Life in Uluwatu, staying at Manta, again, is really chill during this time while I wait for my passport to come back with my renewed visa. Chill mornings, work in cafes, and sunset swims. Caught some incredible sunsets at Bingin beach with Griffin and John, natural pools there are deep enough for swimming and cold beers are served right on the sand.
Did manage to find an amazing local street food joint with Ruth and Vanessa for chicken and lamb sate. On the side of the road is a man grilling meat on a stick over a long coal burning grill, the exact dimensions of the sate. People ride up on their scooters and take a bunch of food to go in plastic bags. We order and sit down in the little seating area behind the grill. They come in servings of ten with peanut sauce and other hot sauces plus rice. I ordered 10 lamb and 10 chicken, sweet and tangy and juicy. I loved the lamb, the fat dripping down the stick onto my hands, felt like real meat (I’ve eaten very little red meat here.) The smoke from the grill wafts into the little hut behind where we sit to eat so after a few minutes we are totally smoked out and have to run out to the road for fresh breaths. Some breeze moves the smoke away and we can get back and eat at the table until the next waft comes in to smoke us out again.
The waves are small, I have a few sessions at small Uluwatu up at Secrets that were cool but nothing really to write home about. Totally uneventful, hard reality of flat waves after G-Land pumped dawns on me. Made my way to Nyang Nyang, one of the main swell magnets of the Bukit, and it was a sketchy shoulder high right that lasted 3 seconds, kick out over a shallow slab of reef. Caught a few with John but after 30 minutes around 10 local Balinese pros paddled out and took every wave. This really must have been the only wave breaking in this zone if all these guys came. Not worth it.
Feeling ready to leave Uluwatu and get a change of scenery. When the surf is pumping, this place is awesome and so much fun, Disneyland for surfing, just focused on getting good waves. Unfortunately, when the swell goes flat, Disneyland for surfing isn’t exactly what I love. It feels too built up and busy with traffic, influencer type characters looking for acai bowls, working out, partying at night etc. All good, but starting to feel like same shit everyday. I feel kinda trapped without my passport, can’t really move and get to other islands/ make flights til it’s returned to me. While the surf goes dormant it is time for me to see another side of Bali that isn’t wave focused. I book 6 nights in Ubud, the cultural and spiritual center of Bali up in the mountains, the cradle of the ancient Balinese civilization. This zone of the island is exactly what a non-surfer thinks of when they’re told to picture Bali: rice fields, temples, waterfalls, volcanos, yoga retreats. I’ve heard it is a little touristy but with my scooter I can roam around the area and check out different sights, kind of use my hotel in Ubud as my homebase for day trips around.
Woke up nice and refreshed ready to get out to Ubud and get a change of scenery. Thank God Made is back, she’s been sick for the past week and not at work. She’s basically the reason I booked with Manta when I came back from G-Land, and I’ve missed her cooking. Have a big ol’ breakfast from her and head over to John and Griffin’s house to drop off my boards and my luggage. Only gonna take my small backpack with me.
Two and a half hour motorcycle ride through Denpassar and up the hill up to Ubud. I’ve been around Denpassar a little on a gojek once and taxi another time and I thought the ride through the city would be a fun adventure. It actually ended up being kinda gnarly. It’s super crowded, dusty, dirty, and smoggy. You kind of move through town by leap-forgging cars or trucks that take up the whole lane, the entire time drinking the exhaust of the car in front of you as they go at a snail’s pace, then you have to kinda skurt around them just to get into the next pile up of scooters and motorcycles. Then you have the heat of the day pounding down, I wore a long sleeve and sunblock because I knew I might get caught in the sun for a while. Constant stops to check the map on my phone to make sure I was going the right way. Got out of the city covered in dust and sweat, dehydrated.
Getting out of the city is a great scene change. As you get out of the main freeways and begin the climb up to Ubud, you see more greenery and all kinds of sweet statues of Hindu deities and symbols in shops by the side of the road. Statues of half man half ape, half this half that, lions and dragonlike creatures, some holding swords, it’s really cool. Every 2 minutes it seems like there is a temple. Back in Uluwatu all houses have shrines with offerings out front, really beautiful. Over here there are constant temples and people coming in and out of them, sometimes women with food spilling onto the street. Everytime I stop to check the map on my phone it’s in the shade of a temple. Now I’m feeling like this is the cultural center of Bali. The drive in is cooler as the area is jungly and lush and tall trees cover the road.
