Diving the Reef and Og-oh Og-oh Parade

---

---

Hello,

So, after leaving Singapore, and upon the recommendation of numerous Aussies, I headed down to Bali. Due to delays, I ended up arriving at about 1 in the morning, which is obviously not ideal. I ended up getting a taxi into Kuta for the night with another couple off the plane. Once there, we spent ages looking for a cheap, available hotel, as it was late, so everyone was either just saying "full" and going back to sleep, or trying to charge us around 200,000 Rupiah. Eventually we found one for 150,000 which was still a lot, but by that time we didn't care so much. After chucking down our bags, we did what was expected of us (being in Kuta) and went out to buy some beers before hitting the beach. This turned out to be quite a lot further than anticipated, but had the bonus of not being lined with drunk Aussies in nightclubs, unlike Poppies II where we were staying. The beach was super-quiet, and really nice, with just us and a few dogs on it, so we chilled there until about 4am before heading back. On the way we stopped at a bar for the hell of it, and met some cool Aussie surfer guys, and some not-so-cool, but very drunk Aussies, one of whom, upon being rejected, said (and I quote) "But why? If we use a condom it doesn't matter." This was unfortunately the general mentality of the tourists in Kuta. This was the first negative about Kuta, the second being I somehow had 1 million rupiah stolen at some point in the night. The third bad point was that in the light of day, after wading through grubby rainwater flooding the streets from a downpour early-morning, it turned out the beach was not at all the pristine white sands with huge waves advertised in the brochures. It was instead a pretty white sand beach with piles upon piles of rubbish all along it, making the beach horrible, and polluting the water to the point that we got a brown residue on out feet when we went paddling. Apparently it's something to do with tides and the predominant winds at this time of year blowing all the crap onto shore rather than out to sea, but that hardly makes it better.

So, having had a great introduction to Bali by way of Kuta (pronounce in a disgusted, disparaging tone), I caught one of the first buses down to Sanur, which was much nicer. I checked into a super-pretty homestay called Little Pond, which had just 8 rooms, an amazing swimming pool, and was cheaper than Kuta. From there I headed down to the beach, which was beautiful, quiet and clean, and spent the afternoon swimming out past the seaweed to little huts erected some way out, and generally relaxing in the bath temperature water. At about 5 it started pouring down with rain, so I went back to Little Pond and chilled in the pool with an older couple who were looking in very bad shape having crashed a motorbike.

Early the next morning I got the public boat out to Nusa Lembongan, a nearby island. The boat took about an hour and a half to get out to Lembongan, as it was a old-school wooden structure, with what looked like wooden sledge runners stuck on either side to act as stablisers - pretty cool but not the fastest. Once we'd pulled up on the beach and piled off, I got a ride out to The Secret Garden on the back of a motorbike driven by one of the staff. For once, I'd planned far enough ahead to book the accomodation in advance, and it turned out to be a good plan. The Secret Garden was exactly as the name suggested: set back a bit from the road and beach, surrounded by an old wall, but inside it was beautiful, and the "rooms" were actually individual chalets, complete with ensuite (outside) bathroom and terrace with ultra-comfy hammock. Pretty good for 7gbp (about average for Bali). That first day I just chilled out and explored the island. I walked over to Mushroom Bay to do some snorkelling, and met up with a couple of French families who bought me lunch and joined me on the rest of the walk around the island. That evening I had dinner at a delicious Balinese place just round the corner with a girl called Jessica from the States.

My second day had more action. As well as being a super-nice hotel, The Secret Garden also has it's own dive company - Big Fish Diving - and as the diving looked amazing, and got me a discount on the room price, I joined Chris and a crazy French guy on a trip out to the reef. Our first stop was Pura Ped, just 20 minutes or so from Jungat Batu beach (makes a change from the 2 hour trips in Cairns!). We got kitted out whilst Jessica went snorkelling, then rolled backwards into crystal clear waters (30m visability) over an amazing wall of coral, sloping down as far as we could see. Add this to the fact that once we got down to about 25m the current was strong enough to carry us along without even having to kick. The only "problem" was that as the wall of coral stretched out beyond our vision even at 30m deep, and was so full of life that I would keep getting distracted by the fish and coral and drift down to around 30m - not good for air consumption, but pretty fun as I finally discovered first-hand the effects of being narked (Nitrogen Narcosis). I basically felt as if I'd had 1 or 2 free beers - a bit lightheaded and happy, which is perhaps not the best thing 30m underwater, but it stops once you go up again to around 25m. The dive was also the longest I've done, as we got 12l tanks (bigger than Oz), so we ended up staying down for about 55 minutes. As the current was so strong, this meant that although we started out at Pura Ped, we actually ended up past the next dive site (Sental)! Along the way we saw 2 Hawksbill Turtles - one of whom rode the current right next to us for a while; a very cool Lion Fish, a Pufferfish, and loads of different coloured starfish. Throughout all this, the crazy French guy positioned himself a few metres out from the wall, turned his back on the coral, crossed his arms, and spent the dive staring out into the (empty) deep water looking for Mola Molas (Manta Rays). Apparently he had skipped the last dive having been hungover, and Chris had seen 2 Mola Molas, much to his disgruntlement.

