Bali

We spent three and a half weeks in Bali having a rest and researching our itinerary for China. First we spent a week in Kuta. We were really suprised by how nice it was, there were plenty of pushy sales people, but there was also lots of shopping and restaurants as well as the famous Kuta Beach. We stayed a little out of town for 2 nights and then moved right into the action on Poppies II. It was actually really quiet in our hotel, even during the day we could lie by the pool and relax. We even had a view of a small family shrine over the wall from our hotel pool from our balcony. However, we felt that there was more to Bali than Australian teenage surfers and headed to the cultural capital, Ubud, for our second week.

We stayed at a great family compound for three nights which was dirt cheap as they were doing construction in the compound, but our room was wonderful. We fancied the nice rice terrace view that Ubud is famous for so spent ages looking for something affordable. Ubud is lovely, but it is choked with traffic, touts and new age hippy stuff which costs an arm and a leg, and it takes a while to find the local groove. We wandered down a path next to some rice fields and discovered a lovely hotel with massive potential that was, luckily for us, untapped and cheap! We took a room on the lower floor overlooking a pond and small garden and beyond to rice fields.

We felt like we had the place to ourselves as we saw very few people and the guys running it would rarely be around. We made big pots of tea and sat on our wicker chairs reading, eating bundles of cheap fruit and watching the wildlife in the rice fields and the men tending their crops.

We did a few of the walks around Ubud from the Lonely Planet, but the rice fields weren’t that spectacular. We saw some great kids flying kites in them though (top picture), and walked up into an artists village and chatted with local Balinese artists. They seem to spend a lot of time doing the same picture to sell to tourists, but they were lovely all the same. We saw some really amazing paintings but explained from the outset that we had no money. They seemed happy just to chat and we felt less like walking wallets up and away from Ubud. We even crashed the catering for a local ceremony and had a road side meal in a banana leaf.

One evening we were out walking when we noticed a massive procession walking up the main high street. We followed it and followed it and ended up walking 4km up a hill north of Ubud to a temple holding some sort of New Year ceremony. Unfortunately we didn’t bring a sarong so couldn’t enter, but we enjoyed the walk up in the cool air listening to the traditional music and walking with the locals all dressed up in their fine traditional costumes. We felt a bit dejected at the top though. In India we’d have been in tens of photo’s and sold everything that we needed to take part, but in Bali you are a nuisance not a novelty at such events and we walked back down unnoticed. Just as we were discussing how far we had to walk back on our own and the lack of, “transport?” calls, we were offered a lift by a kind little family in their mini-van, “for free” as the guy said. We happily took it all the way back to our hotel and had our faith restored in the ordinary people.

Food in Ubud can be pretty expensive if you’re on a budget. This is because almost all of the eating places in Ubud are pitched at package tourists, not backpackers. The food is excellent in these restaurants and they are still cheap by western standards – a large pizza in one of Ubud’s swanky joints will cost you about 50,000 Rupiah – thats about £3. Still if your on a long trip saving a few pounds a day makes a big difference over the months. Basic strategy is to stay off the main tourist streets, and if possible find where the locals eat. We looked around and found a nice “Warung” – a small family run restaurant. This place was a lot cheaper, and here you could get a Nasi Goreng (Nasi=Rice, Goreng=Fried) – a typical Indonesian dish of rice, vegetables, chicken, (whatever they have!) stir fried with egg. The swanky restaurants will sell it to you for 30000 Rupiah (£1.82). Our Warung did a lovely version for 8000 Rupiah – about 48p! We thought that was the best deal we were going to get, but one day we were in the market area after dark and we noticed a lady selling food parcels wrapped in banana leaves – we guessed they were a rice dish of some sort and asked her. She didn’t speak english, so we said “Nasi?” and she nodded. We gestured “how much?” and she said 2000 Rupiah – that’s 12p! so we bought 3 packets to take home and try. These parcels were the best food we ate in Bali. They were rice with a topping of chicken, gado gado (a vegetable salad with a peanut sauce), and chili pickle. The next night we went back to the lady and bought 5 packets – 2 for me, 3 for Andre. That amounted to a very filling meal for 10000 Rupiah – 60p. By eating the local food we were able to live on 100,000 Rupiah (£6) a day for both of us, meals and accomodation!

We fancied something different for our last week. We had been to Seminyak on our honeymoon so decided to do the other coast at Sanur. After hours of searching, Andre found a lovely modern room at a restaurant on the main strip. However we could only stay there for two nights and had to go looking again the next day. Sanur is expensive and caters for the tourist package crowd on family vacations. The hotels are amazing, and cheap for the facilities and surroundings, but not in our league. We had to think again, so decided to go back to the other coast but this time Legian. After another 2 hours searching, Andre found a lovely hotel (but a bit expensive at £21 a night) with bungalow style accomodation, large pool with swim-up bar, restaurant and 24 hour bar which played live music. It was a bit old and empty in the evening, as the food was awful and expensive, but this was more than made up for by the wonderful pool area and free wi-fi. Also next door was a gorgeous local Warung serving huge portions of Balinese food for 15000 Rupiah (90p!) Not as cheap as our Ubud food, but the cheapest in Legian by a long way.

We felt mixed feelings for Bali this time around. On our honeymoon, or in fact when you frequent expensive hotels and restaurants, the hospitality is amazing. The quality on offer for the price is outstanding, making it a great value holiday destination. In the backpacker league though it’s hard work unless you know of cheap places to stay to get away from the busy streets and touts, and cheap places to eat. It is especially difficult when you go in peak season like we did and aren’t willing to rent a motorbike. The touts were so annoying with their calls for, “transport?”, followed by “maybe tomorrow?”. But these were topped by the screams of, “massaaage!?” and a leaflet thrust into your hands by the groups of giggling girls on every corner. The teenagers that work in most of the places we went to didn’t speak very good English and would just laugh at you instead of trying to communicate their misunderstanding. It made me feel old and demanding lol. I think that we should come back to one of the 5 star hotels and rent a driver to take us around, or go exploring the rest of Indonesia next time.