It's been super busy with exams and lots of things going on in Bangkok, so I kind of lost track of the blog for a while, but just wanted to write about Bali and my overall experience here before going home. So, back to Bali: I flew AirAsia with my friend Antoine from California- a quick and easy 5 hour flight from bangkok to bali. The tickets are usually expensive, but every once in a while airasia will post these ridiculously cheap deals on their website, and we caught it at the right time and got a great price.
When we arrived, we had no set plans, but knew we wanted to atleast surf and scuba dive before heading home. We ended up heading from the airport to a town called Kuta, which is the main tourist spot on the island and the most developed. Bali is one of the thousands of islands in Indonesia, and is not too big. It takes only 3 or so hours to get around the entire place, but the vibe from place to place across the island is completely different. Mostly down in the southern part of the island is where the best surfing is located and where alot of the development and hotels are located. As you head further up into the center, rice terraces and valcanoes dot the land, a truly incredible site. Life is alot quiter and relaxing on the east,west, and inside of the island.
On our first day in Kuta, we arrived late in the afternoon and after finding a guest house, we headed straight to the beach for some surfing. The prices in Bali were a bit more expensive than some other places in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia that i've been too, but $10 a night for a room with a pool and a 2 minute walk to the beach is still pretty amazing. The roads here are very small, with lots of street stalls and restauraunts. The beach was crowded, but still nice. But what caught our attention was the waves. We rented boards and headed out to perfect, glassy, head-high beach breaks and surfed until sunset. One of the things I really enjoyed about the beach was how many people came out to watch the sunset everynight. I honestly saw some of the best sunsets i've ever seen in my whole life night after night after night. Lots of locals come out with their families and just play on the beach as the sun sets over the blue ocean. There's always a group or two sitting in the sand, playing guitar and singing, and just enoying the warm lifestyle of the island.
The nightlife in Kuta can best be described as Cancun of the east. I was really surprised and had no idea that the place was going to be so crazy. It was almost entirely australians that we met out at the bars and clubs- I guess they had finished their year at university and many come to bali to celebrate afterwards. We had a blast and enjoyed the night, but knew that we wanted to find out alot about Bali than Kuta beach.
The following day we got up early and rented motorbikes for the day. There's tons of surf shops around and you can just rent a board for the day, strap it onto the side of your motorbike, and head to one of the many beaches spread out across the southern coast. We ended up hanging out at one of the shops with the owner for an hour or so, and he gave us tips and advice on where we should go for the next few days. I couldn't get over how friendly all of the Balinese people had been- just so down to earth, outgoing, and laid back. Life would be real nice here. So we strapped on the boards and headed further south by motobike for about 40 minutes to a famous beach called Dreamland. This in my opinion was much better than Kuta. Not very crowded, and the waves were breaking further off shore with less surfers. We spent pretty much all day surfing, we just couldn't get enough of it. I really can't stress enough how perfect these waves and the rides were. This beach had a pretty slow break that would take you about 100 yards down the coast of the beach until finally dying out.
We left Dreamland with enough time before sunset to head to Uluwatu, the southern most tip of Bali. Uluwatu is famous for its surfing and has some of the biggest waves on the island, sometimes reaching over 40 feet! This is a reef break with really shallow waters, so you've got to know what you're doing or it's game over. No, I didn't surf. But.. the beach is surrounded by massive cliffs and you can sit up at a restauraunt overlooking the beach and waves and watch for a long time. We wanted to stay there for the sunset, but had heard that the temple just on the other side of the bay was the place to go. So, we quickly hopped back on the bikes and drove 10 minutes to this temple to make it just in time. The temple was set up high on the cliffs, and had been overtaken by monkeys. Antoine actually lost his hat because a little baby monkey came up when he wasn't looking and snatched it from his head. I guess they're famous for stealing cameras and other shiny things, but luckily nothing else got stolen. We watched the sunset, then headed back on the motorbikes to our final night in Kuta. We ended up meeting a few australians, french, and english people staying at our guest house and all went out together for the night.
