Evan Genest's Learning Log

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Things to do when visiting Ubud, Bali, Lombok, Indonesia

travel

Why go so far on a vacation

At first I thought this too far to go on a vacation. But now I have two thoughts on that.

First, if your goal is a nice Hawaii type of vacation, Indonesia costs $700 more in airfare but all of the accomodation is much less expensive. So as long as you're staying for more than 4 or 5 days, Indonesia reaches a break even point with the price of visiting Hawaii, and if you stay two or three weeks, it is cheaper than Hawaii, for sure.

Second, everyone knows you come to Indonesia because it excells at affordability, warm weather, and seeing a non-western culture. But what you soon appreciate is you are in a place that leads the world (as in best-possible-place, anywhere) to see the following three things:

If you go to Indonesia, you can encounter an Olympus of those other three things: the ocean life, the volcano encounters, and professional level surfing. Your'e at the World Series / Mona Lisa / Mount Everest / non plus ultra for those three things, so take advantage!

Komodo National Park (4 days)

Once you enter Indonesia, check in to a hotel and rest up. You need to have some strength and health for your trip and you just flew 14 hours! Just get any airport on the grounds or near to the airport. The next day, wake up and go back to the airport. Get in line at Wings or similar airline company, and buy a ticket to Labuan Bajo. You can't really do this ahead of time from Los Angeles or wherever you are. The flight times and airline will be too hard to integrate with your other searches. And these don't sell out, everyone just shows up and pays and gets on the plane. The line can be 20 people long though, so allow some time.

Liveaboard

If you are outdoorsy, it would be pennywise and pound foolish to not at least consider this. It sounds extravagant but booking a 3 day boat is worth it, you will need to cobble together or join a group that has 6 - 8 people. But, I mean: you've come all this way, you'll never be here again! The liveaboard skipper will know exactly how to get to all these great snorkeling spots and if you are going to the wilderness area (in our case Komodo National Park) it is not allowed to come without a local guide. It's pretty cool if you get a friendly crew. And from my ten days in Indonesia, the folks that work in hospitality related things are all very mellow and sincere hosts.

So, in Labuan Bajo you will connect with your liveaboard boat, which you reserved well ahead of time.
Get on the boat. Put your gear into your room. A typical boat has 4 bedrooms that held two people each. We saw two or three large cockroaches the first night, killed them, and never saw any more the rest of the trip. So even though it was an unwelcome encounter, it wasn't constant, just an episode or two. There were zero mosquitos by the way during the whole time in Indonesia - maybe April is the right time to come!)

The liveaboard folks will get you to Manta Point and a few other snorkeling places. Since you're in a protected area (Komodo is a series of islands and the associated reefs) there is an abundance of life, because it's off limits to harvesting. \

Things seen in the ocean, with a snorkel, thanks to the liveaboard access

A list of what we saw in our 4 dives:

*To clarify, about the spearfishing: it is 100% forbidden inside the National Park. We did this outside of Komodo. And it is illegal to do it with scuba, hence our snorkel situation vis a vis the 30' deep fish schools. I am told that herring max out at a foot and a half, so I don't know what these 3 foot long fish were. They were Pelagic and 2.5 feet to 3.5 feet long.

In some places you get pulled along at 2mph in your snorkel, looking, kicking. The current takes you on a conveyer belt. If it carries you over coral and you scratch your thigh, disinfect that later. People have this misconception that salt water cleans out a wound, but it's much the opposite. Dog saliva is more sterile than the ocean. Think about it: you're swimming in a healthy ecosystem where the base of the food pyramid is millions of little "bugs". Also, in my experience, you can feel a bit of the broken glass of the coral's silicates under your skin, and it has organic matter that it brought into your flesh with those shattered branch tips it scratched you with. As the scratch heals and the skin grows out, you can feel that silicate grit in there the whole time. It's not like glass, more like sand.But in theory it is dirty sand, so disinfect any coral scratch ASAP.

Bats

The liveaboard can take you to the island where the fruitbats live. The way that goes down is, the boat should get there areound 5-ish, drop anchor, the sun sinks, and then several hundred bats fly from their island, over your head, out to their foraging places. They fly over head for at least 15 minutes, filling the sky. It's like standing outside of Lambeau Field after the game lets out and all these (furry flying) bodies stream past. And they are very large, so they are not spazzy flitting things, they flap, like a seagull or a hawk, which is confusing if you are expecting a midwestern bat motion. Very strange and wild.

