Living the Dream in Bali (no, this is not Eat, Pray, Love)

(September 2-September 9)

Bali welcomed Jillian and I with a daunting task. First, we had to get around without Kayleigh. Secondly, we wanted to fit the same adventures we had over three weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, into one week in Bali. Luckily, this little island made the second part easy for us.

Bali is a unique little island, even to the rest of Indonesia. While Indonesia is mostly Muslim, Bali is actually Hindu, and is never ashamed to show it. Processions often roam the streets, blocking traffic at random times, and offerings are put out every day in every home, guesthouse, restaurant and store. Though our stupid guidebook taught me how to say thank you in Indonesian, the locals actually speak Balinese to each other, though also know Indonesian for immigrants downtown, and English for their immensely growing tourist population. Tourism is their biggest industry, fueling rapid development all over country, and is growing more popular thanks to that dreaded book, Eat, Pray, Love.

Now that you’ve gotten the first paragraph of Bali from Wikipedia (I actually wrote that myself, from memory of reading the Bali page on Wikipedia so many times) let me tell you how different the locals are from our previous Southeast Asian experiences. Jillian and I got off the plane, took out 2,500,000 rupiah from the ATM (which sounds exciting, but is only 300 dollars) and went to catch a cab to Ubud. As expected, we got bombarded with taxi drivers, asking outrageous prices for the hour long cab ride, prices we could never attempt to barter to close to what we wanted. One guy kept pestering us, saying out here we’d have to pay more. Then he saw Jillian’s computer, and asked if we were students. Out of habit, we said yes (I still fill out my occupancy as student on all my departure forms) and he said, oh, students! Follow me! He rushed us through the crowd of taxis and took us to the official taxi stand that would only charge us 200,000 rupiah for the ride, exactly what we wanted to pay. Then he disappeared, after bidding us good luck in his country. Bizarre. So we met our taxi driver, who asked every person we passed if they knew a cheap place to stay in Ubud. He wasn’t very conversational on the ride there, just telling us it was Ramadan, and Bali was exceptionally busy, which didn’t really made sense since Bali has only a very small Muslim population. When we got to Ubud, he drove us to three places, going up first to ask what the price was, and reporting back to us. What service! We weren’t getting the prices we wanted, so he took us back to the first place, and we left him an unexpected tip for being so helpful.

In the morning we set out to find a cheaper place to stay, after free breakfast at our resort with a swimming pool. We went from paying 35$ for the night, to about 15$ for an adorable little guesthouse with the most adorable staff. Everyone along the way sees a foreigner and asks, where are you from? Where do you stay? Things like that. It apparently comes from a long tradition of tribal greetings, always asking what tribe you are from. It gets a little over the top when this is brought into tourism. As two young girls, it was intimidating having everyone know where we were staying. We got the same greetings at our new place, Teba Guesthouse, but they were adorable about it. Once they showed us our room, one guy came over to bring us coffee. He sat on our stairs and asked where we were from, how long we were staying. He was so sad to hear we were leaving Ubud tomorrow. He wanted to know what we wanted to see in Ubud. And how we were getting to Ahmed tomorrow. Did we want motorbikes? We could rent them from him. Do we need to leave our stuff there? We can leave it with him if we come back to Teba. And they do all these things without getting a tip a lot of the time.

After getting settled in at our new place, and getting some laundry done (finally!) we walked into Ubud’s downtown. Ubud is an artisan town, filled with crafts, artwork, clothing, jewelry and just tons of shopping. Not much to do unless you want to spend a fortune. We visited the monkey sanctuary on Ubud’s main road: Monkey Forest road. Thank goodness we didn’t stay at one of the many hostels on this road, because we soon found out that Jillian is terrified of monkeys when one jumped on her and tried to take her camera, thinking it was food. I had a bunch of bananas with me for defense, and we briskly toured the sanctuary, as monkeys climbed on me to steal my bananas without even asking. They were mean little monkeys.

We browsed some of the stores with somewhat feigned interest, then continued to walk out of town to see some of Bali’s famous rice paddies. We had a direction we wanted to follow, but most roads in Bali don’t have names, so we got horribly lost. I could see we were heading in the entirely wrong direction when people stopped asking us where we were from and instead just look at us, their expressions saying, what are you doing here?! But we did see some amazing rice paddies, as well as many artists working on carvings, and kids flying kites. I was pretty exhausted from all the walking around, so we had an early dinner on the second floor balcony of a little restaurant, attempted a couple drinks at a rooftop bar with live music, then had to head home. We had a big day in the morning to go see some beaches!