Once we had been picked up by Damo in the boat, we had a brief pause for the boys to jump over the side (guess what for), and then we went over to the next dive site, Toyapakah, where we passed out SI eating a lunch of rice and various veges and chicken wrapped in a banana leaf before getting ready for the next dive. This time, the coral sloped off much more steeply, as it was essentially growing on the island's cliffs that towered above us when we were on the surface, and stretched down forever in a wall of beauty when we were under. This dive lasted about an hour, and although the coral was stunning, the amount of fish was even more impressive. We started out in the deep water near the Japanese day-tripper boat, officially so we could see the Giant Trevally and Nepoleon Wrasse that hung out there, and unofficially so that Chris could go and bang on the bottom of their glass-bottomed boat to surprise the tourists and pose for photos. Then we followed the current over to the reef, where were literally engulfed in shoal after shoal of brightly coloured fish. The main ones I can remember and identify are Cornet Fish and Trumpet Fish, of many varieties, Scrawled Firefish, Starfish and Batfish. At one point Chris pointed out a Scorpion Fish, that had such a good camoflage going on that I would definitely have passed it off as a bit of coral. About halfway through the dive we ran into a few Triggerfish as well (vicious fish with big teeth), but they were too busy waging war on a nearby shoal of Jack Fish to pay us much attention. When we were down to about 30 bar each (20 below our limit), we finally admitted we had to go up, and headed for the surface. On the top, the cliffs rose up above us, and all along them, just above the water's edge, massive crabs scuttled back and forth doing important crabby things.

Once back on the island, we dried off and went to the Umbonga service at the local Bali Banjar, where the locals all spent a while praying to their gods, then in one part of the bali they got all pentecostal, whilst in the other half they enacted some sort of play. The pentecostal area basically consisted of a woman in full white throwing her arms in the air and wailing and convulsing whilst the men threw water over her and walked in circles chanting. Apparently it was to get rid of evil spirits or something, but it was seriously weird, and not something you expect on a quiet little island! The play section was also good, once I met up with Margot from the French group the day before, who had seen the English version, and therefore knew what was going on. Essentially, it consisted of various people in massive full-body costumes emerging from the temple, dancing around for a bit, sometimes with one another, then retreating. After Margot had explained the story, it made a bit more sense. I think it was something along the lines of an evil witch, who spread disease, pestilence and general witchy misfortune throughout the land. Then along comes a Prince, who challenges her. She accepts the challenge, and then somehow the Prince turns into a Lion, fights her and wins, and the witch is dead. Then the witch manages to come back - something to do with spirits and necromancy - and they fight again, this time the prince doesn't kill her, though she begs for death as she is humiliated. At this point it got even more confusing, and somehow the Lion-Prince and the Witch-Spirit were fighting again, then all the worshippers in the crowd got up and bundled and jumped on the fighting duo. I think the Lion won in the end. Then, after all this excitement, me and Jessica went back to Maria's to have the best Tuna steak with the best boiled potatoes and the best cesaer salad I have ever had, all costing around 3gbp.

