Last days in Bali

So far we've been in Bali for about seven weeks and seen most of Bali and Lombok and the Gili Islands and Nusa Lembagan and we had only about one week left before our visa runs out and we had for our next destination of Vietnam. All we had left to see was the west coast.

From Lovina we hired a driver to take us to Medewi a surf town about half way down the west coast. We requested to go around the north coast to the far west point port town where you could practically swim to Java and then down along the west coast instead of the shorter inland route. The road is nicely paved two lane and the drive to the west coast port was pretty going along the coast and through the national park. The port city is very busy as it is the main route for goods traveling to and from Java and the road from the port along the west coast was heavy with trucks carrying those goods to and from Dempasar so the drive was pretty hairy with a windy, hilly road and trucks trying to pass each other the whole way. By the time we arrived in Medewi we were exhausted and glad we broke the trip up by stopping there.

Medewi is just a turn off from the main highway down a dead end road with a couple hotels and some stores. It is famous for the quality of the surf; long breaks with perfect curls. A surfer could get a two minute ride almost every wave. I don't aurf and would not recommend Medewi as a place to learn especially because the beach is all big rocks; no place to end a ride if you don't know what you're doing. We stayed at anice hotel with a great pool and the sound of the ocean in the room. We just hung out and relaxed for the one day we were there.

The next day we took off for our last place to visit in Bali; one more harrowing two hour taxi ride along the coast and among the passing trucks and scooters and we arrived at Seminyak. This is just the northern most town on the tourist sprawl from Kuta. All shops and traffic and tourists; mostly Austrailian surfer/party hounds. We styed at a nice little place off the main road with a pool and a Balinese theme to the rooms. Somehow Lily talked them into giving us a villa after we rejected the other rooms as too noisy or awful.

We either hung out at the pool or rented a motorscooter and went to the beach where there was good body surfing and tones of restaurants to watch the sunset from. There wasn't much else to do in Seminyak, we didnz't want to buy anything or windowshop and anyway it was not possible to walk anywhere due to all the motorscooters parked on the sidewalks; kind of a "Catch-22" situation.  Driving was a little bit scary as the intersections do not have traffic lights and requires threading your way through the moving traffic.

We stayed for the remaining three days of our visa and then taxied off to the airport for our flight to Bangkok and Hanoi and bid a fond fairwell to the place we called home for the last two months.

Final thoughts:
We doubt that we will ever come back to Bali. We saw every place of signifigance and enjoyed most places. The people were wonderful to us and the culture is facinating and the scenery breathtaking. We met lots of interesting travelers and got to know some local people, too. We had a great time almost every day. One thing that we didn't get used to was the heat and humidity. We were drenched in sweat within ten minutes of stepping outside. The only relief was motorscootering (or motorsnuggling as Lily called it) especially on the roads around Amed, as it was the best way of cooling off. Maybe another time of year would be a little more pleasant. The other problem was that Bali was way more expensive than we planned/hoped. And from a general tourist perspective it really needs to upgrade the roads and infrastructure to accomodate the number of people and get some public transportation to reduce the motorscooter traffic. We read that the government is planning to make Bali a medical tourism destination with first rate facilities and to build a train system from Dempasar to Ubud. Maybe in five or ten years it will have the infrastructure it so badly needs. 

Lovina

Ubud, Lovina. Rainy, hot and humid and too much motor scooter traffic. Ubud is a mess and has lost it's charm. We picked up our extended visa, packed up the stuff we bought and some things we didn't need any more and sent them back home by the cheapest method, cost $156!!! I hope I do not find any of these trinkets in Cost Plus.

After two days we got a driver to take us to Lovina (it is cheaper than a bus for two or more people and you can stop when you want). The road is decent, but the last ten miles is the windiest switchback road I've ever been on. We couldn't wait for it to end. Finally arrived in Lovina at a wonderful hotel with a nice restaurant and cute cabins on the beach. Unfortunately, there was no wif-fi except at an internet cafe down the atreet for $5/hour. The ocean at Lovina is interesting in that it is almost as calm as a lake. On a clear day you can see Java on the horizon.

Lovina is located near the second largest city in Bali of Singaraja which has the biggest university and has a college town vibe. That isn't to say it is a party town or a liberal bastion like Berkeley, but for Bali it is different by not really being a tourist town.  There is a large and famous Buddhist site in the hills nearby and Lovina  is also the wine grape growing area of Bali and we saw several vineyards as we drove around, but did not see any wineries to visit although we have had the fairly decent wines from this area.

