Bali

1407

Time to say goodbye to ketambe and the Sumatran jungle and get ready for our full day journey back to Medan. We h a d negotiated a private driver with the guesthouse and so all we have to do is sit back and relax (and write this travel blog ;)). Our driver speaks a bit of english and seems a nice guy, but after 5min we have to turn around because Matthieu kept the room key in our pocket. So we get to say goodbye a second time to Thousand hills guesthouse and its beautiful flowers, butterflies and monkeys (and cockroaches). On the way we get so see some results of earth slides, whrre complete houses and pieces of road have gotten washed away. Also the active volcano again and we see several warning signs of the active volcano. It is quite impressive to see the path of destruction it created a few years ago. After 8.5h we finally end up in Medan, where the driver takes us to the wrong house first (luckioy, because that did not at all like we would want to stay there). Once we arrive the guesthouse looks amazing! Its in between several green fields and looks very clean and new with enthausiastic hosts. We decide to go for a stroll through the relatively new neighbourhood and find quite big and new houses. For diner we stop at a local place and then the rain starts pouring down! We decide to wait it out while writing parts of this travel story. Then its time to walk back through the streets that have turned into pools/rivers. Matthieu is yelling out loud that he can 'feel the AiDS/cholera and whatever other diseases he can think off' penetrate his feet from the now flooded streets as we walk home wearing our flipflops. Back at the homestay we prepare our stuff and realise our flight the next day is much earlier than expected.

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After an early wakeup, we enjoy a typical Indonesian breakfast: nasi with eggs. Unfortunately we did not realise that it also included some green chilis, which I unfortunately had to pay for with a very upset stomach for the rest of the day (I could warn Matthieu in time to remove them before burning alive that early in the morning). We arrive at the airport nicely in time and take our flight with stopover in Kuala Lumpur. All goes well and at the end of the afternoon we arrive to Bali, Denpensar. We decide to search for the local bus, since that was the best option to travel around in Sumatra. Unfortunstely 1.5h later we realise that Bali and Sumatra are not that similar and that buses are not frequently used and only go to 2 destinations from the airport. So we take a taxi after all, but at least we negotiated the price a little bit. We want to go to Medewi, which is supposed to be amazing for surfing! During the trip, we realize even more how different Bali is from Sumatra: less chaotic traffic, big hotels/billboards/shopping malls, proper built houses from stone and way less Muslims. But still heavy traffic, since there are only a few roads. We arrive after nightfall at the Medewi secret Surfcamp, where the host orders (a much too expensive, but very welcome) pizza for us and we enjoy a good night of sleep.

1607-2007 Since our host Muklhis is an ex-pro surfer, we decided to take surf lessons for the first day (and also so he could show us a good place to surf for our level). We get ready in the morning at the agreed time and cant find him anywhere. 15min later, we call for him again and the whole house starts trembling which I took as a sign that he was coming down the stairs. Him, his wife and son indeed run out of the house, telling us to do the same, since apparantly we are in the middle of an earth quake! It stops as soon as we are out of the house and after some waiting, our host thinks its safe again. Time to surf! As we reach his beachhouse, we see very steady, longlasting waves, but also rocks everywhere. Munglis assures us its fine and we paddle out from a spot where the waves are less strong (a point break does not have waves collapsing everywhere at the same time). Nonetheless its a tough paddle to the correct spot in the water and we are pretty exhausted when we get there. We get a few tips on paddling and then he pushes us one by one into a good wave, so we can get used to the surfing again. We catch quite some nice waves, but paddling back is always tiring and catching our own waves without a push is still a challenge. Mukhlis assures us we just need some practice and since we dont hit any rocks, we decide to stay a few more days. After a good shoer and siesta, we take the scooter to explore the area a bit more and ride inland.Its amazing!!! A lot of hinduism and buddhism, with extremely pretty altars near every house. Plus around 6pm, they perform small rituals at their altars, where they bring colourfull offerings and incence to the altar so it smells nice everywhere... what a complete difference with Sumatra!!!
Next day we go for surfing by ourselves, but the waves are pretty small and not powerful enough. Also good surfers seem to be struggling to surf any wave at all. After a few hours of futil attempts, we go back home for nap and food. In the afternoon we take the scooter again to a sacred tree and a waterfall and we are again amazed by the beauty here. We also check the surfing forecast and see that tomorrow is supposed to be even worse, so we wont surf on 1807. Instead, we wake up early and take the scooter for about 2h into the mountains to Munduk. We go there to hike and see waterfalls and rice fields. It is indeed pretty, but we have to pay quite a lot for each waterfall and so we decide not to go for all of them, though the hike still takes z few hours next to small rivers. After a late lunch, we go for the biggest Banyan tree, which apparantly no longer really exist. There is still a monument and about 20% of the tree, but the rest was destroyed in a storm. We then go for a hike through rice paddies, which is amazing. We hear a coconut plunge into the water about 1m from where we are and from that moment on matthieu becomes paranoid about being underneath coconut trees. Plus we also loose the track, but luckily with our phone compass we reach our scooter and start the long way back through more rice terasses and mountains. Unfortunately we somehow take a wrong road, which becomes smaller and more bumpy by the second. For me its pretty in between the rice fields, but chauffeur Matthieu stresses out, which gets even worse when we realise 15min later that we have to turn around. Luckily we reach Medewi still before it gets really dark snd we stop at a food court on the big road, where they have lots of typical dishes for very low prices (but where we have to order using hands and feet since they
do not speak English at all).
Next day (1907) we pick up the surfboards again, to find that the waves have increased in size. It is more difficult to get to the spot to surf, but easier to cstch a wave (plus paddling seems to be getting easier). We spend a good half day surfing and decide to go for a Balinese massage with Mukhlis family in the late afternoon. Even though theyre not taking it easy on us/our muscles, this 1h massage at the beach house feels great and we feel rejuvenated.

