Beautiful Bali, I wasn’t sure what to expect from our first stop in Indonesia, but I was sure in for some surprises from our stay. Bali is a medium sized island, one that you could drive across in a day. Even though it is not the largest island to visit, it’s packed with culture, scooters, banana trees, and sights around ever winding turn. One of the main attractions of Bali were the prices. For $30 U.S. a day I could stay in a hostel (with Wi-Fi, AC, and a pool), have a 24 hour scooter rental, an hour long full body massage, and three incredible meals. If my bank account had a mouth, it would be drooling over the new budget I had to live on. One of my absolute favorite things in Bali was the coconuts. For about $1 I could get a coconut full nutritious juice to rehydrate me. Plus, I could then spoon out the soft white meat inside for a snack. I had a least one a day, and I am now confident I could survive solely off of them.
After 4 months of not driving, we decided it would be best to get back on the road on scooters…on the left side off the road…with the craziest yet efficient drivers in the world. After a few hours, we had the hang of it though. Driving in Bali on a scooter is absolutely nothing like driving in America. Basically you throw all rules you have learned in the U.S. out the window and try to fit in like the locals. The roads are dominated by scooters, literally thousands of them. The line down the center of two opposing lanes was only suggested. On many occasions, scooters would be coming down our lane at full speed while passing a vehicle on their side of the road. In Bali, there no stop signs at small/medium intersections. Approaching these intersections you simply slow down, clench your butt cheeks together, send up a little prayer and shoot the gap between the trucks/cars/bikes crossing in the opposite direction. It sounds crazy, but the traffic was the most controlled chaos I have ever seen. Gas can be found everywhere. It was sold by the liter out of Absolute Vodka bottles at nearly every “mom and pop” roadside stand. My scooter was a real POS and the gas gage always said empty. I’ve always heard mom say “you can go forever on empty!” Well mom, it’s unfortunately not true. The one time I ran out, I was able to coast to a stop just perfectly next to one of the roadside fill-ups. Driving here was such an adventure and I loved every minute of it.
Even though I did enjoy Bali, for some reason it was out to get me. I had my fair share of bad luck/mishaps. The most memorable was almost being robbed by two locals. One night on or way home from dinner we stopped to look at the map on my phone. Two locals were passing on their scooter so we waived them down to ask for some help. As we sat on our scooters facing one direction, they pulled up parallel to us facing the other. When I turned my phone to show them the map, the man on the back of the scooter snatched my phone as the driver gunned the gas. I managed to grab the dude on the back by the neck of his shirt. They took off, dragging me backwards off my scooter and 25-30 feet down the pavement until he dropped my phone and I let go, rolling to a stop. Other than some pretty bad road rash on my hands and legs, I was OK and still had my iPhone. I guess all my years of tubing on the river really paid off because I guess all I need is one hand to hold on still!
My other main mishap was a minor fender bender on my scooter. When making a right turn through oncoming traffic with a few vehicles and 15 other scooter buddies, my surf rack mount on the side of the scooter hooked a vans bumper. Of course, it was right in front of a police station so they immediately got involved when I stopped to talk to the driver. They put me in a small windowed box on the side of the road with a policeman and the driver of the van. The policeman then told me to pay the man 600,000 Rupies (~$65). I said that’s bullshit, the policeman didn’t even look at the bumper nor see the accident. The damage consisted of one broken plastic eyehole and a missing plastic screw. I told the officer this was a classic case of the white foreigner being hustled by the two native locals and he gave me a big smirk and started laughing because he knew I was correct. I talked them down to paying 300,000 Rupies. Though they met my bargaining, I called bullshit, again, and said I would pay 200,000 Rupies ($16). So, $16 got me out of the situation and the cop didn’t even make me bribe him for not having an international divers license!
In our 8 days in Bali, we stayed in three main towns on our scooter bike tour. We started in Seminyak which right next to the surfing beach. Maggie got a few days of surfing, I unfortunately could not because of my injuries from being drug behind the scooter. We really enjoyed this part of town, but the farer south we went towards Kuta, the busier and busier it got. After a few nights in Seminyak we headed to my favorite part of Bali, Ubud. Though it has become more popular being one of the stops in the book/movie “Eat, Pray, Love” Ubud was a much calmer atmosphere with a cooler temperature in the highlands of the island. This is where we visited the monkey forest. Though we have had a few monkey encounters on our trip so far, this was the most up close and personal. Simply hold a banana above your head and within seconds you would have a lion tailed maque or two or three run up your back for a visit. They can be so sweet and adorable, but those little bastards can be the most bipolar animals on the planet. At one point I had a baby sitting on each knee and a sub adult male just hanging out on my shoulder while Maggie was getting some pictures. The dude on my shoulder picked at my hair, inspected my freckles, and made it seem like we were best buds. That was until he decided to maul the side of my head and try to sink his fangs into my skull. Luckily, the lady working there quickly came at him with a 4 foot stick like a catholic nun with a ruler and that was the last time that maque bit me that day.
Our last stop in Bali was to a small town on the North East coast called Tulemben. We couldn’t find any hotels online so when we arrived we began looking. We took a random street towards the beach and sitting at the end of the road was a group of men asking what we were looking for. We said a place to stay and a snorkel rental for the following morning. One of the men quickly got up and said follow me! We did, having no idea what we were in for. To our surprise we found a little gem of a hotel with beautiful room, a pool, and it was dive shop! The man asked if we wanted to SCUBA the next day and we said we weren’t certified. “No certification, no problem” he replied. After a 15 minute course on how to work the gear I was wading into the calmest beach I have ever seen and diving the wreckage of a sunken WWII ship. It was incredible seeing the thousands of fish congregating around the coral wrapped deck and rails of the sunken wonder and a great way to wrap up our Bali scooter tour.
