Advertisement
Published: November 21st 2007
So here we are, the start of our Asian adventure, our true travel love. Thankfully we’ve chosen an entry destination that’s as touristy as it gets, easing us into the changes required to travel in a less ‘developed’ continent.
Kuta/South Bali We started here, in South Bali, the throbbing beat of the island, where the majority of people stay to either catch a wave or chill on the beach. It’s a pretty exciting place, heavily overdeveloped with everything a visitor could ever need or want; we wandered around checking out the myriad of shops and getting overly excited by the incredibly low prices of things. We also spent some time on the beach, where I rented a board to go give the surf a try. It turns out I’m really not very good, I don’t have the patience required to wait for a wave, and even when I did catch one, I fell straight off. It didn’t take long before I threw in the towel and decided that surfing really isn’t for me. When I tried snowboarding, I could feel myself getting better and more confident on the board really quickly, that just didn’t happen with surfing, oh well,
can’t be good at everything!
As we’re still adjusting to not having our own transport, we decided to rent a motorbike for a few days to further explore the island. Although not a very large island we soon discovered that it takes ages to get anywhere due to the confusing road system and choking traffic. We first went north west from Kuta to Pura Tanah Lot, the most well known and photographed temple in Bali. It’s set on a small island just off shore, and it’s possible to walk over to it at low tide, although non-Balinese aren’t allowed to enter. It was quite a nice sight and certainly photogenic enough, but lacked any real magic due to all the tourists (us included) milling around outside. After this temple we made our way back to Kuta to freshen up before heading south to another temple, Pura Luhur Ulu Watu where we hoped to catch the sunset Kecak dance performance, a traditional Balinese dance.
On the way, we got confused by directions (and contradictory signs) and I ended up running a red light, I say ran it, but all I did was literally stop a few meters past the
line. Soon a policeman was by our side asking us to pull over. He checked over my licence, which isn’t an international driving licence, but is in English so he didn’t seem to notice and looked at the papers for the bike, and then whisked me off to a small office to fill out some paperwork. I was told that my court date would be in two weeks so I had to make sure I was still on the island… Arghhhhh... we planned to be in Java, by then. I coolly asked if there was anyway I could just pay a fine now, and that was that; I passed over 100,000 Rupiah (£5.30), all the paperwork disappeared and we were let go, to continue our journey. I’m not sure if it was legit or not, maybe they do have ‘on the spot’ fines, but it certainly felt like a bribe, either way, it wasn’t a lot of money and it’ll teach me to pay more attention to traffic lights in the future. It did serve another purpose of course, as I managed to get directions before we left.
Pura Ulu Watu is another sea temple situated precariously on top
of some sheer cliffs, it was a beautiful setting for the traditional dance we watched, even though most of the meaning was lost on me, as is usually the case with performance art. There were plenty of over-fed obese monkeys scattered over parts of the temple, which I was much more interested in as it’s been ages since we’ve seen monkeys.
Ubud We set ourselves up for a few days away, leaving the majority of our stuff in Kuta, the only problem was that we still had two day packs and our huge bag of diving gear, and it took a while to figure out the logistics of getting all of it, and us on the bike; if only we had a couple of small kids to dangle precariously of the sides then we’d fit right in!
It took a couple of hours for us to reach Ubud, again mainly due to the terrible traffic, but we also go lost a few times, and had to be put back on track by many of the other motorcyclists we kept pulling up next to at traffic lights who were incredibly helpful. Once we’d reached the village we managed to
check into a really nice hotel, which we’d managed to get for a bargain due to it being low season, and then went for a walk around.
Ubud is another major tourist centre, focusing on Balinese Culture and its arts and crafts, there were far fewer people around but I thought it had a much nicer atmosphere than Kuta. We had a good look around the many craft shops and stalls, bought an amazing wood carving from the art market completely forgetting that any more luggage will probably stop the handlebars moving on the bike.
We also visited the Sacred Monkey Forested Sanctuary, a patch of jungle housing a few temples but more interestingly, a huge group of long tailed macaques who are forever on the lookout for some food, or a victim to play with. It didn’t take long before a small group got overly interested in my ears and face, jumping on my back and reaching round to pull on my ear rings, one cheeky little sod even managed to get his little fingers in my mouth before trying to pull out my lip studs. Aware of the threat of rabies (and the awful injections required)
I managed to shake them off before any real harm was done, sedating them with some bananas. We continued straight on from the Monkey sanctuary on a short walk around the surrounding villages, drooling over some of the huge pieces in some of the woodcarving workshops that we’d love to be able to buy and strolling through some beautiful rice paddies. Everyone we met was so incredibly friendly, all greeting us with a hello, or good morning.
