Nusa Lembongan and *groan* Kuta Beach


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Asia » Indonesia » Bali » Nusa Lembongan
February 25th 2009
Published: March 9th 2009
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When we got off the bus from Probolinggo in Java, we were swamped by taxi drivers...one of them got my attention by saying “excuse me miss, taxi with meter”. “Meter” is not a word which is commonly used by taxi drivers in Asia until you twist their arm. Normally we make an effort to avoid using the taxi drivers who harass you, but this guy was polite which was a nice change so we all climbed into his taxi and, amazingly, he turned the meter on. He got us to our street in Sanur easily enough, however couldn’t seem to find the hotel. He kept saying to call the hotel...which we were reluctant to do because we figured he would charge us an exorbitant amount for the phone call. However, we eventually gave in and he called the hotel (on his phone) and said something about being a taxi driver and asked for directions. When he got off the phone, he stopped the car and said that he was stopping the meter (WOW) and got out and walked along the street looking for the hotel. He found it pretty quickly, came back and drove us about 100m up the street to our hotel. We all thought this was absolutely amazing - taxi drivers never stop the meter!

The following morning we walked down the street and caught the Perama Boat from the ‘jetty’ to Nusa Lembongan. Jetty is a loose term, although not as bad as Pak Beng in Laos, we still had to scramble over sharp rocks to the boat. Once on the boat, it took us about an hour to reach the island. During this hour long trip Andrew managed to get sunburnt even though we were sitting under a roof...hmm the curse of red hair.

When we decided to go to Indonesia, I was keen to spend some time at the beach so I could relax, however we struggled to find any beaches with good reviews in Java and really didn’t want to be surrounded by bogan Aussies and other drunk tourists on the more well known beaches of ‘mainland’ Bali. Luckily I randomly found Nusa Lembongan somewhere on the internet, which is a small island near the mainland and it looked absolutely perfect. Normally we try to get some kind of an idea as to where we will stay and while researching options for the island I stumbled across a private villa which was so much nicer than anything we normally stay in. As a bit of a joke, I actually looked at the website. The villa, Villa Rumah Kami, looked gorgeous, and when I looked at the prices it was very reasonable. For 150AUD during the low season, and 190AUD during the high season you could rent the villa which sleeps up to 6 people (you can pay a little bit more for 8 people I think).

We were greeted on the island by Komang. We all climbed into the back of the mini-truck thing and drove 10mins to our villa which was just as impressive as it looked on the internet. It has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, dining/family room, private pool (complete with a wide selection of pool toys), garden and a full time, very helpful, staff member (Komang). There is a gorgeous, beach front restaurant about 50m walk down the hill which serves your free breakfast in the morning and absolutely delicious meals. We ended eating all but one of our meals there and the variety, and quality was incredible.
The remainder of the first day, and the whole of the second day were spent eating at the restaurant, swimming in the pool, reading books and doing a whole lot of nothing. Komang was so wonderful and so lovely. He seemed to know exactly when you wanted to chat to him and when you would all just prefer to zone out and relax/read a book or play in the pool.

On our final day Komang borrowed a bike from his friend and hired two more and took us on a motorbike tour of the islands. We rode to one end, and went on a boat ride through the mangrove swamp and saw the seaweed farms. After the boat ride we hopped back onto the bikes and rode across the cable stay bridge connecting Nusa Lembongan to Nusa Ceningan and rode to a cliff where we watched swifts’s flying in and out of their cave as the waves crashed against the cliff. We then rode to the highest point on the island which had a great view over the canal between the two islands. After that we rode back across the bridge to Nusa Lembongan and headed to Dream Beach.

The restaurant at Dream Beach (which is really expensive) had rescued about 50-75 sea turtles when they hatched from their eggs and had been keeping them in a pond until they are big enough to be released back into the wild with a decent chance of survival. We spent a fair bit of time watching them swimming around (and crashing, head first, into the side of the pond) and playing with them. They were so cute! After a while we headed down to the beach, which was actually quite rough. I had to cling onto Scott so I wouldn’t be swept away by the waves. The water was gorgeous and blue and pretty warm.
We eventually got back onto the bikes and rode off to Mushroom Bay, which was covered in tourists. Mushroom Bay is actually just around a small rocky outcrop from the beach in front of our villa. We had no idea as we were that close to so many people as we had seen about 2 other tourists the whole time we were there. We had lunch at one of the restaurants on mushroom beach which was more expensive and nowhere near as nice as our restaurant. After lunch (about 2pm) we headed back to our villa and hopped into the pool again.

That night we ate like pigs, we ordered about 4 entree’s, a main each and 4 deserts because it was our last real meal on the island (breakfast doesn’t count). We were all so full and eventually made our way back up to the villa..where we had no water. Apparently the water in the villa is supplied by pumping sea water up into tanks which Komang had been filling up when we were out of the villa (presumably eating..). We called Wayan (the manager of the villa) who came around, turned on the pump and we had water again after about 15minutes.

The following morning we had to get up early (7.30) to catch the boat back to Sanur. We were all sad to leave the island and could have quite easily spent quite a while longer there. Hopefully we will be able to go back some day.

From sanur we caught at taxi to hell, aka Kuta. Kuta was exactly as I had expected - full of western tourists wearing not much and basically being loud and horrible. Luckily we only had the remainder of that day to enjoy the ‘culture’.

We did go to the Bali Bombing memorial, which was actually quite nice. The memorial looks really good and has the names everyone who was killed when the two bombs went off. It was very tasteful and good to see. The area around the memorial was very busy, and it was easy to see how see how so many people were killed/injured by the explosions.

Apart from the memorial, we went shopping for cheap tourist junk. None of us really bought much and I think we all got quite sick of people yelling “OK, 50000 rupiah’s!” when we no idea what they were actually offering us. Lots of people ask you where you are from when you are travelling, and normally people are quite impressed when we say Australia...however, in Kuta, basically everyone is Aussie so we thought we should come up with something more original. We decided that Mexican suited us well...and when the next person asked us where we were from we replied that we were Mexican. Normally when we say Australia, you get various combination of ‘of kangaroo koala’ or ‘Sydney? Melbourne?’ but this guy had absolutely no idea what to say in reply to Mexico so just said “oh” and looked away...quite amusing.

The following morning we got up at 3am (grr) and headed off for Denpasar airport to catch our 6am flight back to KL. None of us had thought through the whole, if you’re catching a 6am international flight you have to be at the airport at least 2hrs beforehand thing before deciding to book this flight, however in future I think we will all be much more aware of it.


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