Bustling little town, checked in at my lovely hotel, Padma Homestay, with lush gardens, and ate a fantastic meal for dinner, at Mendes Warung. A kind of Javanese BBQ chicken with rice and pickled green bean salad. My drink was a local cinamon, ginger, lemongrass-like tea served cold, called Wedang Secang, the server recommended it to me. Super delicious it was kinda sweet, and spicy in a cinnamon way, very refreshing. Ended up being a spontaneous dank culinary experience here first meal in Ubud.
Took a nice stroll around town and ended up on a beautiful little nature walk up along a path that climbs up through nice Ubud environments. Although my plan is to scooter around to cool zones around for day trips while I’m here, after that drive through Denpasar, no way I was getting back on my bike. At first the walk was along this ridge with ravines on either side of me, streams flowing through them below. Further up the ridge sort of plateaus and rice paddies grid the land. There are little shacks and villas all around, probably for tourists to sleep and wake up with a view of the rice field, but they’re still nice looking. That’s the vibe here, tourists, like me, come here to take photos of this scenery and enjoy the abundant beauty of this area.
Cruised out of the house around 10am and did a nice big loop around Ubud, didn’t get home til 5:30-6. Started at a warung in town and did some work, breakfast turned into lunch. Spent most of the day in the more developed part of town with shops and restaurants. It's pretty touristy but there are some beautiful homes in nooks and crannies around. It kind of reminds me of Rionegro or El Peñol, Colombia, busy towns, not much charm, packed as hell when you go through them, but incredible landscapes all around the outsides. Uluwatu is touristy in a young and hip, influencer and surfer kind of way, Ubud is more of a traditional type of tourist: older white families with backpacks, sneakers, and cameras walking around and sightseeing, following a guide around culturally significant areas. Across the street I went to check out a big temple in the center of Ubud. The temple is beautiful, there are intricate stone carvings everywhere, golden arches and worship areas. At every doorway are two big statues of beasts, I think might be gods, half man half monkey or half frog, things like this, really cool.
Took a long lap around town and got to the Sacred Monkey Forest in the outskirts of town. Super lush jungle with monkeys everywhere, I imagine that this is what all the valleys here must have looked like before the development or maybe the trees were cut for the rice fields. The place is pretty touristy, you pay an entrance fee to get in, but it is pretty damn worth it. The walk is lovely through the preserved jungle, there’s literally 1000 super tame monkeys, cared for and well fed. Moms with babies and whole communities of monkeys. Thus far across Indo I have not been into the monkeys, I even fear them a bit. In Lombok where I first encountered them I realized they weren’t that chill. In Uluwatu I found them to hiss and pump fake you, forget about staring too long. In G-land they’ve been living off of surfers since the 70s so they wait by camp and run in the kitchen to steal stuff. They sit on the top of the cabins waiting for someone to leave their door unlocked so they can run in and take what they can, apparently they love pills. If an alpha male is sitting on the pathway, I take a different path. Here they are more docile and calm around people, every now and then they’ll jump on someone, I’d be terrified, the person would be startled and then it would just jump off in a harmless way, kinda funny. There are stone sculptures of monkeys, obviously, everywhere in various positions as well as the occasional pig and bird, animals of the forest. There are a few temples too and many beautiful shrines around, closed to tourists, that locals come to pray at as well as a cemetery where people are buried before they are cremated. At the entrance to the cemetery is the gnarliest statue of a beast with its tits out, flaming flowers on its tongue, standing on top of a skull. Lots of good monkey and people watching here in the cool shade away from the cars, heat, and hustle of the town.
Heading home I ate some street food from a cart that a bunch of workers were ordering from. Most people out here speak English, this dude serving the food did not. It was basically an Indo matzo ball soup with spicy meat in the balls. Some are fried and others boiled in a gourd of chicken broth with a bunch of noodles and chives. Was pretty dang good, nice fuel after walking around sweaty through the forest. After a few minutes of eating it gets more and more spicy and now I’m fully sweating and panting as I rest. Real nice day, a cool people/monkey watching day, thankful to never get on my scooter.
Oct 25
Today I got out of the town of Ubud and headed for the Tirta Empul Water Temple but it got so hot that I hit Suwat Waterfall on the way and decided to spend the heat of the day there and hit the temple later. To get there I went through the countryside and got a cool look at how the people here actually live in this beautiful scenery. From the road, the front of every house looks like a mini temple, the Balinese architecture with the up-curled tips of the roofs, peer through the gates behind and you can see living quarters and rooms, and kitchens. Drive on and all of a sudden you get to a ridge overlooking expansive green of rice fields laid out in terraces or big steps going down the valley side, jungle just beyond and below where the rice field isn’t. Then back into another little village, cruising through the mini temples in front all over again. Back and forth. Incredible landscapes to drive through at the pace of a scooter on the way to the waterfall.
