In Search of Bali

Prior to leaving Thailand for Indonesia, I heard a lot of mixed reviews about Bali, my first stop on the massive archipelago that makes up the country. This surprised me, as in my mind Bali is the epitome of island paradise. Many people said it was too crowded to appreciate the island's beauty. I figured that if one was willing to look a bit deeper, it would be possible to escape that. I didn't have many plans, but I figured my best bet would be to start in Ubud, Bali's cultural capital.

Ubud

Monkey Forest Temple

From the airport, I took an (expensive) cab a couple hours inland to Ubud. Although I was sleepy after a bus, two flights, and a night in the Bangkok airport, I tried to stay awake to see the island as we drove across. I immediately loved Bali. The road was lined with old stone temples, dark like the volcanic rock that's spewed across the island, particularly in the Ubud area. The statues peering from these temples' walls were leering figures, almost frightening. Everywhere people were selling the fruits I'd come to love in Malaysia (mangosteins, rambutans, and durians) and it was a pleasure to see and heard Bahasa again (the languages of Indonesia and Malaysia are nearly identical). Arriving in Ubud, we drove through the city center on the way to the hostel, and it seemed like a busy, funky place, abounding with organic, vegan, etc. cafes, wedged in between small local shops and food stalls, and, of course, the temples. The hostel itself was wonderful: a great group of travelers, most looking to unwind and relax after time spent in more stressful places. Everyone applauded my decision to start in Ubud, but they threatened it would be hard to leave when the time came. Ubud turned out to be a perfect place to relax. My several days there were spent in and around the temples on the street and inside the Monkey Forest, eating delicious food, wandering through rice paddies, and enjoying the swimming pool at the hostel (Ubud's one fault, everyone decided, is its beachlessness).

Stone lizard at Ubud's Monkey Forest Temple

Monkey Forest Temple

Lotus Pond in Ubud: You'd never know this is right off the main street

Strom brewing over the rice paddies... it never hit though

Rice fields in Ubud

Sunrise at Mt. Batur

My favorite day (and also the day on which I saw the most) by far was my last in Ubud. Together with three other guests I'd met at the hostel, I woke up at 2 am, and was driven to a coffee plantation, where we had an extraordinarily early breakfast (a banana pancake, swimming in chocolate syrup) and then taken to the base of Mt. Batur, a volcano that sits on a vast lake in the region, where sunrise hikes are popular. We had a fabulously full (or nearly full) moon, surrounded by a dull orange haze, which we watched sink lower and lower into the sky as we climbed to the summit. The path up to the top was lit only by the pinpricks of light from earlier visitors' flashlights, and it was hard to get a glimpse of the scenery. We reached the top around 5:30, at which time we settled onto a couple of benches amidst the masses of other sunrise hopefuls. As the sky started to lighten it became clear that it wasn't clear, and we wouldn't be able to watch the sun come up behind neighboring Mt. Agung, but we did have good colors as the clouds turned purple and then pink and orange, with the mountains behind us a deep purple-blue. As the sky lit up, we could truly appreciate how beautiful our surroundings were: the two mountains in the background and the beautiful lake below, which lies side by side with a dark valley of lava rock - the two are kept separate by just the thin crater wall. We wandered in the area, looking deep into the crater. I was surprised to see how green the area was, given that the last eruption was only a few years ago: the plants and trees there have returned quickly (as have the monkeys, who seem to find the idea of tourists who have recently eaten banana pancakes enticing). We made our way down - slowly, as the descent required a bit of scrambling over volcanic rocks and pebbles not quite securely in place, and because the landscape required regular attention.

Can't get enough of these colors

At the crater

Lake Batur, with neighboring mountains

Once we'd returned to the hotel and slept a few hours, I decided to check out the market. I'd heard good things and hadn't been there yet. It was a long street of vendors selling more or less the same things, and I was unimpressed. There was hardly anything original or interesting, and after Pai (where all the shops and stalls are tended by local artists, whose work is unique and incredibly different from one shop to the next), I was disappointed. I'd have thought that Ubud would be much more like Pai in that respect, given its reputation as Bali's cultural center. That said, I did find an artist at the very end of the street whose paintings were beautiful, and spilled out of his stall into the temple just behind. That was lovely to walk through, and I didn't feel pressured to buy anything (possibly he realized that he was way out of my price range and I wasn't worth harassing).

