May 6th, 2019. Mount Ijen – going to Bali
After our failed attempt to visit Mount Ijen, we woke up early in the morning . The whole family of the homestay was already awake. After some talking, the woman came with two plates of nasi goreng with egg (fried rice) for breakfast. It was a very kind gesture of her, since it was the first day of Ramadan and they were fasting.
Nasi Goreng for breakfast
There was not much to do around there, we sat in the front of the house with the women and the little girl. The women was making some sort of boxes with palm leaves to cook rice in them, while the little girl wouldn’t take her phone out of her hands and spoke with us via google translate. Later we went for a short walk along the river in front of the house. There were some locals living life in the simplest way possible, a graveyard in front of the houses and some abandoned houses with Chinese decorations such as dragons and birds, which kept us intrigued.
Our host in Mount Ijen
We said goodbye to this family, and of course we took a selfie with them before we departed. We drove down the mountain and went to a beach side. It happened to be a very poor area, only some huts, a simple mosque, animals walking around, and lots of trash…
After that, we brought the motorbike back to the hostel of the previous day, picked up our other backpack and went to the ferry terminal to go to…. Bali! The owner of the hostel brought us to the ferry terminal for 60k rupiah and gave us tips about prices in Bali.
We are going to Bali
Actually, the previous days we were only busy thinking about visiting Mount Bromo and Mount Ijen, and we did not look up anything about what to do in Bali. Even worse, we had under estimated the size of Bali. In our minds, we would walk out of the ferry and find some homestay within ten minuts walk. That’s what we thought until the driver told us that a bus from the ferry terminal to Denpasar (the main area of Bali) is FOUR hours.
Oh well, that would give us enough time to find accommodation online on the way. But of course… our local sim card stopped working!
From the ferry to Denpasar
We took the ferry, fell asleep and woke up at the other side. Walking out of the terminal, lots of locals approached us offering transport. We got on the first bus we saw, which was heading to Denpasar and already leaving (50k rupiah). It was another of those so called “VIP” bus with “airco”, very full.
Ferry to Bali
The bus stopped at a bus station. We were far from town, and didn’t have internet. So we asked another couple where they were going and shared a Grab to their destination, that was Seminyak. Around there we found a place to have a bite and get wifi to find accommodation. It looks like we had arrived in the most hipster and overpriced area of Bali… but we managed to find a very nice hotel for 15€ with pool and a short ride from the beach.
And once again, not planning anything was the best!
The next days in Bali we explored different areas and found the cheapest place to surf!
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