Bali & Lombok

Sascha and me just came back from our Bali trip - 3 weeks Indonesia, of which 2 weeks Bali and one week chilling on the Gilli Islands (Gilli Air), a group of tiny islands just off Lombok.

The trip via Singapore was pretty long but the flight connection was good therefore the about 16 hours of traveling weren´t too bad in the end! We got picked up at Bali airport - first thought: it´s damn hot and humid! We get taken to our hotel (we only booked the first two nights) in Legian, close to well-known Kuta. Jeez what a mess! It was 10ish in the evening when we arrived and everything and everyone was buzzing (& boozing) around. The traffic was crazy and suicidal so we were happy that in the end we decided to not rent a car but to go with the cheap offers of "transport? you want transport?" on every corner. The hotel looks pretty good and might be the best to come in the next weeks as we decided to rather have it basic and "balinese" than staying in some posh surroundings. We even have TV and watch a football match (can´t remember who played) at 3am in the morning. The next two days we simply checked out Legian and Kuta and allowed ourselves to get adapted to the conditions. I can already see myself spending days shopping me silly here - how cheap is that ????

Next place to visit is Ubud, which is the place to "immerse yourself in Bali´s culture." Its also home to some of Bali´s best craftmakers and artists. More shopping ! Our driver, the same guy who picked us up from the airport is taking us away from the coast and into real Bali. By the way it´s funny that like every second person´s name here seems to be "Ketut". Ketut is the guy on the street offering "transport", the receptionist in the hotel, the name of the brother of the husband of the sister of the receptions, who has a real nice restaurant in Jimbaran with "good price" ...there is a Ketut everywhere. Anyway, good for us as the language and other names than that are much harder to pronounce and to remember! So here we go our approx 2 hours to Ubud, in a fancy aircon car. We arrive in town and Ketut offers us a recommendation of a place - the hotel looks amazing and real above what we expect to live in and we are able to bargain and in the end we pay 15 Euro where 55 US where published. We like Ubud, it has a special touch and flair to it. Hords of expats and immigrants from all over (a lot from Germany) live here and obvisouly think the same. We stay two nights, go for real nice food, hang out at the pool and do a little hike around town. Here we see our first ricefields and it makes me realise - it´s Bali !!

From Ubud we decide that now it´s time for some action therefore we book a transfer by bus and boat to the Gilli Islands - a tropical paradise with a trio of tiny coral fringed islands with white sandy beaches and pellucid water - and these are not only the words out of the Lonely Planet - this is real true !! We decide that this can´t be a bad spot for Sascha doing the Open Water Dive Course and for me to do some diving too! So after a journey, which all in all took about the same amount of time as the trip from Frankfurt to Singapore we arrive on Gilli Air. Unfortunately it´s pitch dark, there is no street (no motorbikes or cars on the islands!) so we can only imagine paradise ....after a bit of a search we find a place renting basic bugalows for 5 Euro / night - yep, we can afford that ! So we stay in a place called Abdi Fantastic Bugalows, first row to the beach. Our host´s name is surprisingly NOT Ketut but Dean and he loves German Soccer - good!
So as we fall into the bamboo chairs on our terrace listening to the waves we already know that this was a good decision. The next days Sascha starts with the Open Water Course and I think it´s not a bad idea to accompany him with a short resfresh course so we are in the water together right away. The days on Gilli Air were spent diving ( awesome diving I found: in addition to the well known and common reef fish there was a sea snake (yep, the black-white stripy one), shark, school of huge parrotfish, lots and lots of turtles, frogfish, leavefish (weird animal, see pic above), scorpionfish, blue spotted sting rays, beautifuly nudibranches (see pic above), and well...a lot to see! There was supposed to be the best BBQ-ed fish - surely the freshest so that is what we enjoyed in the evenings. Laying (no chairs here)directly by the sea, listening to the waves and get real good dinner. Along with the fresh fish came really good banana pancakes, banana milkshakes, watermelon juice and lemon juice - quickly our favourits. Indo dishes like Gado Gado, the common Chicken Sate and Nasi Goreng have been tried as well, of course!

After one week of diving, reading, eating and chilling we decide that it´s time to head back to Bali and see some more - under and above the water !
Via Lombok (looked not by far as nice as Bali!)we had to take the bus along the coast to Sengiggi from where the boat leaves to take us back to Bali. The ride through lush valleys, forests, monkeys along the road was nice but Lombok seemed to be not as colorful and "shiny" as Bali. As Hinduism is the predominant religion in Bali there are temples in every village, shrines in every field, offerings made at every corner.
With a news "transport" guy we made our way up the coast to Tulamben - the big attraction here sunk over 60 years ago : the wreck of the US cargo ship Liberty is among the best and most popular dive sites on Bali and we did not want to miss out on that! Tulamben itself is a horrible town, just made and over-developed to suit tourists and the dive industry - so two nights here were more than enaugh. The beach is made of large washed stones, black and vulcanic origin. We decide to go with a local guide who made a good impression on us and go for two dives out to see the wreck (2 dives -> 40 US!)
It was awesome. I haven´t done any real wreck diving before - I saw one around Utila, Honduras but that was rather a small fishing ship than anything else but here it was a wreck of a 120 meter ship ! When we got to the wreck Sascha and me were so focussing on whats coming upfrom that we did not realise that we already swam passed it - turning our heads though almost made me jump (well not real easy under water but you guessed it: it was almost scary!).
Here she is in better days...





Those two dives were amazing and again we saw a lot. Luckily we were staying on site and we went out pretty early so on the first dive we were the only bubble maker there but later on it was amazing how full it got ! The water was packed with divers - our guide told us that in peak times they have up to 500 (!!!) divers per day! ...I wonder how long those corals can live with that .....

From Tulamben we organised the same "transport" guy again. He picked us up from the hotel and along the coast and trough rice paddies we made our way back into the south - but this time we stayed in Sanur, which is opposite to Kuta on the east coats. Sanur was okay but there was just not a lot to do and it was pretty windy therefore in the end we came back to Legian for the last 3 days. We visited Uluwatu temple on the southern tip of the island, where a crazy moneky jumped on my head and stole my sunglasses(got them back in the end), we went out for nice dinner, hung out on the beach, Sascha did a bit of surfing but even Legian beach´s waves made me shudder...jaja I am a coward when it comes to waves.....
There was not a lot of sleep in our last night on Bali - the alam rang at 2:30 am to watch Germany make their way into the Euro Cup final and then it was time to get to the airport. After a long journey, again via Singapore, we finally made it back to Frankfurt - that was yesterday (26th June) which is Sascha´s birthday and that means he had the fortune to enjoy an 30 hrs long birthDAY!

All in all: this might not been the last time to Bali !


xxx Karin

I published a couple of pictures on facebook or as well here in the right side listed Picture Gallery ...more to come !