Batu Bolong Beach

Because one swimming pool is not enough for us anymore, we moved to the mountains just up the road for a couple of nights. The real reason was to see the region from a different angle, but the hotel did have two swimming pools big enough to swim laps and more importantly... Instagramable! This is a retreat hotel and most of the sleeping arrangements are villas. They were a bit big for us so we stayed in the main building and had to share the swimming pools...with the birds mainly because we didn't see many other guests! It looks more relaxing on the pictures than in reality, they were doing construction work so it was a bit noisy. Not what we wanted but it may be a good transition to our next destination, Canggu.

When we asked for advice on where to go in Bali, Canggu was mentioned every time. It's described as a beach tourist town with a lot of bars, restaurants and surfing, but mainly having a chill vibe. We found a good hotel by the beach, the process of booking it was quite cumbersome as there are so many of them! The drive there was long and the closer we got to the beach the less cars we saw and the more scooters they were.

Our first evening in Canggu we walked down to the beach and saw a lot of surfers and a little religious ceremony going on. It is definitely more lively than the north West, good for people watching. We found a very good restaurant to eat and the street reminded us of Ubud, the first place we stayed at.

The second day we took a grab (equivalent of Uber) to go and visit the Bali museum in the 'Capital' of Bali Denpasar, effectively the same metropolis as Canggu. We had a lot of traffic, but the museum was cute and afterwards we went to a neighborhood where Armelle was able to buy some fabric for future sewing projects. We used mototaxi to go back to our hotel and even if the journey may have been shorten by 5min it seemed a lot quicker, probably because we spent most of it overtaking the cars from on the pavement! Traffic laws here are more of a suggestion tha. Anything else.

The following day we're back at the beach. This coastline runs for most of the island and is pretty much continuous beach the entire western side of the island. The original development started in the south and has been spreading up the coastline ever since. We took a long walk down the beach to see the towns of Seminyak and Kuta where it all began for the Bali Tourism scene. These days they have been taken over by the massive resort hotels, some up to £700 a night, right on the beach with multiple Pools. We had lunch in one of them then jumped on a bike back up to our little chilled area. Some home we manged to walk 4km on the back in just about an hour, the moto taxi ride home took nearly the same amount of time, the roads here really are crazy.

We would have liked to stay longer in Indonesia and visit other islands and try to get off the beaten track, however we heard that is wasn't always easy to travel during Ramadan so that's why we concentrated our visit on Bali, who's population is mainly Hindu. Overall we really enjoyed our time in Bali, there is beautiful scenery, interesting culture and cool animals! What we didn't expect is how long it takes to go from one place to another or you need to love scooter traffic! We were also struck by how fancy the touristy spots are here. In Canggu there are more high end shops than little markets, we ate some good croissants and they even had Kouign Aman! For those who don't know, it is a patisserie from Brittany. It feels that some of local culture is replaced by what tourists. In a way is nice to eat a good pizza but in another it looses the charm a little when you go so far from home to find the same stuff but but with nicer weather.Read more