On 20/07, we decide to surf one more day before the waves become way too big for people our level. The waves have become even bigger than yesterday and getting caught at the wrong moment leads to good wash outs. Somehow I manage to remain standing on a couple of big waves and somebody on the beach even captures it with many pictures. After a late lunch and shower, we take a taxi to Ubud which Muklhis arranged without telling us the price, but we agreed in the end to avoid the hassle of having to take the bus or even finding it. After nightfall we arrive to Ubud in a cute homestay with a very big room and a WARM shower for the first time since we arrived to Indonesia. We walk around a little before we decide to eat at one of many cute restaurants.

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Time to explore Ubud more by foot. It is indeed as the lonely planet described it, many little paths through city, mixed with rain forest, rivers and even rice fields. You never know whats around the corner! We go for the ridge walk, which is supposed to be a highlight to see rice fields, but we are not very convinced. Especially the way back on a road with quite some cars, is a bit disappointing. We eat at a home cooking place we come across by accident, which is a little bit expensive but indeed very good, mainly Matthieus BBQ pork sate may stay in the top food we had in indonesia. Later we walk towards the real center of Ubud, which is extremely crowded with tourists, taxi drivers offering taxis and people selling tickets to Balinese dancing. We decide to go for Kecak Fire and trance dancing and watch the 1h show after our diner. The show has a lot of men in a circle, saying hoo hoo, a pooe with fire in the middle and 2or 3 women doing asiatic moves inn the middle. Sometimes a woman disappears and a person dressed as an animal comes in, but we cannot really follow the story they are trying to tell. Sometimes the incsntations change speed or one of the men sings something we cannot understand over the others. At the very end a person dressed as an animal comes in and kicks burning coconut shells around, which causes some fire sparks, but we still cannot discover the story. Anyway, we have ticked off a cultural thing recommended for Bali from our list.
After a difficult night on an extremely noisy bed, where even breathing already makes noise, we decide to move the matrass to the ground and go find a scooter to rent for the day. Since we know that we can find some for 50.000, we take a while to actually find one for that price that actually brakes. It is a nice pink little scooter, which we kinda regret later the day when it starts to become uncomfortably small. Anyway, we ride to 2 temples that are a must-see, the second is by the sea with a whole village around it, but you do have to pay quite a lot to get in. Since we came all this way we paid and saw the incredibly high waves that were predicted for that day. Like most other temples, we werent allowed to actually enter the temple, not even when wearing a sarong annd a scarf around our middles. Last stop for the day was a beach place called Canggu, where we were hoping to catch some talented surfers taking the enourmous waves while having a late lunch. Indeed we fouhd many surfers, but all beginners that stayed in the low waves and got washed away regularly. We did see some kite surfers crossing through the big waves, while we were eating our wraps at the first spot where we cou op d actuslly eat and not judt drink on the beach. Time to bring back the scooter and eat in Ubud.
On 2307 we walked through the Ubud market, where you get harassed by vendors from every corner. We wanted to buy sarongs but had no idea how much to pay, so I gave it a first go by offering half the price they asked. We reached midway price a bit too easily, so I told Matthieu for his sarong to try even lower and after some negotiations he managed. Anyway, we continued to Monkey Forest by foot, which is another sacred place where maaaany monkeys walk around (but likely even more tourists). It was quite pretty ot walk through with its bridges, temples and rainforest-like trees. We then c8ntinued to Goya goya or elephant cave which was still a long way. The first bit through typical balinese neighbourhoods was very nice, but the last 20min next to the busy road were less enjoyable. When we reached the place, we found a sneaky entrance on the map on our phones which we tried. Via a path next to the river, we could indeed reach the place too. On the way we saw a pretty big monitor (lizard with snake tongue). Elephant cave itself was nice with a waterfall and a non-restricted temple acces for once. On the way back we decided to take Gojak (Indonesian Uber), which worked very nicely and dropped us near Monkey forest as we asked. Since this was one of our last days in Indonesia, we couldnt resist taking one more Balinese massage.

2407 For this last day, we rented a scooter at one of the places that we actually open since it is a public memorial day. In the morning our host brought us some of the offeringd that they had been preparing for several days, so we could taste their cakes, rice in banana leaves, marinated chicken and some fruits. All streets were now decorzted with long bamboo sticks covered with colourful paper. We had of course seen the preparations over the past few days and we knew that many things would be closed today, so we decided to go for Bali Bird Park. This was a bit expensive, but very nice with many shows, bird feeding and even having birds on our arms. In the evening, we wanted to see some of the festivities, so we took our sarongs and scarfs and dressed properly. We saw them playing flutes and drums, while dancing in the middle with some type of animal costumes. They repeated this at every temple/holy site in the neighbourhood, so after a while we went to cook our own diner. Unfortunstely the pasta sauce we had bought was extremely sweet and we preferred just eating dry pasta. A bit earlier then we wanted, our host drove us to the airport. There we spent quite some time waiting and moving to new gates, since they seemed uncapable of deciding what gate our flight was supposed to leave from. With some delay we finally caught our flight and a few hours later we arrived in Darwin, Australia.