The waterfall isn’t that crowded. This whole area around Ubud is littered with waterfalls, some more picturesque and famous than others. This one is pretty low key only like 10 others there. Pay 15k to the caretakers at the entrance and walk down a nice little, well maintained path down some steps to the watering hole. It’s a really cool setup: a stream of water flows from a step in the jungle above onto a pointed rock shaped like a sharktooth 15 feet high sitting in the pool below. You can climb onto the rock while getting lightly splashed by the waterfall and then jump off for a fun little moment. Good times, good jumps, pretty magical little spot. A couple of British 20 year olds were practicing their backflips and gainers.
Head out on my way to the water temple and stop for lunch. Delicious grilled fish, covered in sweet, spicy sauce. The skin is crispy and sticky from the sauce and the meat is juicy and delicate, cooked to perfection. Eat it with some rice and a cold coca cola after being in the heat again. Served with a red spicy chili oil that you douse on to your content, all for 60k, 4usd. The fish was big enough to be filling but small enough to eat right through some of the bones. I ate the entire thing.
This Ubud area is pretty much made of 3 or 4 watersheds that run north south and come down from the mountains, at the top are big lakes, specifically Lake Batur. Following the watersheds are 3 main roads going north south through various villages and farmland as I’ve described. Driving on the scooter you are basically on one of those roads or on a mini windy east west road that connects them every so often. These river valleys are the cradle of Balinese civilization and the main reason why this is the epicenter of Balinese culture and so touristy today. Traveling up one of the central ones, halfway up is the Tirta Empul Water Purification Temple.
In ancient Balinese culture the water from Mt Batur and Lake Batur is sacred and flows into pools in the temple where worshippers (and tourists) still come to be cleansed today. To go in the pools you must present an offering and wear a special religious sarong for the bath. In a single file line, worshippers hop into a pool with 30 spouts and one by one, left to right, get rinsed in each spout with a prayer. The temple is beautiful, the water is crystal clear and much colder than the water I was swimming in earlier. It’s pretty dang touristy. The Temple itself is gorgeous, but it seems kinda weird watching locals wait their turn amongst westerners to go for the purification ritual. All other temples I’ve visited, the locals use for prayer and traditions, visitors must stay away from certain parts. Westerners, like me, kinda come and go and check them out as if it was a museum. This, however, is one where westerners can use it and go into the pool and rinse as the locals do. On exiting the temple you cannot leave the way you entered. A security guard makes you go out the side and it takes you to a labyrinth of kiosks for shopping, I almost get lost in there. Locals obviously don’t have to exit that way.
This pretty much encapsulates this area and Bali as a whole. It’s this dichotomy of beauty and incredible culture and cuisine but with so much reliance on tourism. In this case the commercialization of a sacred place in Balinese culture. I’m not really that qualified to critique this, people here need to survive and foreign money is the way to do that, I understand. Just seems to me that you wouldn’t want this much foot traffic through a sacred space or foreigners getting in the way of locals trying to pray.
Ended the day in town because I heard of a place playing live music. Ended up being live salsa that actually turned out to be an assortment of latin hits.
Left Padma on my scooter around noon and drove for an hour straight north, basically all uphill to Nungnung waterfall. For a while I kinda go around this town, it’s slow going and dusty, pretty shitty. I thought this was going to be a beautiful drive up in the countryside and mountains. The final 3rd or so portion of the drive is exactly that. Beautiful climbing switchbacks with streams on either side of you as you cross ridges. Look over to the side, rice fields in terraces stepping their way down the valley. Go around a corner and you're in a lush jungle tunnel of trees over the road. Go over a bridge and far below is a creek, sometimes with waterfalls, underneath. So many times on this drive I have to stop for photos of these scenes, dramatic landscapes of mountainsides mixed with the jungle and the softness of the light green rice fields mixed in.
Make it to the waterfall. Pay a dude 20k to get in and then it is 400 stairs, a long and steep staircase, down a lush ravine to get to the watering hole. “Oh man, the way back up is gonna suck.” The waterfall is a big powerful beast of a stream that rushes into a shallow pool, exploding water all around. The zone is like a donut, where the water lets out from up top into an amphitheater type bowl of verdant jungle walls. There weren’t that many people there for some reason. On this super hot day, this area is nice and cool due to the spray being whipped up by the wind of force from the impact of this rushing water. All around is damp. In the water I tried to get as close to the impact as possible but the force of the explosion kept me from nearing it. I got kind of close swimming my hardest to feel the waterfall but the current away was too strong. Raw energy in this sanctuary is strangely relaxing.