This time of year is considered the low season and especially in Lovina. It was amazing to see the unused capacity available in the restaurants and drinking spots and how empty they looked. We would have dinner in wonderful places with two other couples in the whole place. It helped us get some reductions in the hotel rate and motor scooter rental.

There is supposed to be the best diving in Bali at a place about 30 miles to the west around an island off the coast.  The few hotels in that area are very expensive so that is why we didn't stay there, but in cheaper Lovina and signed up with a local dive shop.     

Back to Bali and the town of Sanur

Sanur is supposed to have nice beaches and hopefully someplace where we can get our hair cut, our laundry done properly and some decent wi-fi. We zoomed back on the fast boat from Nusa Lembagen and were met by a hotel driver and taken to our room which as usual was awful so they showed us another room which was less awful and we settled in.

  BTW: this is typical, we have learned that they usually show you the worst room first and if you take it, fine, problem solved.  We know better and always ask to see another room which is alway better. If we don't like the hotel, the next day we find another and move to that one. That is why we have been to 19 hotels so far.

The beaches were nice except when the tide is out which is all this week from 9am until 4pm. and then they are rocky sand pits with seaweed and no way to swim. Oh well. However Sanur has a wonderful boardwalk that goes for a few miles from one end of town to the other all along the beach with only pedestrians and bicyclists allowed. Great idea, maybe other Balinese towns on the beach will consider it.

The first night we located a really nice air-conditioned salon, made an appointment for the next day. We went back and both of us got what we needed, but interestingly it cost about the same as in the states. Probably because Sanur has a bunch of $300+ per night hotels.

  Other than hair care and laundry and some decent restaurants (I secretly went off to the McDonald's and had a cheeseburger for $2.30, yummy.) there is not much for hippy travelers like ourselves so we arranged to get to Ubud to pick up our extended visas and head off to Lovina on the north coast.   

Candi Dasa, Nusa Lembagan

 Dasa, Nusa Lembagan:

The last ten days have been a whirlwind of pack and move, pack and move (if we don't like a hotel we move; happens with most places we go). After Amed we got a driver to take us from Amed to the town of Candi Dasa on the north east coast where the road from Amed goes south and then gets back to the coast. We had been to Candi Dasa on our last trip 17 years ago and remember it as a pretty, quiet town with decent snorkeling. Candi Dasa has grown, but is still pretty nice with more hotel and restaurant choices than before. We stayed at a fabulous place called Aquaria on the water (there really isn't any beach) owned by a couple from New Zealand. There were only about eight rooms, they were modern and airy and they all opened to the pool. The best part was the restaurant, it was known as the best in town and that is saying alot.

We stayed for two days, relaxed, met an wonderful Australian couple and took some motor-scooter trips to nearby alleged beautiful beaches (Sadly, they were not. Instead they were actually covered with garbage, plastic bags and whatever both on the beach and for fifty feet out in to the bay.). We also visited a beautiful water temple (had lunch a restaurant nearby and got the best tomato soup yet!)

Our next destination was to a small island off of the south east coast called Nusa Lembagan famous for seaweed farming (seriously!) and alleged to have good snorkeling. We boarded a "fast boat" for the 45 minute ride from Sanur and landed at the port of the only town on the island and were met by someone from the hotel who drove us and our luggage in a very old three-wheeled cargo scooter to the hotel. As usual, as soon as we arrive somewhere we put our bags in to the room, found our bathing suits and headed down to the pool for some drinks and chatting it up with the other travelers (almost always from Australia). Back to life as normal.

The hotel had a big projection screen over the bar where on the first night they played rock concert music videos (if you've never heard of the Irish group The Corrs, you need to see and hear them and their song "Runaway"). This went on until past 2am (sign said music and bar closes at 10pm) with the manager and a bunch of drunken Aussies and Lily having a good time. I went to bed at 11:30 and got up around 1:30 when I realized that Lily was not back I went down to the bar to rescue her and ended up staying till they closed. I think the neighbors must have complained because the next night the bar closed at 10pm.

  One good thing about the island is that are no cars, but there are plenty of motor-scooters. We rented one and rode around the island for about four hours stopping here and there driving on roads of various quality with little traffic except for dogs and pigs and goats and dodging huge pot holes and sandy areas.

