Bali Part 2

After our time in the eastern islands of Indonesia, we made our way back to where we started, Bali. We headed to Ubud in the centre of the island and the other main tourist location. Ubud is extremely “zen” to say the least. Everything is organic, there’s yoga everywhere and every hippy on the planet over the age of 30 seems to congregate here. AJ was recovering from her food poisoning and I was just coming down with mine. Our first couple of days would prove to be very slow!

After a couple of days of recuperating, we rented a scooter and checked out the local sites – lots of temples and the infamous monkey forest.

The best part of Ubud for us was all the western food. With so many tourists, they really cater to the west. Usually this would be a bit of a turnoff as we are here to experience the local culture, but after our food poisoning, we were pretty happy to have some familiar food. We took the opportunity to soak in some of the culture and watch a Balinese Kecak Fire Dance performance. 50 people chanting around traditional dancers telling a story, topped off with a dancer putting out a fire with his feet. It was very impressive. 

After a couple of days in Ubud, we moved on to Amed on the east coast. A quiet costal village that consists of one street lined with a couple of home stays and restaurants. The highlight of Amed is the incredible snorkelling. Just a few feet off the coast there are beautiful coral with tons of fish. The visibility was incredible, so we ended up spending most of our days with our faces in the water. We did however, have time to get out to watch the local cockfights. It was very cool to see, and not nearly as gruesome as we expected, virtually no blood. The people in Indonesia are crazy for this stuff. Unfortunately the show was cut short when all of a sudden everyone packed up their chickens and ran away. When we asked what was happening, we were told that someone had been tipped off that the police were coming (cock fights are illegal in Indonesia, even if they are everywhere). 


We were also fortunate enough to crash a local party and be invited to another party with some locals and our new Russian friends! 

After our time in Amed, we moved on to Lovina, another very touristy spot. We took a cooking class here for an afternoon and tried out the local hot spring. The cooking class was great, the hot spring, so not great. Green murky water just isn’t that appealing.

Overall Bali was really nice, albeit extremely touristy. Food was good, accommodations clean and cheap. It was the perfect place to rest up before we would venture into the next island – Java!