Kristen and I spent a week in Bali. I’ve been in Hong Kong/China for work for the past 3 months, so it seemed like a great time to travel to a place we’ve always wanted to visit.
This entry is going to be a tome. We experienced a lot in Bali, both good an bad, and I’m writing this soon after the trip, without the benefit of memory blocking out the bad.
Day 1: arrival and travel to Ubud
First, I’ll lay out a couple of things about this trip. Bali is most famous for its beaches in the South, namely Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak. We did not plan to go to any of these beaches. Apparently they are a complete disaster, and we heard only awful things. In fact, I believe Australia has a TV show called “Tourists Behaving Badly” or something that is based in Kuta. These areas are basically the Myrtle Beach of Southeast Asia – a bunch of people trying to sell junk to sunburned drunk people in an uncomfortable setting near the beach, plus a Hard Rock Café. I guess they have good surfing, though.
Anyway, we decided instead to venture further afield. We rented a car. Bali is a former colony, and they drive on the opposite side of the road, so I was excited to get the change to learn to drive like that. We had intended to rent a manual transmission car, but apparently that vehicle was broken down, so instead we got an automatic. I didn’t know it at the time, but thank god for that.
The drive from the airport to Ubud (about a 1-2 hour drive) was harrowing to say the least. Driving on the other side of the road is fine, getting used to the location of the turn signal and mirrors is fine. But I was unprepared for the lack of spatial awareness. I had no idea how much room I had on the left, or how close I could comfortably be to the center line of the road without smacking into something. This is fine if you’re in a place with good roads, but Bali is The Land That Infrastructure Forgot. The roads are insanely narrow in many places – in fact sometimes one car has to pull off the road to let oncoming traffic by, and the rules of the road are insanely foreign. There are probably 10 motorbikes (scooters really) to every car, mostly carrying entire families including babies, people just walk out into the street, and cars just go wherever they want. Plus it was night time for that first drive. Kristen was yelling at me that I was going to smash the car into the trees at the side of the road, and I was yelling at her that I had to keep to the side to avoid nailing oncoming traffic. We arrived with nerves completely frayed, regretting our decision to rent the car.
Good thing the hotel – Villa Sabandari – was amazing!
Day 2: Ubud
Us by the pool at Vila Sabandari
Rice paddies up on Campuhan Ridge
Ubud is the “cultural center” of Bali. They have performances of local music and theater every night, and the best museums and arts scene in Bali. It’s a somewhat quaint place, a collection of villages really, but with good restaurants and transportation. It’s in the center of the country, away from the beach, so the town and surrounding rice paddies are the main attraction.
Ubud is also one of the settings in the book Eat, Pray, Love. Which means the streets are full of Western women wearing weird pants and Namaste shirts. You can see the counter-culture vein in the town – the best restaurant in town is called Locavore, they have yoga classes advertised all over, and there are many tattoo parlors (yoga hipsters love tattoos).
On the docket for the day was to wake up early and walk up Campuhan ridge. The ridge has a nice brick path leading right from the edge of town, through some nice open-air art galleries, and on up to some terraced rice fields. It was a very nice walk.
Afterward, we puttered around town, checking out some of the local shops, before heading back to the hotel for a dip in the pool and a shower before dinner.
Dinner was quick and easy, at a warung (small restaurant shop) by the hotel.
Afterward, we went to a legong show at ARMA, the largest museum in town. Legong is a form of Balinese performance dance, often telling a story. The movements are quite flowy, supplemented by subtle finger and toe wiggles, plus eye movements to convey the story. The dancers are complemented by a gamelan orchestra. Kristen played in a gamelan called Galak Tika at MIT (one of the few gamelan in the U.S.). When I first heard gamelan, I hated it – it sounds like a cacophony of noise to the western ear. But I have come to really love it over the past several years.
