of our Australian friends from Ubud and enjoyed more conversation and dinners. We ventured into a local bar that had a live music for some drinks. We were just mentioning that it was kind of unreal being in such a far off place and yet listening to a band covering almost all American music, it felt like a bit like a normal night at home. That lasted for an hour or so until instantly everything became quiet. At this point we saw a table full of locals stand up and run off, we turned around just as a police officer took the band’s microphone and started giving instructions. We couldn’t understand anything, but the people in the bar were obviously more than a bit fearful and were all just staring at the floor.  The police looked around some, asked people questions, searched through things before the manager of the bar came out and after some money was exchanged the police left.  The manager of the bar came over and apologized to us for the interruption.  We weren’t exactly sure what happened, but the Indonesian government is known for being extremely corrupt, #162 of #178 countries, and it’s apparent that the people do fear and dislike them.  Suddenly it didn’t feel quite so much like home.

TULAMBEN

The next stop on our journey was to the small town of Tulamben to get back in the water and do some diving.  There was even less here than in Lovina, but our little guest house sat right on the black pebble beach and you really felt like you were sitting on the edge on the world.  It was peaceful and tranquil with the huge volcano peak to your back and the dark ocean in front of you.

In January of 1942 a US Navy cargo ship was struck by Japanese torpedoes outside of Bali.  It was taken into tow and beached at Tulamben so that the cargo could be unloaded and salvaged.  The Japanese invasion prevented this and the ship sat beached here for years.  In 1963 the eruption on the Gunung Agung volcano, the one right behind the town, split the ship into two and took it out about 50M from the shore where it is today. It is now a popular dive spot as you just walk right off the shore and swim to the wreck.

We got our dive gear ready and thought we would have to walk it out to the dive site a little ways down the beach, but they have a different system here.  We mentioned how the people balance baskets and pails of water on their head, but we never imagined this.  The ladies would come by and pick up your dive gear and balance it on their heads down the beach! Some would even have two at a time on!  For those of you who don’t dive, that equipment is heavy! The aluminum air tanks probably weigh 20 lbs each alone when full. I’m not sure how they balanced them or what their neck discs look like, but we were in awe.

The wreck dive was amazing, definitely world-class. The black sand gives everything a different color and the wreck was teaming with life.  As soon as you dropped down there was a huge school of Jack fish just swarming around, the coral was good, there were the biggest groupers and Napolean fish we have seen yet.  These fish were HUGE! We saw a shark sleeping, swam through the center of the wreck and we even spotted our first pygmy seahorses!  They are so tiny and well hid that we couldn’t even get a picture, but we had wanting to find some so we were excited. They were at 93 ft so while Angie could have watched them the whole dive; we could only take a quick peak before we had to move to shallower depths.  We enjoyed the dive so much we did it one more time before we had to pack up and leave!

SANUR

We set off back towards the main area of Bali to enjoy a couple days of surf before we headed onto another area of Indonesia. Sanur isn’t far from our original Kuta area, but is supposed to be a little quieter so we decided to check it out.  We checked into a nice little guest house and while this one didn’t have a pool, it did have a TV! We haven’t seen one of these in months! Especially not one in our room! And it had English programs via satellite! It was a treat.

Kelly got out and was able to enjoy some surf again.  Angie got another round of food poisoning and then ended up with a bad cold, so she got to enjoy some sleep and time to recover before the journey onward (at least she had TV). We also finally got our itinerary in Indonesia set, something that has taken us forever to decide and finalize.  Indonesia is just a huge and diverse country so narrowing down where to go has been hard.  You also have to be careful how you get where, as safety standards are not really in existence here. Planes going down and ferry sinkings occur at regular intervals, add on the fact that some areas just aren’t safe to travel in and you really have to do some research to minimize your risks.  All that said, we finally decided on how to spend our next month and we hope it all safely comes together.  On our trip, as in life, it’s all about balancing where you are at now and planning for what’s next.

Overall we’ve really loved our time in Bali. The people are nice, the scenery is amazing, it’s fairly easy travel and we got some long awaited surf in.  That said it was probably the first time we got a little homesick on the trip. It wasn’t even that we really miss things from home specifically (other than our dog Oscar) but more just constant sensory overload from all the new languages, currencies, etc.  Sometimes you feel like you’d just be happy to know where things are at, what they should cost, and not having to barter for absolutely everything.  Luckily, we both got over it quickly though and are set on enjoying our last two months as we know they will go by quickly.

We were off another long day of travel to get to our next destination, Lombok. We will have to stop back through Bali again on flight connections, so it’s just so long for now. Hopefully we like the rest of Indonesia as much as Bali!