Bali with Catherine and Peter

The holiday with Mum finishes in Singapore. The tour group is due to fly back to Heathrow late in the evening. There is a strike by Heathrow immigration officials today and no-one yet knows what effect this will have on their journey. My flight to Bali is earlier in the afternoon, so Mum and I say our goodbyes. It will be another 9 months until we meet up again next September. Mum says, ‘Well I waited 9 months to have you, so I can wait 9 months again.’

My flight is only 3 hours and I am looking forward to meeting up with Peter and Catherine, who are already on holiday in Bali.  I am joining them at their hotel for 4 nights and after a taxi ride from the airport I arrive at the Bali Hyatt in Sanur, where they meet me in the lobby, looking relaxed and sun-kissed. We have a drink and a sandwich together and start to catch up with the last 3 months since we last met.

The hotel is fantastic and is right on the beach. It has 2 swimming pools, one with blue tiles and one more natural,  with plenty of sunbeds under shady frangipani and palm trees and beautiful grounds.

Swimming pools

Hotel gardens

In the lobby a pair of local Balinese men play a gentle plinky-plonky tune on xylophone-type instruments.

Plinky -Plonky Musicians

Catherine and Peter comment that the accommodation blocks are unfortunately built in the style of a 1970s multi-storey car park, but they blend in with the vegetation, so that they become almost invisible.

Multi-storey car park-style accommodation buildings

My room is wonderful and spacious, with a balcony overlooking the gardens. As I unpack later that night I look for the wardrobe and am surprised that it has two narrow louvered doors; it doesn’t look big enough for the room; but when I open the doors I laugh out loud because it is a huge walk-in wardrobe!

It is even hotter here than in Singapore and this is the hottest place I have been. The humidity is so high, so that your sunglasses mist up as you leave the coolness of the air-conditioned bedroom. We spend the day quietly in and around the swimming pools.

When the fiercest heat of the day is over Catherine and I have a swim in the sea. The beach is protected by a coral reef and the water is as warm as a bath. When the tide is in the water is only shoulder deep and when the tide is out you can wade right out to the reef and not get your shorts wet.

Sanur beach

Fishing boats at Sanur beach

In the evening we take a taxi ride to another beach, Jimbaran, on the west coast to see the sunset and we are not disappointed – it is doing its thing right on cue. Jimbaran Beach is beautiful crescent of white sand, with many restaurants right on the beach, which are busy in the evening as people take in the view and eat seafood for dinner. After a walk along the beach we sit at a table and drink a beer as the sun goes down and the sky becomes streaked with red and orange.

Jimbaran

My guidebook tells me that the first Europeans to set foot in Bali were Dutch seafarers in 1597 and when the captain Cornelius Houtman prepared to set sail from Bali, some of his crew refused to leave. I’m not surprised – what I have seen of the island so far is truly paradise.

The next morning Catherine and I take a short bike ride in the local area with a guide from the hotel.

Catherine and our bike guide

First of all we cycle along the paved promenade at Sanur. This extends about 5km between the hotels and restaurants and the beach. The tide is out now and a few local fisherman are wading in the shallows looking for small fish. We then cycle inland to the main village of Sanur and visit a local market. This market is very similar to the others I have seen in Asia, selling fruit, veg, meat and fish – but with added religion. Although Indonesia is a mainly Muslim country, Bali has its own version of Hinduism and their religion plays a huge part in their daily lives. There are temples everywhere from bigger local temples to small ones and shrines in each house, shop, restaurant and workplace and several times a day offerings of flowers, fruit, food etc are made to the Gods. In this market each of the stalls has its own golden temple on a stick and many of the stalls are selling the paraphernalia associated with their religion and making offerings.

Market stalls with their own temples

Temple items for sale

Some stalls sell ready-made offerings and also the separate bits and pieces if you wish to make your own – palm leaves, rice cones, flower petals, incense sticks etc. The locals spend a lot of their time and money doing the right thing by the Gods.

Offerings stall

After the gentle exercise of our bike ride some more serious lazing by and in the pool is in order to escape the midday heat. We manage to summon enough energy to swim lazily over to the swim-up bar and order ice-cream sundaes.

It’s a tough life – but someone has to do it!

In the evening we go to visit Kuta Beach. This is where tourism first started on Bali. It was a stop on the hippie trail in the 60s and then became a surf spot and now it is a crazy maze of shops, bars, restaurants and alleyways, known as ‘gangs’, that spit out motorbikes when you are least expecting them. We arrive on the beach just as the sun goes down and walk along among the Muslim locals and western tourists and watch the people who are still in the sea.

busy on Kuta Beach in the early evening

There are no bars as such at the back of the beach, but locals have insulated boxes containing cold drinks and plastic chairs for us to sit on and locals play guitars and sing.

A beer on the beach with the locals

We get talking to a young man who comes from Sumatra, who is currently living and working on Bali. He says he comes to the beach every evening after work and he has made friends with other Sumatrans. We ask him about Bali and he says it is a great place, but he says the Balinese are lazy and it’s the Javans and Sumatrans who have the jobs. We leave them to their beers and music and walk away from the beach up a gang that is packed with stalls selling T shirts and sarongs. Back in the main street the bars and restaurants are belting out western music and it's only 8.00pm. We find a relatively quiet restaurant that has free wi-fi and I manage to Skype Katie, but it is too noisy to be able to have a conversation. After our meal we take a taxi back to the quieter resort of Sanur and leave the excitement of Kuta to the young people - I'm sure it will all be happening until the wee small hours.