Nusa Lembongan and back to Bali

Aaah, this island is on my top 5 list of best islands visited! It may not have been in competition as one of the most beautiful, but just the feelling of the atmosphere here made it such a good experience.

A short boat ride from Gili T, and I arrived at the beach in Lembongan in the afternoon. The company I`d booked the boat ride with also had a transfer to my hotel, and after pushing in too many people in a way to small bemo I was in my hotel to min later.  I was so happy with my choice of hotel, my room was big and open, with a wildly comfy bed. And two meters, literally two meters , from my balcony was the pool. Mmmm, let me stay here forever.  As soon as I`d dropped off my bags I went down to one of the dive shops I`d been recommended and booked a dive for the next day. It was getting dark and late when I returned, so I just had dinner at the hotel and went to bed early.

The next morning I headed over to the dive shop again, and we headed out to the water. It was me, a couple from Australia and a woman from Holland. After a 20 m boat ride we reached our first dive site of the day. It was a drift dive, but the current wasn`t as strong as it was on Gili, so it was easier to stop and look. It was like diving in a completely different world from Gili, the reef here was GORGEOUS! It might have been the best I`ve seen so far 🙂  It was a rather uneventful dive, meaning that there wasn`t anything extraordinary to see.  If you`re diving twice (or more) in one day, you have to wait for a while between dives. We waited about an hour and had lunch before going back in the water. Stunning location yet again, I just love love love to dive!

Several people I`d met on Gili told me about this restaurant that had a movie on every night and if you ate your dinner there, you could watch it for free. So I met this nice girl, Djuna, from Luxenborg in my hotel earlier that day, so we headed off to get some dinner and watch a move together. I mean, this is just the BEST idea ever. They had a couple of place like this in Thailand as well, but on those islands there was always something else to do. On this one on the other hand, it was a quite one and no parties to speak of, so it was the perfect setting after a long day of diving. They had these bean bags to sit on, and it was just perfect. Djuna was also traveling alone, and we found a connection in our travels as she`d also gone to Zim as part of a tour around the southern African countries. Really sweet girl and good company for my days in Lembongan. After the movie I went straight to bed and slept like a baby in my kingsize + bed.

The next morning I`d asked the manager at the hotel if one of the guys could take me to a beach further up the island. I`ll admit it, I`m too scared to rent a scooter and drive. There`s not a lot of traffic on Lembongan, but the left side driving is sure to get me in trouble. So, one of the guys drove me up and we agreed he would pick me up again after a couple of hours. The beach, Dream Beach, was indeed beautiful, but not a dream. Again, not so lucky with the weather so it was mostly cloudy that day. Might have looked better in clear sunlight. The waves here were absolute ape shit crazy 😐 I`ve never come across waves with that kind of power and to go in the ocean I had to wait in between the set and then run in and out before they could catch me. But I had a lot of fun watching people being washed up on shore like ragdolls, sometime in their swimwear and sometimes not 🙂
But not all fun, a woman was being dragged out to sea fast, and three guys had to jump in to save her. After that I didn`t go back in.

Anyway, my ride back came and picked me up again. He had put on A LOT of cologne, and was flirting his ass off. I`ll take it as a compliment, even though he almost ran off the road when I told him I was 29 and unmarried 🙂  I had maybe an hour after lunch before the rains came, and so I just sat in my room and read.

During my day at the beach, the earthquake that hit Nepal was taking place. I got a few concerning messages from my friends back home asking if I was still in Nepal or that they were glad I was out. I hadn`t read the news, but when I did my heart sank in my body and I got physical sick. The first reports didn`t give much information, but I sent a message to all I knew in Nepal and just hoped they would all be safe. As the day went, more and more information was coming out in the media, and the worse it got. I cried and cried and cried. It felt so close, so surreal and awful. Djuna and me went to eat and saw a movie that night as well, but I wasn`t present. All I could think about was Nepal. And every time I read the news, it escaladed and got worse. I was up until I couldn`t keep my eyes open, but even though I was exhausted I didn`t sleep much. And the next morning again, the news was unbearable. I`d booked a dive for the day, but I wasn`t sure if I should go or not. I ended up going, and it was maybe good to have something else to think about for a couple of hours.

