Padangbai, Indonesia
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
13
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Padangbai,
Bali,
Indonesia
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
We decided that we could spend at least one night, even in the downstairs room, so we left our bags and wandered out to explore the town. Being noon already, our first stop was Papa John's Café, where Lisa ordered a bacon sandwich (20,000 Rp) and I got a vegetable pizza (22,000 Rp). Lisa's sandwich didn't have much bacon on it, but it was loaded with vegetables making it almost too thick to get her mouth around it. The pizza I got was also one of the better ones we have got in Indonesia, with sauce that tasted similar to what I'm used to at home. Papa John's adds 10% tax to the bill though like most places in Bali seem to.
After wandering the three streets and gangs (alleys) of Padangbai, we made our way to Topi Hotel at the end of the beach and ordered large water. It is a really good deal there, since you can get 1.5 liters for 3,500 Rp and then we got it refilled for 1,000 Rp again before we left. From here we wandered down a path to a beach called "blue lagoon" and found a shady spot in a cave to wait until our room was ready. According to the locals and the Lonely Planet guide, this is also a good place to snorkel and we saw a few people indulging in that activity.
Shortly after 15:00, we headed back to the home-stay to see what our room would look like. We got a choice of two rooms, both of which were much better than the room we saw downstairs. We ended up choosing room #4 at the Serangan Inn, which had windows on three sides as it is situated on a corner of the building. The room was very clean and had western style toilets, a sink and mirror and a shower as well. The room also had two beds (a double and a single) and a small desk with another large mirror on it. The room was cooled by a fan on the roof which spun around at much greater speeds than any of the other rooms we had stayed in. The room seemed quite cool, even at 15:00, so we were glad we didn't bother getting the air-conditioned room at 2.5X the price. All in all, this may be the best deal that I've ever got for a room anywhere in the world so far.
The upstairs has a large porch with chairs and coffee-tables and tons of magazines that former guest have left behind. We spent the afternoon chilling out on this porch watching boats come and go from the harbor in front of us. For dinner we went to a place mostly because they seemed to offer the cheapest beer in town (18,000 Rp for a large Bintang.) The place was totally empty except for us and we got to enjoy two of the stereo systems from neighboring restaurants playing competing music.
Although there was a party advertised at the Blue Lagoon for our first night in Padangbai, we figured that this would actually be a nightly event and decided to skip it. Now that we have been here for a few days, we realize that it is not party night every night, so it may have been worth going after all. The party didn't start until 21:30 though and it started to pour rain at around 23:00, so it would've been a short party for us either way. Instead we spent the night watching a movie on the laptop for our first night in Padangbai.
For our first full day in Padangbai, we first woke up and wandered out to our porch to see what the free breakfast was going to consist of. My hopes were not very high, considering that food seemed to be pretty expensive here, while our room was only 60,000 Rp (with breakfast for the two of us.) However, we were both pleasantly surprised when we saw a menu waiting for us, with a pretty wide selection to choose from. Lisa ordered a banana jaffle while I went with the banana pancakes which I have come to love. We also had delicious Indonesian coffee to wake us up and a large plate of fruit accompanied our breakfast. After this breakfast, it is pretty easy to recommend Seangan Inn if you are on a tight budget and planning to stay in Padangbai for some time. After all, our dinner from the night before cost more than a decent room with breakfast here.
Immediately after finishing breakfast, Lisa and I gathered our snorkeling gear and headed to the Blue Lagoon. There were not many people at the beach, maybe a dozen tourists plus a few Indonesian women trying to sell their regular wares or massages. Lisa heard one girl offer a massage for only 10,000 Rp, but we were more interested in hitting the water. The water was a little rough for such a protected bay and the water was not as clear as I had hoped for. However the temperature was just about right and within a minute of swimming in we were surrounded by fish and coral. Although the coral was mostly dead, it was still very colorful and made for beautiful backdrops as I tried to take pictures of the fish.
The rough water limited the time Lisa could spend snorkeling, but I spent hours going up and down the bay looking for the perfect picture and movies. This was the first time I had really spent much time underwater with my Olympus SW 1030 and I was really glad that I had it. I soon learned that it was critical to use the flash (in fill mode) to take decent pictures. I also learned that it would've been smart to bring some dried up bread along to attract the fish closer to me. However even without any food around it was still very easy to get close to the fish. There were many different types of fish although I didn't see anything too exotic (like the Lion fish I had seen in Cuba.)
