Southern Bali

We left Singapore for a relatively quick flight to Bali where we arrived at night time. We sorted out a hotel on a part of the island that was supposed to be good for kitesurfing. We spent 4 nights in a lovely garden bungalow on the East coast of Bali, waited for some wind (which sadly didn't arrive) and rode around on a motorcycle we rented.

We did a bit of surfing over on the West coast. We found a good sand break with some forgiving waves and had a few nice rides there. We did also head down to Uluwatu one day to look at some of the big wave surfers do their thing. Uluwatu was particularly good because you can stand up on a cliff and look down on the surfers ripping it up in the beautifully coloured water above the reef. These were super waves complete with barrels, much more amazing to watch for real than on a surf film. We enjoyed lunch at a little surfer restaurant on the cliff while we watched surfers down below, some having some incredible rides and others getting eaten alive by the liquid beasts.

After our afternoon of surf watching we went to a nearby temple to watch a Kecak dance. This is a traditional type of Balinese singing/dancing that is pretty amazing (for those of you who have seen the film 'Baraka' you will have seen a little bit of this already). The dance features an a cappella chorus of around fifty men, often making fantastic sounds accompanied by unified movements of their upper bodies and arms. The setting for this was really beautiful, while looking at the 'stage' you could see the sun setting behind over the ocean, we were at the top of a sheer cliff a few hundred meters above the water. The performance was timed to coincide with the setting sun and take us from light to darkness, very dramatic. It was well worth watching and after an ever increasing list of lame 'traditional' songs and dances in other countries this was refreshing.

Realizing that this was not a great place for Kitesurfing we decided to change things up a bit and get off Bali. We did enjoy Bali but in actual fact it wasn't as good as we were expecting. It is overpopulated (2.1 Million plus many thousands of tourists), busy, dirty, overly commercial and in places feels like a burnt out tourist destination of years gone by. This is how things are on the main Southern half of the island. Where was this lovely tropical and exotic island we were expecting? It certainly wasn't Bali. Fortunately it can be found not too far away. We made a break for the Gili Islands of Air, Meno and Trawangan. These tiny little islands off the coast of the bigger island of Lombok turned out to be just what we were looking for, three tropical, laid back islands ringed by coral reefs, perfect.