  All along the waterfront and up along the hill on one side of the bay there are many restaurants and hotels and dive shops so we had plenty of choices for eating or diving. We signed up for a three hour snorkel trip the next day. The boat ride around the island was interesting with beautiful blue water, island scenery. We stopped at a couple of places and snorkeled for awhile, but the fish and other creatures must have gone on vacation somewhere else. We decided not to bother with signing up for a dive trip.

Everyone told us we should go to this restaurant for the beautiful sunset view called Scallywags, which was also the name of a great restaurant on Gili Trawangan (re: earlier blog about the islands off Lombok). Hop on motor scooter and off we go. The fun part is getting there, the two or three mile trip is on a road that is a motocross challenge of potholes and drop-offs and dirt. It is worth the drive, though, the restaurant sits on a small cove with cliffs on either side and huge crashing waves and faces the sunset and has an infinite horizon pool and large comfy chairs and excellent food and drinks! Which was a good thing because after the drive we definitely needed a drink to relax and a soak in the pool. Later we met the owner, a real character from Britian who owns two others Scallywags; the one on Gili Trawangan and one in Bali. In spite of the challenging drive to get there (owner plans to somehow get it paved) the food, drink and sunset were so nice we went back two more times.

  Lembagan fun fact: The seaweed farming in Nusa Lembagan is the main economy after tourism. It takes a huge amount of work and time to produce the stuff to the point where they can sell it (by the ton) to companies that use it as an additive for making all kinds of food and other products that we eat or use every day, who knew?

I would describe the culture on Nusa Lembagen to be Bali with an island attitude; more laid back and slow than Bali proper. We liked it, but after four days we had had enough fun on the island and needed some civilization after the last weeks of rural small towns and this island so it was back to Bali and the coastal town of Sanur.

There will tons of pix in the gallery in a day or so.  

Dive pix...

We have not been near a decent internet location with sufficient upload bandwidth to let me upload the dive pix within a reasonable time, but I will do it as soon as I can. There are sea horses and an octopus and all kinds of colorful fish so the wait will be worth it.

We are back in Ubud for two days to gather up the stuff we want to ship home and then we're off to Lovina, a town on the north coast of Bali. There is supposed to be good diving and the place is famous for the dolphins that inhabit the area. Maybe I'll get some dolphin pix.

We've only got 11 days before our visa ends and we have to fly to our next destination, Vietnam via Bangkok, there is no direct flight from Bali to Vietnam so we have to overnight in Thailand. That should be an interesting contrast the Bali, maybe it will prepare us for Hanoi a little bit.

Things that are different, part 2

In Bali there seems to be no shortage of craftsmen that can create beautiful carvings and statues and paintings but for some reason they can't figure out how to install door latches in the hotel rooms.  More often than not they are installed backwards; from the inside you have to turn the handle to close the door and then the door can be opened from the outside by the wind or just pushing on it. You have to lock it from the inside to keep it closed. I have been tempted to take the latch out and re-install it correctly, but then maybe it is their artistic license?

In the non-food catagory of different/weird is a spa treatment where you sit next to a fish tank and put your feet in and little fishes nibble at your skin. These things are even at shopping malls.

It's tough to make a living here, high unemployment and difficult farm labor in the hot sun. Today I saw some poor guy wearing a huge Milo drink (some kind of flavored milk?) box walking around the grocery store. I could see his eyes behind the vision grill; he looked sad. Probably lo worse than the sign wavers on the corners in America.

When a hotel advertises that it has hot water it means: 1) they only have hot water, not hot and cold, 2) the hot water is only hot during the day when the sun heats the water.

I have discovered some more chip flavors that you will not find anywhere else: Spicy Chicken Paprika, Lobster, Octopus (seriously?) and Salmon Teriyaki. I thought the last one might be fun to try; I like teriyaki and I like samon, but the flavoring on all the chips is so subtle that it these chips barely registered a salmon flavor and not at all a teriyaki flavor. I also found casava chips (?) that are cheesberger flavored. These chips aren't from some local little manufacturere, they are made by Lays. I never see the Balinese buying or eating these things; who are the audience for them (besides me and I'm only curious)?.

