Thanks to some amazing people who trusted us to take their wedding photos half way across the world, we were able to travel to Bali in September of 2014. If you haven’t had a chance, you should check out Kelly and Albert’s wedding – it was breathtaking. The first few days of our trip were spent near Kuta close to the wedding location. After a few days, we made our way to Ubud, where we were able to do a bit more exploring. Bali is a place we’d been dreaming of going to for many years but when we were finally there, we realized our dreams hadn’t at all done this place justice. We’ve never seen a greener green, or a more breathtaking sunset. The people were kind, the food was cheap, and the Bintang was flowing.
Here’s a (not very) short photographic narrative of some of our adventures. If you ever have a chance of traveling to this unique wonderland, take it!
We stopped at the Deus ex Machina “Temple of Enthusiasm.” Not a real temple. But nonetheless, we got some good drinks, talked to other travelers, and found a little home-away-from-home amongst the surf boards, cafe racers, and art. The place is basically a compound that houses surfboard shaping bays, a motorcycle garage, a barbershop, an art gallery, a killer restaurant, and probably a bunch of other rad stuff.
Tanah Lot: “Land in the Sea.” This temple was a must see if you can deal with crowds of tourists. We came at low tide so we waded the tide pools and watched many a tourist get soaked from the waves crashing against the temple walls.
Exploring Ubud was way cooler than we ever could have hoped. Though the city center is somewhat tourist saturated, its very easy to escape into more rural landscapes and get a glimpse into every day Bali life.
One of the absolute best decision of our lives: renting a scooter for $5 a day and taking to a few of the roads less traveled. Mind you, many of the pictures from this point on were taken from the back of said scooter. Driving in Bali took some getting used to. They drive on the left and don’t really seem to have many rules other than the person in front has the right-of-way. People pass on every side and there are “one way streets” but people will still ride their scooters against traffic. Once we got a little more comfortable we had a blast. Being from LA, we were amazed at how kind and patient all of the drivers were.
Our next journey on our Scoopy scooter brought us through 160km of jungle, rice terraces, volcanoes, and mountain lakes. We had no gps, no street signs, and a paper map.
At the top a long climb with hairpin turns and people passing dump trunks like mad, we made it to Danau Beratan. Intead of the $6 it would be to enter the temple here, we payed a man in a little wood shack $10 to take us on a speed boat road around the lake – second best decision of the trip. Our boat driver put the boat in full throttle, climbed onto the front, and told us he’d take our picture with our camera if we wanted. In these situations, the only right answer is “yes.”
From Danau Beratan to Danau Batur. We got a lost a few times on this rural road through the mountains, but somehow we made our way around the bend to some amazing views and found the road down to the lake.
