Indonesia

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Bali

1st October - 23rd October

We only had 23 days to see this immense country, inconveniently divided up by huge expanses of water which seriously disturbs travel plans. Still, it makes for a good deal of beauty and diversity. Our first stop was Legian in Bali which was admittedly my second trip in as many years. We were kindly put up by Anna, Chiara’s mum and this time, due to the addition of boyfriend, I had the honour of sleeping in Chiara’s room. We were very grateful to finally arrive at midnight (Anna had planned to meet us at the airport at 9pm) and sip cold Campari soda with our host. It had been a long and strenuous journey not made any easier by the fact that I couldn’t find the house.

We spent the next few days walking around the Kuta-Legian area, buying cheap sunglasses and trying to sort out our onwards travel. This involved a hot and sticky two hour walk to the airport where we discovered that our dreams of going to Moluku, the spice islands, were overambitious and ended up booking a flight to Lombok instead (a short boat ride from Bali as it happens), and then tackling the two hour walk back with sore feet. Mine due to my old but still painful New Zealand injury and James’ from an even more amusing accident which involved stepping on the join of two concrete pavement slabs which gave way resulting on James’ foot going through and narrowly missing falling into the sewer below!

On our third day in Bali, after helping Anna to put up some pictures, we took a bus to Lovina. Lovina was just how I remembered it, a picturesque rocky beach scattered with traditional Balinese fishing boats which are like large canoes with long floats suspended at either side, entire families working on simply relaxing on them and pigs, dogs and chickens roaming free and contented. Our room was pleasant and cheap and I was thrilled to be back at my former favourite Bali location and to be able to show it to James, still unspoiled, after ranting about it on my previous return.

Time was short however, and thus we took a private mini bus, after missing the public one by a matter of minutes, to Tulamben which boasts a Japanese ship wreck just off the coast and perfect for cheapskate snorkelers like us. It was pleasant but not incredible and we were soon on our way to Amed, our new favourite location in Bali, via two overpriced bemos (local transport in the form of a mini bus). It was only after the bemo had left that we realised that we had left our prized possession - the water bottle from Ecuador - on the bus. Luckily we had the driver’s telephone number and asked a local restaurant to call him for us. It was easier than we thought. While we sat down to eat a delicious curry one of the boys from the restaurant drove out to meet the bemo driver and returned with our bottle. I was overjoyed and very impressed by the overall helpfulness of Balinese people. Happily we found a wonderful bungalow on the beach for $10 and spent the afternoon snorkelling amongst the coral just off the bay where we were staying. We saw a delightful mauri wrasse, some garden eels and beautiful coral fans and starfish. It was really magical and we felt so lucky to be there.

The next morning I rented some snorkel gear so that we could go out together and we saw lots of puffer fish and most excitingly, James pointed out three spectacular lion fish sitting beautifully camouflaged on some red coral. Then we rented a motor bike and drove to Aas where we swum out to another wrecked Japanese ship. Coral had grown all over it and it was teeming with macro life. It was wonderful if a bit creepy to swim among it and imagine how it must have once been. Apparently no one was hurt during the sinking of these ships however which made this more pleasant than it might otherwise have been.

The following day we took Angus’ bemo (the same bemo that took us to Amed and on which we had left our water bottle) half way to Ubud and then took his brother’s one the rest of the way. We sat down to an unappetising lunch before beginning our unsuccessful search for accommodation. It was not as easy as Amed and we eventually settled for a dingy room with a leaking toilet and no sheets. Still, it was a room and the cheapest we had found thus far. Depressed by the room, we set out to see Ubud and thence spent the next few hours bartering ourselves silly buying various presents and making a few guilt purchases as well. The stall owners are very good at playing the sympathy card and sadly I fall for it every time. I am nonetheless ecstatically happy with my guilt laden Aladdin pants. We bought tickets for the’ Kecak Fire and Trance Dance’ and then went to eat dinner while we waited for it to start. We also attempted to gatecrash some of the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival events and ended up merely standing at the gates with the rest of the poor punters. Regrettably those events were too expensive to even consider.

The’ Kecak Fire and Trance Dance,’ however, was a real treat. Set inside a beautiful Hindu temple it was a fascinating depiction of Rama’s journey into the forest where his wife Sita was abducted by the king who plays a deceitful trick on her. Aided by his monkey friend and brother Rama goes to the palace to fight for her. We were glad to have read the story previously as the whole story was told in Bahasa Indonesia with the exception of one of the badies who, at one point, randomly came out with some highly amusing offers of ‘transport’. The offer a tourist in Bali receives at least twice a minute when walking down the street. The music that accompanied the hour and a half dance was made entirely by a circle of men chanting ‘chec’. At the end, and apparently separate from this traditional Hindu story, was a man on a horse (not a real one) circling a fire made of coconut shells who is brought into a trance by the chanting. During this time boards were put up around the stage and the entranced man started kicking the still burning embers around with his bare feet. This went on for quite some time and it was quite difficult to watch. He didn’t look as though he was enjoying it though there were no winces of pain evident either.

