August 2012 - Indonesia
Kuta, Bali, at 11pm with its bright lights and buzz certainly wasn't what my mother had in mind as we embarked on 18 days unplanned on Bali and Lombok. At 27 years old, I had already considered how we would find a happy medium on this trip...
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| Campuhan Bridge |
After 2 days of poolside deliberation, we boarded a white combi van with 6 other people, headed for Ubud. After travelling for a couple of hours with an acute sense of heading 'up' and indeed away from the coastline, the surroundings grew quiet, more sparse, with unfamiliar draping foliage dominating the landscape. Arriving in Balis self proclaimed 'cultural and artistic heart', we were dropped off on a street of boisterous and overloaded bedlam. Uh oh! I though. Drawing some positivity from the absence of neon lights and billboards, I wondered how this place was going to satisfy the desires my mother had versed using the words 'peace' and 'atmosphere'.
As with the earlier van journey, everything began to thin out - even the traffic to a degree. We traipsed 2km west of central Ubud as the road began to wind and narrow, there were fewer buildings, fewer people, more of that thing I think my mum was looking for, emerged. We crossed a Campuhan Bridge (where we ate later that week The Bridges)
We came to a standstill and in need of a place to stay, followed directions on a faded wooden sign up a dusty track, flanked by a small rice field and an old windmill. This is where we would stay - amongst several rustic old balinese style buildings. At night we watched the light change from the balcony of our tatty room and the next few days more of less disappeared.
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| Ibu Oka |
This is where travelling without an agenda really pays off. Observing the life of others in and around Ubud became an engaging pastime. Men preparing their birds for the upcoming cock fight, women in the rice fields and observing local crafts and artists work around Jl. Penastanan. Periodically, we were drawn down to the suckling pig eatery in central Ubud, then would retreat back along the original walk
(Cheap eat: Ibu Oka, Central Ubud - featured in The Guardian). This was never completed without stopping off for a massage amongst the fields and ravines of this magic place.
Bali is definitely not all about beaches. It turns out I made a good choice for my mum, and perhaps more surprisingly, for myself too.
