BALI, INDONESIA
- Kilometres driven on motorbike: 64km
- Temples visited: 5
- Earthquakes experienced: 1
- Rice dishes eaten: €&%#”?4
Bali has been a mixed experience. I really had no expectations of this place, other than I know a lot of tourists come here. I think the level of your experience is up to which part you choose to stay in. We stayed the first 2 nights near the Sanur beach, which is pretty touristy but still nice. We hired a driver for the day and visited temples, a waterfall and other tourist sites comfortably in an air-conditioned private car. While buying water at a street stand I had to pose for a photo with two Javanese tourists. It was rather strange, but I remember from my days in India that this might happen again, so I stood tall (a head taller than the couple) and smiled for the photo. We visited a coffee plantation where they make Balinese specialty coffee, Luwak. It gets its name from the animal who basically poops the coffee. The luwak animal eats the coffee berries, digests the fruit around the bean and poops the bean out. This delicious coffee is made of those beans. It was really good! We were quite blown away by the beauty of this island, how all the houses are beautiful, although very densely built, and all hindu houses have their own temple! 80% of Balinese people are hindu, which must explain the large number of temples. There are many public temples too, big ones where you have to pay an entrance fee and wear a sarong (a type of scarf around your waist).
Next we spent 2 nights in Uluwatu which supposedly has the most beautiful beaches in Bali, and is known to be very quaint and pretty. So quaint in fact the first night we did not get dinner because everything was closed by 21:00. Renting a scooter was something we wanted to do but hesitated after reading horror stories about the traffic. That did not stop us though, as we needed the freedom to explore this magnificent island on our own. It all went pretty well considering the crazy driving of the locals. About 90% of Bali vehicles are motorbikes and scooters (the number is literally in millions: 2,5 million scooters).
We both had our outdated international driver licenses with us, and although Kai does not have a motorcycle license, we felt it’s good that we both drive, so he had to learn it all here, not the easiest place on earth. He did a good job which eventually made me relax sitting behind him on the 110 cc scooter. We did have a bit of a tumble: I was driving, we got lost in a really bad, hilly road with sand and big rocks. We were coming down a steep hill really slowly when my foot slipped and I could not hold myself on top of the bike, sliding down on the ground hitting my knee pretty badly. It was rather funny as Kai and the bike remained standing. I yelled at him laying on the ground “why did we have to come to this god forsaken road” and he laughed at me “what are you doing, honey”. The staff of a fancy restaurant were witnessing all of this and came to our rescue when they saw my bleeding knee. One of the waiters put some plant on my wounds for healing, and they showed us their amazing place with the most breathtaking view.
Our last 3 nights were spent in a tranquil place called Balian Beach where we arrived on a local bus 2 hours from Denpasar. A bus that was full of locals, kept its doors open while driving. Kai sat right next to the door, keeping himself steady by leaning to the open door with his legs. It was quite a journey!
Now, this place I liked. No tourist hassle, not much traffic, just a little village with chickens and cows, pleasant people getting ready for the biggest hindu celebration of the year. We enjoyed our homestay in the shade of banana and coconut trees, getting to know the chickens of the house. While sitting on our patio getting the well deserved rest we felt a little shake and tremble, but thought nothing of it, only to find out later it was an actual earthquake, 4.6 on the moment magnitude scale. First for me!
The big celebration on Wednesday ended up not being that big, or at least this village was not doing much about it. All houses had a fresh coconut leaf pole decoration in front of their house, they paid extra care to their house temples that morning and put on their best clothes for the day. And so did we. We got all dressed up to go party but all we found were 7 teenagers drinking beer at the side of the road pointing us to an event venue where music (not sure it was even music) was blasting so loud we thought better not. Buying two beers in the supermarket (beer is difficult to find, hindus don’t drink much) we sat on the sidewalk sadly sipping our drinks, and went to bed by ten.
We decided to rent a scooter again, despite the trouble the other day. I made Kai swear we wouldn’t get lost to hilly, sandy roads again. We actually found the best route for scootering, almost up until the big mountain middle of Bali and then back to the coast and south. It was great! We both enjoyed driving and stopped to eat and drink at lookouts and to chat to the locals. Almost everyone we passed on our bike waived their hand to greet us or shouted a friendly hellooo in English. We made people smile. Apparently it is not that common to see gringos in this part of Bali. It was an amazing experience, but of course something had to ruin that too. We had just come down from the forest to the main road, Kai was driving and the police pulled us over. I had read about this, it happens only to tourists and you have to be polite but firm when you start to negotiate. We knew Kai did not have a licence to drive a motorcycle, and we knew here you needed one, even for the small motorbikes. The police said we should pay a million rupees in fines (that’s about 65 euros) but flashing them with a sweet smile and my blue eyes the fine quickly went down to 1/4 of that, which we gladly paid just to get out. Had I been driving we wouldn’t have had to pay anything… Bad luck, I guess.
This morning when we were setting out to leave Bali, we heard there was a traffic accident on the only road leading to Gilimanuk, the ferry terminal to the island of Java. All traffic was at a standstill. We walked from our homestay to the main road with our bags in the hopes of finding a local bus going up to the ferry. And there it was sitting in the standing traffic right in front of us. Kai managed to negotiate a good price with the sleepy driver and on we hopped, chatting to the locals on the way up to the ferry. The journey took us about twice as long due to the accident and the fact that we had to change buses midway because our driver was sick. He was vomiting several times out of the bus door, until he finally gave up and ordered us out of the bus. Luckily we did not have to wait long for the next one which drove us quite hastily to the ferry. Our new friends helped us get the tickets and find the right boat.
After an hour ferry ride we arrived to Banyuwangi, where we will stay for a night before hopping on a train to Surabaya. Looking forward to exploring this island for the next week!