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Published: December 2nd 2023
Rippling water shows lack of depth… ~ Indonesian Proverb
HE SAID... Today we were travelling to the mountain village of
Sidemen.
Locations > Ubud is a bustling mountain town in central Bali.
> Sidemen (our destination) is a small mountain village in eastern Bali.
Transport We travelled from Ubud to Sidemen by minibus, then explored Sidemen’s peaceful streets and lush rice fields by foot.
After lunching at Warung Pondok Bali (a small local eatery on the outskirts of Ubud), we clambered into a minibus and set off toward Sidemen. As we climbed in altitude, the roads narrowed and the distance between villages increased. The villages themselves were remote and small, and there were times when the temple structures outnumbered the actual dwellings. The forest was lush and green, and it occasionally encroached onto the road. Mountain peaks surrounded us on every side, and the air was cool. We were far from the hot sun and humid air that stifled Ubud in the mid-afternoon.
The road twisted and turned, and the traffic often ground to a halt on tight narrow corners – especially when we met small trucks travelling in the opposite direction. There were a lot of dingo-like dogs along the road. White, steely-eyed
and cautious. We’d seen a few in Java, but the Balinese seemed to have a more welcoming attitude to dogs. Unfortunately, they were not well kept.
Accommodation We arrived at Uma Agung Villa in the mid-afternoon, our accommodation for one night in Sidemen. Our bungalow was spacious and cool, with a small terrace that was perfect for relaxing and catching up on travel notes. Lucy, a local white dog with multiple names (including Luna and Chiko), opted to sleep on our terrace during the night. The heavens opened at some point, and our terrace sheltered her from the deluge. She was a gorgeous dog with a high sense of self-importance, and she became an integral part of our short stay in Sidemen.
Along with our fabulous (semi-private) terrace, the bungalow had an amazing outdoor bathroom. A sloping thatched roof sheltered us from the elements, while a surrounding stone wall offered some privacy. The gap between the thatched roof and the stone wall allowed us to feel at one with nature.
Cuisine …Dinner Day 1 (Uma Agung Villa, Sidemen)…
We walked to the Villa’s open-sided dining area around 7pm and settled at a long table. We weren’t overly
hungry, so we ordered the following dishes:
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ayam betutu (steamed chicken in Balinese spices, served with Balinese vegetables and rice)
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tahu tempeh curry (fried soy bean curry with Balinese sauce, fresh coconut milk and rice).
I cooled down with a large Bintang beer, which was very welcome.
…Breakfast Day 2 (Uma Agung Villa, Sidemen)…
When I ventured onto our terrace at 5:30am, Lucy was lounging on the cool tiles as if she owned the place. She joined us for breakfast in the Villa’s dining area, where I replenished with fruit, banana pancakes and coffee. Curled at my feet, Lucy waited expectantly for a few pancake morsels to fall in her direction. They didn’t.
…Lunch Day 2 (Riverside Picnic, Sidemen)…
Towards the end of our morning walking tour (which I touch on in my
highlights section below), we arrived at a grassy verge beside a fast-flowing river. It was such a beautiful location to settle on blankets and enjoy a Balinese picnic. We each received a banana leaf parcel sealed with small pieces of fibrous skewer. On opening the parcel, we discovered a dense and aromatic wrap of noodles, rice, egg, tofu, sprouts, fried tempeh, chicken
and chilli sauce. This traditional Indonesian dish is known as
nasi bungkus, and it was superb.
The chilli sauce was provided in a small plastic bag (allowing you add as much or as little as you like), while the rice was hidden under a banana leaf in the bottom of the parcel. We sat on the river bank and ate the contents of the
nasi bungkus with our fingers, straight from the banana leaf parcel. It was an extraordinary meal, and one I will fondly remember.
