Bali

I had arrived on Bali after the short flight from Singapore and put my bike together at the airport before riding off into the night to find somewhere to stay.

After about an hour I came to the beach town of Sanur, and as there was lots of accommodation I decided that this would be as good a place as any to call home. I cycled to the beach but all of the beach front hotels are resort type affairs owned by the major chains and when I was working I would have been staying here, but now they were definitely out of my budget.

I stopped a western man who cycled past me on a bike and asked him where would be a good area to find accommodation more in fitting with my current budget.  He told me to head about 4 streets back from the beach and there were lots of budget places but just to check as a lot of them were ‘short time’ hotels / brothels.  I decided to go for an inbetweeny and settled on the Taksu Sanur hotel.  It was slightly more than I would normally pay but I wanted to take a couple of days off the bike to recharge the batteries and get my head together after the last few weeks.  You do need to have a few creature comforts around you to totally relax and listening to the bed knocking against the wall in the room next door is not conducive to this.

By the time that I had checked in it was after 11pm and as I had missed dinner I fancied some food.  There is no time difference between Singapore and Indonesia but I think that my stomach was still on Malaysian time where families regularly go out at for food very late and most places are open well past midnight. Not here in Sanur though and unexpectedly given that I was on Bali the streets were empty – no drunken Aussies singing Waltzing Matilda in Sanur. Just up the road from the hotel there was an Indian style food stall which was still open and would do nicely.

The next day I had instructions from my wife to check out the area as she was flying in to see me in 5 weeks time and if it was any good she would book a hotel for a few nights in Sanur.   Having been to Bali a couple of times before I have to say that I am not a big fan of Kuta or Seminyak but Senur was a pleasant surprise.  The beach front has been monopolised by very expensive hotels and resorts and the tourist infrastructure matches – cafes and restaurants serving good food and expensive wine.   The vibe of the place is definitely pitched towards the middle classes rather than backpackers and package tourists.

After cycling a couple of kilometres up the beach I found myself a nice place for lunch and stayed there on the beach for the rest of the day.  If you find a nice spot there is little reason to go in search of something slightly better.

The beach was not spectacular but what I really liked was that there were no hawkers or touts crawling the beaches hassling you for a sale.  You were just left alone to chill out.

The following day I had itchy feet and decided in the morning that I would pack up and head north towards Padang Bai which is the ferry port for Lombok.  My plan was never to stay on Bali as I would be back here in 4 weeks to meet my wife.  Instead, my immediate plan was to catch a ferry and head to Lombok to climb Mount Rinjani which is an active volcano.  The last major eruption, which literally blew the top of the volcano away, happened around 750 years ago and has been attributed by scientists as causing a ‘Little Ice Age’ which saw global temperatures dip.

As I cycled out of Sanur I initially followed the coast line and hopped from beach to beach.  Most of the beaches on East Bali are black sand rather than white.  This is because of another volcanic eruption on Mount Agung which last erupted in 1963 killing thousands of Balinese and forced many to migrate to other Indonesian islands. The lava which rolled from the slopes is now being eroded to form the black volcanic beach material. (As a former Geography teacher I could claim that I knew this but I would be lying.  A local explained this over a cup of tea in the ferry port of Padang Bai)

Although the area even today is sparsely populated the roads on this stretch of the coast are busy and fairly narrow.  Cars and trucks have little regard for cyclists and kept trying to squeeze past which was dangerous to say the least. After about 10km of continually being forced off the road I had enough and got off the main road and headed to the beach and cycled on the beach path for a while.

This was far nicer but very slow going.  As I only had about 60km to go to the ferry port I was not too bothered though. Along the path I came across a group of ladies picking stones off the beach.  They were only after certain stones and when I joined them in their picking efforts they kept telling me off and chucking my stones away.

It was weird to be back in a country where the locals spoke no English at all after spending so much time in Malaysia. The ladies tried to explain using sign language the stones that they wanted but to me they all looked exactly the same.  I have no idea what they will use them for either – they could be polished for necklaces or used for ornamental paving – I have no clue and the ladies hand gesture and my charades were not helping.

The ladies wanted me to take their pictures and to show them what they looked like on ‘film’.  Although they were happy to pose they never smiled in any of the photos.  I had come across this in Cambodia too and have no idea why people who are all happy and smiley have to have a very formal face in photos.  The only way that I have found around this is to start counting backwards from 5 and their face normally changes around the 1 mark so I take the picture at 3, cheating I know but it can make for a much nicer photo when the eyes ‘smile’ too.  These ladies were not for playing my games though and were stoic faced throughout. Great photos even though and perhaps slightly more dramatic.

The fishermen that I spoke to said that this area of the coast was too rocky to fish by boat but was inhabited by many species of crab and lobster.  At low tide the fisherman would wade out into the water to place their traps and then retrieve them at the following low tide.