For a little more than $5 a day, we rented two motorbikes that would get us around the island. We woke up early(ish) for our drive to Ahmed, which, with only a couple stops included, took us the whole day. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the beach (fried rice, fried noodles, and Balinese iced coffee, yum yum) and at a beautiful water palace we had no idea existed. It was at one point royal grounds, but now open for views of rice paddies and a (small) palace over water, with the ocean in the background. Gorgeous. The rest of the way to Ahmed was on a coastal, poorly maintained road. It was obviously built for motorbikes; a full sized vehicle would take up both lanes. I haven’t decided if this was my fault for being a bad motorbike driver, or my bike’s fault for being flimsy, but every time the road turned to gravel, my bike was a little unhappy, and I scraped up my knee pretty nicely. It was quite an embarrassing wound, only because every person I would pass after that would look at my knee and say, oh! Motorbike! (My favorite remark was on the beach, a guy asked what happened to my knee. I shamefully responded that I fell off my motorbike, to which he exclaimed, it’s better to fall in love than to fall off motorbike!) It seemed like we were just taking random roads; at every intersection, it was a true guess in which direction we should continue on. We passed through many villages, and you could tell from how friendly people were that they don’t get many tourists, because as soon as we got closer to Ahmed, people were a lot less friendly, and a lot less excited to see us pass by. We managed to make it to Ahmed (I don’t know how) just as the sun was setting. We stopped here and there looking for the cheapest accommodation, hopefully with a dive shop attached. One resort caught my eye thanks to the “budget rooms” sign. I slowed as we biked by, and the guy sitting out front asked me how much. I said 200, since that was what the last place had told us and I still don’t know how to bargain, and he said yes, we have rooms for 200 (meaning 200,000 rupiah, roughly $22). I told him we’d come back, and we kept biking. Well the guy chased us down on his motorbike, telling us to come see the rooms, and we wouldn’t be disappointed. Pretty ballsy of him. So we checked it out, and they were definitely gorgeous. He wanted to give us the deluxe room, with a queen bed and a single (we needed Kayleigh!) with ocean front views of the sunrise and sunset for 150, so we took it. Later we found out that someone had already booked the room, but hadn’t shown up yet. Silly man, he could have given them the room at a much higher price than we went for. But we were happy to have the luxury room on the hill, with free breakfast, hot water, and a patio overlooking the ocean. We also got more than we bargained for because we had a big spotted lizard that hid in the room and only peeked out from behind the dresser at night. Sounds scary, but he was adorable.

For dinner that night we biked to a place called Wawa Wewe. The sign outside boasted live music, which caught our eye, but we got our days mixed up, so it was just a regular restaurant that night with decent prices. I tried the fish satay, and fell in love with Balinese satay. Still not as good as Dad’s, but I like their style. Mid way through dinner, we found ourselves swarmed with Balinese guys, each one introducing themselves, asking our names, where we were from, the usual. It was somewhat intimidating, being two young girls (we needed Kayleigh!) with all these guys interested in talking to us. It made me feel better when we saw them speaking to an older French couple with the same interest that they spoke to us. They asked us about our “program”, meaning our agenda while we were in Ahmed, and we realized this is because they wanted to be the ones to take us to the diving school or to get snorkel gear because they can get commission from it. All in all though, they were really sweet boys, and really wanted to practice their English. One of them even offered to take us to Mount Agung for half the price the tour groups would take us for. The boys also introduced us to Arak, Bali’s liquor of choice. It’s not terrible stuff, probably because they take it with honey which masks the flavor. One of the most popular cocktails is Arak Attack, but they like to just drink shots from BinTang beer bottles. Arak really comes in beer bottles, oddly enough, even at all the bars.

The one creepy thing about being bombarded by all the guys is that they all asked where we were staying. It took us a while to remember the name, but of course they all know all the places in the area. So we wake up in the morning, about to take off for a dive shop, and two of the boys are waiting for us outside Beten Waru! It was harmless really, they just wanted to take us to the dive shop, so they can make some commission off of it. It took them a while to back off and realize we’re too unorganized to know what we’re doing yet, and want to just drive around, so they let us be. We started with snorkeling. There is a great reef just down the hill from our resort called coral gardens. There is actually a lot of artificial coral in the area because the coral got ruined from WWII blasts. This was actually probably artificial coral, because it was surrounded by dead coral. Other than that, I would have no way of knowing it was fake. We spent quite a bit of time on that reef, and got to see a bunch of huge blue starfish, lots of parrot fish, a puffer fish, and a LION FISH!! Coolest fish I’ve ever seen. After that, we biked up to Tumbalen, the next town up the coast that has a lot of great dive spots. Tumbalen is only 20 minutes up the road, but you would think you had been driving for hours after seeing the change in landscape. Ahmed is very lush with fruit trees all over the hills, but Tumbalen was like a desert. And just as barren, with just a scattering of dive shops and lousy accommodation. We weren’t really finding a good price for a dive, so we settled for lunch on the beach, and biked back to Ahmed to book a dive with one of the local dive shops there. Jukung Dives, a Dutch dive shop, signed us up for two dives for the next day, and told us the history of how they branched off from the evil Euro Dive, who dominates the dives in Ahmed. A lot of the people trying to get us to dive, including the owner of our resort, had tried to get us to sign up through Euro Dive, and I’m glad we didn’t. They seem like jerks.

