BALI – WEEKS 1 & 2 @ CANGGU BEACH 1-14 June 2024
Probably the most “out there” thing we did during our first two weeks was experiencing a float tank at Float Solace. I knew that 90 minutes of floating was going to be a stretch, what was I going to think about for 90 minutes? Christine’s main concern was what to wear … “I know we’re floating by ourselves but I’m not floating in the nude!”
But, more about that later …
Where we stayed … Our first two weeks was in the Villa Kedidi, probably 100m from the Canggu Beach. The Villa had quite a few staff who waited on us hand and foot. Christine and I did our own cooking when we wanted, but if we felt like it we could order a meal. The staff were lovely and very attentive.
My bedroom and the living area over to the left, overlooking the pool.
My bedroom, looking out at the pool, fan, air conditioning, and en suite.
The ensuite bathroom, the main bedroom has a bath in the ensuite.
The shower is to the right, it’s outdoors, so if it’s raining, you get wet with the shower and the rain LOL.
The pool at night. I’ve been swimming in it a couple of times each day, absolutely lovely when I come back from a hot walk.
Yoga … I had decided before I left that I would do as much yoga as possible over the six weeks, so looked around for a studio.
The foyer at the Tugu Bali Hotel where I’ve been going to yoga, very old world.
Some of the amazing Balinese art work (carvings) at the hotel.
The yoga studio.
Stone carving on the way into the Studio.
I chose Ashtanga yoga, at the Guan Yin Yoga Shala. As luck would have it, the studio was in the Tuga Bali Hotel. At A$14 a class it was more than I expected but given the luxury of the Hotel (very “colonial” looking with lots of old Balinese art), I probably should have expected the price. The bonus was it was a mere 50m from our villa.
Years ago, I had started with this type of yoga. Ashtanga yoga involves a series of poses, in a particular order and you can go around the world and do this yoga and know what to expect. The instructor told me it was very “dynamic”, I think she looked at me and figured I wasn’t up for it, and frankly she was verging on being right. After 90 minutes in the Monday class I recon I’d sweated a gallon of water and I was sore all over. At the end of the session one of the 40-something guys congratulated me on finishing … I must really have looked shattered! This is where the proximity came in handy, out the door and over to our villa and I was in the pool, cooling off. Nevertheless, I fronted up for the Wednesday class two days later and whilst I sweated the same amount I wasn’t as shattered at the end. I even persuaded Christine to go to one of the easy sessions, given that she’s not that much off a Yoga person, she did really well. On the second Wednesday session I went to, my usual instructor wasn’t there and the one that was said we’d be doing Power Yoga … and it was a lot harder than the Ashtanga. She was right, after 90 minutes I dragged myself back to the Villa and had to lay down for the rest of the day! All in all, I did six sessions over the two weeks.
Getting around … thankfully Christine likes to walk, and although it was quite humid, the walking was a bonus. “I’m NOT getting on one of those motorcycles” said Christine, this lasted for four days and three walks, but when we were on the way to the Float place and Christine’s Maps on her phone and dismal internet connection sent us way, way out of our way, she relented and negotiated a couple of bikes to get us where we needed to go. We were going to catch a taxi to get back to the Villa but we’d already made the leap to getting around on a motorcycle, so we picked up another two to get us home (lol). After being adamant about not getting on the back of a motorcycle, we actually repeated the experience 2 or 3 times!
Christine, first trying to find where we should be, all 3 had their phones out trying to find the address, then Christine had to negotiate a fare to take us there this was all under the watchful eyes of the security guard.
Float Solace … I asked Christine if she’d do it again, and her answer was an unequitable “yes”! So, that says a lot.
Once we eventually arrived (via motorcycle), we were welcomed with coconut water and cool wet cloths, we chose the music that we’d listen to (if we wanted), Rainforest for Christine and Ocean for me. Then we were offered a class of some concoction that the girl was putting together above, tasted ok.
Then we were taken upstairs, we each got a room with a float pod in it, we had to shower, pop in ear plugs and then when ready get into the pod, you could have the door open or closed, the light(s) on or off and music to the volume you wanted.
It was weird getting in, the water was only about 30cm deep and when I first got it felt a little like half-set jelly, but not an unpleasant feel. I initially started with the door open, but then found it too cold, so closed it, at the same time, I turned the light off (much better to relax with the light off). The music I chose would go for 80 minutes and I was told that the music would stop when the time to get out was right and a woman’s voice would tell you when to get out. After my music stopped, I laid there a while and then decided I’d had enough so got out and had a shower to get all the “stuff” off and out of my hair. I did a lot of breathing exercises (the type I’d do after Yoga), and occasionally moved myself around in the pod, I also changed what I did with my arms too, couldn’t do much except lay there. I did wonder how someone with ADHD would go having to float for 80 – 90 minutes, but I guess they could get out whenever they wanted to.
