Back to Bali.....23 years on!

Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Thu 8 Sep 2016 07:11
08:43.085S  115:14.539E

We have arrived in Bali to prepare for our trip across the Indian Ocean and also to enjoy a bit of land travel before embarking on so many open ocean miles. Bureaucracy and officialdom is a consistent theme of cruising in Indonesia and having left the rally behind means we have removed ourself from the protective blanket and we are responsible ourselves for navigating the byzantine system of clearing out of the country.  Although we have already been in Indonesia for a couple of months, we have had to check in to Bali, which was not as straightforward as it should be as predictably the harbour master wasn’t happy with the paperwork we had brought with us from the officials in Tual and now we have to wait about a week (we hope) to sort the paperwork for the re-export of Bamboozle before we can start the actual clearing out process!  We have engaged an agent to help and while she is going in to bat for us with the local officialdom we have left Bamboozle on a mooring off Serengan Island.  Lucy and I travelled through Bali with rucksacks on our backs in 1993 and it has to be said the intervening 23 years have not been kind to all of Bali.  I don’t think it would be unfair to compare Kuta and Seminyak with Magaluf and Ibiza respectively but the good news is that away from the holiday hotspots it is still possible to find bits of the quiet, friendly, charming and frankly enchanting Bali that we remember.  Lucy’s researches led us to the Sideman Valley, which is developed just enough to find a gorgeous boutiquey hotel but still surrounded by the rice paddies and forests of popular imagination.  

Trekking through the paddy fields….it is just as glorious as it looks!

Unlike the rest of mostly Muslim Indonesia Bali is strongly Hindu. The religion is strongly interwoven with almost every daily act and there are temples and offerings at every turn.

Exploring the Sideman Valley for a couple of hours on the back of a scooter was a great fun and very informative way to look around.


The local fuel station….. this is what they run their cars, scooters and tractors on.  
You won’t be surprised to hear that I wasn’t happy to put this sort of stuff into Bamboozle’s tank and paid a premium to get some decent fuel on board.  We got what we paid for but it arrived in only 10 litre containers which is quite a slow way to put 450 litres of diesel into a boat.

Despite the tourist invasion of some of the island, rural life continues for many as it has for centuries (just with a few more scooters!)

Whilst staying at Samanvaya I completed the last day of my 22 day press up challenge to help raise awareness about PTSD in military veterans.  As you can see from the infinity pool we have found a pretty comfortable spot from which to explore rural Bali!