Renting motorscooters is so casual here it is hard to believe. First it is pretty cheap, typically about 50,000 Rp./day or about $6. Sometimes they want you to pay one day up front and other cases you pay when you're done. No need for license or even indicating that you can drive a motorscooter (although it is very easy; it is driving in traffic or on the beat up roads that are the challenge). There is no insurance, if you wreck it you pay for it. If you damage it, you pay for the repair except they never repair the damage. On the islands you don't even sign a contract, just take the keys and drive off.

One last thing, you can tell that a country is poor when there is paper currency that is worth less than 12 cents (1,000 rupiah notes).

Things that are different here in Bali

I am kind of a snack food afficianado so I like to notice what snacks and candies are available in places when we travel and like to try them if they don't seem too weird.
A popular snack food brand is named 'oops'
There are lots of cookies in small snack packs, but except for Oreo's they are almost all some kind of wafer.
Strawberry is a very popular flavor for many candies and cookies.
The flavorings for snacks and chips is very subdued from western standards. You can barely tell that a barberque flavored chip is not plain.
Some popular chip flavors are seaweed, roasted chicken and chili plus the barbeque I mentioned.
They grow peanuts here so there are lots of peanuts based snacks. 
Some bread that we are served is like cake.
That's it for snacks, the following is general things that are different.
There must be 30 different brands of laundry soap.
I have been trying to find a lightweight shirt, but it has so far been impossible. For one thing the clothing is not lighweight. I can buy denim and long sleeve shirts or thick teeshirts, but not a simple linen white shirt. Also, in clothing sections of stores men's and women's clothes are not sold in obviously separate sections or areas. A rack of shirts will also have blouses, men's shoes will be next to women's, etc.
In general food is pretty cheap, but because we have to go out for every meal it can still take a big bite out of our budget (pun intended). Drinks are the most expensive part of a dinner. Most drinks cost more than the entrés. A simple glass of white house wine (Yes, Bali actually has a pretty decent local wine.) costs about $8, a mixed drink like a Marguarita is $9, local beer (Bintang, reminds me of Corona) is cheaper, but still about $5, imported beer is as much as a mixed drink. but almost any entré is less than $6. Without drinks a very nice meal with salad, soup (tomato for me, of course), excellent entré and dessert for two would be less than $30, but with drinks it can end up around $45-$50.
    One curious thing is that although cigarettes are available everywhere, there are no pipes or loose tobacco or rolling papers and no smoke shops either.
Although there are gas stations they are not so common that you can count on finding one so almost every roadside store sells gasoline by the liter from old plastic water bottles. I guess that isn't dangerous?
Regarding driving, in Bali there are no rules. Do whatever is convenient; drive on the wrong side of the road, park anywhere, go at any speed (slowly), don't use your lights, pass the vehicle in front of you (on either side) even if there are other vehicles coming, run red lights, put the whole family on the motorscooter, don't have a license or insurance. Somehow it works as I haven't seen an accident. Everyone just knows what to do and it all goes smoothly with no one seeming to get upset. And somehow I manged to drive in this chaos too.
One really good and different thing in Bali is that cell phones are cheap, service is cheap and best of all they work everywhere; the city, the jungle, the beach, little islands, everywhere. Very convenient for traveling the way we are as we can easily arrange for a hotel or a driver or just to call each other. Come on America, catch up!
The following might be too geeky for some readers:
As an amateur myrmecologist I am interested in and casually look for what kind of ants live in the places we travel. (It is not as crazy as it might seem as I discovered rather poisonous ones in the trees and fire ants in Panama thus we avoiding nasty stings while hiking and which we might not have noticed otherwise.). In Bali there appears to be three kinds of ants, all harmless. There are large (1/4 inch) solitary black ants that roam around looking for who knows what and are similar to ones in the Sierra's, squads of dainty little red ants with long legs racing over the hot rocks and packs of tiny little black ants no bigger than a speck of pepper dashing helter-skelter everywhere and most often on the fruit in the offerings that are left on the ground and roads. None of them seem to care about the other.
In the evening there are geckos on the walls of every restaurant. There seem to be three kinds, but they might just be different ages or male and female destinctions. There are white ones and green ones and spotted ones. Thay all interact with each other. For amusement we watch them battle for space, chase each other, catch bugs and make the sound from which their name comes; they actually say "gecko!"

Tomorrow we have an authentic breakfast at our driver's home and then head off for Sanur and the fast boat to Nusa Lembongan, a little island off the east coast of Bali for a couple of days of snorkeling and diving where they claim we will see large manta rays.