Highlights …Exploring the village of Sidemen (Day 1)…
On the afternoon we arrived in Sidemen, we dropped our packs in our bungalow and headed out to explore the peaceful mountain village. There were quite a few luxury villas and homestays scattered along the quiet streets, along with boutique jewellery shops. However, Sidemen is nothing like Ubud. The friendly villagers were continuing as normal with their day-to-day lives, and tourism was not the prime focus of their endeavours. Women tended large crops; old men wandered home from outlying fields with sickles in their hands; kids roamed the streets. It was so nice to explore a quiet Balinese village that had not been adversely
impacted by corporate tourism. We couldn’t help but smile.
With the sun starting to dip below lush green hills on the western horizon, we wandered back to our bungalow, settled on our terrace and caught up on our travel notes.
…Exploring the village of Sidemen (Day 2)…
With the adorably self-important Lucy leading the way, we headed out into the hot morning sun for a guided village tour. For the first part of the walk we retraced our steps from the previous evening, but this time we gained a much better understanding of what we were passing and seeing.
Long bamboo rods with small baskets attached to the end (known as bamboo dragons) hung high in the streets outside dwellings, marking a recent holy day in the Hindu calendar. Traditional instruments used in Balinese gamelan music sat in the corner of a large open community hall, a scene so vividly described in Colin McPhee’s
A House in Bali (which formed part of my pre-reading for this Indonesian adventure). We dropped into a local weaving shop and watched on as a woman demonstrated traditional
tenun songket weaving in a small courtyard of her home. She was selling sarongs
and male headdresses, but nothing really grabbed our attention.
Up until this point of our guided village tour, we had been witnessing the daily routines of Balinese families (an opportunity we relished and appreciated). However, it was time to go bush. The rough bitumen streets gave way to leafy forest paths and squelchy rice fields. At times we would have to navigate narrow concrete separating walls, which required significant balance and poise. Despite being slippery, muddy and uneven, it was an amazing experience.
We passed sprawling crops of chilli, sweet potato, banana, peanuts and rice, and the whole time we were accompanied by Lucy. She had adopted us, and she led the way. She saw off every cat and dog that crossed her path, and she even saw off a few local villagers she wasn’t overly fond of. She really came into her own on this walk.
We eventually arrived at a grassy verge beside a fast-flowing river, which was to be our amazing picnic location (which I describe in the
cuisine section above). Lucy disappeared momentarily, but she re-appeared at the end of the picnic to enjoy a couple of eggs that hadn’t been eaten.
We folded the picnic blankets, climbed the steep river bank and walked a short distance to a waiting minibus. As we slowly navigated the rough river bank road in the minibus, Lucy walked in front of us, perpetually guiding the way. When we eventually turned onto a bitumen road and picked up speed, we left Lucy behind. We hoped she would get back to the Villa before we left the village. It would be sad to leave and not to say goodbye to such a loyal two-day friend.
It was midday when the minibus dropped us back at Uma Agung Villa. We settled in the Villa’s dining area and caught up on our travel notes, refreshing with a large Bintang beer (me) and whole coconut (Ren). In the mid-afternoon we were travelling to Sibetan, a remote rural village about 12 kilometres east of Sidemen. We no longer had access to our bungalow, so we settled at a nearby cafe (Warung Wisma Bojana) and relaxed with a Balinese coffee (me) and Paradise Island mocktail (Ren). The open-sided dining area offered amazing views of the surrounding Balinese countryside. It was such a peaceful and serene spot to sit and sip our
drinks.
Did we get to say goodbye to Lucy? No. Did we see her again? Yes. As we drove out of Sidemen, we looked out the window of the minibus and there she was, running in front of two tourists who were just setting off to explore the village. She had moved on, and so had we.
Lowlights There were no lowlights in this peaceful mountain village. A few lamentable traits of travellers within our group came to the fore, but I have neither the motivation nor time to waste on them here.
SHE SAID... After refuelling with a relaxed lunch at Warung Pondok, we climbed back into our minibus and headed for the hills – to the village of
Sidemen (pronounced Si-da-men). I slept for most of the 1.5-hour trip, but whenever I stirred and looked out the window, I gathered we were in a very green and leafy part of the country. I woke when we bounced into the driveway of our hotel.