This Moroccan dude, Anas, is taking photos of the scene and gets some pics of me with the waterfall in the background. He’s here traveling on his own, his wife and kids are back in Morocco, in the Casablanca area. After chilling for a while and striking up a conversation, I’m hungry, “lets find some food. These stairs are gonna suck though.” “Don't you worry,” he says. “Are you ready for 400 stairs up?” “Don't get to into the details, we’ll make it up, haha.” Made a pact to take no breaks and head up in one go.
Unfortunately there wasn’t any real food at the top of the path, just snacks, so we cruised around ‘til we got to a warung on the top of a hill. Spicy BBQ chicken with rice, he gets kinda the same thing but with fish, and a nice view of the greenery beyond. Super lively, social dude, probably my age, excited about his trip, tries all new food he sees. He spotted a local drink on the menu, Temulawak, and insisted that we both give it a try, not before making sure first that it wasn’t alcoholic. It ended up being like a non-bubbly root beer/cream soda, definitely won't be getting it again, it must be made of the root in root beer. Real nice, friendly meal with a new friend. He came from Kuala Lumpur, he works in textiles, he buys and sells fabrics to and from factories. He says he can't afford to buy clothes in Morocco for his family so when he’s in Malaysia he buys them all new clothes. For example, his New Balance 2002 sneakers he loves cost $400 at home but in Malaysia it is $90. He works his ass off so that his wife doesn’t need a job and she can just focus on raising his two kids. Right now, he’s just here in Bali for a few days of sightseeing. He had a couple weird takes on materialism and women but overall we had a pleasant enough time eating. A little dog showed up and got the fish bones/scraps, the dog ate everything, Anas thought it was hilarious when he ate the fish head. We go our separate ways, he tells me, “Allah be with you forever. You are good young man, the kind that would be famous in heaven.” It’s a compliment but the translation from Arabic to English didn’t quite make sense. Kinda funny to think that I spent 12 days in Morocco last year and hardly was able to make a connection with a Moroccan for whatever reason. One year later by the side of an epic waterfall in Bali I made a Moroccan friend.
Was going to check out this lakeside temple up in the mountains but after throwing it on the map, I realized that it would take me 1hr 20min of driving to get back to my room. Really not down for the mission. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to make it up there and check it out without having to leave the place in the dark. Driving at night can be a little sketchy. One, driving down winding mountain roads at night on a scooter isn’t ideal, but what I’ve found out is that you want eye cover when driving, in my case my sunglasses. Yes it protects you from the sun, but also from all the little debris and dust that’s kicked up off the road from traffic in front of you. Everyone here smokes so cigarette butts or ash fly from cars and scooters and I definitely don’t want one of those in the eye while I’m driving. The options for driving at night are to wear sunglasses for eye protection but with little visibility or just take the dust to the eyes and squint the whole time. Anyways, cut the plan and went back to Padma at a nice slow pace enjoying the views of the countryside at sunset.
Oct 27
Chill lazy morning, nice long Facetime with the family. Got ready and out I went to check out a warung that Tom from Manta recommended, over in one of the eastern watersheds of this zone, and then check out a cool waterfall closeby. On my way, 20 minutes into the drive, I get stopped by Police at a checkpoint. Get pulled over and sent into a little alley off the main road, they make me turn off my bike, and introduce me to the captain. He asks me for my license and explains that he’s charging me 2 million rupiah for not wearing a helmet and not having a proper drivers permit. We begin to haggle, I do not have 2 million I have my 200 that I took for the day, I show him that and he’s not impressed. I open up my wallet and I have a $20 bill. “Hey this is a lot of money, this is what I got. Do you want this or not?” He takes the 20 as well as the 200 rupiah. “Hey man you gotta leave me with something, this is all I have, how am I supposed to get food now?” He begrudgingly gives me back 100 rupiah and sends me off back the way I came. Frick, I can’t turn around and go the way I want to. I guess I’m not going to that warung and waterfall anymore, time to go back to Padma, get some money and make a new plan.
On the hot and dusty drive heading back, halfway home, a white van stops abruptly in front of me, I slam the brakes, and lightly knock into its bumper. “Are you serious?” The dude pulls over. Am I going to have to give this guy money too? I actually have nothing on me right now, don’t know what I’m gonna do here. No one got hurt or anything, my scooter is already super beat up so can’t really tell on my end. He checks the damage and shakes my hand while I apologize. “All good bro, no problem.” Gets back in the van and drives away. I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet. But super rattled, today is not going my way. Decide to fully cancel my plans today, head back to the hotel, jump in the pool and reset. Later I’ll walk into town and work on the journal in a nice cafe.
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