Amed, Indonesia, 2015 July 30, 2015 at 3:51am
In the wake of all the worldly uncertainty (the Paris terrorist attacks).. the divisions being spliced between schools of critical thought, religion and human rights .. I reluctantly post the next chapter of our Asian trip. I am in no way insensitive to the current happenings of the world.. Let’s just call this a short break back to when things were less … complicated.
For those interested, we have finished compiling a video of this trip. It’s the classic music playlist melded with various scenes of our trip from Vietnam to Indonesia. The video was shot on a GoPro and is a ghastly 55 minutes in length… the best footage can be found around 21 minutes in .. at Mount Bromo .. wow. It is banned in Germany and probably won’t play on a smartphone .. laptops and computers be best.
Let us continue ..
Our fast boat from Gili was excellent.. less than 2 hours to do what had taken us 2 days a week earlier. Back in Padangbai again and we searched out a scooter for a couple of days. We loaded up our bags, bought a SIM card for our phones and set a course for Amed on the North Eastern Coast of Bali.
The ride was good .. had to be alert the whole time as they drive on the other side of the road and pass each other anywhere, anytime. This plays tricks on the Canadian driver’s mind if you can imagine. The intersections were most difficult, but we just followed the flow and constantly checked behind us. We made it to the Amed area in about 2 hours. This was a road that followed the coast line with very little tourism .. a few villages dotted the coast and it was bay after bay of beautiful water and dark sand beaches. Las playas negras. We found a nice little bungalow for ourselves and did some dark water snorkeling .. it was a bit scary .. The dark sand reduces visibility and everything just seems colder even though the dark sand is hotter than white sand.
There were 3 spots we wanted to snorkel.. a “Coral Garden”, bay and a sunken Japanese fishing boat. The Coral Garden was pretty disappointing having just came from the Gili Islands. It was getting late in the day, so we decided to scout out the other 2 spots so we would be ready for tomorrow. Some nice coastal riding and blackberry maps .. That night we contacted Lasse who was finishing up a 5 day tour of Bali on his own scooter. He was coming to Amed to meet up with us. Sure enough, the next day we were once again reunited with our Danish friend. We snorkeled together and had some good times on the bikes. We found the sunken Japanese boat which was pretty cool .. it wasn’t this huge vessel I had imagined in my dreams, but still a decent sized boat that had become a habitat for many fish. Good times. We had some Arak spirits with a good meal that night and planned on leaving the next day together back to Padangbai to return our motorbikes.. from there we figured our paths would once again diverge.
Sylvie and I had a plan to visit another Island called Lembongan to find this spot called the Blue Lagoon to attempt our first cliff jump. Lasse was heading to Komodo by bus .. a very difficult 2-3 day journey of buses and ferries across a pretty rarely traveled part of Indonesia. Sylvie and I had researched this route back home and wondered if we had what it took to make the journey. During the planning phase, we had chickened out and opted for a flight there and back to see the Komodo dragons. But now that we were here, we learned that flights were super expensive and we were now debating whether or not to skip Komodo altogether. But Lasse has a way of rallying people together .. which he did. He managed to convince us to make the journey with him to Labuanbajo, Flores. That meant taking the ferry AGAIN to Lombok, then crossing Lombok by bus, then a Ferry to the giant island of Sumbaya, then a very sketchy bus or two or three across this island and finally another ferry across to the Island of Flores… yikes .. Probably the toughest journey ever for us..
Lasse was very convincing .. and just like that, sitting on some corner curb, homeless with our backpacks, in some town called Padangbai, we said “Let’s do this” .. 20 minutes later we were on the next ferry off of Bali.
Passport Footnotes 