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Published: December 14th 2023
Different culture means different custom… ~ Indonesian Proverb
HE SAID... Today we were travelling to the coastal town of
Lovina.
Locations > Kintamani is a small village in northeast Bali, perched on the caldera wall of a collapsed volcano.
> Lovina (our destination) is a coastal town in northern Bali.
> Banjar is an inland town in northern Bali, notable for its hot springs.
Transport Minibus.
After checking out of Hotel Caldera in the mid-morning, we clambered into a minibus and climbed a steep winding road to the large town square of Kintamani. Some of the corners were hairpin bends, and there was little room to move when cars, buses or bikes were coming in the opposite direction.
We turned onto a busy road and started our long journey northwest to Lovina. The narrow road was lined with luxury hotels, restaurants and cafes – all offering panoramic views of Mount Batur. As we sped towards Bali’s northern coast and Kintamani slowly disappeared behind us, the high-end tourist places gave way to local shops and supermarkets.
The view of Mount Batur from high on the caldera rim is extraordinary. We could clearly see how the active volcano juts skywards out of an enormous
crater of a once larger (but now collapsed) volcano. Small dwellings stand silently in the western foothills of Mount Batur, and I couldn’t help but wonder why? Given its recent volcanic activity, I wouldn’t be living anywhere near this mountain, let alone at its feet.
Before long we were driving through a lush green landscape. We would climb steeply, then descend with speed, as the road wound relentlessly through Bali’s mountainous countryside. It was a rough and bumpy ride, which made it difficult to type on a laptop. The scenery changed often, from thick forest to bustling villages built along the roadside. Straight stretches of road were rare. We passed through Jalan Surapati on the northern coast around 12:30pm, where we caught a brief glimpse of the Bali Sea for the first time. We arrived in Lovina at 1pm.
Accommodation Marketing itself as a boutique hotel, Rambutan is a sprawling collection of villas set in a large tropical garden. Our upstairs villa was comfortable enough, with a fabulous terrace overlooking a section of the garden. On checking in, we enjoyed a papaya smoothie as a welcome drink.
Cuisine …Lunch (Global Village Kafe, Lovina)…
We dropped our packs
in the upstairs villa, jumped back into the minibus and headed to Global Village Kafe for lunch, a small eatery dedicated to training young people living with a disability. The place was very calm and peaceful, and the aroma from the kitchen was fantastic. We shared the following dishes:
>
ayam betutu (seasoned roast chicken in rich bumbu betutu, served with rice)
>
nasi campur (urab, egg, sate ikan and ayam betutu served with rice).
I refreshed with a lemon and ginger juice, while Ren opted for an avocado juice. The place was very relaxed (almost hippie-like), the food was fantastic and the staff were incredible. This is such a great initiative, and one we were very happy to support.
…Dinner (Hotel Rambutan, Lovina)…
Snacks in our villa.
On our return from the Banjar Hot Springs (which I describe in the
highlights section below), we picked up some mango ice cream and drinks from a minimart beside the hotel. I settled on our terrace with a cold beer and caught up on my travel notes, then poured a glass of golden arak liqueur that we’d purchased from a local distiller in Sibetan and wrote a few postcards.
It had taken me a while to get to these. I typically write postcards at the start of our travels, yet here we were in Lovina – close to the end of our trip. We’ll probably get back to Australia before these arrive at their destinations.
Highlights …Relaxing in hot springs…
In the mid-afternoon we clambered into our minibus and headed 10 kilometres southwest to Banjar. The reason for our trip was almost entirely focused on relaxation. We were visiting the centuries-old Banjar Hot Springs. On our walk into the hot springs – where we were required to run the gauntlet of tourist shops and their zealous owners – we chanced upon a wedding celebration. I was amazed how welcoming the bride and groom were of us. They invited us into their wedding room and posed for photos. If we weren’t pushed for time, I’m sure they would have invited us to join the celebrations.
Anyway, back to the hot springs. I wasn’t convinced of the logic, to be honest. The idea of entering a hot spring in hot humid weather seemed counter-productive. Surely we would overheat? We didn’t of course, because the springs weren’t hot. They were
lukewarm, and they were perfect for relaxing and resting after our long drive from Kintamani.
There were three pools available to the public – a swimming pool, children’s pool and shower pool. I avoided the children’s pool and relaxed in the swimming pool. In hindsight, I wish I’d ventured into the shower pool. The swimming pool had a row of beautifully crafted spouts, from which water was pouring into the pool (at force). When you sat beneath these, the impact of the lukewarm water on your head and back offered an incredible massage. The height of the spouts in the shower pool was much higher, so the water hit you much harder, and this was very evident given the screams coming from those under the spouts. It was clearly popular, so I opted to float and refresh in the swimming pool. Given any choice, I always take the less crowded option.