The dive was good, I was with the same couple from Australia from the other day, and a Canadian. We had two dives and I managed for a few seconds to distract myself from not breaking down in tears. It`s not a very nice feeling when you`re under water and trying to enjoy your surroundings and it just feels wrong. So even though I knew there wasn`t anything very specific I could do, I would rather sit in front of my computer and read then to go off somewhere and have fun. I`m glad I went for the dive, but was happy when it was over. I got back to the hotel, and there was still no word from anyone that I knew in the affected areas. I talked a lot with Marit, the girl I was in Nepal with, and for the first time in 4 months, I really wanted to go home.

The next day was my last day in Lembongan, and I didn`t feel like doing anything, so for the most part I stayed by the pool or in my room reading the news. I walked down to the harbor to confirm my ticket back to Bali the following day, and then had lunch at Eco Deli two minutes from where I was staying, extremely good ecological food. They day went on rather fast, and so by night time I`d packed and was extremely ready to just leave. I went over to have dinner and watch a movie, and when I came back I finally got word back from Nepal that everybody in our team was safe. I was so extremely relieved and could sleep a little better than the two previous nights.

I got up early the following morning to catch my boat back to Bali. I had a day and a half left here before setting off to my last adventure of the trip. I had somethings I needed to do before leaving,  so I spent most of the time just running around doing errands. I stayed in Seminyak this time, but I must say I liked Ubud better, fewer people and a calmer surrounding.  The hotel I`d booked was one of the cheapest places I could find, but in the same time one of the most beautiful. Just off one of the busy streets, and with a gorgeous pool area, 5 m from my door. But, I was still struggling to enjoy it all, and so when the day came for me to leave and go back to Zimbabwe I couldn`t be happier about it! I`ve been here for two weeks now, I`ll post what I have been up to with Sabona as soon as I`m back from Dopota 🙂

Gili Trawangan

Before I came to Indonesia I had planned to go out to the Gili Islands to dive, as I had heared that these dive sites are some of the best.  I knew that Gili T was the busiest one of them, meaning it would be part mayhem. I still booked a 4 day stay there, and well. Next time I will give it some more thought 🙂

In this island nation there are boats connecting most of the islands, and after just a two hour ride I stepped off the boat in Gili T. First impression, not so good. The beach didn`t look to good, it was just a whole lot of boats everywhere and the water was dirty. And crowded. Second impression stepping off the boat, not so good either. It had absolutely no charm to it, just a whole lot of bars and dive shops. I checked in at Manta Dive where I had booked my stay and planned to dive with. That was good though, I had a sweet bungalow with a beautiful outdoor shower, loved it!

I am struggling to find something to write, cuz I really never fell for this island. The weather was still bad (!!!!), and it was raining every day at some point. Maybe that made the whole thing just a little bit more miserable. But in anyway, I had some amazing diving experiences, so let me tell you about them 🙂

Day 1, first dive:  My divemaster for all dives on Gili was Adi, an awesome guy from Gili Air. Together with three other girls we headed out to Haans Reef, 20 min from Gili T. It had been over a month since my last dive, but it was all fresh in mind and I was stocked about getting in the water again. Rolling off the boat into the water is such a good feeling, and descending to the bottom is AWESOME! The site itself wasn`t the best I`ve seen, mostly just rocks and sand. But in the beginning I was working on my buoyancy so I didn`t mind too much. We were in the water for almost an hour, even though I thought I was running low on air way to fast. During the dive we saw turtles, a cowfish (this was apparently rare, so lucky me), boxfish, moray eel, stingrays and scorpion fish. It was awesome 😀 Later that night me and the girls went out for a dinner and some drinks. They were all traveling alone as well, but had stayed on the island for a couple of months training to become divemasters. I actually meet mostly girls who are traveling alone, and very few guys who do the same. Guys usually travel in packs. So on that note I`m simply gonna conclude with the fact that girls are tougher than boys 🙂

Day 2, second dive: Adi and me were ready again, and with a new team of divers we headed out to Manta Point. Deceiving name, as mantas are rare to come across here. In anyway,  learning from the previous day I improved a lot on my breathing and the air lasted me longer. This was only my 11^th dive in all, so still a very fresh diver with lots to learn. The reef surrounding the Gilis isn`t in a very good shape, as dynamite fishing has been practiced in the area. Luckily they don`t do it anymore, but it take ages for the reef to grow back again. But Manta Point was better than the day before. This dive was fantastic too, Adi was great at spotting stuff, and so he found a baby shark sleeping in a small cave. So cool!! We saw a bigger shark sleeping as well, love it! I thought I would be very scared, but as long as you let them be they won`t hurt you. We also saw turtles and cuttlefish which Adi irritated enough so it inked 😛 If you play with them they change in colors, but this one was just in a bad mood.

