Ever dreamt of going on a relaxing vacation to Bali and recharge your batteries? Well, maybe you should reconsider the destination! Although we had fun and got to see some breathtaking views, Bali was a very stressful and expensive place. Let me start with the bright side of everything: I tried to put together some of the moments we shared during the first 3 days in Bali in a short video. We did several day trips to discover more than just Kuta, the region where we stayed in, and yes there are some very awesome beaches and cool temples but still it didn't change my mind - Bali is overrated. I personally didn't like walking on super crowded streets where people drive scooters in a crazy strange way and at times it was hard for us to even cross the roads. The temples were also full of tourists, it kind of makes the magic disappear, and no, I wasn't expecting that because nobody who's been to Bali would post pictures on Instagram with the real frame of what it looks like. Plus, the streets are generally dirty, so it's definitely not as heavenly as you might have imagined, at least for the places I've seen.
Accommodations in Bali are very accessible compared to other countries and thank God because otherwise I would've done 3 days instead of 7. We rented a very big villa on airbnb that can accommodate up to 16 people, for 700 SGD for 5 nights. It was a very nice place we had, located in Kuta, pretty close to the main street, Kuta Beach, and even to the airport.
Funny story about how we got to the villa. We were thinking of getting a Grab (the local equivalent of Uber) from the airport, which was like 35.000 IR (~3.5 SGD) but the taxi drivers outside the airport were very insistent on giving us a ride for 200.000 IR, and there were so many of them, we've probably walked across 100 taxi drivers while trying to get out of the airport area. The good thing is they are willing to negotiate, but their prices still were more expensive than the one we found with the app Grab. It was somewhat stressful dealing with all this aggressive taxi situation so when we got in a calmer place all we wanted was to get to our villa. We were waiting for a grab and we carefully chose a mini-van, since we were 5 and wanted all to fit in. The other 2 persons arrived later because we all had different flights.
This is the place where we had to wait, we thought it was funny how it says on the bottom "Real Money Changer - Rate From Bank - No Bulshit". It took a long while for our Grab driver to come pick us up and when we finally found him or he finally found us (because he was going round), he told us "Get in faster, faster". I opened the door and realized that the 2 extra chairs in the back row weren't unfolded so we couldn't all fit in. So I politely replied to his "faster,faster" that we need the seats in the back as well. He asked how many we are and I said "five, we need one seat from the back to be unfolded". What happened next is unbelievable, the driver shouted "ok, close the door", I was confused why isn't he preparing the seat, and then he repeatedly said while the car started to move slowly "now! close the door!", so I closed it, and he left... Like really left. And the Grab order got automatically cancelled on the app and we couldn't even rate him with a lovely one star. After having discussed with some locals about this strange situation, seems that the only logical explanation to this would be that Grab is illegal in some places in Bali, and the driver freaked out of the idea to get out of his car, prepare the back seats and then leave, because someone could see this and it could look suspicious. Ok. Whatever. So from there, we checked google maps and apparently our villa was only 20 minutes away walking. So we decided to walk, at 1pm. Needless to say how tired and confused we were at that point and then Boom! Surprise #2: Google Maps brought us to a location that was not our villa. We double-triple-quadruple checked the address and it still showed that we were in the right location, although people living there said there's no airbnb for rent at their address. One of the people living there, a Dutch woman speaking a little bit of Balinese, helped us find our villa by asking locals where it could be. We probably stepped in our villa at 4pm or even later. At that point we didn't want to do anything but relax. And that's what we did, day #1 was all about finding the villa and stay at the villa.
Day #2 started pretty early. We booked a driver for the whole day and he knocked at our door at 8:30 in the morning although we agreed for 9am. We spent the day in the South of Bali. First stop was Pantai Pandawa, where we could go swim in the Indian Ocean. The water was very clear and salty, but it was fun! Interesting fact: there's an entrance fee to almost every beach in Bali, and you can't get almost anything for free there, meaning that you even have to pay to sit on a chair on the beach or to sit under an umbrella.
After the beach, we went to Uluwatu Temple, probably the most beautiful place in Bali from what I've seen. Also, we all had to wear their dress code in order to get our knees covered!
Monkeys everywhere, these two were very relaxed, probably about to take a nap, but most of them were pretty intense, jumping on cars, stealing water from tourists, and one of them even stole a cellphone.
Here it is, the famous bad ass monkey who stole a cellphone and was trying to eat it. At some point the monkey dropped the phone and got really mad that everyone had to step back because its face looked like it was about to attack us.
Our third and last stop was at the Dreamland Beach where we tried to swim but couldn't because of the big waves and we stayed until the sunset and I have to agree it was amazing! And yeah, we had to pay another entrance fee.
A day like this costed us 600.000 IR, pretty cheap if the car is full. Without much hesitation, we booked another day trip to Tanah Lot & Rice Terraces in Ubud for day #3. Tanah Lot temple was extremely crowded and the temple itself was closed so I was kind of disappointed of this whole "go see the temple" since we could only see it from the outside. But on the other hand, the temple was built on a big rock/small island so it was still beautiful.
Of course I tried to take a picture between these impressive gates, this is the best we managed to get considering how many people were walking past these gates.
After visiting the Tanah Lot Temple we headed to Ubud and found a very lovely local restaurant with very good prices! I find it difficult in Bali to find places to eat decent food for prices similar to those in Singapore, but this one was the one I was looking for!
After lunch, we finally got to see the Rice Terraces. The views were indeed pretty (another entrance fee though) and the swings were fun even though I was a little bit too scared, but the walk/hike was hard. I usually like hiking but this time it was just too hot and humid outside and those stairs were very big and we had to go up & down the terraces for a long time. I remember how my shirt was wet at the end of the day because of all the nasty sweat.
And that's how day #3 exploring Bali came to an end, we finished it off with a pool party (joking, it wasn't really a party) and some very entertaining card games. On day #4 we stayed in Kuta and tried to do surfing for the first time and on day #5 we went to Ubud again this time to visit the Monkey Forest and a Waterfall. For day #6 & #7 I went to Gili and Nusa Penida. Will post more about the second part of this trip soon because this post is already too long.
Special thanks to Fiona and Yassine, I stole some of your pictures for this post!
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