Bali- A Paradise Lost

Right now I am sitting in a villa in the Gilli Islands off the coast of Lombok- truly paradise (if you like that sort of thing). Now that I have left Bali, I will try to be as unbiased as possible, many people still love parts of it and flock to Ubud like it's this serene oasis where they can get their yogi on...I have to say, I just don't get it...I thought from Ubud right down to Uluwatu, Bali was as uninspiring as  a garbage dump. The traffic is horrendous, scooters and cars everywhere! There are very beautiful places for sure, but for every beautiful place, if you look a little closer, the trash is unreal and just so sad. I will say that the people are incredible, so genuine, always with big smiles on their faces, (and unlike Central America we never once felt like we were getting scammed). The food is amazing- seriously just about everything I ate was delicious (I am going to come home needing the gym very badly), and so cheap! Definitely worthy of  budget travelers . We splurged a bit and had a two bedroom, private villa north of Seminyak, $100/night was very pricey for Bali (we could easily have found something for $40) but this place was incredible, our nicest accommodations so far. 

I am going to use a post I wrote on Facebook as it is so fitting and written with how I was feeling at the time.... 

As you know we have been to so many beautiful places, it was hard to decide where we would go when planning. We always knew we would come back to Bali, a place we fell in love with 16 years ago. I am so sad to say that so far, this once beautiful island has been a huge let down. The food is incredible, people are so nice, our accommodations spectacular... but this island is so crowded and dirty! It saddens my heart to see every where we look there is so much garbage. The beach in Kuta/ Legion, once beautiful was the most disgusting beach I have ever seen. Hoping on other parts of the island we will see the beauty that once was. 

All those spots you see are all garbage- there was no end to it

We hired a driver for the day hoping to see some of the beauty Bali is know for- went to the Holy Spring Water Temple, through Ubud, the Monkey forest, Tegenungan Waterfall and the Tegalalang Rice Terrace

The monkey forest was awesome, beautiful statues, structures and small buildings throughout the immense property. Most importantly, their were monkeys EVERYWHERE- kids were in heaven.

The Holy Spring water temple was quite lovely, everyone had to wear a sarong to cover your legs

such detail in the wood

The Holy Spring water temple

The Holy Springs Water Temple, was very pretty, the architecture in Bali is incredible, on every structure such intricate detail, you cant help but be impressed even if it's "not your thing" (according to Livy)

what you cant see is all the garbage everywhere

Tegenungan Waterfall was very pretty, huge set of steps to walk down with two separate waterfalls. What the pictures do not show is all the garbage everywhere-there was so much, that no one wanted to go swimming, it was so bad....ruined the experience for us, we all love waterfalls, especially ones we can jump into....

The Tegalalang Rice Terrace was awesome, so detailed and such work involved. My knee prevented me from hiking down, but Anneka and Johnny did and said it was awesome.

The next day it was pouring rain (we were here in the rainy season after all- so off to the 3-D art museum. The kids had a ball, it was a great way to spend the afternoon.

On our last day we decided to take a taxi (uber is super cheap here) and go see one of the amazing temples that are along the coast either Tanah Lot or Uluwatu. We thought we would be able to easily see both, but the traffic is so bad in south Bali it literally take over an hour to pretty much drive anywhere (picture the DVP at rush hour. We decided on Uluwatu as they have a fire show at sunset, and it was close to a place we heard was lovely called Bingin beach (secret beach). 

After a swim

there was hardly anyone around, we had one part of the beach almost to ourselves 

This beach was literally in the middle of nowhere we had to walk quite a ways to reach it, when we got here we thought it was quite pretty, not the beautiful sand beaches we are used to, but the rock outcropping were beautiful and the beach in this section was practically deserted. We wanted to make our way to Uluwatu, so we were trying to find a cab and had to walk to the busier section of the beach, this was when we were hit by piles and piles of garbage...we thought we had escaped it leaving Kuta....we were wrong. By the time we got in the cab, sunset was almost over, defeated we went home (25 km took over an hour and half)

The garbage here was so disgusting, this stretched for miles along the beach

At this point, we were all sadly done with Bali, in defense to this once beautiful island, I am sure there are plenty of parts that we did not see that still have retained its wonderful charm of 16 years ago. I bet plenty of people reading this post will have their own version of what Bali is to them and it could be drastically different then what my opinion is. For now the Lambers' are done with this place and happy to move on....guess they can't all be perfect....