Villa Uma Agung was a small boutique hotel. It had traditional roofed bungalows which cascaded down a steep hill that ended in a small river. We were welcomed with
a ginger drink that Andrew loved, but I thought it tasted very weird (this was becoming a pattern with our welcome drinks!). We were handed big wooden keyrings and led to our bungalows (ours was called Srikandi).
Like ours, most of the bungalows faced the pool, but the others further down the slope faced rice fields or a forest. Despite the bungalows being placed in very close proximity to each other, the architects had tried their best to give each bungalow as much privacy as possible. This was a very important consideration, given our bathroom was outside! It had a reasonably high stone wall, but very thankfully we also had a large privacy screen shielding us from the path above, and another smaller one on the downhill side (in case anyone in that double-storey bungalow happened to look up from a certain corner of their patio). Yes, I checked! 😊
This was the first accommodation of our trip without aircon, but we had two standing fans which were more than sufficient for the slightly cooler climate in Sidemen. Despite being in the thick of things, I really loved our comfortable bungalow, and I was a bit sad to
be only staying one night.
After we sorted ourselves out in the room, Andrew and I went for a walk to check out the neighbourhood. We were a bit out of the village centre and surrounded by beautiful rice fields in every direction we looked. The fields closest to us were ready to harvest, and the tall grass stalks were laden with golden rice husks. Beyond this striking vista of green and gold, there stood a brooding volcano in the distance. This was Mount Agung – Bali’s highest peak – and it kept peaking at us through heavy clouds.
The area we were in had a few hotels, restaurants and tourist shops strategically overlooking the rice fields. However, the further we walked towards the village, the setting became more local and the large rice fields changed to small farms with crops of peanuts, chillies, leafy greens and cassava. The farmers were busy weeding and tending their crops. The women were particularly friendly – a smile from us was guaranteed to be reciprocated.
One woman stopped her work (she was picking greens) to ask where we were from, where we were staying, for how long etc. She was
on the far side of the field from us, and our raised voices echoed in the valley and drew curious neighbours out of their homes! I’m sure she would have happily kept chatting in this yell-y manner, but we got a bit self-conscious. We politely waved goodbye and kept walking.
When we reached the village, I was a bit surprised at how small and quiet it was. The only street life was kids playing in their compounds and a few motorbikes passing through. Even though there were no visible hotels in the village, the tourist influence could be seen in the number of homestay signs.
Sidemen sits at a high elevation, and we decided to return to the hotel when the evening air started getting a bit too cool for the t-shirt and shorts I had on. We returned to our bungalow and settled on our small patio to write some travel notes before dinner. I was overjoyed when a very friendly white dog trotted through the property and walked directly towards us (white dogs seemed very prevalent in this eastern part of Bali). I assumed she was the hotel’s resident dog, and I loved that she had
decided to visit our patio. She seemed very interested in the packet of cassava chips I was munching on, but turned her nose up when I offered her one. I guess the chip offended her sensibilities, because with no other food forthcoming, the little madam huffed at me and took off down the hill in a blur of white. 😊
Dinner was in the hotel’s open-sided restaurant which wasn’t far from our bungalow. I ordered the
ayam betutu (steamed chicken cooked in a ‘betutu’ spice mix sauce) which was supposedly spicy, but had zero heat. Thankfully it was still very delicious. Andrew’s
tahu temphe curry (fried tofu and tempeh curry) was also delicious but lacking in spice. We both reached for the bottle of Sambal Pedas (hot sauce) and used it liberally.
Dinner should have been a lovely and relaxing experience; however, it was marred by the fact that two of the group had spent a few hours drinking by the pool, and by dinner time they were loud and intolerably attention seeking. And of course, we had the bad luck of sitting next to them! But thankfully there was a sane conversation going on the other side
of us which enabled us to make it through dinner courteously.
We returned to our bungalow in the hope of doing some writing with a few drinks, but instead, we both opted to have an early night. We had got so used to the hot and balmy evenings in Indonesia that the cold night air drove us to bed early! The heavy clouds we’d seen that evening eventually broke, and it rained heavily overnight. Andrew woke up at one point to bring our shoes inside and reported that the white dog had taken shelter on our patio. She clearly had an affinity to this particular bungalow. In hindsight I was grateful that she was well behaved and hadn’t decided to chew on or carry off any of our shoes!