The next day, our friend Ryan from Thammasat in Bangkok flew out and met us for the remainder of the trip. This day, we took the bikes and headed to another beach called Padma a litte further west of Kuta. It was the same type of day, just surfing and hanging out on an incredible beach. I don't think it ever could have gotten old. We stayed in Padma for the night which was much quiter than the wild Kuta.
Next day, we woke up really early and headed to the northeast part of the island called Amed for our scuba diving trip. We were all PADI certified, so we were able to book a trip with us 3 and then two other divemasters and go out as only one group. It took about two hours to reach Amed, and then we suited up and got ready for our first of two dives. The boats were very classical old Indonesian boats that fit only about 6 people. They were wooden tri-marans with longshaft motors, and left right from the beach. Our first of two dives was along a rock wall off the eastern part of the beach. I was amazed when I dipped my mask underwater and caught a glipse of the pacific for the first time. 100 foot visibility! The rainbow and neon bright colored corals, massive schools of fish, and crazy marine life that I had never known existed surrounded me as I plunged 18 meters down to the bottom of the wall. The only way I can explain the diving is that I felt like I was watching a HD Planet Earth show but was actually floating around myself inside the TV. It really looked fake with the brightness of colors and amounts of fish swimming around. The second dive was just as spectacular and was a bit further out in the ocean where a current drifted around a massive rock base at the bottom. Basically, once we got down to about 15 meters, you could feel a current starting to take you. Once we found our perfect buyouncy to neither go up or down, we could just float there and slowly drift about 2 miles an hour around the coral without ever having to kick or paddle. When the current took us around the second corner of the coral face, I looked up and saw a giant sea turtle slowly and beautiully coasting up the corals through schools of fish. I think you get the idea about what the scuba diving was like.
Next day, or technically 2 a.m of that night, we got up and headed to Mt. Batur, a famous volcano located towards the center of the island. We left the base of the volcano around 3:30 and headed up for a 2 and a half hour hike to the top of the volcano to watch the sunrise. It was a pretty exhausting hike until reaching the summit of 2,000 meters. We decided to climb to the actual top rather than another look out point a few hundered meters down, which was well worth the extra hike. Rather than being surrounded by about 20 other groups at that level, us and only one other group hiked to the summit. The view looked over lake batur, another valcano in the background, and then the haze of the ocean behind both. It was a great sunrise and well worth the early morning hike. Later in the day, we went further into the center of bali and got to stop at some of the rice terraces for lunch. These terraces are remarkable and are pretty famous on postcards and everything for the pictures of Bali. They are staggered along the moutains and have a bright green color to them that makes for amazing photos. After lunch along the terraces, we went to Ubud, the cultural town of the island, and got to walk around or a while and then went to a famous monkey temple. There were thouands of monkeys all around the temple and it was fun to walk around and check out the different sites.
The following day was our last full day and we all wanted to get as much out of surfing as possible to end the trip. We went to another beach along the southern coast of the island, the name is escaping me now. It was alot less crowded and once again, had perfect waves. I had this moment towards the end of the day where I just stopped for a few seconds and looked around and couldn't get over the fact that I was here and how happy I was to actually have made it. I was sitting out on my surfboard waiting for a wave. Directly in front of me, I was witnessing one of the most spectacular sunsets in my life. Off to my left, fireworks were going off and lighting up the beach. Behind me, a massive full moon was rising and playing with the colors of the sky. And to my right, the sounds of guitars, vocals, and laughs floated through the air. Bali, I said to myself. I'm coming back.
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| Dreamland |
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| View in Uluwatu |
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| Uluwatu Temple |
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| I call this study abraod sculpture class |
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| heading out scuba diving |
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| sunrise from top of mt. batur |
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| Ubud monkey temple |
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| rice terraces |
