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Published: February 9th 2008
We decided to do a combined blog for the whole of Bali as we didn't do much there and didn't take many pics (all of them are of Ubud!) as we wanted a nice place to relax for Christmas and New Year.
Lovina We waited in Probolinggo for 2 hours before the air con tourist bus turned up to take us to Bali during this time Neil kept himself amused by teaching a 16 year old boy some funny and rude English phrases and slang. In response the boy wrote everything down very carefully in his little notebook and promised to practice!
The bus was not a great one, again the air con stopped working and even though it was a full-size bus (as opposed to a mini bus) it was very cramped for us foreigners with our long legs. 3-4 hours in we stopped at a restaurant where everyone but us and 2 others who had booked with the same company got a free meal as part of their ticket...we ended up having to pay for our food (grumble!). We finally arrived into Ketapang the port from which the ferry to Bali leaves from at
6pm. The ferry took an hour and the entire time we sat reading and chatting there was a guy opposite us who was looking at us in a really hostile way...we hadn't done anything to offend him, he just looked at us in a really funny way!
Arriving into Gilimanuk on Bali was fun, we had been driving for about 2 minutes when the army stopped the bus and ordered everyone off...apart from the foreigners...and insisted on doing a thorough ID check on all passengers. As a side note - in Asia as a foreigner you rarely have to take part in these ID checks or bag searches. As an example in Bali's airport only foreigners get pulled over to get their bags searched; in Philippines only South East Asians get pulled over and only Filipinos get searched going into shopping centres; travelling between land borders in different countries again only South East Asians are ever ID checked. Anyway, we then had to change transport as we were the only people heading for Lovina on Bali's north coast. The conductor on the bus handed 'responsibility' for us over to a bemo driver (a little truck with seats in it)
who looked like the guy who plays Hellboy in the film. He was a nice guy, although we did feel a little guilty, and apologised a lot, as the bemo left as soon as we got there and we got the impression the other passengers had been waiting a while for us.
The bemo ride was fun, especially as it was open air and it was now 8pm, so it was lovely and cool. There were also 2 girls in their late teens sat in the front seats who were fascinated by us and kept turning around and waving, giggling and asking the odd question. At this point in the journey we were just relieved to arrive. We had been up since 3am and because of the treacle Indonesian coffee, we hadn't managed to sleep on the bus. We just wanted to find a room and sleep!
Lovina is a very small town, there are only 2 little roads to the place, so it was easy to find our way around. After 20 minutes of scoping places out Donna found us a nice room with air con, hot water, breakfast and a pool for 100,000 rupiah (£5). After
settling in we dashed out for food, only to find every single restaurant had closed...ok Lovina didn't strike us as a party place but for the restaurants to shut at 9:30pm? That just seemed silly...we later found out it was silly, no-one had told us that Bali was an hour ahead of Java. Didn't we feel stupid! This is only the second time in 16 months that a time difference has caught us out, so we haven't done too badly so far.
There isn't actually that much to do in Lovina, the activity of most tourists choice is dolphin watching just off shore. We did not do this (although EVERYBODY hassled us to) as we felt that nothing could top our swimming with dolphins experience in New Zealand. Tourist numbers were very low in Lovina, as in there were about 7 in the whole place, which is a shame as Lovina was a lovely peaceful place to relax. Correspondingly, the vendors, transport touts and hotels seemed to want to rip off the few tourists that there were in the place to make up for the fact that tourist numbers were low. This seems to be a common theme in
Asia, especially Bali...just be resigned to the fact if there aren't many tourists then the locals will try and rip you off! We understand that the locals need to make money to survive but so many people visiting Bali we have spoken to say that it just makes them not want to buy anything and makes them not want to return to Indonesia. We are sorry to hear this from other travellers because we really like Indonesia and think it's a shame more tourists don't go there.
Ubud Our time in Lovina was short, we didn't even get to the beach as it rained almost constantly. Deciding there was no point to being at a beach resort in the rain, we booked our onward bus to Ubud. We were so excited about seeing Ubud as we had heard so many great reports about how nice it was. We did not have a good experience in Ubud at all.
The minibus journey was fast but made us feel very sick. It was our own fault, we were travelling on really windy roads and ended up turning around the whole journey to talk to another couple on
the seats behind us. So spending 3 hours looking for a room in the pouring rain was not our idea of fun when we arrived. The reason we spend 3 hours looking for a room was that the hotel owners had decided in their infinite wisdom that they would dramatically increase the price of their rooms because it was a week before Christmas. First Donna looked for an hour and a half, then getting totally frustrated with disrespect and downright nastiness from hotel owners, Neil took over looking. Most places were wanting 150,000 rupiah (£8) for a fan room with a cold shower...Neil came up trumps and found a nice fan room with hot water for 70,000 rupiah including breakfast. The owners were so nice, giving us advice and they were genuinely happy we were staying there.