The next morning the air was very much cooler than it had been the previous day. I wondered about the decision to install an outdoor bathroom in the bungalow when the temperatures in Sidemen were lower than typical in Bali. However, I had a feeling this was one of those places with cold evenings and nights, but hot and humid days. We had a hike planned, so I was
mindful to dress accordingly. I loved the view of mist on the mountains around us. As the early morning sun struggled through the clouds, the mist took on an ethereal quality that was extremely beautiful.
On our way to breakfast I could see staff members looking particularly stressed, and I guessed that our group had started arriving before the kitchen was ready. And as predicted, my simple order of banana pancakes (which we’d ordered the night before) took forever to come out. The pancakes weren’t great, but the palm syrup they were served with was absolutely delicious! 😊
Back at our bungalow we had to prepare not just for our guided walk and hike around Sidemen, but we also had to pack a separate small bag to take to a homestay we were going to later that day. And because we wouldn’t be returning to the hotel until after lunch, we had to also check out and leave all our bags in one designated bungalow.
When we gathered at reception at 8:30am, we noticed the white dog was hanging around. Susi (our group leader) asked the receptionist about her, and we were rather amused by a very
cute but curious story. Lucy belonged to a cafe up the road, but she spent most of her day hanging out with the tourists at the hotel. The hotel staff clearly allowed her to come and go as she pleased. The curious part of the story was that she seemed to know when a hike was on the agenda, and would arrive and wait at reception to walk with everyone! She certainly looked happy and excited… it was the same look our Oliver gets before a walk or car ride.
We met our local guide, and I thought he said his name was Newman. I’m pretty sure I heard wrong. He seemed nice enough, but I took a slight dislike to him when he voiced his displeasure at Lucy walking with us. He went to great lengths to tell us that the farmers disliked him bringing Lucy along, and he asked us not to encourage her. If Lucy was causing angst to the farmers (whose farms we were about to walk through), I guess I could understand his reasoning. But it was sad that Lucy seemed to adore Newman, and had no idea that Newman disliked her. I also
realised there was no mystery about how Lucy knew a hike was on the agenda –she simply followed Newman when he passed her cafe. Smart dog!
Our hike began as a slow amble through the rice fields and past the farms we’d seen the evening before. Newman explained that the farmers use a system of crop rotation here… they plant rice, followed by vegetables like Chinese greens or chilli, and then rice again. We passed Lucy’s cafe, and her friendly owner told us Lucy’s real name was Chiko (she’d somehow been baptised Lucy at our hotel). The lady seemed happy enough to let Lucy/Chiko lead a free-range life and follow the tourists on their hikes.
We walked through the village, passing the local primary school and stopping at the community hall opposite the massive main village temple. Newman explained a complex system of social and religious order, but I have to admit I didn’t really listen. One of the smaller temples we passed had tall decorative
penjor bamboo poles in front of the temple, which Susi called bamboo dragons. The
penjor are erected to indicate a Hindu ceremony / celebration at the temple.
Lucy-Chiko had been leading
us through the village with much delight. She clearly knew the routine of this walk and would dart ahead to see off a chicken on our path or lag behind to investigate a scent; but she always caught up to us and trotted to the front. Apart from frightening the odd chicken, I didn’t think she was doing much harm… but that all changed when we entered the village and walked down its narrow streets. Lucy-Chiko knew the houses with dogs, and she would aggressively charge towards them. A very vocal warning was then issued to those dogs to stay within their boundaries and away from us. I appreciated this ‘protection’ to a certain extent, but when she attacked a pregnant cat for no reason, we all saw her in a very different light. She was lovely with humans, but she was an absolute bully-dog in the domestic animal circles of Sidemen. 😞
We stopped by the Milla Weaving Shop (that was based in a local home) to learn about the local
songket weaving industry. We watched a weaving demonstration by a lovely and very skilled woman who was working on a wooden loom with deft hand movements. Songket
weaving is a large part of the Sidemen culture, and most women learn to work the loom and produce intricately patterned brocade fabrics for sarongs and sashes. Newman mentioned that his mother, wife, sister-in-law and niece can all weave; but with more women moving into the tourist trade, he wondered if there’d be anyone to teach the younger generation this traditional skill.
