Bikes and beaches in Bali

After a couple of days back in KL, Krista and I took off for six days in Bali. We had a pretty loose plan going into this, but we knew we wanted to start in Ubud (and had hotel reservations for the first two nights), do a bike tour through some rice paddies, and spend some time relaxing on a beach with great snorkeling. I’ll admit, my preconceived notions of Bali were mostly gleaned from Eat Pray Love, and I didn’t spend the time researching that I normally do. Did it matter? Not one bit.

Ubud is known as the cultural heart of Bali, and I thought I’d fall in love with it and want to spend lots of time there. I liked using it as our base for exploring, but the town was more developed than I had naively expected and a couple days was just about right. Perfect base for a bike tour, and you can do as much or as little as you like. Temples and shopping galore, and a healthy dose of culture.

We jumped into the local cultural fare, and went to a shadow puppet performance. The plot was based on the Hindu epic of the Ramayana, which I had a little familiarity with from our trip to Cambodia and the murals we saw in Phnom Penh’s Silver Pagoda. Oh, and it’s probably important to note here that while Islam is the primary religion in Indonesia (practiced by about 88% of the population), about 83% of the population of Bali practices Hinduism. Well, the performance we saw wasn’t particularly reverent. They provided notes with which to follow the plot, and translated parts into English. The humor was pretty infantile, and it felt like they were assuming that tourists wouldn’t want to see a more traditional show, and the number of fart jokes they included finally drove us off. The imagery was really impressive though!

We chose Banyan Tree Bike Tours the next day for our bicycle adventure, and loved every minute of it. They picked us up at the hotel, and took us to a restaurant for breakfast (pineapple and banana pancakes – yum!) that had beautiful views of farms and rice paddies edging up mountain slopes.

The next stop was a coffee and spice farm, where we tasted a dozen different types of tea and coffee including the (in)famous kopi luwak. Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is highly prized by some for a flavor improved by a “fermentation” process…in the digestive system of a civet. We were brave enough to try it, and it did have a smoother, less acidic taste. It is mostly produced in Indonesia, and is ridiculously expensive. We bought a small sample pack for Grant, which we served to him before he heard this story. Safe to say, none of us really need to seek it out again, and we can check that off the bucket list.

Next, they set us up on mountain bikes and our small group (just us and a family of three) set off on a very relaxed ride. Our route kept us on small back roads, cruising by houses, temples, and fields. We visited a Hindu temple preparing for a ceremony, pedaled along a narrow dirt track through rice paddies, and stopped for a perfectly refreshing hunk of watermelon by the side of the road. It was as idyllic as it sounds, and exactly what we had hoped for.

Just as the heat had us beat, we arrived at the end of our ride, and mopped our brows with cool damp towels as they took us onward to lunch. Lunch was at Bagi the owner’s home, and it was a family affair. Delicious food – probably the best we had in Bali, but then home-cooked meals always are. I said they should add cooking classes to their offerings, I would have signed right up! In the casual conversation over lunch, we said we were looking to head to the coast and asked for recommendations.

Everyone has an opinion on what you should see, and everyone is an entrepreneur in the making. No surprise, Bagi could help us out with this one. He agreed with us that our initial thought to head to the northeastern coast was a good plan for snorkeling, and he had a friend who worked at a hotel in Amed. Bagi himself was free to take us on a scenic drive around Mount Agung, and along the coast to Amed. We had taken a sweltering taxi ride from the airport to Ubud, so we confirmed and reconfirmed that his car had air conditioning, and booked ourselves on a private tour.

On the way to Mount Agung the next day, we stopped at Gunung Kawi, an 11th century Hindu temple complex with shrines carved into rock walls. Set amid rice paddies and dipping down to a small creek, it was very peaceful with hardly any tourists. The 300 some steps to descend to get to it, and then to ascend to get back to the car might be a small deterrent for some, but we felt it was really worth it. It is important to be properly respectful to those who still worship here, so we borrowed sarongs to cover our legs and Bagi dripped holy water on our heads before we entered. Although the steps were lined with souvenir stands, once you entered the temple complex the atmosphere changed. The rocks and carvings were coated in moss, and the lush greenery added to the hushed worshipful feeling. I liked the juxtaposition of the huge scale of the carved shrines and the small offerings left throughout the complex.

After our climb out of the temple complex, we drove even higher. Mount Agung is the highest point in Bali, and we’d gotten a few peeks at it as we drove along. It is popular to do a sunrise climb here, but after our Kinabalu climb we thought we deserved some relaxation. We stopped for lunch at a pretty nondescript restaurant, but it served up one impressive view! We lingered over pretty terrible food, just to soak it all in.

This was quite literally a high point for us, and the trip down the other side of the mountain on dirt roads was pretty exciting as well. We were thankful for both the AC and the four wheel drive of the SUV. After a long day in the car we arrived in Amed, and checked into the hotel that Bagi had recommended. It was a lovely place right across the road from the beach, and I think we were the only guests there. Just us and the geckos, that is.

We spent our days either on the beach or in the water, and were so happy we had bypassed the more popular and crowded beaches on the south coast. Amed attracts families and those looking for peace and quiet, which is about all you’ll find here. The local beach boys were very friendly and funny (favorite joke: How many sons do you have? I have two, sunrise and sunset!), and they invited us to join them in the evenings, but it was exhausting doing nothing and we enjoyed catching up on our sleep.

We snorkeled right off the beach, with equipment rented from the beach boys, but one day we took a trip by outrigger boat out to a “Japanese” wreck for a change of pace. The water was a bit polluted with floating trash, but it was neat to see the wreck (which probably isn’t actually a Japanese boat), and you could dive down towards it for a closer view. We saw tons of fish, including barracuda, and some really neat coral here.

All in all, the relaxed pace of life in Bali was a perfect way to wind down Krista’s trip.