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So we arrive in Bali later than expected and are glad that we asked our accommodation to pick us up, as its around 1am that we get to our spot. We decided not to stay in Kuta itself but a little out of the hussle of Bali's infamous strip, and we found a spot to stay in Sanur. Our room is great with an outdoor shower, but what impressed us the most was the breakfast the next morning (which was included). Massive bowl of fresh fruit (great passion fruit), and fantastic toasted ciabbatta bread with all the trimmings. Well out of all of the breakfasts that we've had, this has to date been the best one yet.
We realise that we are in Bali in the quiet season, which isn't particularly a bad thing, but the beach was deserted. There are a couple of OAP's on the beach, enjoying the afternoon sun. There are a couple of fishing boats on the horizon and with the sun setting behind them, which gets us some great sunset photos. One of the downsides of the quiet season - you are the target of all the hawkers trying to sell you stuff, and boy
are they pushy.
We get led (I mean dragged by the arm) up and through some alleys to the hawker's shops. After a number of minutes of ohh awwhhh'ing we agree to a couple of vests for Brendon (as it is hellish hot and humid) and a dress and hat for Han.
Our plans for Indonesia are all a little last minute and we haven't really any idea where to go and what to see. After some researching and asking around, we decide to go to Lombok, one of the islands east of Bali.
Now one of the frustrating things that we found overall in Indonesia is the lack of local help for local transport. So if you want to go from say Sanur to the port to get the ferry, there should be a local bus. Do you think anyone knows, of course they do, but they're not going to tell you because either their brother, uncle or dad is a taxi driver. So after we have worked out the transfer to the ferry port, the ferry and then the transfer to another area in Lombok, its cheaper to fly! Can you believe that!? At the
moment our carbon footprint is probably quite high. Sorry!
After what must be the worlds shortest commercial flight from Bali to Lombok (25 mins and we even got offered refreshments), Brendon negotiates with one of the people at the airport for a car for our stay in Lombok. We get a great deal, but its a very small Suzuki Jimmy which is probably about 20 years old. The seatbelt it tied on with a piece of string, but its perfect, as we look like locals , well Brendon does anyway. Hehe. We shunt down the roads (luckily they drove on the same side as England) and head down to Kuta in Lombok, which is down towards the south of the island, which is apparently Surfers Paradise.
The countryside is very nice and we both love it straight away after the commercialness of Bali. There are green lush rice fields everywhere, fresh fruit being sold all along the road and it just looks a little more rural, which is just what we are looking for.
After getting a little (okay a lot) lost we get to Kuta in darkness and manage to get a decent enough room. We
ask where we can do dinner and walk down the road to the only restaurant, but have a great meal of local fish. The following day we drive around (which is a great bonus having our own mode of transport) to find some good beaches. Well some of the beaches close to the room aren't that great but we manage to sneak into the only 5 star hotel in the area hoping to go unnoticed, Well we failed!! But luckily for us the staff allow us to stay on the beautiful beach and use their facilities, if we paid a couple of quid, which we do.
Now that we are paying guests, we take full advantage of the infinity pool, the spa pools and the free fruit. Thats when the guy bringing around fresh fruit to our sun lounger told us about the huge annual Worm Festival. Every year most of the residents of Lombok come to Kuta for this festival which is the next day. We had no idea before we arrived in Kuta that this was going to be happening. The festival celebrates a princess who sacrificed herself to the sea, because she couldn't choose which of
the two men she loved to marry, a d rather than choose one, she chose neither. But every year she comes back to them in the form of worms that are caught in the surf at dawn.
The festival starts with local kids parading through the streets, beating drums bashing their symbols, and singing as loud as they possibly could. People are pouring out of the buildings, and a huge crowd gathers and follows the parade down all the cordoned off roads. Everyone looks like they are loving life. Really is great to see.
This all leads up to the main festival that happens just outside the main town tonight. SO that evening we head over to the festival grounds and we spotted only 2 other foreigners there. We get lots of looks from the locals, for example 'Hey Foreigners' but nothing other than curiosity.
The festivities include local dancing, and hundreds of food stalls. The crowd must have been 5000 plus. The beach was pitch black and covered in bodies camping out over night waiting for dawn to come before the worms spawn in the water. The worms are a delicacy and are collected from the
water by the bucket load. We weren't lucky enough to get a taste.
The following morning we decide to move north and head to Sengigi about 1 hour north of the airport. Its a lovely little town on the west coast and after driving around we find a great little bungalow right on the beach run by very friendly staff and great food. We could (and did) laid in bed and watched the sun set or the morning start from the comfort of our bed looking out over the beach and sea. If you ever go to Sengigi - definitely try and stop over here for a couple of nights. We treated ourselves to a lovely dinner in a super posh (well by our standards at least) restaurant that night. Our bungalow had an outside shower again which is really cool as you can shower and check out the sea (if you stood on your toes).
Watching the sun set one night at one of the surf points, we get chatting to some local kids, whose "teacher" is trying to get them to learn English. Well they were very sweet, and they kept on asking what is your
name and where do you come from. Hannah (being the only blonde within a 20 km radius) was asked more than once. The only concern was, that they were aged between 8 and 12 and most of them smoked cigarettes!! Which is just plain mad! They invite us to watch some stick fighting the next night, but we had some other plans.
A couple of days later we hand our Jimny back (well Brendon left the keys with some dude so we still don't know if it was the right person or not) and get a transfer to the Gili Islands by long boat. Its a great boat ride of about 1 hour admiring the views or lush vegetation and forests ending right on the sea.
Our next stop is the Gili Islands. This is a collection of 3 islands Gili Trawanagan (or just T for short), Gili Air, and Gili Meno. When we drop off the 1st batch of passengers we are just in awe of the crystal clear water and can't wait to get to our island to see if its the same.
