Indonesia - Raja Ampat and Bali (Dec 2022-Jan 2023)

Dec 22-Dec 25

With Houston now going through its second major freeze in two years, this time we had the fortunate timing of leaving the city to miss the brunt of the suffering. I’m sure it won’t be as bad as last time as there is no precipitation forecasted but I guess we will see how bad it was when we get back. The last freeze was during my birthday in February of 2021, easily the most miserable birthday of my life. This freeze though we are on our way to Indonesia, originally this trip was slated for March/April of 2020 and of course that was the start of the COVID madness in the US. It was obviously scraped so we rescheduled it for September of 2021 and of course Indonesia caught the COVID wave right before our trip and blocked all tourism. Fast forward to December 2022 we were going to try again and this freeze really tried to mess with our plans. Also the day before our flight, the airline notified us that Russia was doing air drills so our flight would have to be delayed by 2 hours, normally this would not be an issue but we had a 2.5 hour layover in Taipei so it just made a tight layover even tighter. Couldn’t move the flight to another day because we had to be in Indonesia by a specific time to catch our dive boat, even tried to leave a day early but that flight was already full.

Flight left Houston on time and got to Taipei late and when getting off the plane the airline ushered us to our next flight and we caught it with plenty of time, granted I didn’t have enough time to use the restroom but we caught the second flight. After another 5 hours in the air we landed in Jakarta, and we had to pay for our visa, then get said visa then wrangle the luggage and over to our hotel to kill 10 or so hours until our next flight. While at the hotel we didn’t do much but we did get a hour long massage that was a nice treat. Dinner was at the hotel and then I took a cat nap before catching the 10pm bus back to the airport for our final flight to Sorong.

The flight left Jakarta at 1205am and after another 4 hours in the plane and crossing 2 time zones we were finally to our destination of Sorong. The boat crew picked us up and took us straight to the boat where we chilled for the day and waited on the rest of the divers to arrive. We left port at 5pm and headed south.

Dinner and a briefing for the ship and crew before lights out. Diving will start tomorrow and it looks like it will be 4 dives a day… what have I signed up for?

Typical Daily Schedule

630 wake up call

645 briefing

700 dive

830 breakfast

1030 wake up

1045 briefing

1100 dive

1230 lunch

230 wake up

245 briefing

300 dive

500 snack

630 wake up

645 briefing

700 dive

800-830 dinner

Dec 26 3 sites (4 dives) plus beach visit:

Andiamo

Warna Warni

Yelit Kecil (day and night)

Dec 27

Shadow Reef - baby shark, lots of life

Boo Window

Tank Rock

Dec 28

4 Kings

Wedding Cake

Gargongian Passage

Day trip to Lovers Lagoon

Heart shaped lagoon behind us

Baracuda rock (night)

Dec 29

Puri Pinnacle...

Boo East

Whale Rock - aborted due to current

No night dive

Dec 30

Kaleidescope

Toblerone

4 Kings

Punia Kecil (Night dive)

Nudibranch

Dec 31

Dangerous Kayak

Nudi Rock*

*Noon dive, had to be woken up because of the rough sleep the night before.

Dive group and crew

Jan 1

Shadow Reef

Two Tree Rock

Gin-Rummy and a boat ride to the north after being blocked by rough seas

Jan 2

My Reef

Melissa's Garden

Batu Rufus

Rebes night dive

Jan 3

Blackrock

Eagle Rock

Eddie Blackforest (Taman Wafo)

Beach party with fireworks!

Beach party

Jan 4

Sawandarek

Cape Kri

Saporkren

Wonderpuss Octopus

Jan 5

Blue Magic

Lazy day, others dove 2 more times depending on their flight and we rested. Late night packing and prep for travel the next day.

Jan 6th - Bali

After the boat had done 38 total dives, Rebe and I 34 and 33 respectively, it was time to move to the next stage of our journey.

We were up at 630 to finish packing and to catch our flight back to Jakarta and then a second flight over to Bali where we will spend the next week. The flights were pretty simple and straightforward but the traffic to Ubud which I assumed would be a quick journey, but I’m getting the feeling that any road trip in Bali is going to be a slog.