It was past 14:00 by the time my camera ran completely out of battery power, so it was time to go back and clean up for lunch. We decided to try one of the smaller warungs for lunch this time, since we had lots of luck finding some with great food and low prices everywhere else we had been in Indonesia. We found one called Warung Satika on Jalan Pelabuhan that looked reasonably clean and had great prices. We both ordered the same main dish, Mie Goreng (fried noodles) with chicken at 10,000 Rp and a tomato salad (8,000 Rp) as a starter. Juices here were also very reasonably priced at 5,000 Rp, so Lisa had a pineapple and I had a banana. Everything tastes quite good, but then I haven't had a Mie Goreng yet that I hadn't enjoyed. This one had ample vegetables and lots of chicken (without any bones or grit), so we were happy and full until dinner.
After swimming all day, we were both rather tired after eating and went back to our room for a nap. After drifting in and out of consciousness for a few hours, we returned to the Warung Satika for dinner. This time Lisa got a dish called Chicken Rambo (30,000 Rp) and I got a vegetable soup (8,000 Rp) & a vegetable omelet (6,000 Rp) as well. My vegetable soup was great but the omelet was terribly salty. Fortunately I had another banana juice to quench my thirst. Lisa's chicken Rambo dish was absolutely huge, filling two full sized plates. The main dish was breaded and fried chicken, with onion and other vegetables garnishing it. It filled the whole plate and was completely boneless, so I had to help Lisa finish it. The other plate was filled with french fries and a salad, so this meal was a good deal at 30,000 Rp.
After returning to our room, we soon met our new neighbors in the room next door. It was a young couple from the Czech Republic and the girl came over to ask if I could charge up her iPod for her. She had seen my laptop and also said she saw us at the Blue Lagoon earlier that day. Of course it was not a problem for me to charge up her iPod and we found out that they were staying in Padangbai to try and save some money. They had just come from Nusa Penida and said they spent lots of money there. Like us, they were not sure how much time they would spend in Padangbai and their next stop was also the island of Lombok.
With the beer being more expensive in Padangbai than anywhere else we have been on our trip so far, we spent another night watching movies in our room. I wanted to get to bed as early as I could so that I could bring my good camera and get shots of Blue Lagoon with the morning sun shining on it. However going to bed never seems to agree with me and it was 1:30 before I actually fell asleep.
We still woke up earlier the next morning than the day before and after having another great breakfast of pineapple pancakes and fruit, we headed back to Blue Lagoon. The water was much calmer this time around and once we got in we found out that the visibility was much better as well. We figured that it was murky the first day because it had rained and stormed the night before, but this time it had been clear out for the night before. The swimming and picture taking was great, even better than the day before. This time I saw a number of different fish (including long gars and small sharks) as well as a stingray at the bottom. With the water being so clear this time, the pictures and movies were better than the previous day's efforts.
I also finally tried the snake fruit that we had received from the woman in Ubud. It was even more obvious how this fruit got named as I peeled it because the peel looked and felt like a real snake skin. I found the fruit quite delicious, although Lisa didn't care for it much. I ate both of them which were refreshing after swimming all morning long. The snake fruit has two large seeds, one in the middle of each half and they came out so cleanly that I decided to save them to send back home. I know they don't stand a chance of growing outside in Canada, but I think it will be cool if I manage to grow them in some type of indoor environment. Although we have been traveling around Indonesia for over a month now, I have only seen this fruit once so I suspect not many people back home have heard of it (mind you, we eat out every day and don't go to grocery stores much.)
Although when we first arrived in Padangbai, I thought we may want to leave sooner rather than later, now that we have been here for two full days I find that I am quite enjoying it here. We have found cheap restaurants and a really cheap supply for water (Topi Inn refills 1.5 liter plastic bottles for 1,000 Rp) and our cheap room is very comfortable. I love the snorkeling and we haven't even made it to the other well-known beach for swimming in the area yet. I am also planning on renting a motorbike and taking my camera to Gunung Agung, which at 3142 meters is the highest volcano on the island of Bali.
The only thing I am really missing here is cheap (or free) Internet. The cheapest place we can find here is 300 Rp/minute, which is about 2-3X the cost of anywhere else that we have been in Indonesia so far. In reality, I have found free Internet everywhere but here there is not a single wireless access point in existence in Padangbai. I guess the other problem that I am experiencing is the water that is stuck in my right ear. I have been diving down around three or four meters to take many of the underwater pictures and now I have the same problem that I get from scuba diving. This will not stop me from continuing, but I hope the water manages to get out of my ear before we have to catch a plane back to Jakarta.
