Our 2nd destination on our 6-months-traveling-journey was Indonesia. With a main focus on Bali.
I visited Bali 8 years ago for the first time, all alone. I was supposed to travel to the island with my friend Ross in 2017, however due to an accident, he had to cancel the trip. So I made the trip by myself and had a blast. Since then, I’ve been traveling for quite a while, seen lots of places, especially in Asia. However Bali always left a special place in my heart. Not necessarily the people, or anything specific about the country itself. The whole of Bali left lots of positive memories.
Back then I fell in love with the natural landscapes, the millions of palmtrees, surrounded but ricefields, wooden houses. It was the first trip, where I ever rented a motorbike. I was never keen, driving a vehicule on the left side… felt like my brain wouldn’t cope with driving on the opposite road-side. However it was super easy… I felt so much joy riding by myself through the jungles of Bali.
The traditional clothes: the sarongs & shirts, were beautifully designed with Batik patterns. Indonesia was the only place in the world where I witnessed these beautiful traditional patterns. I took home too many shirts. And started wearing those men skirts at home..
Foodwise, I wasn’t that impressed. Most people were very friendly, I couldn’t complain about that, but I hardly made any friendship with the local people. Which is pretty hard, as you will only see tourists in their restaurants or bars… Bali is VERY touristic. However once you step out of the touristic city centers, you’ll discover a beauty of the island, out of this world.
Ubud.
So this trip would be quite different, than the first one 8 years ago. We were traveling as a family of three. Knowing that public transportation is almost non existent in Bali. You can hire a driver, or a drive a car by yourself, however with the mental traffic on the island, it would be a pain in the ass, to be stuck in traffic jams all day.
The regular bus lines, as we know them from back home, aren’t available. Trains non available. There’s a GRAB (asian Uber) available in Bali, however mostly in the busy city centers.
We decided to rent a scooter, and ride it very carefully across the island.
As soon as we stepped out of the airport, we were being chased by some taxi drivers. I checked the Uber prices, and got the same rate from them. Getting an Uber/Grab from, or to the airport, is always more expensive… just because it’s “the airport” prices are way higher, than choosing any other destination.
On our drive to Ubud, I realized how poor the locals were. Around the main touristic cities, it’s way less noticeable. There wasn’t much beauty outside in the streets. And it took us forever to reach Ubud. If I remember correctly it was around 90 minutes. The 3 of us fell asleep in the cab, as we were tired from taking the airplane early in the morning.
When we arrived at the hotel, I noticed why I loved Bali so much on my very first trip. The streets are filled with divine statues of their several gods. They are very impressive, I just love how they look. They are carved in a very unique style. The streets are packed with smaller temples. You can smell the religious donations, they put in front of their homes: burning inscents, flowers, rice… The local men are wearing the sarongs (long colored skirts).
As soon as we got our bike through the hotel, we went out and discovered the area.
Ubud is very touristic. The “pretty cool traveleres” will advise you to skip Ubud. However any other place in the lower part of the island is touristic: Kuta, Canggu, Seminyak, Ubud, Uluwatu… Those places are packed with white people, tourists from all over the world. But who cares? That’s mostly the place where you stay for food, sleep, and a shower. Otherwise feel free to discover waterfalls, the rice fields, temples, natural view points… It’s a big island, and it will easily keep you busy for days.
Vanessa, went for some yoga classes, while I stayed at our mediocre pool with Valentina, our daughter. The first hotel in Ubud, wasn’t amazing. The second one, was amazing, despite being located further outside of the city center.
Ubud, you gotta love it as a whole.
We visited the famous Yoga Barn together, where Vanessa planed on doing some classes. The whole “ashram” looks quite fascinating, it’s a yoga studio in paradise. The food was great, obviously only vegetarian or vegan food.
I showed her the fantastic “Alchemy” restaurant, which was my go-to place on my first trip. It hadn’t changed, the food was still a 10/10. There was an Alchemy in Ubud, and we visited a 2nd one in Uluwatu.
In the city center, we did some nice shopping, Batik shirts & sarongs. Some traditional hand carved Barong masks. We had the best coconut ice-cream we ever had, at “Tukies - Coconut Shop”, so good! The traditional market is right in the city center, and will keep you busy for an hour or two.
Like already mentioned, the city is packed with tourists, everything is about spending money.
From Ubud, you have plenty of options. The Tegalalang rice terace is most definitely the hotspot. It’s very beautiful, a great place to take some snaps of the area, and yourself surrounded by beautiful nature.
There are some water temples around Ubud, some aren’t too far away, others are further outside the city. Look up : Tirta Empul Temple, which is the most popular among tourists.
We went for the Pura Gunung Kawi Sebatu. It’s not as close, but it was worth the ride. Obviously there were other tourists, but not too many. We enjoyed doing the bathing ritual. It’s a sacred place, surrounded by the beauty of nature. You can feel the serenity, once you step into the temple. Just doing the ceremony as the locals do, made you enjoy it even more. Respect the ritual, don’t start acting like an influencer during the ceremony.
Monkey Forest is a tourist trap. We’ve seen monkeys in almost any other asian country. However because of our daughter, we did the park .
Sidemen.
We got out of the tourist hot spot of Ubud, and stayed two night in Sidemen. It was even more beautiful than the surroundings of Ubud. Kind of the same scenerey of palmtrees and ricefields, however it had a more “untouched” feeling. We stayed at a beautiful homestay, a very nice family that was renting a handful of wooden balinese houses. They had a lovely restaurant, the owner was a chef, so they spoiled us with great dishes during our stay.