We finally made it to our place just outside the Ubud city center and it is a farm stay place where the people who run the place actively farm and you can do activities with them (cooking/farming, we’ll see if I do that this week). The location is really secluded and supposedly there are monkeys around so maybe we’ll spot some. For dinner we ordered out and had it delivered since we do not have a mode of transport.

We walked the grounds a little before calling it a night.

Jan 7th

First full day in Bali and we slept in and since breakfast was included we ate it on our front porch at 930. Rebe was looking forward to a spa day today, so the day was sort of planned around that. After breakfast we had the place we were staying drop us off in the center of town and when we got our bearings we headed to the Sacred Monkey Forest.

The Forest

Yep, they got a park in town that has 1040 monkeys just roaming around, it’s a beautiful park and pretty cool to see the monkeys running around. They are pretty domesticated if you ask me since the park puts out food for them every day. Of course you’re not supposed to look the monkeys in the eye or give them food but of course people do it but luckily while we were there no incidents occurred other than tourist trying to touch the monkeys.

Monkeys chilling

We left the park with some time to spare, ducked off into a coconut bar to cool down and have a snack. We then were picked up by the spa in town and were taking to their facility to be pampered for 2 hours. We each got a massage where two people worked on us at the same time (4 hand massage). It was sensory overload for me, I felt like I couldn’t quite enjoy all that was happening as it was very synchronized. Overall 5 stars and we’ll probably do it again before we leave.

With the massage done we high tailed it across town to pick up a SIM card for a local number. Our phones were working but for some stupid reason a few local apps for food and Uber-like services require a real Indonesian number.

By now it was dinner time and our new friends from the dive boat told us about this interesting place to eat which was vegan and all raw food based. Not something I would have picked for myself but it actually turned out to be pretty good.

We ended the night at the Ubud Palace to watch the Legong Dance. Dunno how to describe it but he’s some pics. Definitely an interesting show.

Legong Dance

Jan 8th

With breakfast at 8am we started early as we had planned to be on the road today seeing some of what Bali has to store. Our driver, Widana (he told us to call him “Wi”), was around at 9 to pick us up for what was an all day drive throughout eastern Bali.

First stop were the Tagallalang Rice Terrances, our driver was kind enough to drive us slightly past the touristy areas so we didn’t get mobbed by the locals with requests to buy things.

Tagallalang Rice Terrances

Next stop was Lake Batur and Mount Batur over look, we stopped at another spot to dodge the crowds and I got the hankering to sit down and enjoy the view and have a sip of tea. So we did.

Lake Batur and Mount Batur

From the lake we headed up to Besakih Great Temple, the Mother Temple and Pura Gelap. All of these are beautiful temples in one location and the oldest and largest complex in Bali.

Main stairs at Basakih

Pura Gelap

Next temple was Pura Kehen, this was a really cool temple and even cooler because we were the only tourist there. The temple also had what I think is one of the largest Banyan trees around, the temple even put the temple bells up in this massive tree.

Pura Kehen

Penglipuran Village is a Balinese traditional neighborhood that values God, humans and the environment. Each house has a praying temple and different segments of the family can live within the unit.

Main Street of Penglipuran

From the village we stopped at a local store to get some snacks and headed back to our place in Ubud.

Jan 9th

Sometimes you just need a lazy day and that’s what we had today. We booked a cab over to Puri Sebali to sit by and chill in the pool all day. It was nice for us as we were the only people using their pool and the pool had nice rice terraces to to view while we chilled.

Pool view from Puri Sebali

We took the shuttle into to Ubud and had a traditional Balinese dinner at Murni's Warung. Then home to Be Bali.

Jan 10th

With so many days in Ubud and not exactly a lot to do in Ubud we opted for another day long tour to see more of the sights of the island. Standard breakfast from the home-stay at 8 and then on the road at 9am. First stop was the Taman Ayun temple, it is surrounded by a moat and beautiful gardens. Really cool place and interesting history as the temple was initially built for the royal family but as the area grew it became the area’s (town’s) temple.

Us at Taman Ayun

Water surrounding the temple

Next stop was, yep you guessed it, another temple but this time set on a lake. Ulun Danu Beratan Temple, a really nice and scenic area, pretty small temple but definitely a sight to see.

