Activity Summary
Friday 18th November - Day 78
Travel to Ubud (Bali)
Saturday 19th November - Day 79
Singaraja-Lovina tour (do not recommend)
Taman Ayutthaya temple (royal family Mengwi temple)
Hidden garden coffee & tea tasting
Ulun Danu Beratan temple & lake
Gitgit waterfall (rejected)
Lovina beach (pretty terrible)
Banjar hot spring
Sunday 20th November - Day 80
Mt Batur sunrise hike
Sweet Orange walk trail through rice fields
Monday 21st November - Day 81
Own biking tour through Ubud
Tegallang rice terrace
Pura Tirta Empul temple
Manuaba waterfall
World Cup
Tuesday 22nd November - Day 82
Bukit Campuhan walk
Ubud sacred monkey temple
Wednesday 23rd November - Day 83
Afternoon in Kuta
Travel to New Zealand
Summary
Ubud
Ubud is definitely the most scenic area of Bali. Surrounded by greenery, forest and interesting architecture it was much nicer to walk around and appreciate. As we had limited time we definitely overspent our time in Ubud, which meant we had exhausted all there was to do, but gave us time to wind down and plan before going to New Zealand.
It was fun but didn’t blow us away, which was a recurring theme for Bali in our opinion.
Accommodation
Pratama House - 5 nights - £4.20/n/p
Great place. The owner is such a stand up guy and the place is lovely. Interesting architecture throughout (a mix of the old religious and modern requirement upgrades that appears throughout Ubud) and the rooms are great with a huge super king size bed, large bathroom and balcony to chill on.
Location has been perfect for us as we don’t mind a short walk into town for food, although the warung on the road of the homestay is excellent so not much of this is really required. The roads around Ubud are pretty treacherous so the only downside is having to dodge many of the cars and bikes when walking but that’s the same everywhere.
Travel
Ubud
Gili T homestay -> [walk] -> Gili T port -> [Ekajaya ferry] -> Padang Bai port -> [local taxi] -> Ubud homestay
Denpasar airport
Ubud homestay -> [grab] -> Kuta -> [grab] -> Denpasar airport
Diary
We were tracking the weather pretty closely the last few days to determine when would be the ‘best’ times to travel across the Lombok strait as we were very cautious of speedboat travel that far. Fortunately there was a nice halfway option with the Ekajaya ferry, a much larger vessel than the speedboats but nowhere near the size of the vehicle carrying slow ferry. The mornings tended to be a calmer time so we got the earliest ferry we could and the journey was surprisingly smooth, taking the longer way back to Lombok and for the most part hugging the island before cutting across the strait.
In one piece at the harbour we were greeted by arguably the most annoying people of the trip. As soon as the ferry doors opened, a harem of taxi drivers more or less blocked the exit from the boat and championed the unique and timeless selling tactic of shouting “taxi” in your face. Not only was this dangerous, as it was incredibly easy to push passengers either back onto the boat or simply into the water, it was so fucking irritating. The taxi men are usually persistent in the sense that ignoring them doesn’t completely work as they continue to shout after you when clearly you aren’t interested, but these fuckers took it to a whole new level by physically grabbing and getting in our faces. Luke’s hatred of these heavy handed sales tactics meant he started shouting expletives at the variety of taxi drivers who got in his way and simply walked right through them, while Nicola’s tactic was much more reserved.
Unfortunately the ports and transport hubs tend to be grab unfriendly (various banners of said hate dominated this port) so we had no choice but use one of these guys. So Nicola found a guy who wasn’t being a prick, simply standing and waiting and we went with him. This fare felt overpriced to Ubud but again we had no choice really. Best part, he had no idea where he was going like every non-grab driver we have had.
We eventually got to Ubud and had to walk the last 5 minutes because the guy was hopeless. We arrived at our homestay and were incredibly happy with the accommodation, such that we extended then and there for the rest of our time until we left for New Zealand. It was cheap, incredibly comfortable and the location was decent.
We hurriedly went into town to grab some food and our rash decision without research backfired and the place was crap. But now we had some energy for the rest of the day so we spent it wandering around the central Ubud town and picked up a fridge magnet (managed to find one that wasn’t a “Bali / Bintang beer” one thankfully, as both are pretty terrible). Luke went off to do laundry for a few hours while Nicola rested (what a ledge he is) and ate at a local warung down the road from our homestay (which was banging).
The last thing we did with our day was book an Ubud tour for the next day and also the Mt Batur hike the day after. It proved a little challenging late on in the evening but not impossible which was always a perk of travelling SE Asia… we very rarely needed to plan anything well in advance.