Later the same evening, I participated in one of Bali's most famous tourist events and joined a few guests in attending a Balinese dance performance in one of the temples. We arrived a bit late, and the place was already completely packed with Western faces. I figured we'd have to stand in the back, but one of the men working there simply brought out a new bench and placed it in the front row. Somehow being late won us the best seats in the house (I recognize that this is not a useful life lesson and I should disregard it). The temple was tiny: there was only one tall pillar in the back, facing us, and a few small walls and sculptures, but the pillar was carved beautifully, with a leering stone face at the top. In front of that, in the center of the horseshoe audience, was one iron pole with candles all around it. As we were getting settled, people were lighting these. There was a bit of hushed chatter in the audience, but it was mostly quiet, and a little eerie in that temple with only flickering candlelight by which to see. Suddenly a huge group of men dressed only in sarongs ran out, chanting and singing. The unique part about this particular performance is that there are no instruments: all the sounds are human-made. The men formed something of a Greek chorus, they sat in a circle around the dancers, singing or chanting, rising, dancing, and otherwise participating in the action when necessary or appropriate. The dancers themselves (five or six men and women) were dressed in elaborate costumes, with beautiful jewelry and headpieces, and more extravagant masks for the demon characters. They moved in a way I can only think to describe as serpentine: fluidly and slithering (in the dancers' arms, legs, heads, and entire bodies) punctuated by sudden rapid jabbing motions. Their fingers flitted constantly. Suddenly, I noticed that the moon looked strange. As I watched it (dividing my attention between it and the dancing), I realized it was eclipsing. It was so suitable to the already eerie atmosphere to listen to the chanting and watch the moon vanish. When the show ended in a huge and frantic battle scene, emphasized by the men's voices growing louder and faster, everyone applauded, and filed out of the temple. It was a fantastic finish to my time in Ubud.

Kuta

Against my will, I left Ubud for Kuta on Sunday. I'd heard nothing but awful things about Kuta, the haunt of Australian surfers looking only for the most raucous party scene on the island (on one memorable occasion, I recommended Ubud to a hostel-mate, saying that it was a very "relaxed, cultural city." He didn't even bat an eyelash when he responded, "Yeah, I don't really care about culture"). Unfortunately, it was the most logical place to wait while my visa extension was being processed (since it takes an unreasonable amount of time and requires three separate trips to the immigration office). Upon my arrival, I was bombarded by shopkeepers and taxi drivers: "Shopping, darling?" and "Transport, darling?" and "Surf lessons, darling?" and (once) "Boyfriend, darling?" I headed for the beach. From afar, it looked nice. It's been a long time since my last beach (Phuket) and I was glad to smell and hear the ocean as I walked along the main road. I was met by a huge stone gate, beyond which I could see blue water and hear crashing waves. It seemed great. As I walked through the gate and onto the beach road, I was blown away by the sheer number of people. The beach was wide and long, but I had never seen so many humans in one place. It was nearly impossible to find a space to sit, and when I did, I was again harassed by women offering massages and men offering surf lessons. The ocean itself was beautiful, and the waves enormous, but there were so many surfers (most of them receiving their first lessons: a popular pastime on Bali) that it was hard to find a spot to swim (I didn't trust the beginner surfers to not crash into me). Being on the beach in Kuta was absolutely unpleasant.

The beach itself isn't too bad.

At least we got a nice sunset

A storm brews

On Monday, I went to the immigration office for the first of three times. It was a mess of filling out paperwork, re-filling out paperwork, searching for a printing shop, struggling with the printer at the printing shop since the girl working there had apparently never used or seen one before, and waiting. When I finally handed in all my documents, I was told to return on Wednesday to pay and have my photo taken. I said, "I really can't do that right now?" because how long could it take? but I was firmly told, "No. On Wednesday." So I went back to the terrible beach. I walked a bit further north, where the beaches are supposedly nicer, but couldn't find any difference, except that there were a lot of fancy resorts and the food was much more expensive. I did watch a beautiful thunderstorm roll through. The clouds were moving so fast, they actually condensed before my eyes. I saw a single bolt of lighting hit the water in front of me, but there were a lot of long, low rumbles of thunder. I took shelter in a restaurant where I ordered an overpriced (but delicious) glass of sangria while I waited for the storm to pass. Once it had, I returned to the beach and was delighted to find it empty. The sun wasn't out either, so there wasn't any need to chat with the surf instructors who haunt the only shade on the beach. That was my favorite day in Kuta.

Since I had Tuesday "off" (I didn't have to go to Immigration), I decided to go diving at a shipwreck off the eastern coast of Bali. Our two dives were fabulous. I was diving with a divemaster and only one other diver, and we dove from the black sand beach at Tulamben. As we got our equipment ready and on, we listened to the odd "whoosh"-ing sound the waves made as they swept over and through the volcanic rocks. At first the water was quite murky (there was even a layer of trash floating just off the beach), but as soon as we got a bit deeper, it really cleared. I'd never done a wreck dive before, and it was incredible: the stuff of old pirate movies, with the water turning everything a ghostly blue-grey, and corals growing all around the deck and masts. We swam through tiny openings and into small alcoves, all over the ship - it was amazing. It was easy to imagine the ship as a working vessel, but it was hard to appreciate how massive it was: I kept trying to swim back to get a look at it as a whole. After two great dives, though, it was time to head back to Kuta.

