Bouncing around South East Asia: Bali FIN

THE END OF BALI

Thoughts are a little jumbled, excuse spelling, grammer, and any other mistakes.

Shane now had less than 3 days on the island of Bali before he was heading back to California, which ment I had 4 days left. So we decided we wanted to continue exploring the island as we could make it back to Kuta, the capital city within half a days time from just about anywhere on this island. So picking out some obscure names on a map of bali in the north that looked like the would be a challenge to get to we rented a pair of motorbikes for 2 days and set out riding. Renting them from the town we were staying in, Candidasa, required us to return there, but since it was on the way back to the airport it seamed logical. Motorbikes get a bad rap on the internet about how dangerous it is in Bali and it’s not recommended to use them. Well, after you get over the chaos of their traffic system its actually quite nice and I would highly encourage anyone to do so. It’s $4 for the daily rental and petrol is $1 per liter so it’s pretty easy and cheap to get around and far outweighs getting taxis everywhere. I wish we had just rented bikes the entire time we were in bali and probably would have saved 50-75% of our getting around expenses.

Anyway, so around 8:30 we had all of our belongings on our backs and set off in search of adventure and white sand beaches. Well, that lasted about an hour maybe 1.5 hours before we stopped to get some petrol, at which point, (I’m not really sure exactly how it happened) when we were leaving the gas station, we somehow got separated. Different sides of the story explain it with slight variations but about an hour later we were no closer to finding each other and I decided I would find him when I settled in somewhere for the night with Wifi. I had heard about a place called white sand beach and read through the directions of how to get there several times because it was extremely easy to miss. Eventually after passing it the first time I doubled back and turned down a long narrow road that eventually spit out into a large parking area shaded with tropical foliage. I also paid 2000.00 ($.20) to get into the area and it made me realize how little money I had left 50,000.00 ($5) and that I would need to exchange some rather soon.

Well I’ll let the pictures do that talking. The beach was amazing, and only had tourists on one end, the otherside of the 2.3km beach was completely deserted.

So after enjoying the water and eating some snacks I headed back to the back and took off again twisting through the roads towards the north of the island. After 2 or so hours the beaches turned to black sand and the surf was much calmer. I went up into the mountains passing rice terraces and jungle landscape back down to the shore. It was a great experience and the best way to see the country. I was zipping right through traffic and making good time, blasting through all the small towns and heading towards one of the main cities on the north coast of Bali where I decided I’d stay for the night. I arrived and it was a bit of a scarier city than I was comfortable, which made me want to change my plans so after consulting my map for a few minutes I decided on trying for one of the fresh water lakes located inland Bali. I still hadn’t found any money exchange places and my cash had dropped to $3 as I needed a couple fuel stops. Well I backtracked until I found the turn off for the lake and then only made it about 25 minutes until I was met with an extremely heavy downpour. That was enough to turn me around again as I had all my belonging in my packpack; including my computer. All of the Balinese simply pulled over on the side of the road and got out their ponchos and then kept on trekking, but unfortunately for me I didn’t have one and there was not much of a town in the area where I met the rain. So long story short, I ended up back tracking and then got caught in the storm again as it had cleared the mountains and come over to the edge of the island. Luckily there were some rundown bungalos that I turned off to try and get some shelter. I was completely soaked in the couple of minutes that it took me to get there. After talking with the owner for a while about how long he though the storm would last or if he had a poncho I could buy I decided to rent a beachfront bungalow for $10usd (because that’s all I had) and spent the night there while the storm passed. The only downside to the bungalos was that I had absolutely no internet connection.

It wasn’t until the next day that I did get a chance to shoot off emails to Shane and we rendezvoused the following day back in Kuta.

More pictures of my solo motorbiking experience

After sending Shane back off to the states I found a nice little beach.

Overall great time in Bali with lots of stuff done and seen.

Unfortunately on the last night of my time there I got a bad fever with cold sweats; enough to make me think I had gotten some time of bad mosquito transmitted disease. But nothing 14 hours of sleep couldn’t cure and I woke up feeling great.