Thinking we were going to have a nice lie in before our tour was very much interrupted at 2am when the tour guide for Mt Batur called Luke and tried to take us over to the mountain the day early. Luke politely declined and informed him of his cock up before crashing out again.
There are a large number of day tours available for Ubud / central and north Bali so we opted for one of these given we didn’t fancy the hours of biking it would take to do it ourselves. As with most of the activities in Indonesia, the tour was quite pricey but we were told the day before that the only thing we would need to pay for would be a small temple entrance fee. Worth bearing in mind.
The Singaraja-Lovina tour as it was called involved no traditional touring, and we learnt nothing about where we were going but was simply a private driver for us as no one else signed up to it.
The first stop was the Taman Ayutthaya temple (royal family Mengwi temple) that cost a little to get in but we were prepared for this. Fortunately the temple had a fair amount of information about the history of the place so could be reasonably self sufficient here. The temple didn’t blow us away and the fish pond (or river nearby) outside the museum had an overpowering smell of a teenage boys overutilized semen sock. Unfortunately for the temple this was our key takeaway.
Our next stop was a place called Hidden garden for a coffee & tea tasting. A lot of these places in Bali operate very controversial practices over a delicacy called luwak coffee, a nocturnal animal that has a fondness for coffee seeds which poops out decent coffee beans it turns out. This place had luwaks running around the cafe with people posing for pictures and the very likely scenario that there were more held in captivity to make the coffee so it wasn’t a great look. Nicola didn’t entertain the place and went round the corner for food while Luke had a vast array of coffee and tea presented as a taster meant for 2 (without the luwak coffee - Luke did ask about the practice but was unsure of how reliable the answer was).
The next temple was called Ulun Danu Beratan & lake which was much more interesting. However what took us by surprise was the rather large entrance fee we had to pay but given this was the last temple and we had driven for a long time to get here we reluctantly paid. The temple was less conventional and appeared more like a cross between a UK holiday park attraction and historic temple. The rather large plastic gimmicks and pedalos gave it an interesting tacky look between the standard ‘Bali gates’. The temple on the lake however was quite attractive.
We finished with the temple a fair bit quicker than the driver had intended who was absolutely KO’d in the driver's seat. Our attempts of tapping on the window, speaking to him and not being overtly aggressive failed miserably. We just stood there like lemons laughing until another local took pity and woke the guy up in a much more forceful manner. He appeared pretty dazed for the next 5 minutes which isn’t so ideal when navigating the shitshow that is Indonesian traffic.
The next tour stop was the Gitgit waterfall. With all these stops, there was a lot of driving in between and this along with paying quite a lot to get there forced us to cut our losses and pay the additional and ill informed fees. When hearing it would cost £10 each to see this waterfall we had had enough. Luke lost his cool and started ranting at the waterfall operator (who understood English) and the driver (who understood zero English). The translator ended up being a middle man between us but in essence we were incredibly pissed off with how expensive the day had become and weren’t willing to pay anymore money. So we rejected the waterfall, citing that New Zealand was round the corner as part of our trip and would be far more impressive, then we were back on our unmerry way.
To quote the brochure the next stop was Lovina beach - a very good beach north of Bali. The overcast weather likely didn’t help but it was pretty dire so we spent a few minutes pondering then walked down the road for a food joint Luke had found. This was the best part of the day by far. It was a cafe called The Global Village Kafe which hires those with hearing difficulties and main purpose is to collect and fund charitable activities that benefit the disabled community where, from our experience in Indonesia, it seems absolutely impossible to operate in given pavements that barely exist. The food was excellent and was to a great cause so we left very happy after also donating to the cause.
Reunited with our driver we took off to the last spot and the Banjar hot spring. We had already researched this spot and knew it would be a small fee so we’re fine with that. The springs themselves were decent, a bit colder than expected but we managed to spend some time relaxing from a day that was pretty disappointing.
Now at the north part of Bali, the drive down to Ubud was a very long slog so we did little but stop off at a roadside viewpoint and play on our phones, occasionally Luke tried to communicate with the driver when he would start rambling to him incoherently.
Back at the homestay fairly late, we had dinner again at the local warung and tried crashing out as early as we could given the 2am start the next day for Mt Batur.
Another day, another 2am wake up for a sunrise hike. This time it was Mt Batur which stands at a piddly 1,717m (half of Rinjani) and is a pretty easy walk to the summit.