Every couple of kilometers along the coast there were shrine like ‘monuments’ that had been built.  As language was once again a severe barrier I was not quite sure of why they were there but they were often built from lava stone and were very dramatic and beautiful:

Once the coast road ran out I just continued north ambling through Balinese villages.  The villages were simply beautiful and the houses tended to have high walls around them built from lava stone which has a beautiful texture.  Many of the houses had very dramatic entrance doorways which added to the grandeur feel of the villages.

In most of the villages there was just one ‘shop’ which acted as the supermarket for the village:

In the streets were overhanging yellow ‘lanterns’ which give the streets a magical air.

There are many temples in the villages that are built in dramatic fashion.  The word for temple in Bali is pura, which in Sanskrit means ‘space surrounded by a wall’ and hence like the houses they tend to have high walls with dramatic entrance ways: (It was a very informative cup of tea and it seems all of us are getting an education today….)

The entrances are guarded by statues who act as the guardians of the temple:

The insides of the temples may well have some order to them but from the temples that I visited that day I could not decipher a pattern.  Most of the temples were made up of different walled sections containing shrines to different gods.

I can see why so many people have fallen in love with Bali and once you get out of the tourist areas the countryside is beautiful.

The main ‘industry’ in a number of the villages seemed to be the production of ‘antique’ stone statues.  Next time you are on Kuta Beach in Bali and being sold an ‘antique’ stone statue it may well of been produced here.

The other dramatic change was in the landscape itself.  Gone were the oil palm trees of Malaysia as these had been replaced by padi fields, rice terraces and banana trees.  A familiar landscape to most of the countries that I had already been cycling through and much more picturesque.

After a few hours of winding my way north I arrived at Padang Bai and cycled into town to organize a ferry.  There was a ‘car ferry’ that departed on the hour 24 hours a day and would take 5 hours to get to Lombok.  It was now too late for me to take this as I would not arrive in Lombok until after midnight.  The other problem with this ferry was that it arrived in Lembar which is in the south of Lombok and I wanted to go to the north.

Instead, I booked a ticket on the fast boat which would take just 1 hour to reach Lombok and drop me in the north of the island which would save me a couple of days cycling.  The ferry departed at 8.30am the following morning and so I checked into a hotel in Padang Bai and went to find food.

Here is a video I shot during my brief time on Bali and hopefully will give you a flavour of the beautifully dramatic villages that I cycled through:

The following day I went down to check in for the ferry with the other 500 or so people who were travelling that day and everybody was corralled into a holding pen to await the arrival of their boat:

Having a bicycle does have a few perks and as I was a ‘health and safety’ concern I was allowed to wait on my own on the jetty

Our ferry arrived and we all duly piled aboard for the 90 minute crossing to Lombok.  Once the luggage had been stored in the bow of the boat and my bike had been strapped to the roof we set off at breakneck speed for Lombok. I had learnt my lesson from my trip to Koh Lipe in Thailand and grabbed one of the seats at the back.

This boat was much bigger and the seas calmer so no mass puking, which was a blessing.  You could even head up onto the roof of the boat if you wanted to take your life in your hands.  You have to take your hat off to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Balinese though as throughout the trip they kept up a steady effort to sell beer to the tourists.  There were a couple of hardy takers at that hour of the morning but not many.

The boat’s first port of call was Lombok and afterwards it was bound for the Gili Islands which lay about 1km off the coast.  The Gili Islands are tiny coral islands that most tourists visit as an overnight trip from Bali.  Not many people visit Lombok though as it is considered to be a more traditional ‘muslim island’ when compared to hedonistic Bali.  It is a bit like the dramatic contrast between the east and west coast of Malaysia.  Hence, only 3 of us got off at Lombok and the rest stayed on for the Gili’s.

You would think that they had never done this before as our luggage had been put in the hold with everybody else’s even though I had clearly told them that I was getting off in Lombok when we had got on the ferry.  In the end the 3 of us had to jump down into the hold to search for our bags.  It was a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack as there were more than 100 tourists on the boat who all had bags.  Luggage was flying everywhere as the crew needed to get going.  They kept saying that they would come back with our luggage after offloading everybody at the Gili’s.  There was no way that the boat was leaving with my bags so I kept digging.  Towards the bottom of the pile after shifting around 30 suitcases I spotted one of my yellow panniers and the other 3 were nearby.

One of the other guys who was getting off in Lombok was not so lucky and his luggage could not be found.  Instead of watching his luggage sail away he decided to stay on the boat and go to the Gili’s.  The boat captain said that he could catch the return ferry to Lombok.

I was now on Lombok and felt immediately at peace.  Even to me this sounds a bit corny but there is something so nice about travelling in traditional ‘Muslim’ areas.  Forget what you read in the newspapers or see on TV about the extremists.  My experience is that followers of Islam are among the most generous and open people in the world.  This would be why once again I would hopefully be given places to stay but if not camping on the beaches would be my main fall back option for the rest of my time in Indonesia.

Thanks for reading and I hope that you enjoyed my journey through Bali.

Cheers

Stewart

 

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