Amed/Tulamben It was another long drive to the north west of the island, but a fairly easy one, as once we got onto the coast road the traffic eased considerably. We got stopped a couple of times by the police, but they only checked our papers, and asked us a few questions about where we were from and where we were going, genuinely interested in what we were up to in Bali.
We arrived in Amed at lunch time, stopping at the first dive shop we came across,
Amed Dive Center, we checked out their dive packages, and for 62 euros each we got 3 dives, transport, all equipment and a stay in the neighbouring resort, which was amazing with all the
luxuries we really weren’t used to, even better yet, we were the only ones staying there so we had the entire resort to ourselves. Yay, I love low season!
We only had an hour to freshen up, before heading back to the dive shop for our first dive; this dive would be on Amed wall, a short boat ride away. We got fitted up for all our equipment and headed out to the dinghy on the beach. We were soon speeding along the shore heading towards our destination, when all of a sudden the boat violently lurched and the outboard motor was ripped off. We’d managed to snag a mooring line on the way, not great news at all and the driver of the boat was really apologetic, even though the rope holding the outboard to the boat almost tore his leg off. Faye and I sat patiently, while the driver and his son wrestled the motor back onto the boat to reattach it, and Wayan, the dive master snorkelled around the area looking for some pieces that had fallen off. Once it was back on and reattached though they discovered that they couldn’t get it started anymore, so
Wayan decided we’d just start our dive here and work our way over to the wall.
It felt so great to be back under water, and straight away we were confronted by shoals of colourful fish, which seemed even more vibrant then usual due to a backdrop of dark volcanic sand. We swam around a lot of mooring blocks which provided great artificial reefs for the surrounding marine life before descending down the sloping sea bed. Due to all the sand we saw hundreds of rays swimming around, and a white tipped reef shark which sadly didn’t stick around once it spotted us. It was a really nice dive, and as we spent the majority of time at shallow depths swimming to the wall, we had a really long bottom time, which is always good, even though it only felt like we were down there a few minutes as always.
Once we made our way back to the surface, we got picked up by a passing fishing boat, back from Lombok as our boat still hadn’t been fixed. The fishermen were really friendly treating all our gear like gold as we passed it to them, gently cradling it
and placing it down. When we were all aboard, we made our way back, picking up our stranded boat on the way before being dropped off at the beach by the hotel. Our next two dives would be in the morning, so Faye and I spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in the hotel pool and relaxing.
The next day we started early, driving twenty minutes to Tulamben, one of the most popular dive sites in Bali. Just offshore lays the wreck of the USAT Liberty a U.S. Navy cargo ship torpedoed by the Japanese in the Second World War. We decided to get there early before all the buses with divers from south Bali arrived, as Wayan told us, he’s seen upwards of 200 divers on it before. When we got there, there were only a couple of other people so it was definitely a good idea to come early. It was another shore entry to the wreck which lays only 30m or so out to sea. The wreck lays in a few pieces which was a bit different to the other wreck we’ve swam on, we were also able to swim through parts of it which
was quite exciting. The big highlight of this dive was a huge shoal of jack fish schooling around, near the wreck, which we were able to swim into, allowing the thousands of fish to circle around… truly amazing!
Our final dive was on Tulamben wall and after a lengthy surface interval (due to the last dive being quite deep) we were back in the water. The wall was really interesting as it was heavily encrusted with coral and covered in millions of colourful reef fish. We didn’t see any large marine life but we were content studying all the tiny reef organisms that Wayan kept pointing out, and trying to get the necessary photos.
Once back on land we packed away all our gear and drove back to Amed, it seemed we’d timed it just right too as loads of people were turning up. When we got back to the hotel we got cleaned up and checked out of the hotel, sad that it was all over, but only for the time being… we’re already planning our next dive destination. We got all our stuff back on the bike and left for the long drive back to Kuta,
it took about 3 hours, but our butts were convinced it was longer, I’m sure it’ll be a while before the feeling comes back.
Once back in Kuta, we spent a couple of days relaxing and shopping, buying a large wood carving which we really liked then trying to find the cheapest way of shipping it home. In the end we opted for Indonesia post, although the packaging they wrapped it in left a lot to be desired but I’m sure it’ll get home in one piece, if it gets there at all, I suppose we’ll see in a few weeks! Sadly we had to leave Bali, time is pressing and we’re not going to see much of Indonesia in the 30 days our visa will allow us as it is, so we left on an overnight bus bound for Java the next day. We’re already making plans to return to the island, maybe heading east next time checking out the other islands, there’s also still plenty of shopping we missed out on and at those prices we’d be fools not to take advantage!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.361s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 23; qc: 111; dbt: 0.1654s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
Dad
non-member comment
coppers everywhere!!
Glad you got some good dives in! Bloody coppers, good piccies. take care Love Dad!