Bali - Lovina and Amed

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David here...

We left Munduk on time when our taxi turned up at 11:00. We were both wanting to stay longer, but felt that we had done everything in the area and we like to leave somewhere wanting more. We appeared to have the safest driver in all of Asia driving us; not going too fast, overtaking at the right time, not on blind bends or hills. The journey to Lovina took just over an hour and took us right to the door of Villa Jaya.

This was a little more expensive than previous hotels and included a pool as the standard in the area for our normal price range was not great. We had been led to believe that tourists in Lovina are literally hounded by touts and hotels to book on the tours and trips out to see the dolphins however our hotel never mentioned tours to us and we've felt that actually the touts are pretty sedate here, maybe due to it being out of season.

After settling into our room we headed out into Lovina to look for the town centre and a big supermarket. Turns out, there is no big supermarket and the 'town centre' is actually right next to our hotel. It was good exercise at least. In the evening we ate at Warung Jejeg 2 near our hotel, which turned out to be the best meal we've had so far in Bali. Lovely rich, deep sauces and fresh ingredients. We bought a couple of beers after the meal and sat on our balcony watching the bats land in the palm trees in front of us to eat the seeds, got some good pictures of them as they were not in the least bit bothered by the camera flash.


After a decent nights sleep we had a tasty breakfast of banana pancake and fruit before doing some research on our next few destinations, Amed and the Gili islands. We sorted out the onward shuttle bus through the hotel with no bother, before taking a very slow walk to The Global Village Kafe for a light lunch of daal and falafel, though my salad did have a small caterpillar in the lettuce, easily missed and it didn't put me off. The mango and chocolate milkshakes I had were also delicious. I'm on a mission to try all flavours of milkshake and have so far conquered vanilla, chocolate, mango and banana. Only got more adventurous ones to go now. We walked back to the main beach area and had a nice beer in the local sports bar before heading back to the hotel and jumping in the lovely pool for a couple of hours to cool off. Obviously had to have a beer there as well, would be rude not to. We had the pool to ourselves right until we left to head up to the room to get ready for the evening.


We decided to eat at Warung Ayu, which turned out again to be the best meal so far! We had an Indonesian platter, which included vegetable soup, Babi Kecap, fillet of fish, mixed meat satays and uraban, a vegetable dish with coconut. All of it was lovely, but the highlight was the wonderful Babi Kecap, a pork and soy dish that is just so deep and rich, we almost bought another bowl of that before leaving, but managed to resist. Before going back to the hotel we decided to check out the beach area which hosts volleyball matches every night. There are guards in uniform guarding the way in, which can be a little intimidating but we got through and bought a beer at a bar and watched the volleyball for a bit, which was actually very dull. Before bed we had one more beer at our hotel on the porch before a decent nights sleep, mainly thanks to the air conditioning.

We woke up early and had banana pancakes for breakfast again before our shuttle bus to Amed arrived. A hot and sticky 2 and a half hour journey later, we arrived in the coastal town of Jemeluk, which is one of several villages known as Amed. We were immediately asked if we wanted a taxi however a quick look at the map showed our bungalow was potentially a short walk away. It was still a hot day but the walk proved easy in the end, even with our packs on, and we made it to Pondok Aldi after 3 hours of travel, a bit sweaty but in good spirits. Our room was clean, spacious and very comfortable. We dumped our stuff and headed out to find an ATM and to get our bearings. We stopped off by the beach for a light lunch (including a coffee milkshake) and just strolled along. It was too hot to really do anything else. After a rather lazy afternoon, we went to Warung Sea View for food. Just as we sat down and ordered a 'band' started playing, far too loud for a small restaurant. That was a little off putting but fortunately the food was excellent. Feeling full we bought some essentials from the little Noni supermarket in town, namely beer and mosquitoe coils and spent a couple of hours on the porch before a fairly decent nights sleep despite the heat.


We got up around 09:00 oclock and had a breakfast of banana pancakes on the porch before spending some time planning the day and looking at our next destination, Gili Air. We had booked onward travel through the guesthouse as that proved to be much cheaper than doing it ourselves. We decided to head to Warung Jemeluk for lunch as they let you use their sunbeds if you eat there and they rent snorkeling gear. Lunch consisted of (slightly disapointing) grilled chicken and grilled barracuda before we finally made it into the sea. The snorkeling here is really good as the coral reef is just off the beach so you immediately get to see tons of fish swimming round you as soon as you are in the water. I saw a fish with no eyes, it was called a fsh! We spent at least 3 hours at the beach before heading back to our homestay to freshen up and relax before wandering out for the evening.

We headed out to Warung Celagi a little earlier than normal so we could enjoy the sea view before it got too dark and had a couple of beers before ordering food. We chatted with one of the family members for while discussing the weather, Bali and various other topics until our food arrived. Now, I'm aware I've said this for the last few meals but this really was the best meal we'd had in Bali so far. We had the recommended chicken curry, mie goreng and barbequed barracuda with a spicy sauce. It was all delicious, a cut above what we'd eaten before. While we were in the Warung, the clouds had darkened as a storm approached, bringing with it lots of lightening, though no rain. The evening was completed with us drinking a few beers on our patio with heavy metal playing, using the same little speaker that we received from my work as a going away present on the last RTW trip we did 6 years ago.

The next morning we had breakfast of...you guessed it...banana pancakes and fruit before packing up and being transported to our next destination, Gili Air.

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Comments

[Malcolm]

Best wishes
Hi David and Suzanne, enjoying reading your blog, sounds great!, have fun on your adventures!, Malcolm.

[SuzanneandDavid]

Cheers Malcolm, hope things are good with you, Gayle and Edward? We're currently island hoping off the coast of Lombok, literally just arrived on Gili Meno 30 mins ago. 10:00 in the morning and it is around 30 deg. Glad we have an air-con room!