On our way there, the taxi couldn’t find the exact adress. The street of our accommodation, was about to be built, so we had to reach our “hotel” with all our luggage, a stroller, our daughter’s helmet, her toys,… Definitely a moment that wasn’t fun, but a memorable one.
Sidemen was definitely not touristic, as we felt like being the only white people in the area. Sometimes we crossed some tourists on scooters as well, however everything else was mostly locals.
I gotta mention, we never felt unsafe, on the whole island of Bali.
Sidemen’s Gembleng Waterfall, must be the most beautiful natural infinity pool, we ever witnessed. You gotta walk up some stairs to reach the top of the waterfall. There are a couple of pools around the edge of the waterfall, where you can dip it in, and take breathtaking photos with a surreal background.
Sidemen wasn’t too far away from the overhyped Tirta Gangga. Yes it’s beautiful. However the beauty gets destroyed by the insane amount of tourists running through the place. While visiting a very touristic water temple, why not adding an even more touristic spot: Pura Lempuyang.
Pura Lempuyang, was mostly about taking a photo. You had to grab a waiting-line ticket. We were told that we had to wait an hour, to be able to take a photo at the “Heaven’s Gate”. The same landmark another 200 people were waiting in line just to take photo. We were lucky, a couple gave as their ticket, when they left. So our waiting time was only 20 minutes. Were those 20 minutes worth the wait… yes, it is indeed a beautiful spot. However mass-tourism kills it.
While visiting those temples, we were driving on our scooter, and that allowed us to see the beauty around Sidemen.
One day, we drove towards Amed, which was in a different area in Bali. We read about it, and were also thinking to spend a night there. As we didn’t want to move our luggage too often, we decided to visit it by scooter. It was a long way. Amed didn’t seem that attractive. Nice for a photo, however nothing comparable to Sidemen or Uluwatu.
Uluwatu.
On my first trip in 2017, I visited Uluwatu, and didn’t really like it. However I gotta admit, I totally missed out the lively area of Uluwatu. This time we stayed nearby Labuan Sait Jalan street, a lively road that led to the famous surf spot Padang-Padang Beach.
It was a pretty cool area. Of course, packed with white people, 1000s of surfers, influencers, australians…. however it was also a “beach town”, which made it a cozy area. We went to some enjoyable restaurants that came with great food. Did some shopping. Overall it was a satisfying experience. The distances on spot were short, and we enjoyed those daily small scooter rides around town.
And we had fun at our super beautiful Villa, that looked like a home for rich people. The lady who was managing the place, was the nicest person we had met on the island. She made us feel so welcome. Or daughter liked the presence of pet cats and dogs. The inner-design of the house was outstanding.
We went to the beach, which aren’t actually the best spots for kids. The water isn’t shallow. The are rocks and reefs on the bottom, got to be careful not to cut your feet. Big waves obviously for the surfers, however they can be intimidating for casual swimmers.
Uluwatu was the right place to wind down our Bali experience. Our daily bike rides became shorter in distance until we turned back those rental bikes, jumped onto a cab, and headed towards Denpasar Airport to fly over to Yogyakarta.
Yogyakarta.
We were looking forward to visit Yogyakarta, pronounced “Jogja-karta”. Our main reason to visit “Jogja” was the buddhist temple Borobudur. Prior our arrival, we noticed, that we would have a hard time, getting tickets to make it on top of the temple. From online blogs and several posts on Instagram, we saw how pretty the buddhist temple looked from the top. It has a very unique architecture, one of a kind. But those tickets that allow you to climb up the temple are very limited. Especially after Covid, they started to slow down tourism on spot, as the weight of people walking up those stairs on daily basis, resulted in shifting the weight of the construction, which made it sink into the ground. To avoid a further incline they limited the entries.
As usual, we’re so often out of luck, when it comes to visiting tourist attractions, we wouldn’t get any tickets online. In the city, we tried at every corner, to buy some tickets for triple the price, or even five times the original price. We checked out the “expensive hotels” for their private-tours, to see if they had any tickets left. No chance!
So in the end we didn’t make it on top. Which was a bummer. As our only reason to visit Yogykarta, was the view from the highest point of the temple.
There was another surprisingly beautiful temple area called: Prambanan. Some people consider it even more beautiful than Borobudur. Definitely worth checking out, both temples are easily doable within a day.
As we only spent two nights (one whole day, during daytime), we didn’t see much of Yogyakarta. The area of our hotel, looked pretty worn down. So did the streets, when we headed from the airport to our accommodation.
The population is highly Muslim oriented, even though the biggest temples originate from Buddhism.
Jakarta.
While we were in Indonesia, and weren’t too far away from Jakarta. We decided to spend 2 nights in Jakarta, at our buddy’s Craig new home. We met each other in Luxembourg, while he spent 5 years in the country, working as a teacher. Later on, he moved to Jakarta.
We were tired of traveling, and enjoyed the coziness of his charming house, that came with a pool. We checked out the hood to get some photos, headed to a local shopping mall and shared some delicious food with Craig.
That was about, how much we got to know about Jakarta. It seemed lovely though, very developed, welcoming local people. Way nicer than Yogyakarta. We had excellent food at a Japanese restaurant, and some amazing cocktails at a local craft mixology bar.
Someday we might make it back to Jakarta, to get a full blast experience of the city.
Indonesia has so much to offer. I really loved our trip, and the magic that I discovered on my first trip to Bali in 2017, still remained. The magic is still there.
