Beautiful beaches, turquoise ocean, nightlife, cheap shopping and pure relaxation. 10 days in Indonesia with some of my best friends from university sounded like the perfect way to spend my summer holiday, and it was
It only took one night sleeping on the floor of the Incheon airport and one night in Kuala Lumpur and we were finally in paradise, or in Bali at least. After a long semester teaching English in South Korea myself and three friends were more than excited to head off on an island holiday and meet up with three university friends who are living in Hong Kong - and Indonesia did not disappoint. Indonesia is a really interesting, beautiful and exotic country, the archipelago is made up of 17,508 islands and we only managed to see three of them but the beauty that we saw definitely left me wanting to see more.
Bali is probably one of the most touristy islands in Indonesia because it has established itself as a cheap holiday destination for Australasian and Asian travelers. We definitely had an enjoyable time there as did many of the other travelers we encountered but it sure is a busy place with thousands of scooters zooting through the narrow one-way streets and stalls selling anything and everything packed along every street.
You usually will fly into the Airport at Denpasar and head off to some other part of the island from there. The cheapest place to stay is in the Kuta area which is definitely the most bustling section of Bali. You can stay right on the famous Poppies Lane (although there is a Poppies Lane 1 and Poppies Lane 2 so don’t get confused when trying to find your way back to your hotel) or in one of the small allies off the sides of Poppies for remarkably cheap. We were lucky enough to find a cheap hotel online that was a little ways away from the hustle and bustle of Poppies lane but still a close walk into the excitement and if you are travelling to Bali I would certainly recommend the Bakung Sari Hotel in Kuta as a great budget place to stay for travelers looking to save some money, they have a pool and they throw in breakfast which includes strong Balinese coffee which is a great bonus.
There are many great things about Bali. The shopping is ridiculously cheap, but you need to be able to barter well and not give in to the temptation to feel sorry for the shop owners and just pay them the exorbitant amounts they request. The best thing to do is to start really low, to counter the ridiculous price they offer you at first, and then when you have decided your ‘best price’ walk away from the stall and 9 times out of 10 the owner will give in and give you the price you want to stop you from leaving. Shopping is great for a while and you can buy really cheap clothes and trinkets as well as A LOT of knock-off stuff but after a while you realize every stall is the same and sells the same stuff so shopping can become rather tiresome. The Balinese people are really friendly and kind, although the men can border on creepy especially if you are travelling in a group of 6 blonde girls. The beaches are beautiful, the food is great and at almost every street café you can get a fruit juice of real fruit blended up for somewhere between R5 and R10 which was amazing coming from Korea where fruit is very expensive. If you want to eat cheaply you are better to eat at roadside stalls or get street food because the nicer restaurants up their prices a lot for foreigners so you need to be careful of that and if you want to travel cheaply a daily intake of fried rice or fried noodles covered in the delicious sweet soy sauce, Kekap manis, will keep you full and within you budget.
We knew we didn’t want to stay in the Kuta area the whole time in Bali and so everyday we would find a taxi driver we could barter with to take us to one of the beautiful beaches or head off for a bit of adventure. Dreamland Beach was really lovely although swimming was treacherous in the rather rough sea the day we were there. We loved the tiny beach at Padang Padang, where a surf competition was supposedly going on but we never saw any surfable waves to be honest, but the tiny bay-like beach was a lovely relaxing place to suntan and wallow in the calm water. Ulewatu is not a swimming beach but a great surfing beach and the view at sunset was spectacular.
It definitely was a holiday full of fun and the four of us teaching in Korea had not seen the three Hong Kong girls in about 8 months so the 7 of us all back together was bound to be a fun and crazy holiday. There is a lot of nightlife in Kuta and it is definitely the party section of Bali. There were bars offering free drinks or great drink specials all over the place and as long as you were prepared to party with some unsavory characters (there are many) it was a fun night out. Bintang Beer which is the local Balinese beer is really good and can be bought everywhere for varying prices and you can buy all sorts of Bintang memorabilia to remember your holiday by, but remember if you buy a Bintang wifebeater (vest) and wear it your first night out you will be wearing the same outfit as about 500 other people so if you want to stay original, steer clear.
At the hotel we got talking to a friendly Australian couple who had been to Bali many times and they got us in contact with a tour guide called Grumpy who could hook us up with great group deals for our time in Bali. 7 of us fit perfectly into one of the combi taxi's which saved us money and we got hold of the Grumpy fellow and he organised two day trips for us.
The one day Grumpy’s driver took us inland, first to a beautiful Hindu Temple, their temples are all outdoor temples which was really interesting and their elaborate statues and Balinese stone architecture on the temples and buildings in general is really beautiful and was one of my favourite parts of Indonesia. We then headed to the little inland town of Ubud to the monkey forest which was great and there was a temple in the middle where they were having a special ceremony and they had this big precession where they were carrying all these live animals for sacrifice, like ducks and chickens and a live pig and even a turtle, it was bizarre!! In retrospect we wish we had stayed a night in Ubud because it was a really great little town but we were really enjoying our hotel in Kuta so just did a day trip instead. Then we headed off to see a volcano, Mt Batur, luckily it’s dormant so we didn’t have to run from fiery lava but it was so beautiful and we had lunch at a restaurant with a great view, we also saw amazing views of rice paddies on these steep steep hills with palm trees all around. Inland Bali is very picturesque and well worth getting out of Kuta to see. Lastly we went to the Elephant Cave or "Goa Gajah" which had a beautiful garden all around it and was really stunning and interesting.