The spring water has a high sulphur content (26 percent), which apparently contributes to its healing properties. It also stains everything yellow, especially white fabric. Luckily the stains disappear easily in the wash. Despite the crowds and the basic facilities, I really enjoyed the hot springs. It
was such a rejuvenating experience.
Lowlights None.
SHE SAID... We left Hotel Caldera and its stunning view of Mount Batur at 10:30am. The winding roads, combined with the super early 2am start and my happily full tummy, conspired to make me very very sleepy. I guess everyone else was very tired too, because even the two loud ones were quiet, and it helped me to sleep for about 90% of the trip from East Bali up to the northern coastline. The only time I briefly woke, I remember being surprised at the vineyards we seemed to be passing. That’s not a sight I had expected to see in Indonesia.
The second time I woke was when we drove along a beach road and turned into a smaller road which our hotel was on. I was annoyed that I’d missed the drive into the small town of Lovina. I get the same feeling when I arrive somewhere at night – it takes me a lot longer to get my bearings around the hotel and the town. Lovina is in the Sinharaja regency, and it used to be the capital before Denpasar assumed this role. These days
it’s best known for being a tourist town.
A lot of tourism centres around the dolphins that hang out along this part of the coast. We saw many ‘Dolphin Tours’ advertised around the place, but by all accounts, this type of activity is looked on very poorly by anyone with even the smallest responsible travel bone in their body. I was very disappointed to discover that two in our group considered it, and were only deterred by the 5am and 6am start times – despite Susi (our group leader) telling us how unethical the tours were. 😞
We checked into Rambutan Hotel, which sits on a small street off the beach road. This boutique hotel has a cute open-sided reception building that leads into a mature tropical garden. I had a very good feeling about this place, and this feeling was justified when we were led to our cute double storey villas that formed a horseshoe around a pool. We were allocated an upstairs villa which had a gorgeous balcony that sat among the tree tops. We were surrounded by large mango trees, palms and frangipani with bright pink flowers. The room itself wasn’t that great, but it
was large and functional.
We were told to make our way to the restaurant to receive our welcome drinks, and it wasn’t until we all went hunting for the restaurant that we realised the hotel was quite sprawling and there was actually another ‘back’ pool at the other end of the property. The beautifully manicured gardens curved around a tight corner near several massage and yoga buildings, then led to a second pool and a lovely open-sided restaurant. The welcome drink was a mixed-fruit smoothie, and it was absolutely delicious! Andrew had been getting used to me not liking welcome drinks at our last few hotels, so he expected that I’d pass mine along to him as usual… but not this time. 😊
We didn’t have long to relax in our villa. We had been looking forward to a quiet afternoon and evening, but an unwelcome change in the itinerary meant we had to hustle and get ready for an included trip to the Banjar Hot Springs. Firstly, however, we were getting desperately low on clean clothes and we had to get some laundry done. The rates at the hotel seemed very reasonable, and a whole lot of
us found ourselves in reception with bags and bags of dirty laundry. It turned out that the far-right corner of our balcony overlooked the laundry, and we had a bird’s eye view of our clothes being hand-washed and hung to dry for the next two days.
On the way to the Hot Springs, we stopped at Global Village Kafe for lunch. Global Village Kafe is a training centre for kids with disabilities, and the profits from the cafe go towards healthcare for disabled kids. The Balinese believe in reincarnation and karma, and they believe disabled people are a product of their bad karma in a previous life. This prejudice makes life even tougher for anyone with a disability. We were so happy to support such a wonderful and much needed social enterprise. 😊
Susi had pre-warned us that the service staff were most likely going to be speech and hearing impaired. We all made the effort to eye contact and point to what we wanted on the menu, rather than speak. Our lovely waitress (overseen by a supervisor who could jump in if necessary) did a great job. We had trouble choosing drinks because everything sounded lovely, but
Andrew finally settled on a refreshing lemon and ginger juice, and I opted for an avocado juice. My avocado juice was okay, but nothing special. I had fallen in love with off-the-chart delicious avocado juices in Morocco a few years prior to this trip, and I suppose it’s unfair to keep comparing everything to those.
We ordered the
nasi campur (rice with various side dishes) and the
ayam betutu (chicken cooked in a ‘betutu’ spice mix sauce) from the ‘specials’ board. I had first tried a
betutu dish at Sidemen a few days ago and loved it. However, this version was actually nicer. I was happy to see a small serving of the
ayam betutu as the meat component of my
nasi campur. The other side dishes were
urab sayur (warm green beans and toasted coconut salad),
sate ikan (fish satay), boiled egg and the ubiquitous Indonesian
krupuk (rice crackers). All these components sat around a nutty and flavourful red rice. Every single element of my
nasi campur was seriously delicious!
