Bali Hai

It had been a long and at times, bumpy drive. Even though we were less than 15 minutes from our destination, Aunt Penny needed a break from sitting and a cold drink. We stopped at the first convenience store we saw.

Emily and I waited in the car while Aunt Penny and Susan went in to grab something cold. They came out with their drinks…and a bag of popcorn. Durian flavored popcorn. They didn’t realize it wasn’t plain or butter flavored since the package was yellow – the official color of artificial durian flavoring throughout Asia.

They had no interest in durian flavored popcorn, so I went in to try to exchange it for plain. Only it turned out they were all fruit flavors – strawberry, orange, durian and pandan. Given that returns and refunds don’t really exist here, I had to make a choice and pandan which is a coconut-based flavor seemed to me like it went best with popcorn.

Apparently, it was a good choice and went over better than the fruitier flavors. Oh, the experiments you can have in an Asian convenience store….

It was just another laugh in the chain of laughter that characterized the day. We left our house near Ubud around 10:30 and headed north.

We stopped at the Taman Ayun temple – one of the great pieces of Balinese temple architecture. The roughly 600 year-old structure is set in the middle of a man-made lake and adorned with lavish, sculpted gardens. The grounds are almost as large as the giant temple itself. With its fantastic inner sanctum filled with structures housing the Hindu gods, Tamun Ayun is one of the more complex religious structures in Bali and an absolute wonder to stroll around and behold.

Some people are sobered by it. Some find themselves disinterested in what appears to be just another ornate temple among the perhaps thousands of temples in Bali. Our group somehow managed to maintain a firm appreciation and respect with constant kibbitzing and laughter. We brought some fun to Taman Ayun.

With the heat of the midday sun glaring down, we were happy to get back into the air conditioning of the car and head further north into the mountains. We drove past one gorgeous rice field after another until they became giant stacks of more than 20 terraces per hillside.

The volcano areas of Bali and descent to the north shore are some of my favorite parts of Bali. They’re a completely different Bali – one so many visitors to the island never see. While they certainly aren’t free of tourism, they represent the traditional heart of Bali – an older Bali more like what people found 20 and 30 years ago.

Susan and Aunt Penny told us that during their stay, they wanted to go to another part of the island for a couple of days to get another perspective on Bali. I knew immediately that if they were amenable, I wanted to take them north and share a very different slice of Bali.

As we climbed the the volcanic foothills, the scenery changed. Suddenly, thick, full foliaged trees began to cover the hills. Terraces grew vegetables and fruits instead of rice. Bali’s delicious, fresh produce comes from the hills. We saw strawberry farms and farmers gathering their crops of fresh cabbages and bok choi to bring to market.

We climbed until we were snuggled up to giant Mount Batur and could view southern Bali sprawled below us. We wound through the mountain roads until we reached the three lakes that sit in the shadow of the volcano and the gorgeous temple that flows out into the middle of the central lake.

The road took us into a monkey forest looming over one of the three great lakes, where monkeys hang out alongside the road. We stopped, took photos and paid the woman trying to sell us bananas to feed the monkeys herself. It felt safer and the photos came out well.

After passing through several mountain towns and villages with their large produce markets and distribution centers, we came to the fork in the road I know so well. One day in 2004, when I needed to get away and clear my head, I rode my motorcycle up the mountain just to get a change of scenery. I turned off the main road onto a small, bumpy side road with a great view of two of the lakes.

It led me to a coffee plantation that operates a small restaurant in Banyuatis with an immaculate view of the coffee trees, hillsides, rice terraces and the black sand north shore below. I returned there many times, often with guests. I don’t know a better view in Bali.

Today, we could see all the way to the shore and across the strait to Java. How many people get to enjoy a cup of freshly grown and roasted Bali coffee while also having their Java in sight?

Around the lunch table foods were tried, topics were discussed, coffee was evaluated and there was much laughter as we looked out at the reddish coffee trees and stunning views on all sides. Then we enjoyed a guided tour of how the coffee is picked, dried, roasted and ground into the most exquisite coffee. I love it so much that even though I don’t usually drink coffee, I can never resist it – it’s a true taste of Bali.

Our journey took us down the windy road leading north to the Singaraja – meaning Lion King – province of Bali. We passed through the clove growing villages which sadly weren’t drying their wares on the side of the road as they so often do. Then came some of Bali’s most sculpted and sprawling rice terraces accompanied by stunning coconut groves. Emily needed to stop several times for photo sessions – each time invoking gasps as I rolled the car onto the narrow and sometimes thick, grassy turn-offs on the side of the narrow road.

Eventually, we hit the large road that runs the length of Bali’s north coast – where the colonizing Dutch originally landed and had their first encounters with the Balinese. For many years, the king of Singaraja – the Lion King – kept them from ever reaching, let alone passing the mountains, which helped the kingdoms of central and southern Bali retain their independence.

Along much of the the north coast, rice fields and banana plantations extend all the way to the ocean. We followed along them until we reached Lovina where we will stay two nights. Our hotel courtyard features a beautiful, large swimming pool, our rooms face out to the South Pacific sitting 20 feet away and we are all on a Bali Hai.

**As of this writing, we are fine and there is no tsunami here.

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