We had one day that was just packed with adventure. We started off snorkeling and then took a boat to turtle island which is a kind of turtle sanctuary, that part of the day wasn’t exactly what we had seen advertised but we just accepted it as part of the motto we had developed for Indonesia: “expect the unexpected”. The best part of the day was definitely parasailing which I have always wanted to do and which was amazing, very dreamlike floating up in the air. We also did this water sport called ‘the flying fish’, which is a big blow-up contraption that gets dragged behind a boat. Two people go at a time and you lie down on your back and hold on, first you are dragged behind a boat on the water and then the ‘flying fish’ lifts into the air, it was a lot of fun. The instructor even let me stand up the wrong way around which is a bit scarier and he called me: ‘crazy girl’ afterwards which I take as a complement. We finished off the day of adventure with a dinner at the famous Jimbaran bay where you sit at a restaurant right on the sand and watch the sun go down as you enjoy their amazing seafood. Grumpy took us himself to this spot and on the drive home shared some of his wisdom with us. He told us about the Balinese war and how he lost many family members in the bloodshed, his story was heartbreaking and beautiful but what struck me the most was the amazing way he explained Balinese outlook on life and how they manage to live such a relaxed happy life. He spoke of their belief in Karma and that “without bad and pain there is no good or joy”, he really touched me with the way he has been through so much and can still look at the world as a beautiful and spiritual place, it was humbling.
We spent a great few days in Bali, shopping, beaching, eating and drinking and enjoying the sunshine with our friends but we were then ready to head off somewhere a bit quieter for our last few days. The plan was to head to The Gili Islands for three days, by this stage we were more then ready to get out of the hustle and bustle of Kuta. Unfortunately we had been slack about booking our boat across and couldn’t get a fast boat in time so ended up having to take a slow boat to get there, but you know what they say about travel being the journey not the destination so it worked out in the end.
The Gili Islands are three little islands just off the coast of Lombok (the island right next to Bali), the biggest island is Gili Trawangan (where we were heading), and then Gili Meno and Gili Air is the smallest. We left Kuta at 10 am and had a two and a half hour ride in a bus to Padangbai on the east coast of Bali, the drive was very pretty through nice rural countryside on rather potholed roads. From there we would catch our boat across to the island, it was supposed to take about 4 hours but took more like 6 and combined with time spent waiting at the port before boarding it ended up being a whole day travel expedition. The time on the boat was actually really pleasant and I didn’t mind the extra two hours. I just sat on the deck under shade and read my book with a nice sea breeze on me. As sun set my friends and I sat on the bow of the boat, in the breeze and watched a spectacular sunset. We arrived at Gili Trawangan in the dark and then had to find our hotel. The island has only dirt roads and the only transport they have are horses or bicycles which were a nice change from the crazy streets of Bali. So we hailed a horse and cart and were off to our hotel.
Gili Trawangan is really one of the most spectacular places I have ever been, with white sand, turquoise clear water and a relaxed feel in the air it was the perfect place for our last few precious days of holiday. Our hotel was a bit away from the main town centre which was really nice and who doesn’t want a place where there is a big pirate ship right in the middle of the swimming pool? You could snorkel right off the beach in front of the hotel and see turtles and tons of beautiful fish and coral. We watched the sun set right from our own private beach and could eat dinner right on the beach and then listen while the hotel staff played the guitar and sang round a camp fire. Although we had no hot water we had fresh water to shower in rather then salt water which the majority of hotels have.
The Island was just what we needed, and we spent the next few days exploring on bicycles or on foot, swimming and snorkeling, eating at the various restaurants in town and relaxing with our books and a drink in hand. It was paradise. Unfortunately you cant live in paradise forever and we decided a whole day on a boat was not the way to get back to mainland Bali and so the owner of the hotel organised for us to fly back to Bali for less then what a fast boat would cost, plus we could leave the island a bit later on our last day and would get straight back to Kuta. We had to fly out of Mainland Lombok so we took a boat across, past Gili Meno and Gili Air which was beautiful, and then had a magnificent drive through the forests of Lombok to the Airport.
We flew on some tiny Indonesian airline and they honestly had the worst security I have ever seen. The tickets had been booked through the hotel under random names with no surnames and they didn’t ask for ID or anything, my ticket literally just said 'Anna' (not my name if you hadn’t noticed) and they let me on the plane, it was hilarious and a little scary. It was really great to see a little bit of Lombok though and Lombok is really mountainous and was very beautiful and we were a little sad we didn’t spend any real time there but unfortunately our holiday was coming to an end. We had one last night in Kuta, did some shopping for last minute presents and then flew out of Bali back via Malaysia, with only a 7 hour layover this time, to Korea the following day.
All I know is that Indonesia is a fascinating, beautiful, mysterious place that I didn’t even see 1% of and I am definitely hoping to go back one day and see more of what this beautiful archipelago has to offer.
Back in Typhooning Korea
Until next time 또 만나요 (tto mannayo: see you again)
