First day in Bali

While I had said goodbye to Australia, my trip wasn’t quite over as I had planned a few stops in Asia, mostly to visit friends. (Might as well when you’re already on the other side of the world.)

My first stop was the island of Bali. As I was heading later on up to Jakarta, I figured that I might as well stop to this famous Indonesian island on the way. I hadn’t done much research but had settled for three places to visit throughout the island, Ubud, Lovina and Sanur.

I started with Ubud. I had booked a room in a small guesthouse just off one of the main streets in town. My bookings had been made back in March with the help of the forums on tripadvisor. I also chose to be picked up by the guesthouse’s driver for an extra $20 as I didn’t want to find myself bargaining at the airport with no idea what I’d be negociating.

On the road from the airport to Ubud

The heat that hit me when I got off the plane told me I was in a very different part of the world, and this was proven to me even more so as we drove off from the airport. The ride was a bit more than an hour and the driver changed lanes many times, watching out for the motorbikes that were everywhere, zigzagging their way through. He used his horn on quite a regular basis, mostly to let the motorbikes and scooters know we were coming. We saw one small motorbike mishap but both the driver and passenger seemed ok. While most did wear helmets, some didn’t which surprised me quite a bit.

The road was filled with shops with very words that didn’t mean much to me, except perhaps words like polisi for police.

We finally made it to the Ubud Dream guesthouse. The driver showed me to my room. It was quite spacious with a huge bed. The bathroom was interesting, as it didn’t have a sink so I had to use the shower to wash my hands. But it did have a normal western toilet!

The room was on the top floor so I went down to ask about paying. The owner wasn’t there and this other lady told me to pay when I’d go out. She also gave me a map with restaurant and other suggestions as well as the wi-fi access code. Since I did want to go out and explore, and find water as my body would probably not cope well with the local tap water, I came back wanting to pay. However the lady repeated, “when I’d go out”. I then realised that she meant - when I’d leave, on my last day I would need to pay.

So I headed out and found a convenience store and water. I also heard French and asked what turned out to be Franco-Manitobans about the area and their suggestions. They were heading out the next day for a bike tour so I thought I would look into that option. I then kept on walking up toward the market. On the way I had a few locals asking me if I needed transport. It usually went like this: “ Hello Miss, transport? ” or “ Hello Miss, taxi? ”. I always said no thanks and kept on. I made it to the local market and was overwhelmed with all these people trying to sell me stuff. I did not feel up to the challenge of negotiating so I left quickly.

I also picked up a few brochures, including a couple for the cycling tours and made my way back to the room where I looked up trying to find restaurant recommendations.

I was more or less successful in my online search but headed out around sunset to find food. This time around, I was not only being offered transport but tickets to the various gamelan and dance shows taking place in the local temples that evening.

Food was my priority and I wandered up back near the market and tried to find something that wasn’t too upscale. I found this lantern lit path that lead to an outdoor restaurant overlooking a rather dark river. I picked a table with a thatch roof and stared out into the dark, listening to the sounds of the night and blurbs of conversations at neighbouring tables.

I don’t quite recall what I ordered but there were some vegetables in it and I was surprised that it was served cold. I didn’t mind as it was a warm night and I had it with a Bintang, the local beer that would become a staple of my Balinese evening meals.

After this $5 meal, I made my way back home. I was tired as I had gotten up at 5 am Melbourne time to get my early flight but somehow, I stopped on the way to go and check out one of the temple shows.

I avoided the main spot and ended up picking an all women gamelan troupe called Luh Luwih. Only a handful of spectators were there and those on stage outnumbered us. At first, it was only instrumental (Ujan Mas) until a girls’ troupe came on. Some dancers were better than others and, as I’m sure many have observed before me, there was a lot of focus on hand and eye movement. I believe their first dance was the Gabor as the girls danced with flowers. A man came out for a warrior type dance and came back for what I believe was the bumblebee dance.

Here are a few videos of the performance.

The music was quite entrancing and that, combined with my lack of sleep, made me almost doze off a couple of times. So even though the performance was only about an hour. I was quite delighted when it ended and I was finally able to go to bed. The night had become a bit cooler, and with the ceiling fan and open windows I slept quite well.