This time we were picked up in a big van full of tourists and the guy arrived on the correct day. We were the last to be grabbed which meant Luke certainly had the bitch seat, lacking a headrest which turns out is quite important when trying to catch up on sleep when on the move. So he plugged in the sweet sound of the LOTR audiobook and watched everyone else around him pass out.
We arrived at the hike start at about 3.30am where we were served coffee and banana pancakes. Nicola was not able to consume any of these that early and was again really struggling with the early start before we set off.
This was Nicola’s 3rd early sunrise hike wake up and she was feeling pretty nervous about it after the adverse experiences of Bromo and Ijen. Sadly, and through no fault of her own, her body just would not play ball again. The walk itself is pretty simple, a well trodden path but fairly steep up to the summit. Nicola very sensibly cut her losses early in the walk rather than continue feeling faint and ill so got a motorbike taxi down to the car where she waited for the group to return.
Luke story time.
This was the most annoying walk we had done so far, but kinda was expected given it was Bali. Trailing behind our group was a Brit with a boom box playing a whole host of aggressive tunes at 4am to the masses of people effectively single line queueing up the mountain. This was incredibly irritating and made the already painful experience of walking as slow as the slowest person up the mountain penguin style, worse. Fortunately the tour group guide also thought the same so made sure our group sped up as quickly as possible past rest points and overtaking the painfully slow people (leaving some of the group with the other tour guide - sucked to be them but they were looked after). Much appreciated.
Near the top is a large viewing area that is just shy of the summit that gives a great view over Bali and the much larger Mt Agung in the distance. I really wished I’d climbed that mountain but failed to take note of it in my research so I settled for Rinjani and the simpler tours of Bromo, Ijen and Batur.
At the viewing platform we had some breakfast before continuing round to the summit. As an active volcano there was immense heat coming out of the rocks at one part so one of the tourist attractions was to take incense and blow through the rock to get it to smoke. The photo was incredibly fake and I found it hilarious to watch tour guides fanning smoke at tourists while they posed (myself included).
After taking in the views we began the descent down, which took a different route and wasn’t restricting the pace of the group through single track rock paths so we were down a lot quicker. I had a very interesting conversation with the tour guide about skyscrapers and how he found 4 storey buildings baffling given his village upbringing.
Once reunited Nicola had returned to life again with a lot more energy. An add on to the tour was to go to another coffee and tea tasting session so we had all of the same hot drinks as the day before (vanilla coffee and mangosteen tea were the highlights) before getting dropped back just after 10am so we fell asleep for a bit.
We spent most of the afternoon catching up on admin at a cafe/restaurant as we had a fair amount to prepare for New Zealand.
After being stationary for 4 hours we walked to the Sweet Orange walk trail and through some of the many rice fields around Ubud. It was a great walk and just on the doorstep of the main town so were pleasantly surprised.
One of the raved about dishes in Bali is called Babi Guling, a slow roasted pork with various assortments of trimmings plated up. Luke was desperate to try it so took Nicola along for the ride. Luke found it delicious and Nicola a little too spicy but also pretty good. More Luke’s kind of thing however.
With the failures of the tour a few days prior this forced our hand in getting a bike for a few days and would be the last time we would be using this ropey transport method for a long time. Luke was pretty happy with this and plans to return to SE Asia with full licence in tow as the biggest fear has always been that ‘small’ problem.
The first place on our self styled day tour was the Tegallang rice terrace. It was absolutely roasting, zero air flow and as humid as hell. The 30 minute bike ride was ok for Luke up front but Nicola had to be peeled off the bike as her clammy leg sweat had all but super glued her down. We paid the entrance fee and walked down the wrong path initially, which in the heat was pretty annoying. Back up the hillside and down the correct way we were greeted with a great view but also entwined with the insta vom fest of the Bali swings and various other fake photo op moments. Many adult swing parties were making use of the swings, which were ridiculously expensive.
After walking around and struggling with the heat we grabbed a drink from the rice terrace cafe which had nice views but was extortionately priced.
With a bit of sanity restored we carried on to Pura Tirta Empul temple. Here we had the option of taking a holy wash which we both were not keen on, but instead were able to just creepily watch others do it. We also got to expand our sarong photo catalogue despite Nicola trying to circumvent this rule by donning her standard temple-ware. Turns out they weren’t happy with this.
The heavens opened in a pretty aggressive fashion as we were just about to leave, so we hid under one of the roofed halls for over an hour, mainly practising our Spanish and waiting for calm. Eventually it subsided so we were able to continue on the bike (it really sucks biking in the rain).