To be honest Ubud was a real disappointment and it wasn't just us saying this either. Other travellers recently have said the same thing. The people were very hostile and unfriendly, looking to rip people off where they could; if Donna walked around by herself she got very sexist comments aimed at her by the men there and the food was awful
and very expensive. Some restaurants were charging 50,000 rupiah (£2.60) for a simple starter of one spring roll...erm this is Indonesia...we were very shocked. We struggled to find a good restaurant, we finally found one which was ok, but still on the expensive side, we just had to suck it up and pay the prices.
Everywhere in Ubud seemed to close early. By early we mean 9pm...we walked around on our first night looking for a place to have a beer and every where was shut. It didn't help that the entire time we were in Ubud it rained and it rained, we got soaked more times than we can count! As you can see from the pics fashion concerns went out of the window with Donna wearing her waterproof coat! We were told that it was because Ubud was in the mountains why it was raining, but the rain was a Bali wide thing with everywhere being affected.
We were taken aback that Ubud was such a bad experience for us. We only hoped that things would get better with the rest of our time in Bali and the Gili islands.
Kuta Kuta
was, let us say, a unique experience for us...mainly because we managed to get ourselves into 4 fights in 5 days. More about that later!
We arrived into Kuta a lot later than we expected (in between Ubud and Kuta we visited Gili islands for Christmas, this is another blog!) after a not too bad a journey, although the ferry we were on was quite crowded. When we say crowded we mean you couldn't walk on the floor because there were so many people sprawled sleeping on it!
We hadn't been able to reserve our 'first choice' accommodation so we ended up having to stay at another hotel in a room which wasn't very nice...it smelt of mould, the water was lukewarm and there was no water coming from the tap! But the next day we were in luck when a gorgeous deluxe room became available at the hotel we wanted. Ok, we paid £10 for the room (only £3 more than the crappy first room we stayed in) but we had decided to treat ourselves for New Year...we had a pool and got a feast for breakfast delivered to our balcony every morning. It was pure luxury!
We had a really nice time in Kuta catching up with shopping, having great, cheap food (chicken curry for 36p!) and fruit shakes for 25p. Now to the fights...hmmm, where do we start? It basically comes down to a lack of respect from some vendors when tourists don't want to either buy their goods or look in their shop. One guy put a bucket in front of us when we were walking past his shop, Donna nudged it out of the way with her foot and the vendor then slammed the bucket in front of her trying to deliberately trip her up. We carried on walking down the road and the guy from the shop came running after us shouting that he was going to 'do us in'. Erm why, because we moved a bucket out of our way? Shouldn't it have been us that were angry because he had deliberately tried to trip us up? The next time was a whole lot more nasty.
Another fight was when we were walking down the main road Jl Legian, chatting. A guy was in the way so Donna politely brushed past him, ignoring his sales tactics. The guy turned
around and hit her in the leg...a full blown thump on her thigh like some pedantic child who didn't get it's own way. Obviously Donna being the strong headed person she is, wasn't about to take that and turned around and hit the bloke back. Fisty cuffs and scuffling ensued between Neil and this guy...with shop owners on our side as they had witnessed the guy hitting Donna. In the end the guy walked off mumbling that Donna had 'pushed past him and not bought his stuff', with shop owners apologising for the guy's actions. What annoyed us the most though was that other tourists witnessed what had happened and not one stopped to make sure we were all right or to stand up for our point of view. People just looked as if to say 'yep it's happened to us too'. Have people really become that apathetic to the world...we have witnessed tourists getting similar treatment and nasty abuse from vendors on Jl Legian without the tourists saying a word back to those vendors. No-one has the right to treat other people like that...we understand people have to make a living in the tourist resorts, but when tourists don't want to buy or look at your things you certainly don't hit them or try and trip them up!
Enough about the fights and more about New Year! Our New Year's Eve was a quiet night, it was lovely. We both got dressed up, had a great meal and had a few beers. Everything was going really well and then it rained at 11:30pm! The same thing happened last year...we had fun sitting under a canopy in a beer garden counting down to midnight, drinking our beers. Yes we got wet but it was funny!
A few days after New Year we left Bali to head back to Java, this time to Surabaya for our flight out of Indonesia. We had a wonderful month in Indonesia (fights and some not so nice people aside!) and we hope to go back and visit Sumatra in the very near future.
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Mark Bate
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Hello! I'm from Hartlepool too, and recently went to Bali. Not that impressed with it really. Sorry to hear about your scuffles....