Nov 13, 2008
The first three days we spent in Padangbai were all quite similar. Wake up, enjoy breakfast, and then head to the Blue Lagoon for snorkeling until the camera battery died and we were ready for lunch. On the third day of snorkeling, I put one of our Therm-A-Rest inflatable mats on a dead cactus that was mixed in the sand of the beach. We didn't notice the problem until it was too late and now the mat has many holes in it and no longer holds air. It still has the memory foam to provide a little bit of softness though, which makes it slightly better than a beach towel when we are lying down at the beach.
Later that day, I had some more bad luck. We had dinner at Warung Satika again, so I decided to try something new on their menu. I ordered a dish that was a chicken and vegetable stir-fry. Instead I was brought out a dish that consisted mostly of potatoes and chicken in a thick curry sauce. It didn't taste half-bad, so I didn't complain and was enjoying the meal. Then I saw some dead bugs that were mixed into the sauce. I saw at least two of them before I turned away and tried (in vein) not to think about how many of those dead insects I had consumed before I noticed the problem. I was about half way done the meal and cast the rest aside. When I showed the waitress the "extra ingredient", she apologized but still charged me full price. Needless to say, we did not go back to this cheap warung again.
The next day we decided to rent a motorbike to explore the east coast of Bali. A woman from our home-stay offered motorbikes for 50,000 Rp, which seemed to be the going rate around town. We ate breakfast as soon as we woke up and were on the road by 9:00. There are not many roads traversing Bali, so we just went to the main road near Padangbai and started driving north.
We had a few goals in mind other than just taking pictures though. First we hoped to find an ATM that would let us withdraw a reasonable amount of Indonesian Rupiah. The only ATM in Padangbai charged 100,000 Rp to take out a maximum of 500,000 Rp. On top of this, VISA/Mastercard charged an additional $3 per transaction, which made this quite an expensive proposition. We had found machines before that let us take out 3,000,000 Rp for a cost of 100,000 which still seemed excessive, but was about the best deal we could find. It seems strange to me that you can get a good meal and a night in a bungalow for less than the cost of an ATM transaction, but I guess ATM machines are only for the rich in Indonesia.
Another goal was to purchase our plane tickets back to Jakarta for Nov 27th, the day we are flying to Bangkok. We would've done this from Padangbai, but the Internet had been down across the entire town the entire four days we had spent there so far. We did manage to find working Internet in the tourist town to the north called Candidasa at a cost of 400 Rp/minute (about five times what we paid in Ubud). However when we tried to book two tickets from Mataram to Jakarta via Lion Air, none of the four credit cards that we brought with us would work. At least we got to catch up on email, but that is about all we got accomplished during 25 minutes of frustration.
After using the Internet, we decided to go and see the resort town of Amed which is almost directly east of the famous Ganung Agung (the highest volcano on Bali at 3142 meters). It wasn't long into our trip that we spotted the top of Agung peaking through the clouds, although the clouds never went away enough to see the entire thing. Considering that we were traveling almost at sea-level, it is hard to miss a peak that is over 3 kilometers in the sky. Apparently the last big explosion (1963) left a 700 meter oval shaped crater at the top, which left it looking flat at the top.
As we traveled down the road heading north, we started noticing more and more young men walking towards us. At first they were all just wearing traditional Hindu clothes, but all white from the waist up. As the crowds thickened, there were teams of people carrying ornate trunks propped up on two poles, to help them distribute the weight. We pulled over at a scenic spot and watched several hundred people walk by. When they saw my camera, quite a few of them called out asking to have their picture taken and posed as they walked by. Some of them were complaining about how hot it was, but for the most part they seemed to be very cheerful about whatever they were doing. We have no idea really, but it seems as though they were doing some type of pilgrimage. For the next several kilometers we passed hundreds more of these young men, so it was obviously a rather big ordeal.
Around noon we saw some warungs along the side of the road and pulled over to eat. We soon noticed a sign saying we were at Tirta Gangga which featured an old water palace built by a rajah of Amlapura in 1948 (although it was heavily damaged by the Agung eruption of 1963.) The warung at the entrance was quite cheap and delicious. We had sandwiches for 10,000 Rp and fresh fruit juices at 5,000 Rp, but had to order a Nasi Kampur with chicken (15,000 Rp) to fill us, as the sandwiches were rather small.
