Bali - the story so far

Kuta

I soon grew tired of Singapore and was perpetually dreaming of Indo perfection and beautiful beaches, so I booked my ticket and left Matt and Singapore behind in search of new adventures. However, my hopes were quickly dashed where upon arrival, I was greeted to torrential downpour. It stayed like this for days and my dreams of beautiful Bali were fading quickly - who would have thought it would rain so much in the wet season!

Kuta itself is a bit of nightmare to navigate. All the streets look the same, the vendors are extremely aggressive and at night prostitutes and ladyboys line the street looking to prey of the vulnerable. It's impossible to walk 5 metres down the road without someone saying "bike boss?"; "massage?"; "transport?"; "dirty porno?". To give you an example, there's guy who sits opposite my hotel who every morning asks me "bike boss?" - even though I'm already sat on my bike. Or anther example is that I'm riding down the road and someone shouts to me "Cheap room?" as if I'm supposed to spin round and agree that is exactly what I'm looking for! Something I also noticed about Kuta is that I may as well be in Newquay with the amount of people I know. I think by the time we leave here, there will have been over 30 people from Newquay. Most of those are also staying in the same hotel as us!

Mushroom Rock and Blackstones

After a few days, the sun decided to show its face and a few of us headed down to Mushroom Rock, a fun righthander, between Nusa Dua and Sri Lanka. My first surf in years proved quite fruitful as I bagged barrel after barrel and I was finally starting to enjoy my time here.

Around the corner from Mushroom is Blackstones which is a lefthander. We surfed here in the afternoon and although it wasn't working properly I did see my first sea snake, which turned out to be absolutely massive. However, with little mouths and rarely aggressive there wasn't much worry about. The next time I surfed balckstones it was almost a completely different wave. A heaving mutant wedge that gave me my first proper indo beating as I got caught in the wrong place and got a solid set on my head, dragging me across the reef and ripping the fins off my feet. A manatee also popped up next to me in the surf here - I cannot stress enough how I nearly s**t myself thinking it was a shark!

Temple tour

Matt finally arrived late February and we got on with some sightseeing. Our first tour was a temple tour. This tour took up pretty much all of the day but it was great to get out of Kuta and start seeing some of the island. Our first stop was Taman Ayun in Mengwi. This was apparently a royal temple that dates back to 1634. Next on the hit list was Ulu Danu (which is pretty much every Bali brochure). Ulu Danu is in the mountain resort of Bratan, in Bendugul, and the temples here appear to rise out of the water. Next we stopped at some rice paddies for a bit to eat before moving onto monkey forest, where we saw yet another temple and lots of monkeys and flying foxes. Our last stop of the journey was Tanah Lot. This temple was built in the 16th century by one of the last priests to come to Bali from Java as is one of the most important sea temples.

Rafting

After our tour it rained some more, and more and then....more. However, we booked a white water rafting excursion that would take us through the jungle. As it turned out there was really that many rapids that caused us any concern but we did stop at one really beautiful waterfall before finishing the course a few miles down and having something to eat. Again, this was a great way to see some of the inner island, that we would have properly not seen otherwise.

Keramas

I have to mention this place, because not only is it the most videoed/photographed surf spot in the last 12 months but I also got some amazing waves here. I don't think the pictures do this place justice. What made it better was that each morning that I went here it was just me a Trigg (H-bay surf guru) out for a while until the crowd caught up. Admittedly we did leave at 5am every morning to beat the crowd!

Nyepi

Nyepi is the Hindu new year (it's now 1930) but rather than celebrate it by throwing a big party they have peace day, where you're not allowed outside and lights aren't allowed on. They pretty much sit in silence and ward off evil spirits. However, we decided to sit in the pool all day playing drinking games. This turned out to be great fun until it was time to find the way back to our rooms in the pitch black. Drew in true drunken form slipped and smashed his head on the concrete. How he didn't crack his head open no-one knows, as EVERYONE in the hotel heard him smack it....still hurts now!

Waterbom park

To kill some time we all headed off to the local waterpark for some thrills on the slides. We thought it was a bit expensive for what it was but it was a really good day out. Also Andy Irons and Joel Parkinson were also there, taking time off from their 'hectic' WCT surf tour, so that was an added bonus. Two of the best surfers in the world seemed more impressed with the splash they created on a slide than they do in the water!

Matt has now moved on to explore the island while Drew is feeling sorry for himself fighting a fever in his room. However, we're hoping to meet up again in a few days and go to the Gili Islands. So there will be more to come.....