I talked to a friend from India who says fruit bats taste great cooked.

The liveaboard also takes you to the titular resident of Komodo National Park: its dragon! We saw several Komodo Dragons on that island. You have to pay a local ranger to take you around and you have to stay on the trails. Even so, there is plenty of wildlife and we were lucky enough to see a dragon almost run head on into a wild pig. Totally worth it if you are a bird watcher or David Attenborough fan.

The prayer card behind each seat on Wings Airlines

The archipelago of Indonesia requires the equivalent of an intercity bus service. This is accomplished by ferries and airplanes. So, where a North American is expecting to jump in a car to go see freinds or nearby touristic sites, in Indonesia you fly and boat, walking up to the counter on the day of departure and buying a ticket.

When you fly, the airplane seatback has two laminated cards for you to read. The first one explains what to do in case of a crash or loss of cabin pressure. The second card takes you through a guided prayer on behalf of the pilots and crew.

The front side is a careful Islamic prayer to God:

Then on the back there is a range of attempts to include the religions of the next five most likely fliers in this part of the world. I am curious if these were vetted with anyone and I wonder if the airline would consider a version 2.0 on some:

I fell asleep listening to some shuffle of music I brought on the 30 minute flight from Bali to Lombok. As we landed, in my headphones Thom Yorke was singing over and over: "Women and children first, women and children first" which didn't bode well, but we landed just fine as it turns out. Then we got into a 1990 Honda civic of a hired driver. The cost was 200,000 IDR ($12 USD) to take us on a 1 hour drive to Sengiggi. Somehow that $12 covered his costs for a time, the car's maintenance, and the gas (3 gallons maybe). It proves that Indonesia produces its own gasoline and keeps it cheap.

Lombok versus Bali

It was Ramadan while we were in Lombok. The minarets, even out in the country were quite active. We heard hour long announcements at 4 in the morning and at 7 at night. The local mosque would hold up a microphone to a long radio/tv show and broadcast that from the minaret. Of our liveaboard boat crew, 1 of 6 people were observing the fast. The other guys seemed to tease him in a good naturely way about fasting.

Taking a Ferry

The terminals were like an American bus station: some anxiety about being at the right gate, craning your neck, finally your boat comes in and you all get on. The below decks is packed with seats so they strip you of luggage (it all goes en masse onto the roof of the boat, which made me anxious). There can be a bit of sea sickness. Meg took dramamine, I did not. We were on a "fastboat" which took 50 minutes, pounding the waves the whole time: bam! bam! bam! bam!

The Cloth Wraps

A lot of Indonesian men wear a cloth wrap, otherwise known as a sarong. They wear it at hotels and restaurants. They also just wear it working in the field. They make it a very practical, manly, hot weather garb. I have seen cool men back in the states wear something like that - usually more like a wool kilt, worn with a black hoodie and some kind of work boots. So I was amicable to buying a sarong for streetwear. A good place in Indonesia for sarongs and other clothing is Lombok Exotic, near Sengiggi, in Lombok Indonesia.

https://www.instagram.com/lombokexotic_oleholeh/

Sort of connected: statues wear clothing.

Lombok Wildlife Park

You get to feed the animals. Everything. Including hippos, including primates, including bears, and these wolverine looking things called Bearcats. You can hand entire pineapples to an elephant and watch her toss back the pineapple like it was a peanut. The only living thing that we fed to another living thing that day were the chickens we gave to the crocodiles.

https://lombokwildlifepark.com/

President of Indonesia

The upcoming 3 (or more) leading parties for presidential election are interesting to follow. Spring 2024 might be the election. Lots here usually: https://www.thejakartapost.com/

Volcanoes

In two weeks there wasn't enough time this trip to do backpacking. The silhouettes of volcanoes made every vista better though. You could always plainly see that you were in Indonesia.

How to see all of the Island of Bali

We used Ubud as a base. Ubud city has always been the center of the island of Bali so you don't need to feel like it is a Eat Pray Love theme park. We stayed four nights. Day tripping from Ubud to the rest of Bali is about like being in NYC and day tripping out to Long Island or up the Hudson River Valley, if you are trying to budget time/distance.

