Tag Archives: traffic

From quiet roads to traffic

Waking up knowing you’re leaving such a nice place as Lovinalife is not easy.

And so we dragged ourself to the restaurant to “enjoy” a little breakfast. Literally little.

Sweet sweet breakfast

Red fruit salad

Despite not being so abundant, the breakfast was quite good.

We went to our room to finish packing our stuff and get ready. While Sara was completing the usual morning woman procedures, I went to the hall to pay the bill.

As I was there our bus arrived so I had to rush outside give the driver our luggage and ask him to wait for my wife.

We caught the bus… Unfortunately!

The trip was horrible. We were seated in the last seats of a minibus, with another driver who didn’t want to use the third gear and shifted directly from second to fourth accelerating like crazy.

View from the trunk

Plus the bus was old and smelled bad.
It took almost 4 hours to get to Sanur.

Furthermore the driver left us far from the original drop off point ,

Thanks to BlueBird, the Balinese taxi company, we reached the hotel in few minutes and spending only 30thousand idr.

Our room for the next 3 days

The hotel also had a swimming pool, and a Spa. I’m quite confident we will use it in the coming days.

Hotel’s garden, with swimming pool

We unpacked all our stuff, and rested a bit before renting a scooter for the rest of the day.

We decided to go to Semyniak, to enjoy the tourist life for once.

It took us 35 minutes… To get stuck for the next 30 minutes. Traffick between Kuta, Legian and Semyniak is something crazy!

Narrow roads, hundreds of scooters, dozens of cars, and nobody that seems like having an idea about how they got there and how to escape.

As soon as we could we parked the scooter and went shopping on the way to the beach.

Beach that was not there when we got there… Semyniak beach is barely 5 meters wide, and basically empty.

We then rode back to where we met with Dario. The beach between Legian and Semyniak. Here we enjoyed the sunset, while watching surfers, kites, and people walking on the shore.

Sunset on Legian beach

Ti conclude the day we went for a cocktail in one pub close to the beach.

Pineapple juice and Strawberry juice

Refreshed we rode thee scooter back to Sanur.

Another 35 minutes in the traffic.

We didn’t go straight to the hotel, but searched for a restaurant for dinner.

The choice fell on Kayumanis. The Menรบ was a bit Occidentalized, but the food was great nonetheless.

Filled we went for a digestive walk on the Sanur “lungomare” where we went shopping, and bought two return tickets for the next day for Nusa Penida before going back to the hotel.

Kuta, Legian, Seminyak: The vibrating soul of Bali

Yesterday we decided to have the breakfast served early so to be ready to leave around 9am and visit the island.

Breakfast came at 7:45. Not wanting to make the same mistake of the day before we tried to order less stuff, but still it was massive!

American breakfast for Antonio

Asian mix for Sara

Everything was delicious. And we were done before 8:30. But something happened…

Something unexpected…

The bed reclaimed Sara’s body!

The sleeping beauty

She fell asleep right after breakfast and slept well over 10:30, basically fucking up all the plans for the morning ๐Ÿ˜‚

Luckily for us, a friend of Antonio who lives in Bali, invited us to visit him.

Dario, who has a YouTube channel I suggest you to watch and follow, moved in Bali in April living in Ubud. Just one week ago he moved in Canggu, quite close to Denpasar.

We decided to meet in Seminyak in the afternoon. Only two ways to get there: call a taxi or rent a scooter, as no bus goes around in the Denpasar area.
Furthermore there are two big “No”: taking a taxi to pass through Denpasar is a very bad idea as traffic is something crazy here in Bali, while renting a scooter equals to a suicide mission for the same reason as before.

11km in 1hour

After debating for a while we (Antonio) decided to rent a scooter. It may sound crazy but it took more than 30 minutes to find a retailer who had a scooter available.

Once taken the scooter, the first step was to top up the tank as it was obviously empty. Close to the renting place there was a small unnamed shop with a… I don’t even know how to call it! Let just say it was a gas pump.

Balinese Gas Pump

For a little less than 3 euros I got a full tank of gas. Marvellous!

Balinese traffic is something I’ve never seen anywhere. Basically you are like a paper boat in a river. You can just go with the flow.

And so we went, passing cars both on the left and right, driving on the opposite lane for some hundred meters, avoiding the long line of vehicles stuck in traffic passing on the side walk and sometimes passing slow scooters on the same sidewalk…

Complete chaos.

And I liked it ๐Ÿ˜‚

In 25-30 minutes we were in Legian. We only risked our life a couple of hundred thousand time. Nothing to worry about…

Then everything was quiet…

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The neighborhood was completely different from Jimbaran. Dozens of shops selling goods for tourists took the place of the drab local ones, while the roads were packed with Western people.

Waiting for Dario, we decided to have a look at the beach, which was also different from what we had seen before. Clubs close to the beach rented beach chairs and umbrellas while serving drinks and cocktails. On the beach was also possible to rent surf boards.

And there were probably hundreds of these clubs for all the length of the beach

High waves and surfers trying to not fall from their boards were visible everywhere along the seashore.

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After a short walk we stopped on a kiosk to enjoy a couple of pressed fruit juices and wait for Dario.

As he arrived he took us on a coffee shop in Seminyak called “Monsieur Spoon Petitenguet”. Here we ordered coffees, croissants and fruit salad.

Super Dario!

The best thing about this place was the back door having a view on a rice field. Sara went out to take some pictures.

Fruit Salad for Sara

Rice fields next to the city

We spent some times there talking before moving to another place to have dinner.

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With the scooters in few minutes we reached the Nook, a restaurant in Seminyak area that sits on the corner of a rice field and offers a very relaxing ambient.

The view from Nook entrance

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We ordered something to eat while discussing of interesting topic regarding life, the universe, “artefigense intificial” (you can ask Dario about this).

Gado-gado: Tempeh, tofu & peanut butter sauce

Once again the food was amazing.

Satisfied and full we followed Dario to our last stop, the 707, a beach club literally on the beach close to Canggu, where we enjoyed a beer, Antonio, and a juice, Sara, while listening to music e talking about the past, present and future.

After an hour, tired for the day, we said goodbye, promising to meet again in Ubud, and left.

On the way back we enjoyed a taste of Balinese traffic by night, almost worst than the daily one if possible.

As we got home we jumped into our pool to remove the thick layer of smog on our skin, and had a hot shower before going to sleep.