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Published: August 12th 2008
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Ok so how do I say this in the nicest way possible, Kuta SUCKED!!. Well I guess it wasn't so bad, it just wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be, and you all know what happens when you have high expectations. The touts in Kuta are enough to drive even a seasoned traveler insane, Ben had to calm me a few times. There are lots of vacationing surfers roaming around and high end stores priced higher than I would pay back home for the same stuff. I do want to mention that laundry is still cheap to do there though.
Ben arrived a day after me, and we walked around town a bit, and then decided to try surfing. For those that remember my first try at surfing in Equidor, it wasn't as bad this time. The waves were of a respectable size, not the 10 foot ones I had challenged before. However I still pretty much suck. Ben and I gave it an honest 1-2 hour try, and between the two of us only managed to stand on the board a few times, and let me say term "stand up" is being used rather loosely. After
that we spent some time laying around on the beach, which is actually very nice. The beach itself goes on for miles, and at one end you can see the airport, which is far away, and when planes land there it looks like there going straight into the ocean.
The following day we booked a general site seeing tour, we went and seen a couple of temples, I forget the names now, but one was outset into a lake, one was on the coast out into the ocean, and one was around Ubud somewhere. I'm not pretending to be very cultured here, but they where neat to see. We also stopped off at a place called the monkey forest, which for the day, was one of my favorite stops. The drive was also one of my favorite parts as we passed through several rice fields and lush forested hills, and some small villages. When we booked the tour, we thought that we would end up meeting others as Kuta is totally packed with bodies, however I guess no one really wants to do the sight seeing thing there, or at least not that day. At the end of the
Taman Ayun
Former Royal family temple day our driver was happy to get rid of us, after a geniun Thank You, he just waved us out of his van with a ya, ya. I did tip the man, maybe it wasn't enough?
After three days in Kuta, Ben and I unatimilously agreed to head over to the Gile Islands just north of Lombok, where we were going to do some diving. The way over was a complete mess, we had to get up at 6:00am to catch a minibus from Kuta to Padangbai port (only a two hour ordeal) where a ferri would take us to Lembar Lombok (another 4 hours), then another minibus to Bangsal (yet another hour) where we would take a taxi boat to the Gile Trawangan. Try saying that ten times fast, or in my case once slow.
The trip started out horrible, some surfer dude, decided rather than rent a surf board for all of $5.00 a day, he needed to bring his from home, so its stuffed all down the side of this minibus, we all had to cram beside it, and then we ended up picking up one more person than the van would normally hold, so
Ulundanu Temple
Build on Lake Beratan it was quite cramped. (on a side note, I can't beleive someone would pack around a huge surf board threw airports, and on buses while traveling. Even if I where to go on a special trip just to snowboard, and it included a flight, I would have enough brains just to rent, I guess thats why surfers are so well known for there brains) (Not that my spelling demonstrates mine).
Ok back to the story, we get to the Padangbai port a hour and a half before the ferri leaves, and the bus driver drops us off at a crappy little resturant, (ok I see how that works) however, I would have rather slept another hour! It just gets better too, after Ben and I board the ferri, these ladies with food and drink are there heavily selling, stating that the ferri is five hours in length and that there is no store or cafeteria on this ferri. We had just boarded and were happy to get choice seats, so we buy the next few hours supplies off of them. About an hour into the trip I start wondering about the ferri, as it has three levels, and outside
Tanah Lot
Hundreds of locals celebrate here during different festivals. decks and such. Well you can almost guess what I found on level 3... a store and cafeteria selling the same junk (if not better) for half the price. I think its fair to say that the ladies were less than honest with us. One cool thing was that I saw some dophins swimming out in the ocean, and one did a big jump in the air, just like on TV!!
The rest of the trip was ok until we got the port of Bangsal, the touts there are completely full it, they had told us that beer and liquor on the island where at very high prices and to buy it there instead, we didn't, and they were wrong. However we did find out from our driver that there is no ATM's on the island, WHAT, how is that even possible these days. Luckly I brought some US$ with me and changed those for the next few days we planned on being on the islands for. I didn't change enough and on the island there is a 10% charge to pull money out with your visa ... that sucked.
So we land on Gile Trawangan, and it
was one of the most beautiful islands I had ever seen, they don't let any vehicals or motorbike on the island, and you could walk around it in about three hours. The water is crystal clear and there is a laid back friendly attitude every where you go. Ben and I had met a girl on the way who was also budget traveling, so we all decided to share accomidation as it is quite expensive on the island in high season. Her name was Amelie. She was also from Canada and ended up spended a few days there with us before heading over to Gile Meno. The day she left, her and I went over to the next island called Gile Meno, where we snorkeled and saw some sea turtles and a bunch of fish, then we just relaxed in some hammiks for the afternoon before I headed back to Gile Trawangan where Ben was taking his open water dive course.
The next few days I spent diving at the same place Ben was taking his opne water course, and I managed to rack up 7 more dives. I ended up Diving at the sites called, Shark Point, Deep
Gile Trawangan beach
Wow, look at the color of this water. Turbo, Hans Reef, Sunset Reef, Bounty Reck, and two others that I now forget the names of. Among all the cool fish and coral I seen, the highlights were, White tip reef sharks, Turtles, a Nepolean Wrasse, Squid, Scorpion fish, and some Pigmy seahorses. I also saw a bunch of those pesky Titain Trigger fish, like the one that attacked me before, this time all was well. On the second last day I was really sick from some bad food I had ate, and after I finally got my butt out of bed, Ben dragged me all over the island. It started out that we where going to just walk a coulpe hundred meters to the other side where we thought we could try a different resturant, however there was no resturant, so we ended up all over the place in the deserted part of the island looking for a place to eat, the senery was awsome and we could see how the locals lived off the main drag. Ben still states it was one of better days there, however being sick I can't say that I enjoyed it as much, but looking back it was still cool.
After
a week and one day on Gile Trawangan, we were off trecking, to the second largest volcano in Indonesia, for those that know me, trecking isn't somthing I am completely in shape for. You'll have to check out the next blog to see how that went!.
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