The following day we took bemos back to Kuta, the last of which we think we managed to get for a fair price. We went to a warung (local restaurant) and apparently didn’t understand how to order. I got the only thing which seemed to be vegetarian which was a plate of white rice accompanied by a plate of the mandatory ants, chilli and some inedible green leaves and bean like things which I assumed were there to add flavour rather than eat. Suffice to say it was rather miserly and not what I really wanted. James did slightly better although I think could have added a great deal more to his plate for the same price. We just didn’t understand how it worked and nobody spoke any English. You live and learn. On our way back to Anna’s we got hideously lost and ended up buying more bulky stuff which we didn’t need in compensation for it.

We spent the next day in Legian wondering around and doing very little indeed. We had a sunset beer on the beach and watched a man do a bungy jump on a scooter which was an interesting sight. We spent the evening preparing for our early morning flight to Lombok.

Lombok

10th October - 20th October

The journey to Lombok was early and tiring but relatively smooth. From the airport we took several bemos to the port and then chartered a boat with some other tourists to Gili Air where I had hoped to do my diving course. Once all the freeloaders had boarded our expensive boat we set off for the short journey to our island. One of the girls on the boat told me that she was planning to do a diving course too and recommended Manta Dive to me. There we headed on arrival and soon enough I was enrolled on a course beginning the following morning. James found us a bungalow and we spent the day reading and relaxing.

The course went well. I had a great instructor and was with only two other girls and it all went very smoothly. Remarkably I was told that I was the calmest! As it was low season we decided to take it slowly and did the course in 4 days which entailed theory and practicing skills in the pool in the morning, and diving in the afternoons. On the last day we dived in the morning and James and I dived together, both as certified divers, in the afternoon. It was all fabulous and I am still terribly excited to be able to call myself a qualified open water diver! Although most of the dives we did were focused on learning how to dive, we did see a great many interesting things such as turtles, an eagle ray, octopuses, moray eels, puffer fish, scorpion fish and on my dive with James we saw an amazing fish which we have been unable to identify. We think it may have been a stone fish.

Back on the mainland after a sleepless night (James was unwell), we made our way to Mangsit near Sengiggi beach. The next day we hired a scooter and drove down to Lombok’s version of Kuta which is far more relaxed and beautiful than its Balinese equivalent. As we were celebrating the anniversary of having been travelling for an entire year (any excuse) the next day, we invested in a rather nicer room than normal and rested our travel weary bottoms.

The momentous day was unexpectedly rewarding. We set off on the bike in search of a beach having read that there were several nicer ones in the area a short drive away from the beach near which we were staying. The first beach we stopped at was stunning and we were very tempted to stay but as it was early we decided to push on for a bit with a vague notion of returning to this paradise a little later on. Throughout the morning we explored three other beaches, between each having to take very potholed roads inland to get over the headlands. The journey took us high into the hills providing spectacular views of the volcanic coastal vistas and their turquoise boarders. We travelled through rice paddies, tobacco fields, saw many monkeys and were frequently at risk of being knocked off our bike by overenthusiastic local children giving high fives and shouting their ‘hello misters’ at us.

We intended to reach a beach town called Blongas but didn’t quite make it. Just before Pengantap we stopped to ask for directions and to relieve some of the pressure from our backsides and hips and there met a school teacher who invited us into his house. We said that we would stop by on our way back if we had time. Following his directions we drove to Pengantap where we struggled to find a way to the beach. We were soon invited to leave our bikes with a local who guided us through his compound and out to the beach. We were surprised to find lots of dark coloured square patches about two metres by two metres just under the shore line. This, our new friend explained, was where they farmed seaweed. Not wanting to disturb it by swimming (I also felt uncomfortable bathing in a bikini so close to a Muslim village) we refrained from swimming and simply sat down to recover from our rather uncomfortable ride before trying to push on. We were not allowed to leave however until we took coffee with our new friend and his family so there we sat, on the mat outside his house, refreshing ourselves with a delicious, sweet and black Lombok coffee in front of an audience of about twelve children and various adults with no common language. We enjoyed the experience however and had to politely yet adamantly refuse food and beds for the night before we were allowed to leave promising that if we had time, which we doubted, that we would come back and stay with him and his family. On leaving, however, our host noticed that we had a puncture and drove us to a mechanic friend of his who removed our inner tube and fixed it by melting a square of rubber onto our worryingly large hole, replaced it into the tire, pumped it up and regretfully charged us 20,000 rupiah, about $2.