To finish our day, we headed to the other end of Ahmed to snorkel the Japanese shipwreck. The wreck is really just offshore, and it is beautiful! There are reefs all around it, and just 10 meters in from the shore is the wreck. You don’t even need to dive to see the whole thing, you can see it all from snorkeling. The only thing that made the Japanese shipwreck slightly less cool was the lack of giant blue starfish. We spent a fair amount of time there as well, going back to the shipwreck twice before hurrying home from the beach. A little hungry, and definitely needing a beer, we stopped at a little shop on the way home. We were just going to pick up a couple of BinTangs, but the woman at the shop had some home cooked Balinese food on display, and it looked amazing. She made us a quick little package of rice, suckling pig, roasted peanuts with greens and coconut, and some spicy sauce for less than a dollar. We took it home and devoured the entire thing before the sun even set. It was by far the best food we'd had in Bali. We took our time getting showered and dressed before heading out for a light dinner. As we were walking down the hill, we heard a couple guys from a motorbike yelling “Hey hey!! Remember us from yesterday!?” It was Wayan and Ben, two of the nicer boys from the restaurant last night. They invited us to live music at another Wawa Wewe (apparently it's a franchise). We thought, why not, so we headed to the cute little beach restaurant. We got fish satay to share, and had some Arak as the rest of the boys started coming in, some that we had met the night before. I had to smile when I saw that the table we were sitting at had “Ahmed Boys” sloppily etched into it. They must hang out here often. The band was actually pretty good, playing of course mostly a selection of Bob Marley songs with some originals mixed in there. The bassist was the best, with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, facing away from the band in his own little dread-lock world. I felt a little better when some other tourist friends of theirs came in and sat with us, but it was really strange that only the Balinese boys were hanging out with us, and not the girls. I had asked Wayan why they don’t hang out with more Balinese girls, and he didn’t really have an answer. He just said there aren’t many girls in Ahmed. There is a weird divide between the genders that I don’t understand, and I don’t really like. The girls are very laborious, and seemingly unresentful about it, but it’s still weird. Jillian and I exchanged our code word to get out of there after the band finished up, and we quickly went home.

We had to get up early in the morning to go for our dive, both of us grumbling about Arak as we tried to get our things together. Jukung Diving picked us up at eight, and drove the bumpy, windy road to the dive shop, making us feel sick in the backseat. We met a couple of other divers and headed over to the site in Tumbalen. As we were getting our gear on, eager to get in the water to kill this hangover, another dive instructor, said “hey I saw you girls last night!” Oh god. “Yeah, you were at Wawa Wewe! So where’s the party tonight?” We totally didn’t recognize him, and thankfully had no idea where the party was tonight, as we would be avoiding it. He laughed at us when I told him we were hung over from too much Arak. Ugh, Arak.

It felt great to get into the water again, and I had missed diving so much. Our dive master was great. Through his mask, he looked furious at us, but as soon as we got to the surface, he was all smiles. Kind of how our scuba instructor in Thailand always looked like he was surprised. I wonder what I look like through my mask. Jillian looks the same. Our first dive was around the Liberty Shipwreck. It’s an American ship from WWII that got wrecked by a Japanese submarine. The ship had made it to the shore in Tumbalen, but got washed out to sea when Mt. Agung erupted in the 60’s. So now its just a few feet off shore, and a very popular dive site. We circled the ship, looking in all the crevices and at the coral that has grown onto the wreck. As we were approaching the shore at the end of our dive, we saw these crazy garden eels, that stick out of the sand like shoelaces, and swaying back and forth with the waves, with one neon eye peering out the tops of their head. They're creepy little things. After an hour rest period, we went back in for our second dive through the inside of the wreck! There is less going on inside, not as much coral growing, so not as many fish. But it was really cool and totally eerie swimming through the boat. I felt like I was in the Titanic, though this ship cannot even be compared to it in size. The only feature you could really make out on the ship is the huge steering wheel. Before we surfaced, we saw this enormous school of jackfish, making a whirlpool with their movements. We paused for a minute looking up at the swirling school of fish, with the sun rays piercing through their whirlpool. I wish I could take pictures underwater.

They gave us a free lunch at the end of the dive, and we got to talk to the other divers and compare what they saw. It would help if we knew the names of any fish so we could pretend to know what we were talking about. The two Germans invited us all out to have dinner at a beach side restaurant they had eaten the night before. So we took a long afternoon nap, with a quick snack from our new favorite little shop, then headed to the restaurant. We made sure to wear different clothes so we could go past the multiple Wawa Wewe’s without being noticed. The restaurant was great, and we were with the two Germans, and two Spaniards, again all speaking in English. It was a totally polar opposite night from the night before, and we had a very mellow night with calamari, and some card games with the Europeans. Fact: scuba divers make more friends.