Day 3, third dive: This day I was almost sure they would cancel the dive. I had gone to the beach early to tan a bit, but after only an hour it started to pour down, and by pour I mean buckets. I was stuck in a cafè for more than two hours while it was thundering and the rain never seemed to want to stop. During a small window of no rain I ran back to the diveshop, just in time for a new shower. Luckily it stopped completely about half an hour before our dive. This time it was only Adi and me diving, and I managed to use my air so well that we were under for 60 min, and I still had plenty of air left when we got back up. We were at Bonte Wreck just off Gili Meno. It wasn`t a proper wreck, but a huge sunken platform of some sort. It was really beautiful though, lot of soft corals growing on it. As we were drifting along the wreck, Adi wanted us to swim through a whole and not over it. I was sure I would be able to just glide right through, but a smaaaaall miscalculation on how fare I actually was from the top and Adi had to pull me through so I wouldn`t damage the tank. He was laughing so hard he had to remove his regulator and just let some bubbles out 🙂  On this dive we saw several sharks again, boxfish, angelfish, a school of long finned batfish, triggerfish, Nemos (clownfish) and moray eels. And there are always tons of other tropical beautilful fish around, like swimming in an aquarium. If you take the time to google some of them you might get the kind of jealous I want you to be 😉

Day 4, fourth and fifth dive: I wanted as much experience as I could, so I had two dives on my last day. The first one we went to Meno Wall together with a sweet couple from Canada. This was by far the dive with the hardest current, and so we just drifted along the bottom. When you want to see cool small stuff you really have to push against the currents, and Ludo (my instructor in Thailand) told me never to wave around with my hands to try to control my buoyancy. Well. That was just impossible with this current, I was either sinking like a stone or floating like a piece of wood when I tried not to wave. In anyway, this was also a very good dive, more turtles, Nemos, batfish, angelfish (my favorite) scorpinfish, lionfish and stonefish.
On the fifth dive we went to Halik. Just me and Adi again, and we had one of the best dives I have ever had. In the shallows it was absolutely stunning, the reef was healthy and amazing and with so many cool things to see! We saw an octopus on the move, changing colors as he gracefully swam across the seabed, we met a cuttlefish in the mood for some games and it changed into so many different colors as Adi was teasing it, turtles (love love love turtles and never get tired of seeing them in the ocean), titan triggerfish, lionfish, and as the grand finale: A HUGE swimming moray eel! I have only seen them in caves before, holy cow it was so awesome to see it on the move 🙂

The next day I left Gili T, and I don`t think I have been this ready to leave a place on this trip. We just didn`t connect, and that`s just the way it is. I regret not going to Gili Air, but I will have to do that the next time I find myself in Indonesia 🙂

Next time: Nusa Lembongan.

 

Bali – Ubud

For you who are reading this and thinks that I have this traveling thing all figured out, here something for you to laugh about (And I can only tell this story now because time heals all wounds, and I can now laugh at it too):  When I was leaving Kathmandu I went to the counter at the airport and gave the nice lady from Jet Airways my passport, and waited for her to check me in. She asks me for a visa, and I politely told her that I didn`t need a visa for Indonesia, I would get in on arrival. She looks at me firmly and says: “ Madam, your TRANSITvisa to India. You are flying from Delhi to Chennai and need a transitvisa in order for me to check you in”.

