Bali – amusemusings

I think a lot of people know people who’ve been to Bali for their honeymoon. Before visiting, I perhaps had a fear in the back of my head that it’d be me & a bunch of boring newly betrothed couples, but I’d heard great things & since I will most likely never take a honeymoon (sorry mom), I thought this was a great time to visit. I spent nearly 2 weeks exploring the island & it has a lot to offer beyond the beautiful beaches in the South it’s known for including a lush hilly interior region with lovely rice paddies & charming towns featuring hippy yogis, arts & crafts & temples as well as a Northeast coastal region dotted w picturesque fishing villages, 40+ dive sites, stunning views & few tourists. Oh yeah, & it has a TON of backpackers (so fun, social fellow travelers) who come to visit all of the above plus the great surfing. Thankfully.
First stop was Ubud in central Bali, 2 hours drive from airport. I stayed in a lovely private villa with pool overlooking a rice paddy, at a discount bc it was low season, that was a 15-minute beautiful walk into central Ubud, which I soon decided was a shoppers Mecca as it has a ton of local artisans & galleries/museums selling art, yoga gear, unique textiles, clothes, antiques & other goods. The fact that I’m traveling w a pack that I physically have to carry on my back makes it easier to refrain from overindulging when shopping but Ubud tested me. I did cut myself some slack & bought some hippy gear but still enforced my “one-in / one-out” rule & left a few things behind (who needs tennis shoes anyways?). So while it’s a charming area, it’s certainly overrun during the day w a crazy number of tourists. I think they take taxis here from the Southern beaches just for day trips. So there’s lots of traffic, autos, motorbike & foot, on tiny roads. When you’re at shops or restos, servers often ask if you’re staying in Ubud. They tend to react well if you say yes; you get a superior level of service at restaurants & often times further discounts at shops. That tells me locals have grown weary of the day-trippers as they really showed an appreciation for folks actually staying in Ubud. Once the day-trippers clear out in time to get all dolled up for some fine dining & dancing, the town slows down a bit & is much more relaxing. It’s a quiet place at night as places close down pretty early. So I’d have a nice quiet dinner & then stroll back to my villa & spend the night reading or doing trip research while listening to music & hopping in & out of my pool. Nice chill place but bc of the massive amounts of tourists that invade during the day, I sure was ready to go after day 3.
Second stop was Amed on the NE coast, a 3 hour drive from Ubud past tiered rice paddies & through the hills. Amed is a beautiful area dotted w little fishing villages featuring these cool boats called jukungs that are mini outrigger sailboats. I stayed in another beautiful place w villas on a hill overlooking the sea. Amed is known to have the best diving in Bali but few tourists so that was the plan & it delivered. My dive shop in Thailand recommended an Amed dive shop owned & operated by a former dive boat manager who was amazing & organized some cool dives where I saw a giant octopus (that we followed around for awhile), manta rays, a couple sharks (yes!!!), moray eels, etc & a cool wreck of a US ship sunk by a Japanese torpedo in WW2. I also was lucky enough to see perhaps the most beautiful view of the trip as I hopped on back of my dive pro’s motorbike & headed 30 minutes outside of Amed proper to a viewpoint on the Eastern-most point of Bali overlooking a gorgeous black sand/pebble beach lined w jukungs & the picturesque little island of Gili Selang. Stunning views.
Finally Nusa Dua, the last stop in Bali for some R&R on the beach, was a 3.5 hour drive south from Amed. I decided to skip Kuta & Seminyak… two of the most high profile spots on Bali & where everyone flocks for beaches, nightlife, etc. It’s supposedly crazy & real jammed w tourists so not quite my thing. Nusa Dua is a quieter beach locale featuring fancy resorts so I used my hotel points & it was more of the same relaxation, paddle board, kayak, reading time. While staying at luxury properties is nice, you find a certain kind of traveler – one who is relatively well off, on holiday & often still in work-mode so on email or calls while the wife, girlfriend or family is entertaining themselves on the beach. You also find the honeymooners. All of these folks are looking for total isolation both physically, as these fancy resorts are located on gorgeous remote beaches enticing you to just stay put all week long, & socially, as the guests are not looking to meet other people (& they’re also missing out on the best of Bali… these are the day-trippers if they dare to venture off their sun loungers). There aren’t too many people doing what I’m doing & staying at these joints. This clientele is very different from who you get when you stay at a mid-range place in the middle of the action. There you find fellow travelers on extended trips, often solo travelers, interested in meeting new people & who are generally in a very happy place in their life, thus inviting interesting conversation. So while I’ve used the luxury properties as a welcome break to really relax & enjoy the sea & do some trip-planning on good wifi, I strongly prefer the mid-range social hotels/guest houses as they’re a lot more fun.