Advertisement
Published: June 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Medewi is a small village situated on the west coast of Bali. It is not on the normal tourist trail as there are probably much better resorts elsewhere on the island. Medewi is well known among the surfing community, so we had to go and check it out. It was a long and interesting drive through beautiful countryside and busy towns, really giving us a feel for what Bali is really like when you take the tourists away. We arrived in Medewi in the early afternoon and the sun was shining.
The options for places to stay were quite limited. There was a resort hotel right on the beach and a small mid range guesthouse further up the road. We had been told by a guy we met at Linda’s that there was another homestay right on the beach with really cheap rooms. At first we couldn’t find it, until we realised that you could not access it from the road, but literally had to walk along the beach for a short distance. It was called ‘Gede’s Warang’. As with all homestays, they are family run, and your accommodation is part of the family home - as the name suggests.
It wasn’t the cleanest, but it was very cheap and cheerful. We were greeted by some local guys who hang around the place all day watching the surf and talking to the tourists, they make a little bit of cash by selling tours or t-shirts. We became friend with Mas - who was deaf, but managed to communicate very effectively with international sign language (you know like Jen playing charades at Christmas time). Believe it or not he was able to tell us that he was married and had twin sons that were now 12 years old, but when his wife had the babies the twins were a complete surprise (healthcare being basic in Bali), he just thought she was having a big baby - and that he thought the nurses were hot!
It must have been popular because they only had one room left, right at the back. I get the impression that the room doesn’t get used that often. Now we had a dilemma. The room was dark and spidery, and the bathroom was pretty bad. But the sheet on the bed was clean and it was so close to all the action on the beach. The
restaurant was friendly and cheap and lively. The place up the road was much cleaner, but lacked the atmosphere. So we braved the cheap option. Now, so that you can imagine how rough the room was, it still remains to this day, the worst place we have stayed. There were spiders, ants and cockroaches. Oh and a very large, fat lizard living in the bathroom door. I came face to face with him one evening causing me to scream out loud, frightening the poor thing into throwing itself against the tiles in an effort to escape. Stu thought I must have been making a fuss about nothing of course, until he followed with a similar reaction on entering the bathroom. This was no common gecko; it was a big mean alligator! The windows were really grubby (the ones that had glass anyway) with little natural light able to enter. The toilet was old and cracked, and the water source was a hose sticking out of the wall. The bathroom door was rotten with big holes, and most of the tiles were mouldy and cracked - But it was only costing us 40,000 Rp a night. (£2.25!). Stu really loved the
place! We ended up staying 2 nights……the room wasn’t great but the place itself was good. I can’t really explain it in words. Overall in Bali we have stayed in some of the most beautiful and most lavish accommodation, but also the most basic and rough.
We ate all our meals in the café with the family cooking. It was very cheap, it passed the ‘nasi goreng test’ with flying colours (judge a place by the quality and price of a plate of Indonesian fried rice - it really works). A good nasi goreng consists of a decent portion size, a little spicy, with varied veggies and some fried chicken or satay on the side, and the obligatory fried egg and prawn crackers. It’s an artery furring meal in itself, utterly satisfying. And coming in at just under 40p. Other meal choices included BBQ chicken, prawns even crab. It was really good, as long as you did not look too closely at the dubious stains on the plates and cutlery. The short walk from our room to the terrace meant closing your eyes as you passed the very small outdoor kitchen area too. The family toilet was also another
place to not linger, having a squat style loo, with the accompanying smell and bugs crawling on the toothbrushes!
As I mentioned the café/terrace area was the hub of the activity. It was on the beach over looking the point break. The only clientele this place would attract would be surfers. I was the only girl (except for the family) and a non surfer; well I was the only one that looked like a girl. There were 4 Aussie girls staying in the place up the road. They could have been pro-surfers; they were that good, they were certainly better than all the guys anyway. I think the downside of being a good surfer as a girl is that you end up looking like a bloke - or like one of those body builder types. All muscles, sun damaged skin and over dyed hair. They were beefy to say the least, but they kicked ass in the water. There were 2 lovely guys from Sweden, William and Christopher, both learning but really didn’t care what anyone else thought and gave it their best shot no matter what. Everyone else was a bit too cool for school…. Especially the old
English guys that had obviously been there for months and forgotten what the outside world was like, with the inability to talk about anything else but surfing.
So, I must mention the surf, for any that are interested, and if I don’t then Stu certainly will. Like I said it is a point break, over a beach with large grey and black pebbles. It was definitely not suitable for sunbathing, and a stroll along the beach comes with a free pedicure. The waves were big, at least 6-8 ft at times. Access into the water was tricky due to the rip current pushing you back in and to the side and collisions with the giant pebbles that pounded on the shore. This made Stu’s first attempt at entry a little shaky, but taking a different approach of paddling across from further down the beach soon solved that problem. As the waves got bigger more and more adrenaline junkies created an almost crowded peak. Then a tropical storm hit, the rain came down in sheets making visibility poor, and thunder and lightening crashed in the distance, but the waves just got bigger and cleaner. Most of the westerners did the
sensible thing and got out. This didn’t stop the locals though, and these guys were great surfers, some of them probably only 11 or 12 years old, it was great to watch!
The evenings were relaxed and chilled and although it was cool meeting all the people there and enjoying the vibe, after a few days I was bored of all the surf talk and Stu’s muscles had taken a battering from lots of extreme surfing. It was time to move on, besides we had still planned to go across to Lombok and our time in Indo was ticking away. So we were back in the Suzuki and back to Kuta.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.052s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0293s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb