Seminyak and the Not So Pretty Side of Bali

Posted in Bali by Sara

Seminyak is a very popular tourist destination in Bali, and is known for its high-end boutiques and spas, as well as its restaurants and nightlife. About a 20 minute drive from our hotel (but only a $10 cab ride), the husband and I decided to check it out for dinner and drinks one evening while in Bali.

Seats and View of the Indian Ocean from La Plancha Bar

Our first stop was La Plancha, a popular bar on the beach in Seminyak. The “restaurant” basically consists of a bunch of brightly colored bean bags on the beach with wooden end tables between them. It’s a really beautiful, comfy way to relax and enjoy some drinks, not to mention really good people watching.

The hubs enjoying a cocktail

Enjoying the sunset and the company

After enjoying the sunset and a cocktail, we headed down the beach to our dinner spot. As we walked, we ran into a number of stray dogs. All were mangy looking, many of them were also aggressive, scaring even me, a huge animal lover (my dog has more medical specialists than I care to admit). The dogs are a huge issue in Bali; the government estimates that there are 500,000 of them and 4,000 people are bitten each month. I’m glad that I didn’t read this NY Times article about the fate of the stray dogs until after we left Bali, or I probably would have tried to adopt them all. It shows an uglier side to the island, from which the government tries very hard to shelter its tourists.

Selfie attempt

As we walked along the beach, another of the not-so-pretty aspects of the island became apparent. It was just after dusk as we headed down the beach, so the lighting was poor to say the least. I considered taking off my shoes to enjoy the sand in my toes, but quickly realized that doing so was not a good idea. I kept seeing things in the sand, but couldn’t really tell what they were, so I pulled out my cellphone for a closer look, quickly realizing that the beach was covered in trash, most of it plastic. I did a little research and learned that this is a yearly phenomenon that happens during the wet season in Bali. The locals even refer to it as “trash season.” It was a huge reminder of the environmental impact that we have both at home and while traveling. Most of the trash comes not from the locals, but the tourists that flood the island to enjoy its beaches and other natural wonders. Over 3 million people visit the tiny island of Bali each year and the infrastructure is not able to deal with the growing number of tourists that visit. Much of the trash is illegally dumped, and when strong winds come in from the North during the wet season, the trash resurfaces on the very beaches that the tourists flock to Bali to visit. I’ve never seen the environmental impact of tourism displayed so obviously before, and it was a wake up call as to how much impact we are having on our environment. The trash on the beach clearly was not the result of an irresponsible few, but of the millions of people who come to Bali to relax, many forgetting the impact they are having on the local environment. Responsible tourism is so important. If we are going to enjoy places like Bali’s beaches, we need to reduce our consumption and help countries like Indonesia develop the infrastructure to ensure that phenomena such as Bali’s “trash season” stop. We really are trashing our oceans with all the waste we are generating. Read more here.

The beach in Seminyak Covered in Trash (photo courtesy of realbali.com)

Moving on from my we-need-to-stop-wasting-so-much-or-we-will-all-be-swimming-in-trash-soapbox, the husband and I headed from the beach to eat dinner to continue a long tradition that we have while traveling. We’ve never been fond of fancy dinners, often preferring to visit cheaper, local places instead. While we always try to embrace the local food and customs, we always keep a bit of home close, in the form of a burger tradition. It started in Barcelona, Spain, and has continued in every country we’ve visited since; we always try to find the best burger spot in a particular city/country, and Bali was no exception. One of the restaurants that was recommended to us just happened to be a burger restaurant, so we obviously had to check it out.

Outdoor courtyard with cute lights and music

Wacko Burger Cafe from the courtyard

Set in a totally random, hard to find, but quaint little courtyard, Wacko Burger Cafe was our destination. We are both pretty traditional when it comes to burgers; we like beef burgers best, and typically keep it light on the toppings (usually just cheese and onions). Wacko Burger did not disappoint. The restaurant was super cute and the service was great. Most importantly, we both really enjoyed the burger, and the fries, which are just as important as the burger, in my opinion. Neither of us like ketchup, but I am a huge fan of aioli and the husband of hot sauce. If you go, I would definitely recommend trying their Wacko sauce, it was so good I could drink it.

Enjoying a Bintang, an Indonesian Beer

My burger, fries, and the delicious Wacko “special” sauce

The husband’s burger

After a nice night out it was time to head home to get some rest. We had our last day in Bali and a long day of traveling back to London ahead of us. Our first flight was about 9 hours, and went from Bali to Qatar on Qatar Airways (which I would definitely recommend). It was mostly uneventful until they asked for a doctor on board…twice. While I highly doubt that I was the only doctor on board, I was the only one to respond to their multiple requests for assistance, and ended up spending a good portion of my time helping two (thankfully pediatric) patients who weren’t feeling so well. I’m fairly certain that the airline staff thought I was too young to be a doctor as they requested my medical license information before helping the patients (which I obviously didn’t bring with me) so I ended up giving them my NPI number, the only one that I could find after searching through files on my computer for 30 minutes.

Luckily the next flight from Qatar to London was much less eventful, which was good, as I realized during our layover that what I thought were sore muscles from being crammed into a small seat for 9 hours were actually myalgias from an oncoming illness. We arrived home safely, and I spent the next 5 days (including my birthday) in bed in London with a high fever, dizziness, and muscle aches, all of which I’m pretty sure was from the flu. Spending 2.5 weeks straight with the husband was amazing, and it was painful to have him back to work in London, my sickness adding insult to injury. Luckily I was better relatively quickly and able to continue exploring my favorite city in the world…London.

14Mar2015

Rice Terraces, Temples, Black Sand Beaches, and Awkward Encounters

Posted in Bali by Sara

The goal of our trip to Bali was mostly to relax and soak up some sun before heading back to rainy (but still lovely) London. While we wanted to relax, we also wanted to learn a little more about the island and see a few of the sights for which Bali is famous.

We don’t do the big-tour-bus, hoards of people, cruise ship type thing, so we were very grateful to have discovered the site Tours By Locals a few years ago during our trip to Machu Picchu (Edwin was amazing). We’ve used it in Peru, Israel, Croatia, and Bali, and it’s always been great, though I can’t say the same about our guide in Bali. He was the worst we’ve had by far, and I can’t say I would recommend him. He went to school to be a tour guide, and his bio said that he had given tours to a Nobel Prize winner and other important people, so we expected him to be amazing. His bio also said that he spoke fluent English, but he didn’t understand everything that we were saying, nor did I always understand him.

Exploring with my favorite person

This is the inner nerd in me, but I love to learn the history of a place when I’m traveling. We are so isolated in the US, and I hate how little we learn about the history of the rest of the world. I learn so much from traveling and having my own memories to help tie together important events in a country’s (or the world’s) history. I was really disappointed in how little we learned from him about the history of Bali. As a Hindu island in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, I can only imagine that their history is an interesting one.

A temple in a local house that we visited

The guide and his driver picked us up from our hotel early in the morning and we set out to tour the island. Our first stop on the tour was a woodcarving workshop. As we drove through the small towns, it became apparent that each one has a particular material that they specialize in using. The shops of each village were all filled with items made from the same material, such as silver. We could tell when we entered a new town because the store fronts, and the goods spilling into the sidewalks and streets, changed. One minute, the streets were lined with wooden furniture, a few minutes later, they were lined with stone sculptures, and a few minutes later still, with items made of glass.

The woodcarvers in action

It struck me as odd, at first, given that our modern business sense tells us that we should sell items in an area that isn’t already saturated with people selling the same thing, but in the context of the Balinese culture, it makes sense. Balinese families tend to congregate in a particular area, and have a trade that they pass onto their children. As a result, the wood carvers all live and work in the same village, as do the stone carvers. People know which village they need to go to in order to get a particular item, and they also tend to know who is the most skilled in the area. I’m still not sure how all of the craftsmen stay in business as it seems that they are all selling the same stone Buddha sculptures (or any other item made of the material of choice of a particular town
), but it seems to work for them.

After watching the craftsmen hand-carve sculptures out of a block of wood and then stain them, we headed to our next stop, a Balinese temple. Bali is known for its Hindu temples, and it seems as though you can’t drive for more than a few minutes without seeing one. We stopped at Pura Tira Empul, a temple known for its purifying waters, where the Balinese people go to cleanse themselves. For those that are believers, it is said to have healing powers. The husband and our tour guide thought that we, too, should bathe in the purifying waters. Modesty is important in a temple, so we were all given sarongs to wear to cover our legs prior to entering.

The husband looking stylish in his bathing sarong

After changing into our bathing suits in the grossest bathroom I’ve ever seen, and putting on new sarongs especially made for bathing in the waters, it was time to experience the sacred Balinese water. We entered the temple and removed our shoes out of respect. We hopped into the water and got in line behind the first fountain to start the process. The holy water flows from a spring below ground in to a pool above, then it goes through a series of about 14 fountains, and finally flows into the pool in which we were standing. The Balinese give each fountain an offering, pray, and then put their heads under the water. Most also drink the water after dunking their heads, but I was fairly certain that we might get typhoid if we did, so we did not. They move, in order, from one fountain to the next, skipping the second to last, as it’s only for dead people (I didn’t even ask if they actually bring dead people there, it was better not to know). One of the fountains is only for people with bad nightmares, but it seemed that no one skipped that one. Maybe everyone in Bali has nightmares? I’m still having nightmares from the dirt and stench in the bathroom where we changed our clothes at the temple (I’m pretty sure that people just peed on the floor). Maybe our tour guide made the whole nightmare thing up? Who knows.

Fountains Containing the Healing Waters (Image courtesy of trekearth.com)

I could have done without actually getting in the water, and think I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I not succumbed to the pressure. I always feel guilty and disrespectful being a tourist in a holy site that is not my holy site, and this was no exception, especially because most of the bathers were Balinese. It didn’t help that right after jumping in, I happened to notice a needle at the bottom of the pool, and for the rest of the time was paranoid about getting a needle stick in the middle of Bali with no Employee Health department to call for help.

Waiting for our food

Luckily, after visiting the temple, it was time for lunch, so we hopped back into the car. After driving for about 5 minutes, we were in the middle of nowhere, and stopped at a restaurant on the side of the road, D’Alas Warung. It overlooked the rice terraces and served delicious, spicy, Balinese food. The views were beautiful, making this stop one of my favorites on the tour. I could sit and look at those terraces all day and would definitely stop there for lunch if you are near Ubud. They had very clean toilets, too, which were much appreciated after using the grossest toilets I’d ever seen at the temple.

For a minute, we thought that they forgot the rice

There it is! They know how to do rice in Bali

Enjoying the view (not to mention the company :))

After lunch, we headed to see some of the rice terraces. I was really hoping to see some of the larger terraces, but instead we stopped at a smaller one just off the main road. We stopped just long enough for a picture, but not long enough to learn anything about the terraces themselves. I was disappointed that we didn’t learn more about how they grow and harvest their rice, but just seeing the terraces was beautiful.

Rice Terraces in Bali

After a quick drive through Ubud, the cultural heart of Bali, we headed to a black sand beach to relax for a bit. Our tour was supposed to include a walk through Ubud and a visit to the market, but we ran out of time. (We did, however, find the time for a very awkward drop into a spa—more on that later). It was my first visit to a black sand beach, and it did not disappoint. Many Australians visit Bali to surf, and this beach was clearly a popular one. We sat on bean bags (a popular form of beach seating in Bali) and watched the surfers for about an hour.

Mike and our guide

This was by far the best part of the day. The beach was hidden in a totally random spot, was super clean, and I could have lounged at the bar and had cocktails (or cokes) all day, watching the surfers crash into the waves. Our pasty skin sure could have used the sunshine and vitamin D from lounging on the beach all day!

The bar included a pool for swimming

Relaxing after a fun day exploring Bali

After a nice, relaxing time at the beach, we headed back to our hotel. Our guide offered to show us a really nice spa that was on the way home to our hotel. We obliged, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. It turns out that the spa that we stopped at, while it looked nice, had horrible reviews on trip advisor. It seems that all of their business comes from tour guides bringing their (captive) tourists there and try to force them to book services on the spot—the tourists get a “discount” and the tour guides get a kickback from bringing in the business. Our guide was (very) uncomfortably pushy, trying to get us to book a service on the spot, and trying to stall us from leaving so that we would book a service. It was more than a little uncomfortable. Thankfully, the husband is much better at being direct than I am, and he held his ground, making up some story about us having plans for the other days. Despite our guide leaving much to be desired, the people of Bali are among the kindest I’ve encountered while traveling, and we loved our day of exploring on the island.

2Mar2015

Bali: Homemade Alcohol, Massages, and Flowers in our Hair

Posted in Bali by Sara

Since we got 3-4 inches of snow today in Columbus and I’m seriously missing London at the moment, I thought that continuing to talk about warmer, more tropical destinations would be appropriate. After Perth, the husband and I hopped on a flight and, in about three hours, were in Bali. Bali is a predominantly Hindu island, while the archipelago of Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world (12.7% of all Muslims). Only 1.7% of Indonesians are Hindu, but 83.5% of the Balinese practice Hinduism. I knew nothing about the Balinese culture before landing in Bali and was excited to learn more. We were very thankful that our AirAsia flight landed safely and were ready for some relaxation.

Our View for the Week

The husband and I seem to have a propensity for visiting The Bachelor filming locations in the time between the filming of the episode in the location and its airing on tv. We stayed in the same hotel room as Ben Flajnik at The W Hotel in Vieques, Puerto Rico (you know, the one where he and Courtney Robertson spent some “alone time”). We were so glad that we didn’t know that they had been there just weeks before while we were staying there (gross !!). This time we just stayed in the same area of Bali that Chris and his women visited, not in the same room, thankfully!

Nusa Dua Beach at Our Hotel, Also Where The Bachelor Was Filmed

We stayed in Nusa Dua, at The Laguna Resort. The husband has a lot of Starwood points from all the traveling that he does for work, so we used those to “pay” for the hotel (aka to stay for free). We were choosing between the nearby Westin and The Laguna, as we could use points for either one. While The Westin was brand new, it was also teeming with children, and we were glad with our choice of the more adult friendly Laguna. Breakfast was buffet-style and included a European breakfast, an Indonesian breakfast, an American breakfast, sushi, chicken, you name it, it was there and it was delicious. We tried all kinds of new fruits each morning. The only fruit I can remember at the moment was the jackfruit, but I assure you, there were more fruits available that I didn’t know than ones that I knew. The hotel gets its name from the lagunas that snake around the resort; some of the rooms even have direct access to them lagunas from their rooms. There is also typical chlorine-filled pool right next to the beach. The beach is clean and the surf is calm, making for a perfect place to sit in the sun and read a good book, which is just what we did.

Freshwater Pool at The Laguna

Nusa Dua is a resort-filled area of the island. It does not give a vibe of the “real Bali” but is a very nice place to rest and relax. There is a security checkpoint when you drive into the town and when you get to the hotel itself, despite the fact that the area feels incredibly safe already. There were horrible bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005 that killed a number of tourists and severely affected the tourism industry in Bali. Tourism accounts for 80% of Bali’s economy, so making sure that tourists feel safe and still want to visit the island is of huge importance to the Balinese economy. Luckily, Bali has been able to recover from these attacks and the tourism industry is back in full swing. We spent about 5 days and 5 nights on the island, using most of them to relax and recharge before heading back to London.

Part of the Laguna at The Laguna

One of the best parts about Bali is how cheap things are. The husband and I went to a spa where we got 90 minute couples massages for $45 each, including tips. The exchange rate at the time that we went was about 12,500 Indonesian Rupiahs per US dollar. This translates to a giant wad of cash in your pocket that probably amounts to no more than $20 US. I would definitely not recommend leaving Bali without getting at least one spa treatment or massage. They have all sorts of traditional Balinese services, but we went for the massage in lieu of things like an aromatic floral bath or scrub. Do note, however, that they get a little more “personal” with their massages than they do in the US. It wasn’t so personal that it was creepy, but still, good to know before you go.

Another Area of the Pools at The Laguna

One of my favorite experiences in Bali was our first dinner out, at a typical Balinese restaurant called Bumbu Bali, which also houses a cooking school. It is not typical to eat out in the traditional Balinese culture, so it can be difficult to find authentic food that hasn’t been modified for tourists. This restaurant was started with the idea of opening the traditional Balinese home to tourists so that they can try traditional Balinese food.

The restaurant exemplifies just how nice the Balinese people are in general. (Seriously, everyone was so nice, I just wanted to hug them). First, the restaurant picks you up and drops you off at your hotel for free. When you enter the open-air restaurant, the whole kitchen (which is open and located at the front of the restaurant), shouts hello to welcome you. I was so surprised, initially, that I thought that something was wrong, or that someone more important than us was arriving behind us. I quickly realized that they were simply greeting us, and that’s just what they do. The hostess gave both the husband and I a flower for our hair and then took us to our table where we were given Balinese crackers.

The Husband with His Flower in His Hair

Spirits in Indonesia are legal but carry 300-400% tax, making it cost prohibitive to drink them. One way around this for the Balinese is the homemade alcohol, Arak, which can be up to 70% alcohol. I would highly recommend against trying it unless you know the person who made it, or unless it is at a reputable place, as the alcohol content can be extremely varied depending on the quality of the distillation/production process. That being said, the husband drank the Arak at Bumbu Bali, which seemed like the safest place on the island to try it, and really enjoyed it.

We started off our meal with an appetizer, Ayam Sambel Matah, which is a shredded chicken with a lemongrass and shallot dressing. We also had a soup (yes, even in the hot weather), sop ayam. It is a Balinese soup with chicken, vegetables, rice noodles, and egg. Both were delicious, but despite not being marked as spicy, both made my mouth feel like it was literally on fire. It was, by far, the spiciest food I had ever eaten in my life. I think that I accidentally ate a piece of pepper in my first bite of Ayam Sambel Matah, though, and there was no getting rid of it for the rest of the meal. The husband thought I was crazy and that neither dish was even in the least bit spicy.

Part of our Delicious Spread at Bumbu Bali

Pork is considered a Balinese specialty and is featured in some of their best dishes. For our main meal we shared the Sate Campur (chicken sate) and the Be Celeng Base Manis, better known in English as the pork in sweet soy sauce. While the satay was good, the pork proved why they say that the Balinese specialty is pork. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Bali is a beautiful island with lovely people and a vibrant, rich culture. While I’m not sure that I would fly around the world to visit the island a second time, I am certainly glad that we visited and were able to take in the culture. We did spend some time outside the resort area of the island, learning more about the local people and their customs, which I’ll tell you about next time!

A Girl, Her Boy, And Their Dog

Category Archives: Bali

Seminyak and the Not So Pretty Side of Bali

Rice Terraces, Temples, Black Sand Beaches, and Awkward Encounters

Bali: Homemade Alcohol, Massages, and Flowers in our Hair