The gamelan shows were frankly a major part of the reason we came to Bali at all. I did a ton of research to find the best gamelan orchestras in town, so Kristen would see the masters at work. The Arma group is known as the Peliatan Masters, and masters they were. I was totally enthralled by the performance. The players in the orchestra were clearly having a great time, and the dancers were super engaging. Sometimes, when the dance was synced up with the music, it was unclear who was leading whom. Kristen confirmed that the gamelan was top notch as well.
This show at ARMA was one of my favorite parts of the trip.
Day 3: Ubud to Pemuteran
The Jatiluwih rice terraces
Jatiluwih again
Day 3 was mostly a travel day. It was also the day I learned to drive in Bali.
The plan was to drive from Ubud to Pemuteran. The trip would take us up through the center of Bali, to the North Coast, and then to the far Northwestern tip of the island, within sight of Java. People said the drive would take 4 hours or so.
After a bit of a late start (we wandered back into town that morning to get some coffee from Anomali, the best shop in Bali), we began the drive. I had planned a stop at the Jatiluwih rice terraces. These are the terraced rice paddies you see in pictures. It’s a UNESCO world heritage sight, and well, well off the beaten path. We got lost twice going there. The final approach road was a narrow disaster you can barely even call a road. But once we arrived, wow. The terraces are unbelievable – a vast complex built onto the slope of a volcano. We hiked down and into a terrace, and then had some babi guling (suckling pig) at a local warung.
The rest of the drive should have been beautiful, but it was pretty horrendous. Narrow windy mountain roads, suspicions of getting lost (we learned the limitations of the Garmin), traffic, and several near-misses. We wondered many times why we were even going to Pemuteran. We both had doubts that I had done a good job planning the trip.
Oh, and also, people were burning trash everywhere. This is again a symptom of Bali’s struggle with infrastructure. People buy stuff, or use stuff, and there is not really any place to put the trash. So they either litter (many temples, public places, and roads are strewn with litter), throw it in a heap on a hillside (we saw many garbage heaps), or simply burn it. It seemed to be a daily ritual to burn trash at every house in every village we traveled through. I’ve seen it blamed on culture – the Balinese historically ate out of banana leaves which could be discarded easily – but what we saw is far more extensive than that.
We finally arrived about 5pm, giving us a total travel time of about 7 hours, and were totally exhausted from the drive, though I felt like I was getting the hang of the language of the roads by the end of the trip – when to pass, when to pull off, when to honk, how to turn into traffic, normal traveling speeds, etc.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant and went to bed early.
Day 4: Menjangan Island
The boat to Menjangan Island
Selfie in the boat to Menjangan
Kristen on the boat from Menjangan after snorkeling
We awoke that morning to the sound of roosters calling at around 5am. Apparently there is a chicken farm right next to the hotel. The plan for the day was to go snorkel at Menjangan island.
Menjangan island is the main draw of the Pemuteran area. It is an island in a nature preserve that is about a 30 minute boat ride from town, and it borders the only national park on Bali. Menjangan is known for its massive coral reef system – probably the best in Bali. It is quite remote, so the island doesn’t get very crowded.
Kristen and I “learned” to snorkel in Belize in January, so we already have all the gear. We also learned to ID tropical reef fish, many of which were also present in Menjangan. It was good that we were experienced, because the tour set up by the hotel was sort of a mess. The guides didn’t speak English, and it was unclear what was going on the whole time. There was no briefing, no buddy system, and no fish ID help or anything. Some people were standing on the coral and breaking off chunks. It was horrifying to watch. It was not clear if we were supposed to snorkel near our guide, or even who our guide was. So Kristen and I kind of did our own thing.
Luckily, Menjangan island is incredible. None of the disorganization mattered. The reef was absolutely jammed full of coral of all different colors and types we hadn’t seen in Belize. Some of the fish were the same, and we were excited that we could ID some of them. But there were some new ones, and way larger ones than we had seen in Belize. We did two snorkels, and had a fantastic time.
Afterward, we went back to the hotel and went for a swim in the pool.
As we reflected on the past few days, we realized a pattern had emerged – Bali is a bit of a Devil’s bargain. There are truly amazing things to do and see, but they mostly require some degree of horror or hassle to do and see them.
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