Eventually we left Pengantap and returned to our first friend, the school teacher, where we wiled away several hours sitting with him and his students attempting, rather poorly, to teach them some English. The experience was very poignant for us. The teacher has set up the school himself with little money and no government support. All the students are very poor and consequently cannot donate anything. They all live with him and his wife and two children while attending the school. His English was poor but yet he persisted in teaching the children all he knew for no apparent financial gain. It was very inspirational and we only wished we had something to give the school. We had no time however, nor did we have any materials which could have been any use. We left deeply affected. After our farewells we got back on the bike and took the painstaking road back to Kuta stopping at a lovely restaurant for an early dinner.
The next day we checked out of our lovely accommodation and drove to Praya, the nearest town with an ATM (about an hour away). On our way back to Kuta we stopped at a village renowned for making ikat (weaved cloth). I had a go but it was so intensely complex that I have not the first idea of what I was doing. Women in this town are not considered fit for marriage until they can make a beautiful and complex ikat. These usually take about three months to make. Back in Kuta we went to Mawi beach, the beach we had thought to return to the day before, and had a pleasant late afternoon swim before checking into a rather dismal insect infested room and getting a new puncture repaired. This time we got a new inner tube. We cheered ourselves with some fantastic stone oven pizzas.

We returned to Sengiggi the following day via a little village which sold batik. We bought a rather nice blue silk painting which James took a liking to. Once in Sengiggi, we checked into the same place as we stayed before and found a delightful warung, ‘Coco Beach’ which had fine food, was very elegant and luxurious and was also very cheap. We ate both lunch and dinner there.

Our last day in Lombok was spent in search of some more culture. After breakfast we drove to Pura Lingsar, a temple which was built in 1714 and is considered the holiest in Lombok. Part of it was built before this, nobody knows by whom, and this part is frequented by people of all religions as a place of worship. Our guide showed us the five separate fountains which pump holy water from Mount Rinjani representing the five religions of Lombok, Islam, Hinduism, Wektu Telu (Animism), Christianity and Buddhism. Behind these fountains is the Muslim section which typically faces towards Mecca, and in a separate part is the Hindu temple. Disturbingly, it was here that our guide decided to start negotiating tour fees leaving us feeling rather sour and awkward.

Later, after coffee and fried bananas at our guide’s house, we were taken to a Sasak village and saw a man waving a beautiful bag. We were also shown a mosque and various old Muslim houses with three steps leading up to them. These steps, our guide explained, signify the amount of times Sasak Muslims pray each day. Our guide was clear in making the point that they were not yet ‘real’ Muslims. After buying a couple of masks made in the village we bid adieu to our questionable guide and returned to Sengiggi to pick up our bags, return the bags and eat. A bemo then took us to the airport from where we returned to Bali for a night and a morning.

Jakarta

21st-23rd October

We literally went to Bali to sleep, pick up our big bags and say farewell to Anna before going back to the airport. At the airport we discovered that our flight to Jakarta had been cancelled. We were thus put on another flight to Surabaya (which was two hours later than our expected flight and then delayed by two hours). There, we had to wait for another flight to Jakarta which was also two hours delayed.
When we eventually arrived in our hotel in Jakarta we received a phone call from Ade, our friend for Cambridge who lives in Jakarta. Ade had apparently called twice before and was quite concerned for us since she was expecting us hours before. We met her and her friends in a nearby bar where we spent a pleasant but late and tiring evening.

We arranged to meet Ade the following morning and thus had to sort out our visa photographs for Vietnam early. For $7 we were taken into a professional photographic studio, positioned, tidied up, photographed, edited and were then given four death-like images of ourselves each and a CD just in case we wanted to reproduce them! Perhaps we should have explained that unlike Indonesian’s we like our skin to look darker, not paler. However, they are passport photos and that is what we desperately needed so we left contented and just tried not to look at them.

At 10.30 we met Ade and she took us to the phallus shaped national monument, apparently a national joke, and were educated on something of Indonesia’s history. We lunched in a cafeteria in Ade’s university and then left her to go to her class while we returned to our hotel for a much needed siesta. Later we met Ade and her friend and went out for a fantastic meal and a few drinks before, exhausted, we collapsed in our hotel.

The following morning was spent enjoying a lack of engagements and thus watching ‘Notting Hill’ in bed. It finished just in time for check out. Backpacks on, we walked out into the smoggy Jakarta heat to the bus stop where we took our bus to the airport and said our goodbyes to Indonesia.

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Photos

Amed, Shell Garden
Our wonderful bungalow room

Kecak Fire and Trance Dance
The orchestra

Kecak Fire and Trance Dance
Sita and the evil king

Kecak Fire and Trance Dance
The burning coconut shells

Gili Air
Practicing skills in the sea

Gili Air
Revising hard

Gili Air
boats and sea stuff

Gili Air
Fisherman

Sengiggi
Sunset over Bali

Kuta, Lombok
On the road to the beaches

Kuta, Lombok
Monkeys

Kuta, Lombok
View from the road

Pengantap
Seaweed beach