Our next stop was the Manuaba waterfall. It was a little unclear where it was using Google maps but eventually we found the entrance guarded by two kids. Forced to pay over our money for fear of being beaten with sticks, we were then given the weapons to help us down the slippery and muddy route to the waterfall which was a nice little stop over.
Finally, with an England World Cup game at a sensible time for us on our travels and in a populated area that was likely to accommodate, we found a sports bar that was rated fairly well. We however were pretty slow to get over to the bar so panicked and ducked into the first we saw with the game on. This proved to be a bad rash decision as 10 minutes later, as the game kicked off, the bleeding band kicked into their live set. The bartender's attempts to turn up the volume failed miserably but we were stuck as we had just ordered drinks. However, given there was a ridiculously large pause in the game for the Iranian goalkeeper's head injury, we had time to run to the initial bar which was packed full of England fans. We had to stand uncomfortably for a short time before making our way in to find a place to sit but the lounge ended up opening up and were very comfortable on a sofa for the second half. A pint was ludicrously expensive and took forever to get served, as this place clearly didn’t know how to deal with English punters on game day but this helped Luke in not drinking himself poor.
Now fairly late we walked back at Nicola’s pace which is more like Luke jogging.
We were running out of things to do in Ubud so decided to have a fairly chill day and see what took our fancy. After breakfasting we decided on the Bukit Campuhan walk which turned out to be fairly disappointing. The sweet orange walk was much more entertaining and this was a simple back and forward with little to see.
Next we decided on the Ubud sacred monkey temple, simply as we had little else to do. We both are really not fan of monkeys and this was proven before we even got into the forest. Nicola had foolishly (but completely forgotten) that she had cookies in her side pocket of her bag. A monkey without even seeing them had worked out where they were, squared up to her and tried jumping onto Nicola before she managed to thwart its efforts by shouting and moving out of the way at the last minute. Luke joined in and stuck out a leg - FYI this is a bad idea and the monkey was very close to attacking him as it snarled with fangs and all. Sensibly Nicola threw the cookies away.
We walked around the forest with minimal problems now rid of food, the highlight being a male getting his end away twice in the space of 20 seconds. Got a good ol two pump and dump rhythm going. Lucky ladies.
Again the mid afternoon storm rolled in so we got stuck in the foyer of the monkey forest entrance. This time we entertained ourselves with a couple games of ticket to ride and it is worth noting that Luke finally won a game. It was like his 10th attempt so he was very happy with himself. From there we headed the short distance to a Greek Restaurant for lunch. The traffic was horrific but we squeezed through on a bike before having lunch and playing a game of chess. It was noted at this time the bus we were stuck behind as we arrived had only made it 100m up the street in the 1.5h we'd been in the restaurant. It's true when they say traffic in Bali is horrific.
In the evening we met up with Yuriko, a Japanese traveller who we had met in Malaysia and was travelling Indonesia with her other half Anuraggin. It was lovely to catch up and meet Anuraggin.
The day had finally arrived where we would say goodbye to the chaos of SE Asia and head over to New Zealand, the place we were both most excited for coming into our travels. We were in no rush to get to the airport as our flight was at 10pm so decided to ease our way around Ubud in the morning, get settled and head over to Kuta to see what the fuss was about and also because it was 15 minutes away from the airport.
The grab taxi from Ubud was easy enough (despite there being a million signs saying ‘say no to grab’ - if the locals were better then I’d be inclined to do so) and were in Kuta for around lunchtime. We grabbed a spot in a cafe and didn’t leave for 5 hours except for a quick walk around the local area. It’s a shit hole.
Plenty of hours before our flight we got a grab to the airport. Slight concern we would be gridlocked in traffic but that passed fairly quickly. At the airport there was additional confusion as the airport staff didn’t have access to the NZ esta/ immigration system so couldn’t process any of our flight connections. After about 20/30 minutes of waiting around with what seemed like exclusively British people, we were given our boarding passes for the first flight and told we needed to check in for our connection in Sydney.
Airport security was a breeze, we grabbed some overpriced fried chicken and ramen then had to wait an extra hour for our delayed flight. Outside there was an almighty thunderstorm raging which gave some concern but fortunately had dissipated by the time we boarded.
With a row to ourselves we tried to sleep as much as we could as we left Indonesia. Potentially for good! This is because of a recent law change meaning that premarital sex and room sharing is punishable by lashings and a year in prison for foreigners. This has a very real chance of us shunning the country going forward because we'd be in the less touristy areas going forwards. Always great to hear about these backwards steps taken.
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