If you have some motorcycle skills and are ready to always drive on the left (don't forget!) you MUST take a scooter once or twice. We rented one (I drove) for a day: 70,000 IDR ($5 USD). And gasoline is cheap. You need to feel the freedom of going "wherever" and getting lost. And you see 5x more in the same amount of time. And otherwise in Ubud you can get some of that trudging feeling that the tourists in Midtown Manhattan get. Or if you rely only on a driver, you end up magically appearing at your destination without manually processing the context of Point A to Point B. Plus you get to experience the social give and take of who will yield at an intersection.

You should also enjoy Grab (the Singapore-based version of Lyft that is dominant in Asia). Local drivers seem to resent it a bit: "Some guy in Singapore takes 40% of this fare", you might hear.

It feels good to bypass that and use a more local centric vendor. Rides, rentals, guides, can all be arranged safely by asking your host (the hotel, or homestay) to recommend a cousin or friend. If in doubt of pricing, compare it to the price from the Grab app on your phone. You usually agree on a price before hand so you don't need to worry about "going the long way" it seems.

I felt like some guides kept interjecting temple side trips, when I didn't want them. Maybe for them, they really identify with the temples. Compared to a vacation in Rome, Italy, I think the religious sites in Bali might be more important and currently relevant to the local people? I'm just guessing. I got the feeling that the island of Bali was sacred to its people, like the way first nations people in North America respect the locales here.

Toilets

Toilets seem to almost all be western style. We were never far off of the tourist track, admittedly. What was universal was the presence of a bidet. There was a very simple nozzle and water valve at the back rim of the toilet.

Campuhan Ridge Walk starting in Ubud

This can be done on foot from your lodging. We got a taxi to make it more pleasant. It is sort of a half day affair. We were hot and tired by the end. There are fields, groves, and tea houses all along the way, so all you need is sun protection. Stop and buy beverages and look at art for sale all the way out and all the way back (there is a shop or two per kilometer I estimate).

Tagallalang Rice Fields

These are steeply terraced and are the photo on the cover of many Bali guide books. Rent a scooter (or driver) and reach them within 45 minutes from Ubud. Arriving at the trailhead you will find a dozen art shops and some places to drink coffee and eat ice cream.

If you are not much of a hiker, you can just enjoy the Instagram photo opportunity at the top. The trail itself winds down the terraces, bottoms out at a creek where you will be charged $2 to cross, then winds back up and goes an hour or more if you wish. On the far side of the creek you will reach a zip line and a farmer selling drinks. We posed with him as he chopped a cold coconut for us.

This was very mellow, a bit hard on the knees, high sun exposure. I like this trip a lot. These are active plots of land and the folks will be out there taking care of their rice with hand tools. We saw lots of dike repair and terrace maintenance by folks swinging a hoe.

Sacred Forest Monkeys in Ubud

You pay at a large entrance building. There will be a hundred or more people milling around in this area, queueing, meeting their tour group, et cetera. Once inside the ambience is like NY Central Park and has about that many people milling around. It's a forest so no sun exposure. The signs explain that there are eleven separate clans of monkeys. We certainly saw at least a half dozen distinct communities of them. The monkeys are a bit oblivious to the humans, so you can see them lying on their back while a subordinate picks things off of their crotch to groom them, stuff like that. Juveniles play tag. This was worth it to see so much primate behavior in a natural context, close up. An artificial aspect is that the staff throws them a pile of yams a couple times a day. But beyond all the free food, their social mileu seems pretty real.

Books

Bring good old paperbacks to leave and trade. Hotels and coffeeshops always had a small shelf that was in need of better books. The French and Germans would leave high brow things and the English speakers all seemed to be leaving James Patterson and John Grisham type books. There is a bookstore chain in Indonesia. They had two locations in Ubud: both had great selections of books in English that explained history of the island and that would be hard to find back in the west.

Bali Museum in Denpasar

The park across from the museum was quite lively on the Sunday morning, before 10am when it was still cool-ish. A mass exercise class was being led from a stage and several pickup games of barefoot soccer were happening.

The museum is modest but reasonable. It will explain a lot of the symbolism and ritualistic objects you see everywhere in Bali.