We are not disappointed as we get to Gili T, the biggest
islands out of the 3. There is about a 300 metre stretch of beach on the east coast, with loads of choices of accommodation. We decide to go middle of the pricing for accommodation and for that we get a nice but slightly small room, with kick ass aircon (cause it hellish hot out here) and some TV - something we haven't really had in a long time AND a swimming pool. We only planned to stay for about 2 days but ended up staying about 5 as it was just great. We spent the day lazing on the beach, going snorkelling off the beach as there is an amazing reef just off the beach and LOADS of turtles. Both of us just love the chilled out vibe and lovely people on the island, locals and visitors.
We enjoy great food, an outdoor cinema (playing pirated DVD's), amazing sunsets at the south of the island and just chilling. We decide to head over to one of the other islands and after hearing that Gili Meno has millions of mosquitoes we decide to head to Gili Air instead.
What a change. This island is even more chilled out and
relaxed than Gili T. We manage to find a great bungalow run by an Italian couple that moved out here about 1 and half years ago. We see that they made their own pasta and we were like .... PASTA TONIGHT!! Well they didn't disappoint. One of the things that you don't really get in Asia is good Italian, and sometimes you just crave it!!
Gili Air is the smallest of the islands and also the closest to the mainland, but we still met some nice and interesting Germans at one of the bars in the north of the island. Here the owner claims that the Rolling Stones were at the island a long time ago, and smoked some wacky weed with them and chilled playing some guitar. That night we enjoyed an even better sunset again (it never seems to be possible to tire of sunsets) but realise that as the sun went down we don't have a torch and there are no lights for our 20 min walk back to our bungalow. Well it was interesting :-)
Brendon went on the 2nd run of our travels around the island. He managed to do it in about
45 mins. Which means either he is very fit, or the island is very small. Likely the latter! The Gili Islands are an absolute must for any travellers coming to Indonesia.
After meeting almost all of the 45 people that lived on the island, we decide to head on to Nusa Lembongan. We get suckered into catching one of the fast ferries to the island that is just off Bali and get there in a very comfortable 2 hours. After shopping around for some accommodation we settle for a nice little room with use of the infinity pool next door and enjoy a really nice sunset.
The island is very nice and we bargain to get a motorbike for a couple of days so that we can see the sites, and get to see Devils Tears, bottle beach and paradise beach which all live up to their names. Except that on bottle beach Brendon saw something floating in the surf and pulled it out - hoping that it might be some kind of treasure, but turned out to be a goat in a bag with some weights around it. Weird - must have been some kind of offering,
but once Brendon pulled it on to the beach it stank the whole place out, luckily we were the only ones on it.
We stay on the island for a couple of days, but make arrangements to get to Ubud in the middle of Bali island as the Hindu new year is in a few days and everything would shut down. So our host organises a boat over to Bali and when it arrives we were like what. Well it was basically a fishing boat... no in fact it was a 3 metre long fishing boat. To start there were the 2 of us and 2 other people on the boat and we were like, okay this is going to be cosy, as we sit facing each other with out legs and knees interlocked. As the captain steers us out, he pulls in to another spot and picks up another 4 people. Now we are really crammed. So the waterline is getting closer to the edge of the boat, and he pulls into pick up some more people. Well after repeating this a couple of times we end up with 12 people, heading out into the open seas. One
girl was visabily stressed out, but we enjoyed the sun and the open sea, and as a reward for our "troubles" a pod of dolphins greeted us halfway through the crossing.
Once we get to Ubud we walk around for a while to find some accommodation, only to find out that there is a massive festival on and accommodation is pretty scarce. We find a place called Nick's by accident, which funny enough was recommended by a couple that we met on one of the Gili Islands. Well it was perfect, it was off the main road, set in its own tropical gardens and river with a pool. Why all the luxury? Well during the New Year - everything closes and you aren't even allowed to cook, or leave your own property, including foreigners.
The New Years festival is our 3rd New years of the year, which is pretty cool, and what the Bali folk do, is create paper mache sculptures called Ogo Ogo's. Now these things aren't small - they are MASSIVE 8 to 15 feet tall, and they are carried on the shoulders of the people that have made them (hih is the local school kids).
So the reason they make these is to create a Ogo Ogo that is big enough and scary enough to ward off evil spirits for the new year to come, and at the end of the parade they are taken to the local cemeteries to be burned.
It was a crazy night with over 50 different Ogo Ogo's being paraded through and down the centre of town, and a made fireworks display with no health and safety - it was great!!! That night back at the room, Brendon managed to do the unthinkable - to kill a spider twice. After Hannah asked if it was dead, Brendon replied "of course I killed it", only for the same spider to appear again. This must has been the spider that bit Spiderman! The spider (it was the size of a 5 year olds hand)had made itself into our room, because the lights in the town and whole resort are switched off, and so the tiny little light in our room attracted all the bugs that night.
The new years was spent chilling around the pool, as everyone was not allowed to work or do anything physical (they made some food
for us the previous day).
We head down to Kuta beach for 1 night as our flight is the following day. Well Kuta could have been anywhere in the world. Loads of tourists (mainly Ozzies - sorry Ozzies), wearing Bintang vests and walking with beers in their hands, but we enjoyed the sites.
Well it was a very quick visit to Indonesia, and while we only visited 2 of their many islands we loved them and would come back here one day if we get the chance. The people are amazing, the food and sites are great plus the accommodation is very cheap.
We fly out of Kuta to Jakarta to catch our connecting flight to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia Borneo. More of that later!!
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Elsie
non-member comment
AWESOME
What an amazing adventure. Thanks for sharing. Miss you lots and can't wait to see you soon. Tons of love