Starting my world travel in Bali, Indonesia
In the beginning, I was pretty unsure where to start my world travel. So I decided to see two of my friends who were studying in Denpasar, Bali. I booked a flight to the most common destination for Australians – Bali Indonesia and managed to get my neighbour and friend from Sydney to Bali too.
I arrived on the 25th of May in Denpasar and got picked up by a driver Simon (my neighbour) hired to drive me to Padang Bai, where I met Simon after 4 months again! We grabbed a beer and joined Simons travel mates at the beach. Our other friends Steffen and Andi (the students) had to study for their final exams, what a bad timing. The next day we took a ferry from Padang Bai to a nice little island called “Gili Air”, the island is pretty quiet and has amazing beaches and snorkel spots to discover also, the sunsets are stunning on those islands.
Enjoying the island life on Gili Air
That island is so tiny you can walk around Gili Air in 40 minutes! We did that hike on our first day, cause we booked a cheap homestay (120.000 IDR ~ 8,30€) on the opposite side of the pier where we arrived. Usually in Asia, you are surrounded by crazy scooter drivers, when you walk on a street. But on the three Gili Islands, there are no scooters or cars only horse taxis to take the lazy tourists to their accommodation. After our first night in the mosquito infested room, Simon and I booked a diving trip to a turtle hot spot. Later that day we run into a guy who told us: “The Gili Islands are the turtle capital of the world” – Yes, I haven´t seen turtles or other cool fishes in Thailand before. Basically we relaxed all day, had some good food and watched every sunset with a nice drink and a good talk!
Impressions from Gili Air
Left to right: Me and Simon my Neighbour and Travel-Mate for Australia
All in all, it was an amazing time and with awesome people! For me it felt more like a vacation, cause my last real vacation was in the summer of 2016 when I lived in Croatia for a couple of months. Besides my Christmas holidays I was just working, saving up money and planning my World travel! Unfortunately our group split up after Gili Air, the guys did some Island hopping, Juliane went to Ubud to stay in a villa with their own chef! Simon and I went to party with our other fellas in Seminyak.
Taxi Mafia and Partying in Seminyak, Bali with our other fellas!
We arrived in Padang Bai after two hours on a ferry (boozcruise) from Gili Air just to find out, that the Taximafia is still present. They tried to charge me ~300.000 IDR (20€) which is a three-day salary, just for one and a half hour drive in a shuttle bus. I was pretty hungover and sleepy when I tried to negotiate the Taxi Mafia for almost 45 Minutes. They nearly got me to pay that expensive ride but I changed my plan and tried to find a scooter rental store. So I walked with 20 kg on my back around the city and asked local restaurants for guidance. No one could or more likely don’t wanted to help me. The Taximafia was still present in local stores and even the usually friendly waiters don´t want to help us, but there were offering private rides for 200.000 IDR instead- still too much! Basically every Indonesian guy in touristic places is getting dollar signs in their eyes when a white tourists are around. They are making different prices for different tourists! The unluckiest tourists are from USA, Australia, UK, Russia and Germany. I ended up renting a scooter for 50.000 IDR a day from a store outside the city but there was a little hook I had to deposit my Passport, what I usually would never do! The German Government was so kind to hand me out two valid Passports for my world travel.
I was so glad when we arrived at our Hostel in Seminyak alive, after my first ride on a scooter during the night in Bali. Traffic lights count only for cars – not for scooters, so you can imagine how crazy the traffic is. Overtaking with while vehicles are on the other side is no big deal, you are quite small on a scooter and fit between two cars easily.
Simon and I met up with Steffen and Andi our two other friends who “studied” in Bali since February, they had their final exams during my first week in Indonesia. What would you do after your final exams as a student? Yep you got it, get drunk, party and have a good time! That’s recently what we did two days straight. Unfortunately Simon had to left for work in Sydney and I stayed in the pool house in my friends rented Villa. It was a crowded place all the other German students from Steffen and Andi hang out there too.
Simon left on Saturday and my other two fellas would leave this beautiful country on Monday night too. From this point, I will travel alone until I met up with Simon in Australia for our road trip.
Ubud – Monkey Forest, Waterfalls, Rice terraces
I left the villa and my friends around noon with quite a hungover and headed to Ubud, a nice little town in the heart of Bali. It was really hard to drive 1,5 hours during peak time traffic on a scooter with 20 kg on your back. Just before I left I texted a German guy I met on the plane to Bali, while we were trying to get drunk with Gin Tonic, to avoid the 12 hours straight screaming baby in our front row. While I was checking my navigation system for the direction I received a message, that I can sleep on their sofa – nice! I was so happy to get a hot shower in their nice Villa, a good dinner and a relaxing evening at their pool while drinking Gin Tonic and playing cards.