The next day way Nyepi Eve. Basically this meant that the locals believe that once a year they need to cleanse the island of evil spirits by making a lot of noise on Nyepi Eve - having a massive party and going around the whole island shouting and banging drums - then the next day (Nyepi Day) they all stay inside for 24 hours, completely silent, and the electricity is cut for the whole island so there is no light, so that when the demons come back, they are tricked into thinking the island is uninhabited and therefore leave it alone, in preference for somewhere full of people to corrupt with their demonic influences (we reckon they all go to the USA). So, after another morning spent diving, this time at SD and the Mangroves, where we saw (amongst the miles of coral) a few triggerfish and a moray eel hiding out in a cave, we headed back to the Bali Banjar where it seemed the entire island was gathered to pray. After a bit me and Jessica met up with David who was diving with World Diving (nowhere near as good), and we settled in to a restaurant on the road to watch the celebrations. At about 6 they started setting up, and by 7pm there was a massive crowd in the road. It turned out that we had chosen a good spot as the locals carried the Og-oh Og-ohs down the road to our corner, stopped and waved them around crazily, and then carried on (unless they broke, in which case they made a pit stop in the side road next to us). When they started, they brought the Og-oh Og-ohs down the street in groups of 3. They were each carried by about 36 people, who were each enclosed in their square of the bamboo lattice that the Og-oh Og-oh was carried on. Preceding and following each Og-oh Og-oh there was kids with flaming torches, and guys playing drums and guitar-like instruments, and every time one came past, everyone would flatten themselves against the walls, tables, or each other at the edge of the street so as not to be impaled on one of the bamboo poles. There were a few breakages - The big red monster lost it's head at one point, and they had to stop to hammer a wooden stake into it's neck to keep it in place, and one of the legs of the Centaur collapsed, so they had to parade it up and down whilst also carrying the weight of a teenage guy who was up on the float holding it up! One of them was carried by kids from the primary school, who for the first half hour of their parade held it high and jumped about a lot, but for the last half hour their "Og-gogo" as the called it got lower and lower as they got tired. It ended up being a really good night, and even after all the Og-oh Og-ohs had come past several times each (which took about 3 hours), everyone stayed up drinking and partying until the start of Nyepi, where we all retired to the hotels to "be silent to trick the demons" or "sleep off the hangover" depending on how you look at it.

Nyepi day itself was much more dull, though the silence on the island was eerie as you couldn't hear a single motorbike or aeroplane the entire day, and it was quite relaxing to lie in the super-comfy hammocks and read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" until it started raining in the afternoon. We didn't have any electricity, so we ended up eating banana sandwiches and cold rice with curry, egg and chicken wrapped in banana leaf, that we had bought the day before. The lack of electricity also meant that at about 6.30 it got dark and we just had candles to see by, so we headed off to bed pretty early!

I had to spend my final night in Bali on the mainland so that I would be in time for my flight, so I headed back to Sanur on the slow boat at about 8 the next day. This time I was one of the first people there, so instead of being crammed in below I got up onto the roof with another guy and spent the journey sunbathing, which was much nicer! Back in Sanur, I ran into a guy called Ricardo, and his friends - Jhoe, Steven and Peter from Flores, and Marseille from London - and we chilled at their place for ages, drinking tea (Sanur is that kind of place) and talking about English football - a subject which only I, the only properly English person, seemed ignorant of. After a bit Ricardo and Jhoe got out motorbikes, and we went over to Balangan Beach. I ended up on the back of Ricardo's bike on the basis that he said he wasn't that good, whereas Jhoe kept boasting that he was amazing. This turned out to be a sound choice! Balangan turned out to be a cool beach, and we spent the afternoon there, swimming despite the coral and rocks that the waves were breaking over, and generally chilling out and getting sunburnt. That evening I went out to get dinner, and go to bed early as I had a flight early the next morning. In reality I ended up at the Ducks Nutz with a bunch of guys, where they had live music playing, and the owner, Ron, who was pissed, kept giving us free drinks, then we went over to Ron's hotel, where all ordered pizza for dinner.

The next stop was Jakata, where I stopped over for 2 nights before heading up to Vietnam. Nothing much of interest happened there. I went up to a museum that had a "fertility cannon" that women used to sit astride to give birth, but nothing much else. In the place I was staying, I met an older guy from Java who was staying there whilst waiting for an Aussie visa, and a couple of Swiss girls. The guy made a really nice dinner for us, and on the recommendation I let him give me a massage. This turned out to be the shortest massage I've ever had, due to his interpretation of "full body" being rather different from mine. Then I headed on up to Saigon, Vietnam.

K xx

n.b. sorry about the bad photos from Nyepi and the lack of photos from Jakata - my camera is playing up - not turning on half the time, and never consenting to use the flash 😞

---

Photos

Chris, Jessica and me
Damo in the background

Og-oh Og-oh 1
Serpent Killer

Og-oh Og-oh 3
Sea Spirit

Og-oh Og-oh 9
2 on one float

Comments

[danioo]

Hi
Hi Katie :) I like to read your story in Bali. I'm Indonesian and just once time visited Bali for four days. I plan to visit Bali for holiday, and your story give me lot of information that I need, thank you :). So you came when Nyepi. Bali so quiet and feel peaceful, isn't it? But as a tourist, sometimes feel suck we just end up in home stay and can't visit many places while Nyepi. By the way, I so sorry for your lost and your disappointment about Kuta. Actually, Bali have a lot of friendly people, but there are always bad people everywhere. Nice to meet you and happy Traveling. :)