The beach in the island of Bali

{ July 2009 - Bali, Indonesia }

We planned our Bali trip around spending times in 3 main cities - Sanur, Ubud and then Seminyak. We spent the first day in Sanur, drove up North to Ubud on the second day, spent our whole third day in Ubud and our last day in Seminyak.

Day 4 (21 July) - Seminyak and back to Singapore

We spent the night in Seminyak, after travelling from Ubud at night. After breakfast, we started walking along Jalan Raya Seminyak which is a congested and crowded road, with lots of pollution all around. There are rows of shophouses along the road, and it was definitely not probably at around the same price as Singapore. So, we just walked along the road window shopping, while trying to hold our breath when walking along the road. After awhile, we just couldn't stand the smell any longer, and escaped into a (very western looking) cafe for drinks and lunch. The menu were full of western food but we managed to order a relatively Indonesian looking dish.


After lunch, we walked to Seminyak beach. It was a quiet stretch of beach with very few people, but lots of interesting designs on the sand! We believed that they were made by tiny little crabs, crawling around the sand. Isn't it amazing how many different crabs, crawling around randomly could produced such interesting designs?

 

We stopped by a small little shack that sells drink to enjoy the sun, the breeze and the view. We were asked to get tattoos a few times, but I wonder how safe that will be! There were also lots of vendors walking around selling batik (like the one below) as well as sunglasses and caps.

 

As we started walking South towards Legian beach, there seemed to be an invisible line that indicated the end of Seminyak beach and the start of the Legian beach. The following view while reaching Legian beach took us by surprised with the number of people on the beach.

 

We spent the rest of the day just resting by the beach, sitting in cafe having drinks and relaxing. That taught us something - we were not meant to have relaxing holidays! After awhile, we were just bored! We wanted to look at things, see things, experience the place. However, all Seminyak and Legian beach showed us were the number of foreigners on the island. If we wished to spend time with tourists, we would rather visit their home country and be tourists in their country.

All in all, Balinese have interesting cultures, and the country was beautiful. However, we did not really have a chance to meet lots of Balinese - there were lots of tourists and from what we understood from the locals, there were lots of Indonesians from other islands that went to Bali to work. So, most of the "locals" you met in Bali, aren't really locals after all.

So, in reflection, would I want to go to Bali again? Actually, I would. But, the next time, I would be spending more time on the North of the island, maybe around the volcanoes and lakes, and less time, if any, by the beach. The food was good, though I wished there were more local food than restaurants catering for westerners. We enjoyed ourselves, nonetheless. A holiday is still a holiday - and there would definitely be stories to tell regardless of how much you enjoyed it (or not).  I wrote three entries on my short Bali trip, didn't I?

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