I just could stay for a night, because they were leaving to Denpasar to catch a flight to Hong Kong. So I booked a Homestay (150.000 IDR) a bit outside the centre to have a base from where I can discover all the beautiful spots around Ubud. The most annoying part about backpacking is to pack and unpack your stuff every time you have to move. Even yet I had some awesome vacuum zip bags, it is still like playing Tetris on an expert level!
Sacred Monkey Forest and Goa Gajah in Ubud, Bali
On my first day in Ubud I discovered the sacred Monkey Forest, which is awesome not only for seeing monkeys. The whole area is a sacred temple in the middle of a rain forest. It feels like you are walking around in a jungle with monkeys jumping around to steal your food, sunglasses, nearly everything they could grab. The locals sell you a bunch of bananas for 20.000 IDR to feed the monkey, cause the monkeys love bananas as much as Germans love beer!
After the sacred Monkey Forest, I went to a quite unknown temple close by my base, called Goa Gajah. Directly after I parked my scooter in front of the temple 4 women tried to sell me a Sarong. A Sarong is tradition cloth which you need to enter a Temple, that’s what the women told me. I got a nice blue one for 50.000 IDR only to find out later that you can rent them at the Temple for 2.000 IDR. Neither the less the Temple was awesome, the monks had a small hole in the middle of a cave just for them to sit there all day and pray. Behind the caves was a nice little river and a colourful lake. I talked to the oldest monk and tried to make him understand that I would like to fly my drone and capture the beautiful scenario. After 15 minutes he agreed and it was nice to see a person spending most of his life praying in a cave and being open minded enough to allow a backpacker to fly over his sanctuary.
Rice terrace and Waterfalls around Ubud
I was on my way to the famous Rice terraces around Ubud and I noticed another white guy on a scooter. We were overtaking each other every few minutes, while the other stopped to check his phone the other one was overtaking. After our little “race” we both stopped at the rice terraces parking lot and got immediately picked up by a coffee Plantage owner, who offers us a free coffee tasting. I mean nothing is free in life but I couldn´t figure out the actual hook behind the story, so I decided to join Ronald (The guy I had the race with) for the Tasting. The Plantage owner showed us the procedure how to make the world famous and most expensive coffee in the world – Luwak coffee! Basically it is the poo of an animal and in Europe you pay around 1000€ per Kilo. Ronald and I shared one cup for 5€. To be honest I liked the vanilla coffee by far more than the “cat shit” coffee.
After the coffee Tasting we were ready to hike up and down all day. In total it was really exhausting hiking in the middle of the day, the sun is burning you, the roads were totally muddy and you just walk up and down all day. But the landscape from our point of view was stunning, we started our hike from the coffee plantage, which gave us the advantage that we don´t have to overtake the selfie-loving chines tourists, which could easily block a whole road just by taking selfies and if you are not an advance limbo dancer you couldn´t make it thru!
We found a good spot without tourists to fly my drone around the awesome landscape of the rice terraces. It was the first time I had to fly without actually seeing my drone. I was a bit nervous when I only had 30% of battery left and I was still 400 meters away from the Home Point. I changed the screen mode from capturing to maps and made it “home” easily with the build in navigation system.
I spend the next days exploring the surroundings of Ubud with Ronald with our scooters or as we called it: “Just get lost”. We saw so many temples, awesome waterfalls and stunning landscapes during our rides around Ubud.
After that amazing time, I spend with Ronald our ways split up for a short time. I booked the “Sunrise Mt Batu tracking” for my last evening. My alarm was ringing around 1:45 am cause I got picked up around 2 am. We started the day with a 1,5-hour drive, a small breakfast and some really motivated group members and I was just too tired. We climbed that huge Vulcano in around 1,5 hours in the middle of the night with just flashlight. Usually it should take 2-2,5 hours but as I mentioned we had a really motivated group. All in all, it should be an awesome experience if you have good weather which we unfortunately hadn’t – it was just foggy as hell you couldn´t see anything from the stunning sunrise we saw in the advertisement. I even get my drone up to 150 meters above us, but it was still foggy.
We came back to the homestay around 9 am and I had to pack my stuff, take a shower and had to check out until 10 am – all I wanted that morning was to sleep, cause I only slept for 2 hours. I wanted to catch the ferry from Padang Bai to Lombok which would departure around noon. So was in a kind of hurry with only two hours to get some food, drive one hour, get back to the scooter rental anbuyby a ferry ticket.
I made it! The second part of my Indonesia adventure will be uploaded soon!