Wednesday, I went back to Immigration to pay and have my picture taken. As I'd predicted, it took less than ten minutes, and I didn't have to be back until Friday afternoon, so I found myself with two and a half days. That seemed like enough time to get out of Kuta so, at a friend's suggestion, I hopped on an Ojek (motorbike taxi) to one of the beaches on Bali's southern peninsula.

Padang Padang

While the beaches on the Bukit Peninsula are referred to collectively as Uluwatu, a Kuta hostel-mate (not the one who doesn't like culture) recommended Padang Padang specifically. Since the internet conveniently stopped working in the middle of my research, I figured I'd just take his advice. Padang Padang is a tiny beach, set between two cliffs, without many waves (and thus, very few surfers, aside from those willing to paddle out to a nearby reef). Although it was pretty crowded when I arrived in the middle of the day on Wednesday, the water was so perfectly blue and the cliffs so beautifully framing the sea, that I didn't mind (also, the quality of the tourists there was much higher than in Kuta). Even the entrance to the road is beautiful: the beach sits much lower than the road, so that visitors must walk down a small staircase cut into the cliff. It feels a bit like walking into an underground cave. There's not much of a town (only one road runs through) but there are several cafes and restaurants with good local food.

I love how the setting sun made the water sparkle

Cliffs at Uluwatu

I spent Thursday morning and early afternoon at Padang Padang beach again, but then decided to see what else was around. Since I didn't have a motorbike (the best form of transportation on the peninsula where there is no public transport and distances are too great to walk), I set off in the direction of Uluwatu beach, and met a taxi on the way. As it was becoming evening, I decided to head to the temple to see the sunset, as I've heard the view there is wonderful. The temple itself is huge and perched on the edge of a cliff, looking west over the ocean. It boasts the same black stone temples and pillars as in Ubud, but all the inner courtyards were closed except for prayer. From the temple along the cliff is a path leading in either direction, so I walked first to one end and then to the other, basically just killing time and searching for the best sunrise spot. Looking out over the ocean, the waves were enormous, and the sun turned the crest of each of them gold. When the sun started to go down, the clouds hovering just above the horizon turned the sky pink and purple and gold, and the sun became a vibrant orange. I hurried out to make it back to the parking lot before dark, then I pleaded and bargained for a cheap ride back to Padang Padang. I spent the next morning sitting at the beach, enjoying the sunshine and the quiet of the early part of the day, before I went back to Immigration for the final time. I left grinning, passport in hand. I hope never to have to extend an Indonesian visa again.

Temple seated on top of the cliffs

Temple gates

Sanur

My last stop in Bali, I headed to Sanur for the weekend. Sanur is a beach town on the eastern side of the island, which Lonely Planet snidely referred to as "Snore". I disagree. I spent two and a half very relaxing days in Sanur, where I found a swimming pool at the hostel, a good group of people to hang out with, and meandering streets of cute cafes and restaurants, and a good amount of street art. I found it a quirky little town, with good local food and, if one was willing to head inland, small villages thriving on the tourism there. I spent all Friday afternoon at the pool, and Saturday, although I kept telling myself to go to the beach, I never made it there. Instead, I spent the morning at the pool, then for lunch went wandering through town, off the major beach roads, and then returned to the pool for the afternoon. That evening, several hostel-mates and I went to have dinner at a buffet, pay-what-you-can place, where we listened to music by the owners, and felt a bit like we had stumbled into some kind of commune. It seemed that everyone there had been there before or was some relation to the two brothers who run the place (their mother sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"). The musicians encouraged anyone who felt so compelled to join them onstage and/or find an instrument (there were several drums lying around, and other people just banged plates and silverware together). 

Sunday I did make it to the beach, and I was the only Western tourist there. There weren't many waves, but the water was cool and refreshing, and very clear. The beach was wide and deep, but mostly empty, at least in the area where I was. By chance there was a Yoga and Health festival going on down the beach, so I walked through the Farmers' and Flea Markets that had sprung up there for the day, and watched a few free Ayurvedic treatments. There were masseuses, Balinese healers, and cooks, all offering their services for free on the beach. Later, a few girls and I went to one of the free yoga classes (we even got free yoga mats, although now i feel obligated to lug it around Indonesia), which took place amidst live music on the beach at sunset (although the beach faces east, so there is no sunset). Sanur was a perfect and relaxing end to Bali.

Peaceful Sanur beach

In general, I had a wonderful time in Bali. Had I been able to cut out Kuta, I'd have had no complaints. To all those whose trips to Bali have left them with a sour taste in their mouths, I respond: search deeper. It isn't hard to find the peace, the tranquil beaches, the ancient temples we hear about. They're there.