After showering off I met Christine downstairs where we were given drinks and a snack and encouraged to lay back and relax (that’s Christine “relaxing”). All in all a really unusual experience, thanks for booking us in Christine!
Seeing the sights … our walking tours.
The start of our first walk, turns out we are only 100m from the beach.
A big block of lava on the beach with a shrine and some Hindu offerings on it. Note the banner at the top, this is the same rock as this one with the shrine, evidence of past volcanic activity in the area.
Some of the offerings. These offerings are made daily, there is always one at the front gate of our villa driveway, and sometimes at the door to our villa.
The beach just down the road from us, the white you can see are beach umbrellas with beach chairs under them, usually out the front of a bar, so people can sunbake and have drinks delivered to them. We walked this section of beach a couple of times.
The first time we walked down the beach, we took one of the roads leading away from the beach and meandered our way back to the villa, took quite a while to find out way back, stumbled on this bazaar on the way, took a look inside, but very hot under the roof so didn’t stick around for long.
A nod to Tino and Aaron, we found a couple of man-hole covers (Tino and Aaron are always photographing them).
Christine didn’t think this qualified as a man-hole cover but I’m pretty sure it was, they were all up and down the main road.
On the second day’s walk (we went a different way), we went past some rice paddies, right in the heart of town almost. This was the day that we walked all over hell and back to find our way back home.
Still on the same walk, another rice paddy, this one already harvested.
Sunday’s pamper day – on the second Sunday, in the morning, Christine and I did a yoga session, and then after lunch, Christine had ordered a full body massage, facial and pedicure. Two lovely Balinese ladies came to our Villa and we laid on the two twin in my room and gave us an amazing massage. The only thing that was missing was some background music. The whole experience spread over 2 hours or absolute pampering.
After our pedicure! Love having my toenails painted!
More Sight seeing – on the second Monday, Christine organised a tour to one of the other islands nearby, Nusa Penida. We were to see some of the highlights of this small island (Our driver J (aka Jerky) told us it had a population of 500,000 people, but according to Wiki, it’s around 56,000). We were picked up at 6am for a transfer to the port in Sunur.
Heading down to the boats, an awful lot of people for these small boats.
Many had gone off the to side for their boat, but still too many! I had visions of capsizing boats and us making headlines down in Sydney.
Once loaded though, it didn’t look too crowded, good ride, took about 1 hour and not too choppy.
We met our guide once we got off the boat (he was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with the name of the company so there was no confusion), name, Jerky “but you can call me J”.
After a 1 hour drive through the middle of the island, we came to Atuh and Diamond beaches.
Christine and me at Atuh beach. Given all the tourists, and the massive cliff behind us, there were NO railings to stop the Instagram people from taking a selfie and then taking one too many selfies back and over the cliff!
Looking down on Atuh beach, this is tide dependent and you walk down a precarious looking track, with a dodgy downclimb to get to the beach (you can see the people down on the beach, it’s a long way down). We decided the walk down was not for us, plus it was really crowded.
This is the same beach, plus the headland and you can see near the arrow where a new track is being carved into the rock (limestone), I’m guessing this is because the current track is (a) dodgy and (b) too crowded, I could see some guys on the track working away at it, hope it’s going to have a handrail (the existing one doesn’t).
Looking down to Diamond Beach, the only way down is via this track, all the infrastructure you see on the beach had to be carried down. There were what looked like caves at the water level, if I’d had someone to go with me I would have checked them out, mind you the tide wasn’t favourable on this day LOL.
Looking back up the Diamond Beach Valley, some farm land, plus you can see from the expanse of hills, plenty of opportunities for finding caves, if you could tolerate the heat in the forest.
Walking up to the headland between Atuh and Diamond beaches, a massive swing (for the tourists) is being erected, looks like the swing will take the punters over the edge of the cliff. It looks safe enough, I’m hoping that these poles go down a fair way, and that the concrete was the right recipe to take the load.
The swing seat ready to go, hopefully there’ll be some sort of harness to keep you on the seat.
The infrastructure for a zip line that will take tourists out across the beach and cliffs, lots of infrastructure going in.
The other end of the Zip line, you can see why they’re putting so much money in, plenty of tourists. Mind you, the road to the beach is a bit scary, they might have to do something about that too!