After filling our stomachs, we were back on the road and soon found ourselves overlooking some of the best scenery we had yet discovered in Bali. The road was elevated, as we were part of the way up Gunung Agung, so the land to the east of us gently declined as far as the eye could see. All of this land was quite lush and had rice terraces with farmers tending to them with the odd water buffalo tied up to a tree. We spent some time taking pictures and video before continuing on the road to Amed.
When we finally reached Amed, we saw many nice resorts spread out along a long stretch of coastline. We saw a hill at the end of the road which we drove towards, looking for the postcard view that we had seen in the travel books. At the first great viewpoint a young Indonesian girl came to talk with us. She spoke excellent English and after sharing our names and where we were from, we asked her if she was a student. Although she was tiny and looked to be around ten years old, she explained that she was thirteen and had already finished school. By this time her younger brother approached us as well and the little girl asked us if we had a pen that he could use for school. Of all the people that had asked us for things in our travels, this girl was the most polite and deserving, so I gave her my only pen (despite it being a fancy expensive one from Canada.)
The water in Amed was so clear that I can understand why the scuba divers and snorkelers flock here, but alas we did not bring any of our gear with us. After taking a few panoramic pictures of the coastline from the top of the hill, we decided to head back to Padangbai. On our way back we looked for a better ATM, but the best we found was one that let us withdraw 1,200,000 Rp for a cost of 100,000. By the time we got back and returned the bike (and were overcharged by 10,000 Rp.), we noticed that lots of the locals were swimming in the main harbor area. As we were both hot and stinky from the day on the road, we decided to join them.
The water was beautifully clear in the protected harbor, so I decided to try and take some pictures of Lisa with some of the traditional style boats in the water. After taking the first picture though, something went terribly wrong and the camera would not turn on. The Olympus Stylus 1030SW that I had brought along for this trip had served me well for the past three days of snorkeling, even one time warning me that water was sneaking in through the battery latch. This time there was no warning to be had, the camera just ceased to function after taking the first picture.
Once I had dried everything off, I opened the battery latch and saw that it looked dry. I held my breath and prayed that I had simply forgotten to recharge the battery, but alas when I took the battery out the bottom of it was wet. I am not sure how the water got in, but my underwater camera is now broken. It is still under warranty, but it will likely be a challenge to get it fixed before I return home to Canada. I had also been using this camera to take pictures of the local meals that we have eaten and since the dSLR will not fit in my pocket, I suspect I won't be continuing this practice any longer.
With all the bad luck that we had been having over the past few days, we decided to have a nice dinner and to drink some Bintangs. During dinner we decided that we had better spend another day on the motorcycle and return to Ubud, where we knew there was good ATMs and cheap Internet available. The following day we went to Papa John's Café and rented the same model of motorbike as the previous day, but this time ensured we would only be charged 50,000 Rp. It took about an hour to navigate the way to Ubud and after a quick visit to the Apotek (drug store) to replenish our supplies; we headed to the Internet café that only charged 5,000 Rp. an hour.
When we tried to book the airline tickets, we again ran into problems and none of our four credit cards would get the job done. When we tried to log into our PC Financial banking website, both Lisa and I managed to get our accounts locked somehow as well. This requires a phone call to Canada to resolve, but fortunately the computers we were on had Skype available, so we called immediately. Lisa answered the security questions accurately, but apparently I did not so they could not unlock my account until the following day (with another phone call.) Knowing that I was not going to have Skype available the following day, this did not make me very happy.
Fortunately at least Lisa got her account unlocked, so we were able to transfer money to our credit cards and then go to a familiar ATM to withdraw 3,000,000 Rp at a time. Not knowing when we would have access to another good ATM, we used it three times to get 9,000,000 (at a cost of 300,000 Rp.) Hopefully this will be all the Indonesian currency we need for the rest of our time in the country.
We spent the day in Ubud mostly using the cheap Internet and had lunch at our favorite local restaurant, Dewa Warung. Both Lisa and I ordered the delicious Ginger Cashew Chicken meal (15,000 Rp) and fresh fruit juices (5,000 Rp) and coconut pie (5,000 Rp.) for dessert. Dewa Warung was a real treat with their low prices and superb food and one of things I missed most about Ubud. By the early afternoon we had taken care of everything we could (important exception being the Lion Air tickets to get us to Jakarta) and head back to Padangbai.