In the morning, we were happy to leave Ahmed. Though I love this little fishermen’s-village-turned-tourist-town, it was a little too small to spend too much time there. I think everyone in the town knew where we lived (we had to start telling people, we’re at the resort two hills in that direction). We didn’t trust that our new friend Wayan would take us to Mt. Agung for half price, so we went out to climb it on our own. Sorry Wayan. We hopped on our motorbikes, and tried to find our way to Selat. It didn’t take long, and we ended up on the road that takes you halfway up the mountain. We drove to the end of the road, being stopped by an old man who prayed for us, splashed some holy water on us, then asked for a donation. We obeyed, and continued on our way to the top. We hiked up 100 stairs to the temple, and looked at the rest of the volcano mountain teeming over us. In the morning, we would climb to the top. On our way back into town we looked for a place to stay the night. We followed signs to a place called Great Mountain View. Sounded promising. The signs took us through these tiny roads in a tiny village, and into a paradise resort. The place was very expensive, and we would have to hire his tour guide, but he lowered to half the price for everything because we hesitated on it for so long. We did save some money by not hiring a tour group from Ahmed or Ubud, but not much. It was worth it though, for the great staff, and the great mountain view. Nyoman, the owner, had two cousins getting married that day, so he asked us to put on sarongs and join him, if we wished. The ceremonies were beautiful, the first an untraditional couple. They were in their forties, the man from Bali, the woman from Sumatra who couldn’t even speak Balinese. They fell in love over the phone, and he sent his son to get her from Sumatra. They had a Brahma priest who conducted the ceremony on her gold pedestal, and then she had to walk across the village to the second ceremony. At both, we were greeted with such respect and intrigue, and offered many fruits, sweets, coffee and roasted pig skin. I felt a little silly carrying around a handful of mango, snake fruit and apples, but they just kept handing us more little treats. The second ceremony was more tightly orchestrated, with places for everyone to sit on these bamboo slabs under a tent, and a gorgeous young couple very done up. The groom looked like a prince. With a lot of makeup on. They went through the same procedures as the last couple, walking up to the temple, standing in front of the priest as she rang some bells and splashed holy water on them. The whole thing was very lackadaisical, and it seemed like no one knew or cared what was going on, but were all excited about passing around the food and coffee.

We got back to Great Mountain View for a dinner on the patio looking over the rice paddies with Mount Agung in the background, completely cloud covered. Despite the gorgeous foods, we had to head to bed early that night, because at 1:00 AM, we had to get up to get to the volcano! The owner drove us to the temple where we waited for our tour guide. It sucks that you can’t get to the top without a tour guide (since they are all so expensive!) but I can see why we would need one. We started the climb in the pitch back, following some indistinguishable trail through a forest. We climbed seemingly straight up for two and a half hours, the landscape changing from forest to volcanic rock. It took over an hour to get above the trees. We got to the top just as the sun was rising. Perfect. Of course we had been warned that it was cold at the top, but we didn’t have any warm attire with us, so I’m shivering at the top in my shorts and sweatshirt. Our tour guide brought hot water for some Balinese coffee. We took heaps of pictures of the clouds below us, the sky changing with the rising sun, and some monkeys that were hanging out in the crater. We started back down the volcano, the landscape having completely changed in the daylight. If I hadn’t recognized the way the path snaked around, I would never have thought we had taken that way up, and for the first time could see a clearly defined trail that we had been following. The volcanic rock were all sorts of colors along these sheer boulders, completely open with no trees or soil in sight, and we could see the clouds really thickening up as we approached the forest, then the entire second half of our hike down was immersed in clouds. Our tour guide was of really no use to us in the end. He could barely speak any English (though the whole time he was practicing the phrase, may I help you with your bag), and he had to take breaks often. We still made it down fairly quickly, and got a ride back to our resort. Then, after a quick, delicious, banana pancake breakfast, we were on our way back to Ubud.

I think we really started to get the hang of the motorbike thing (well, really just I got the hang of it, Jillian already had it). The road to Ubud was very well paved, and we were only delayed behind one procession, but we made great timing to Ubud, flying by other amateur tourists along the way. This was our last night in Southeast Asia, and we treated ourselves like royalty. We (accidentally) got the deluxe suite at Tebu House, did some last minute souvenir shopping, got massages, some happy hour mojitos, and to top off the night, CRISPY DUCK! Best thing I have ever tasted (since Thailand). With satay, green beans, rice and some other Balinese treats. And in the morning, we were off to New Zealand.