I really loved our lunch experience at Global Village Kafe, and even without the draw of being a very worthy social enterprise, I would still go back
for the lovely laid-back atmosphere and delicious food. I looked enviously at a young tourist who had settled in with an iced coffee and a book in a very comfortable looking nook… but we had a Hot Spring to get to. Looking at the other customers in the place, it was hard to miss that it was full of tourists. While the food did lean towards tourist tastes (avocado juices etc.), I was still a bit surprised that it had no local support.
The drive to the Hot Springs seemed to take forever in the afternoon traffic. A few group members had opted out of the afternoon’s activities due to illness and fatigue, which gave us a bit more space to spread out in the minibus. It also made the lunch table conversation easier to manage.
The Banjar Hot Springs is a sacred Hindu site, but tourists are allowed to enter a small part of it. Judging from the carpark full of minibuses and the gauntlet of tourist-crap-market stalls we had to stride through, we were more and more convinced that we were entering an extremely crowded and uncomfortable tourist trap. We were also not sure about sitting
in sulphur-filled stinky hot spring water on such a muggy Bali afternoon.
Well, we couldn’t have been more wrong. Yes, there were a few tourists about, but we were in the tourist part of the Springs after all. And even considering this, it wasn’t that bad. There was a bit of sulphur in the water which stained our skin and hair a bit (we had removed all our jewellery), but it wasn’t offensively smelly, and the water was a perfect tepid temperature for the balmy afternoon.
There were three pools to choose from, and we’d normally have chosen the smallest of them… but it had been monopolised by two families with screaming and splashin’ kids. Given this wasn’t the calm vibe we had hoped for, we waded into the biggest pool. The sides of the pool had water pouring out of ornate lion head spouts, which gave a great head and shoulder massage. We took turns hovering under the spouts, and the sense of relaxation was almost instantaneous. There was a third smaller pool around the corner, but the water from the lion head spouts fell from a much greater height, so I decided that wasn’t for me.
The only uncomfortable experience of the Hot Springs involved two tourists who hadn’t quite taken into account (or didn’t care) that this was part of a holy Hindu complex. They wore the barest of swimwear – the kind that would raise eyebrows at any family friendly pool anywhere in the world. I saw a bloke filming them, and while such predatory behaviour upsets me… I wanted to scream ‘have some respect and read the friggin’ room you stupid girls!’. 😱
Despite the looong drive in heavy traffic to and from the Hot Springs, I really loved the experience. It was also enhanced by the fact that we chanced upon a wedding near the Hot Springs. An old uncle saw us walk past, and through Susi, he invited us in to partake in the celebrations. Weddings in Bali go for many days, and on this particular day the couple were in the front room of their house waiting to greet well-wishing guests. While they were happy to have photos taken with us, we were very mindful of intruding. They looked so beautiful in their wedding attire, and we looked so scruffy in our casual clothing. We actually looked like
a ragtag bunch on a day outing from a minimum-security holding! 😄
The wedding prompted Susi to talk about marriages in Bali (this happened the next day, but I’m including it here for continuity reasons). Bali has a caste system, and even though it’s not as strictly followed these days, weddings between different castes are still rare. Very interestingly, marriage can change a woman’s caste. When a woman marries into a family of a lower caste, it has societal repercussions. For example, she and her children wouldn’t be able to eat dinner with her parents at the same table anymore etc. I was shocked by this.
Another very intriguing cultural insight was that a family with only daughters faces the challenge of not having anyone to inherit the ancestral house and take responsibility for the family temple. Women routinely move into the man’s family house, so the family would have to ‘buy’ a son to leave his family and move into the woman’s family house. This obviously means he’d have to give up his family compound, and apparently not many men agree to this condition. I love that men have been happy enough to have women do this
for centuries, but have to be essentially bribed to do the same thing themselves.
Back at our lovely hotel villa, we were pretty tired. Plus, we were too full from a late lunch to even consider dinner… so we bought a few Bintang beers and some snacks (including a delicious mango ice cream) from a small minimart near the hotel to see us through.
We settled on our lovely balcony and caught up on writing travel notes. Sadly, the pesky mosquitoes eventually drove me inside, but Andrew has no such issues with bite-y flying creatures and enjoyed the balmy evening for a bit longer. I was in bed by 8:30pm and fast asleep within minutes!
We had a full day exploring the coral reef near Menjangan Island the next day, so I was glad for our quiet night.
See you around Lovina!
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Jasmin Baker
non-member comment
Dolphins
So sad for the dolphins. People do so much crap to beautiful intelligent beings