Our next destination was a lookout called the Tree House. This was a similar “right on the cliff” lookout but you could walk down to another cliff where there were some old huts built there. We didn’t bother with the walk down, a bit of a crowd down there. On the walk to the Tree House lookout we passed a Dragon Fruit plantation, apparently the pink/purple dragon fruit are the ones that are most popular here.
Set up for the Instagramers! The wind was blowing a gale and I wasn’t too happy sitting on this on the edge of a cliff, the structure was moving around a lot, thankfully the wind was blowing in the right direction. After The Tree House, we were taken to a local restaurant for lunch.
Our next stop was Goa Giri Putri temple. We were given sarongs to wear in the temple, even though I had a skirt on, that wasn’t good enough.
Lots of steps to walk up, thank goodness that there was an awning over the steps otherwise it would have been soooo hot.
The never-ending steps, was so pleased to get to the top.
At the top of the steps we were met by someone (not sure what he was) who shook some sort of liquid on our heads with a small paint brush, some sort of Hindu thing.
Then we entered the temple which was actually in a cave. The entrance was quite small, involving a small climb-down. This would be the closest I would get to a cave for the whole 6 weeks. Given that there was infrastructure inside, I’m not sure why they didn’t go to the trouble of making the entrance high enough that you didn’t have to crawl through. Well done Christine (this is the second time she’s been in here).
Whilst in the cave, I checked out what “modifications” had been ade, I found one huge stalactite and there were a number of what looked like dark passages on the sides of the two main chambers, really had to hold myself back from exploring.
the chambers were really big.
More formation on the side, but basically, this was about all there was as far as formations go, quite like Philippines which wasn’t as highly decorated as the Australian caves that I’m used to.
One of the Hindi shrines.
All the way through the cave there was a tiled walkway, just as well, the floor was quite muddy, with what I’m guessing was old guano that had been compacted over the years. There was water dropping quite a bit from the ceiling, so without the walkway, it would be very muddy.
The main worshiping area with permanent places to sit, kneel and stairs up into non-tourist areas and a yoga area. We were extremely fortunate apart from us the only others in the temple were four or five “priests” in white robes laying around.
Whilst the start of the “temple” and all the way through it was all Hindi, however at the end near the exit of the cave there was a huge Buddhist shrine.
We walked through the village at the end of the cave trip, nice to see village life away from the cities that we’ve been in for the past 10 days.
Walking back through the village towards the main road. Lots of chickens and roosters about.
On the drive back we passed this shrine, can only imagine that the coast line has eroded quite a bit over the years, must have to be low tide to put offerings on it.
The route we took back to the ferry terminal was mostly along the coast through fishing villages (note the traditional fishing boats), was very scenic.
We arrived back at the terminal early so caught an earlier ferry. It wasn’t as organised as the main ferry terminal, no way to know that we were getting on the right boat and there were soooo many people. We were standing in line and I thought I’d check it was the right line, Christine was cofident, I wasn’t. I asked the woman behind us where whe was going, “Samur” she says … “Oh, no, we’re going to Bali” then Christine reminded me that that was the name of the terminal we were going to, Whew! Once on board, sitting up the front, I had to watch what seemed like hundreds of people loaded onto the boat, again, had visions of capsizing but Christine and I both thought we’d be able to get through the window that we had opened “just in case!”. Got back without incident, thank goodness. Good tour, thanks Christine.
The finale – On the last night at the resort, we celebrated with a complimentary dinner from the resort owners.
When we arrived at the dining area, we discovered that some of the staff had decorated our table with marigolds and frangipani flowers. Just for us! They had spent hours decorating the table.
And this was our dinner, Mahi Mahi satay sticks, Chicken and an Indonesian Salad. Absolutely delicious.
So, on Saturday morning we said farewell to the staff and were picked up and transported to Ubud. Both Christine and I were sorry to leave the villa, but we were off on another adventure. Thanks so much for doing all the legwork for this 2 week adventure Christine!
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Looks like a relaxing trip, apart from the power yoga.
Did you check the knots on the Edelrid 11mm rope on the zip line? Make sure they’re tied correctly.
i checked the knots but would really like to see whats going to hold people in lol
Looks like a good trip to Bali. I also have had visions of overloaded ferries capsizing a few times….it happens a lot in countries that are over regulated like Australia. Likewise with unfenced cliff edges. In AU you’d have a 6m cyclone fence with huge signs protecting us all….mainly the idiots that go way too close to the edge. It’s a way of thinning out the population and culling the nit witted types. I like that.
yes, definitely good for culling nit wits