Newman and Susi asked us if we wanted to have a go on the loom, but something had been lost in translation, as the weaver had to apologetically tell them that the piece she was working on was too expensive to hand over to any of us. Fair enough – this was her livelihood. I had been looking forward to buying a scarf from this weaver. However, try as I may, I couldn’t find anything I liked. The beautiful earthy coloured thick cotton fabrics were too stiff for wearing around my neck, and the thinner silky fabrics came in bright colours that I’d never wear. I was very disappointed. The scarf gods clearly didn’t want me to buy a scarf from this weaver. 😞
When we left the paved village roads and started walking towards larger
farms and rice fields, Newman decided to address the elephant in the room – plastic waste. We had all noticed a lot of plastic waste on the roadsides and in the waterways, and it was heartbreaking. The only thing Newman could tell us was that once a month, the biggest resort in the village buys plastic waste from the villagers (paid by the weight). In fact, we’d walked past that resort and had seen staff cleaning plastic bags out of the stormwater drains. This was a great initiative, but it was dealing with the consequences of the issue rather than tacking the actual issue of single use plastic, or the proper disposal of it. But I suppose it was possibly an important first step towards bigger things. Fingers crossed.
We passed gardens full of fruit trees – with durian and jackfruit being the most popular. We walked past farmers harvesting sweet potatoes and yams, and entered the fields. The fields were full of chilli plants that were close to being harvested, after which the terraces would be flooded with water and planted with rice. We had to balance on a narrow concrete wall that hugged the edge of the
fields, and Newman warned us to watch our step on the mossy parts of the wall that were particularly slippery. It was a task in concentration that only got harder when we later walked along the muddy ridges that separated each of the terraces.
The ridges were even muddier and more slippery than normal from the heavy overnight rain. A few people in the group had small stumbles, including Andrew, who lost his footing when Lucy-Chiko got on the scent of something and stopped dead in her tracks in front of him. It was only a minor slip, but it was enough to give me the giggles for the rest of the walk. 😊
At one point while still walking in single file along an outer ridge, we came across two tourists walking in the opposite direction with their guide. Apparently, the road / ‘ridge’ rule is that the bigger group gets right-of-way – so they had to step off into the muddy ground to allow us to pass. We apologised to them, but Newman just couldn’t understand our embarrassment. There were rules and we had followed them. End of story. 😊
It was quite funny that
the other guide recognised Lucy-Chiko in our midst, but called her Luna! It was becoming clear that Lucy-Chiko had befriended many guides in the village as part of her self-appointed role of ‘tourist hike guard dog’. We were still chuckling about this when Newman suddenly sprang into some sort of hunter mode and pounced on a little bat hanging on a tree. He proudly displayed his catch to us, but very thankfully none of the group were very impressed, and he soon returned the frightened little thing to the tree he had grabbed it from.
The walk then took us through light jungle with wild fruit trees and bamboo. Very extraordinarily, the divide between crops and wild plants was often blurred, and I wasn’t always sure if we were walking through jungle or an organic farm. We had been walking alongside a pineapple plantation for a few minutes before I recognised it as a farm. It was so overgrown with grass and shrubbery that I thought the spikes of the pineapple plants were some sort of wild aloe vera.
The paths were also very overgrown, and I was surprised that none of us had any leech incidents from
being in close contact with wet grass in such a humid environment. I loved this walk very much. It was the perfect way to take in the beautiful scenery that Sidemen is famed for, and to also get up close and personal with the land. My camera just couldn’t do justice to the vastly different shades of green all around us!