When we rented this bike in Padangbai the fuel tank was nearly empty, so I went to the nearest stall where I could get fuel and bought a 1.5 liter water jug that had been filled with gas for 10,000 Rp. I was amazed at how far this fuel lasted as I still had a half of tank left as we left Ubud to return home. However I did not want to risk running out of fuel somewhere remote, so when I passed by a real gas station I got an additional 10,000 Rp in gas and that left the tank completely full. Even by the time I got back to Padangbai the tank was still showing full, so after dropping Lisa off I ventured out again.
While Lisa was buying us tickets to Gili Trawanagan (125,000 Rp/each), I explored the back roads around Padangbai and soaked in rural life in eastern Bali. The landscape was consistently beautiful and the people seemed to be extra friendly when they saw foreign faces in the middle of nowhere. I spent a few hours traveling down small dirt paths and visited several remote beaches that only had beached fishing vessels populating them. There was storm clouds surrounding me most of the time, but it never actually rained until an hour after I returned the bike in Padangbai.
After having our final breakfast at the Serangan Inn and paying our bill (60,000 Rp a night, no tax) we got picked up by a minibus which drove us the 200 meters to the ferry terminal. There were two separate lines, one for the locals and one for the tourists. We also noticed a large military ship patrolling the channel, probably due to the execution of the terrorists from the 2002 Bali bombings a couple days earlier. They let all of the tourists on first, so we managed to get comfortable seats. The ship was not very crowded so the local people got decent seating as well, but I still thought this was a strange practice (discriminating against their own people in a way.)
Once we were on the ship, the sales people came in a similar fashion to any other form of public transportation that we had used in Indonesia. Lisa and I were already prepared and had 1.5 liters of water each and plenty of snacks, but some of the other tourists stocked up for the five hour journey. I overheard people agreeing to prices that were around 3X what they would've been on shore, so I was glad we had thought ahead. Once the ship's engines fired up, all the sales people evacuated the ship in a hurry and soon we were off to the port of Lembar on the island of Lombok.
We had seats in the bottom deck, which although they provided shade from the intense sun, also trapped in the smell of diesel and stifled the cool wind. It was hot, but not as bad as the public bus and train in Java had been. Lisa and I used the laptop to watch a movie and some prerecorded TV shows which helped waste away the time. We made it to Lembar in around four hours (13:00), but the port was too busy and we had to sit and wait for an hour before we could dock. Fortunately they sold ice-cream and other snacks on board and this helped make the time pass by. The ice-cream snacks cost between 5,000 to 10,000 Rp which was around double what they cost on shore.
Soon after we got off the boat in Lembar we were picked up by another minibus which drove us (and two others) to Mataram. I suspect we only had to go to Mataram for a sales pitch to get us to buy an open ticket to get us back off the Gili islands. Although Lisa and I had both overheard people warning that these return tickets were totally unnecessary and possibly a scam, we felt pretty comfortable buying them from an office in Mataram and bought an open ticket from any of the Gilis to Sengiggi for 75,000 Rp each. This ticket lets us board a boat from any of the three Gili islands at 8:00 on any day and then gets us on a minibus to Sengiggi from the port of Bangsal on Lombok. We had heard that Bangsal was known for ripping people off, so this would allow us to avoid having to arrange for any transportation there.
Soon after leaving Mataram, we drove through some windy and poorly maintained paved roads through Lombok's monkey forest. The roads winded along the sides of hills and volcanoes with huge valleys of palm forests and we saw several monkeys chilling at the side of the road. Within an hour or so we were right outside of Bangsal and we were dropped off at a restaurant where we could wait for the hour before the boats left for the Gili Islands. Lisa and I took this time to catch up on lunch and another bus full of people was also dropped off to wait with us. We were surprised to see a procession of Hindu people walk by for some sort of ceremony, since we thought Lombok was mostly a Muslim island.
By 17:00 we were told it was time to go, so everybody grabbed their bags and we all walked a few hundred meters to the port where the boats were waiting. We were greeted by dozens of locals that all seemed waiting around for something to happen. There were three different boats which each went to a different island, so we were soon broken up into groups going to the appropriate destination. There are no docks for the boats to pull up to in Bangsal, so we would have to walk through the water in order to board the boats. As Lisa was taking off her shoes and socks, a man grabbed her bag and put it on the boat for her. Lisa was repeating "no, no, no" the whole time, but he did not care and still asked Lisa for some money for this 10 second job. Lisa refused and reminded him that she told him not to touch her bag, but he kept trying anyhow. Everybody else that boarded the boat kept their bags on them, so Lisa was the only easy target for them that day. It didn't work though and eventually they gave up and walked away.