After driving for another hour we made it over to the Jatiluwih Rice Terraces area, which is a Unesco World Heritage site. Rice terraces are a really unique method of irrigation where the water flows from to top and down the ’stairs’ to flood all the levels. A really genius method of farming that was create long ago. These are the biggest field in Bali and are simply stunning, sadly while we were there they had just recently planted the rice so it wasn’t in its greenest state but still a sight to see.

And finally we made our way to the Bali coast to visit Tanah Lot, the temple on a rock in the sea. Another cool spot for a temple but sadly you can’t really go in and it’s kind of small and now hidden by trees. The big thing to do is to watch the sunset but since we’ve seen the sunset over the ocean we stopped over and watched the Kecak Dance. I would try to explain it but I’ll just post the pics :)

then back up to Ubud for the night.

Jan 11

Well today was the day we risked it all…you know how they always tell the tourist to stay off the scooters, we held out until day 17.

Your author before a night ride

Originally today was going to be a, well there was no plan as usual. I was trying to convince Rebe that we should just veg, she was pushing for another massage even though we already have another one booked for tomorrow. We had been talking about seeing some waterfalls, but we didn’t really book a tour and they weren’t THAT far from our current location. So we rang up our host and asked about a rental and it was at our place in 30 minutes. Beyond not being able to open the seat and initially crank the damn thing it all went swimmingly well surprisingly, no oh shit moments at all.

We got our bike around 11 and on the road we went, first stop Kanto Lampo.

Pictures don't do this place justice

Kanto Lampo

This place was so amazing, big wide cascading waterfall but everyone and their mother was in the water and trying too look Instagram famous. 1) You ain’t cute 2) No one follows you. 3) At least be original. To even get a good pic of the waterfall you have to wade into the water or like most others go for a swim, we dropped the shoes and waded it. We almost wore swimsuits and water shoes (yep, crocs) but I didn’t trust myself driving a scooter in those and I’m not a local (they do it in flip flops).

After Instagram-hell we scooted on up to Goa Rang Rang Waterfall, much less crowded but I’d say equally as awesome.

From there we moved further north to Taman Sari. If I had a tripod I probably could have captured something wall worthy here but these cell phone snaps will have to suffice. This place had maybe 10 people swimming in the natural pool below the lower falls, very peaceful and serene so we sat around for a little bit.

Taman Sari

It was now approaching 3pm and both of us were getting hungry, we ate the shared the snack we brought with us and decided that we would go see one more waterfall before eating an early-ish dinner. There were 3 that were within a reasonable drive, we checked out the pictures and picked the one that looked the best, which of course was probably the most famous and most touristy but probably the biggest (by volume of water) waterfall we had seen. Tegenungan is the name of the waterfall.

This place had hotels and restaurants surrounding it, they’d even built a glass bottomed bridge within sight of the fall. I think the pics can justify why they did.

Tegenungan Waterfall

Dinner was the famous crispy duck and spicy fried chicken at Bebek Bengil and desert was coconut ice cream at Tukies.

Jan 12

Last day and last hoorah. Lazy morning, breakfast and then we took the scooter into Ubud proper. Stopped at the Lotus Cafe for a quick peak at the temple set behind it. It has these amazing lotus pad pond.

Lotus Pad Pond

From there we did a little shopping, a rarity for us. Stopped and had lunch at a super random spot, noodles and fried rice for $4. Now it was off to the spa, remember day 2 in Bali spa well we went back for a 1.5 hour massage, 30 minute reflexology, yogurt and body scrub and a flower bath. It was a nice 3 hours of being pampered.

Flower Bath - looks nice but it's actually tough to get all the flowers off of your body when getting out

We drove back to the heart of the city, parked the scootered and walked down the hippie street and found a very nice Indian restaurant, Pesona Lounge. Top notch food, would recommend.

Jan 13

Left Ubud around 11am to get to the airport at 1pm, we had to check out so we had to leave so why not just go to the airport. When we got to the airport they did not want to let us check in because we were more than 3 hours before our flight, luckily the nice people in customer service spoke to the ticket counter and let us through.

Flight left at 6pm and we checked into the same Jakarta hotel again but this time to spend the night as our next flight was at 2pm on the 14th. Arrived into Houston on the 14th at 10pm.

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