After about an hour and a half of walking, we detoured into a gorgeous river valley that led us to our lunch picnic spot by the Telaga Waja River. I had expected the picnic to be in a very serene and secluded setting; and it sort of was… but there was a farmer bathing in the river close to us (fully naked!), and there was a derelict resort not far away. The abandoned buildings were sort of creepy, and none of us showed any interest in getting any closer. It seems this Bendung Uma Duuran Resort was hit hard by the massive downturn in tourism after the Bali bombings in 2002. The resort was abandoned and has been left to slowly decay. It’s very sad to see such a loss.
By now I was starving and really
looking forward to our picnic. Our minibus had delivered our little parcels of
nasi bungkus (rice parcels) wrapped in banana leaf. This is the traditional way locals take food to their farms or on road trips. The wrapping was organic and easily disposed of.
We sat on a large red mat and I opened my little triangular parcel with much curiosity. It contained noodles, chicken, tofu, fried tempeh and an egg; and the rice was separated by a piece of banana leaf in an almost hidden bottom section. This ingeniously stopped the wet elements from making the rice soggy. There was also a small packet of chilli oil inside the parcel. We ate with our fingers in the local way. It was all very delicious, and I was surprised at how much food had been crammed into a palm-sized parcel.
After we’d finished lunch (and Lucy-Chiko had wolfed down the leftover eggs), we piled into our minibus. Our plea to give Lucy-Chiko a ride back was met with a hard ‘No’ from the driver. She didn’t seem to mind and trotted off in front of the minibus as we bounced along on a dirt path. We wondered how
long it would take her to get back to her cafe… but we needn’t have worried. When we were leaving Sidemen later that afternoon, we saw Lucy-Chiko leading another group on a hike! She really was living her best dog life. 😄
Back at the hotel, even though we’d checked out, we thankfully had access to the hotel’s restaurant and pool, as well as a shower in the communal bungalow we’d left our bags in. We had a couple of hours to kill before our departure to a homestay, so Andrew and I settled in at the restaurant to sip on drinks and write up some travel notes. Andrew loved his Bintang beer, and I sorely needed the hydration from the whole coconut I ordered. It was a pleasant way to spend an hour or so, but I hate killing time like this, and I would much rather have left for the homestay earlier.
After a quick cold shower to cool down, we decided to try one of the small warungs (local food eateries) on our hotel’s road. Quiet little Warung Wisma Bojana was just across the road, and had a lovely view over the surrounding rice fields.
Andrew loved his Balinese coffee (which is a strong filtered coffee), and even though my Paradise Island mocktail was an utter failure, I actually didn’t mind it. It was supposed to be mix of pineapple juice, lime juice, coconut cream and grenadine… but all I could taste was the coconut cream and grenadine. It didn’t help that that I didn’t want ice, so I ended up with a room temperature creamy pink drink… and it was oddly nice. 😊
Our short stay in Sidemen had come to an end, and I was a bit sad. I had really enjoyed our bungalow with it affable staff, and I had really loved our hike and traditional picnic lunch. I felt truly relaxed and happy after our immersion in this green rural wonderland. If a day in Sidemen could have that effect on me, I wondered how I would fare if we ever decided to return for a week-long getaway.
There’s not much to do in this sleepy rural village other than relax in your bungalow, try all the small warungs and hike in nature… and I think that would be just perfect! I could ‘eat, hike, relax, sleep, repeat’ in
a perfectly contented and peaceful routine. What more could you possibly need for a seven-day getaway? I would say… absolutely nothing. Granted, Andrew and I would need to negotiate the size of the hiking and relaxing components, but I’m sure we could reach a happy balance. 😄
This idyllic quiet village setting against the backdrop of Mount Agung, with friendly locals, beautiful views, stunning rice terraces and jungle landscapes, was as picture-perfect ‘Bali’ as it got! Dare I say it, despite my cynicism, we had found our version of that special elusive something that books and films on Bali attempt to portray. On a slightly serious note though, it’s so nice to know that Bali still has beautiful spots such as Sidemen that haven’t been attacked by rampant tourism… yet.
Next we travel east to Sibetan, where a homestay in a snakeskin fruit farming community awaited us.
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Jasmin Baker
non-member comment
oh the serenity
I can see why you loved it so much! And the view is much better than an airport runway! LOL