I instantly felt sick, cuz I knew I was in deep shit. I swear, before leaving home I checked all those god damn visa rules for the countries I was going to, and managed to misinterpret India`s rules. From what I could remember, as long as you were staying no more than 24 hours in transit you would be fine. Of course that was the international transit, in the domestic you are actually entering India. Sooo, there I was, there was no way they could let me on the plane, and their office had just closed and she couldn`t call anybody to rebook in me on a flight directly out of India. Great. Great. GREAT! I feel so bad for everybody around me cuz there was so many not good word coming out of my mouth. And just as you know, we were 3 people doing the same mistake. I`m not the only idiot traveling 🙂  And to make this story short, the very nice people from Qatar Airways managed to book me on a flight to Doha and then to Bali. A hard lesson learned that was.

Anyway, after the all the hard activity in Nepal, I was more than ready to have some time off in Indonesia. The original plan was to stay for 4 weeks, but after I had changed my plan to go back to Zimbabwe I was left with 2 ½ weeks. So to start with I needed to get away from people, and do absolutely nothing. I found a beautiful and quiet place in Ubud, located in Bali. And it really was perfect, off from the center of Ubud, and not a lot of other people. Just this nice couple who was on their honeymoon. Very thin walls in this place…..
The resort was located in the lush green hills of Ubud, viewing down on the river and some rice terraces. Absolutely stunning! I instantly fell back in to island coma, oh sweet state of mind how I have missed you.

One of my all-time favorite movies is Eat Pray Love, and so I had somewhat of a very romantic and rustic view of how Ubud would be. And from what I have already learned on this trip, I should have known that the world is so traveled now, you will hardly find a place that isn`t crowded with people. And so it didn`t live up to my extreme expectations, but still a beautiful place. On every corner you`ll find a temple, and it`s the good kind of temple. Not the kitchy-old-mixed-with-all-that-glitter-and-shines-kind of temples, but the beautiful architect and proper old with moss growing on them,   surrounded with water, flowers and small offerings.
The main street was just as any other main tourist street: Shops, restaurants, cafès, street sellers, taxi drivers on every corner, and so on. I had three trips in to town and just walked around for some time. So hot. Too hot. I ran in and out of every shop I could spot with an air con so I could cool down and keep it going a little bit more.

I only went to one really touristy thing, The Sacred Monkey Forest, a nature reserve and Hindu temple complex in the middle of Ubud.  I`m having a hard time learning on this trip, and so I walked the 25 min down from where the taxi dropped me off. “It`s gonna be great, then I`ll get to see more of Ubud”. Idiot. It is too freaking humid to be walking around, I know this! So all sweated out I arrived and walked around there for an hour or so. Beautiful place and hundreds of monkeys all over! Afterwards I found a restaurant overlooking a temple and a pond of lotus flowers and tried my best to calm down and try to stop my face from melting.

My hotel was about 15 min drive from central Ubud, and there are taxies lined up everywhere so finding a ride wasn`t hard. The hard part was finding a taxi driver who would just drive you, ask you nicely where you are from and leave it at that. I first got the very direct harassing driver: “ You need man for tonight with happy ending, you call Wayan. You want pill first I get”. First of all: F*** you. Second of all: Drugs? I don’t even freaking do drugs back home, but in Indonesia where they sentence you to death for drugs, yeah this would be a good place to start. I then got the more subtle harassing one: “you very pretty lady, I`m very lonely man”. And the ever so sweet handshake where they poke you with their finger, meaning; Sex.
No. Hell no.
Reading up on Indonesia in Lonely Planet they said that Bali was one of the best places to travel as a single woman, abut ya`ll better rewrite that section. I haven`t gotten so many comments, offers and looks in any other country so far. Boys, tuck your shit in and keep your god damn mouth closed.

Despite the bullshit, I really loved being in Ubud 🙂

For the last day I confined myself to the pool during the hottest hours of the day, mustn’t forget to work on that tan. To my surprise the weather wasn`t on my side at all. It rained every day, either in the morning or in the evening. While at first I was desperate and thinking this would ruin my whole stay, it was rather nice to have it cool down, and not feeling guilty about doing absolutely nothing. So, true to form it started raining right after lunch. I had already tried some of the restaurants LP recommends in Ubud, but I was saving Three Monkeys until the last night. Amazing restaurant overlooking rice terraces and off the busy street in a calming atmosphere. I treated myself to a very good dinner and a Bloody Mary. Perfect ending to my Ubud experience 🙂

Next up, Gili Trawangan.