Bali By Bike

If you're gonna get anywhere in Bali, it's got to be by bike. Day 2 was chill-out day. A day to compose, relax, take it easy and hit the local beaches and restaurants. Today, however, was an entirely different one. I got up at 6.45 am and Waeyan gave me the keys to my very own motor bike. Now, taking into account I'd never ridden one before, I was a little bit nervous when he handed me the keys, gave me a helmet and told me that he had to head off to the local market. He drove off, leaving me to stare at the bike whilst listening to the local cock, cock-a-doodle-doo away. I looked around and saw nobody, so, I got on top of the bike and hit the START button. Spluttering and jerking up the little hill that leads to the road, I was amazed that I didn't hit anything. I got to the top and headed right to the local beaches. On my way I cruised... well, more like did the equivalent of bike-crawled, up to a swiss guy hanging out outside his hostel. I asked him a couple of quick questions like... "erm... how does this thing work?", so he smiled and gave me a quick run-down. Within minutes, I was a bike-riding god! The roads here are surprising smooth and very hilly and controlling the thing became very easy. I headed out to local beaches, only to find that the waves were all flat. So I came back and decided to head on out to Nusa Dua, which is on the other side of the island. I got conflicting reports on what was the best way and how long it would take to get there but found that, in the end, the only way was to ask as many people, as much as possible. Eventually, I got there, after about a 40 minute drive. And it was worth it. The beaches on this side of the island had highly favorable winds and the waves looked lovely. Nothing too big but just a little bit of fun. Unfortunately, they were far out past a reef and getting out to them was going to prove to be a little bit of a mission. I settled for just going for a swim and headed out towards the local beach. The water was incredible. The kind of cyan clue that you only dream of and see in your local bus-stop billboard. From a distance, I could only see a few people and some shacks, but when I got down to the beach, through a little cave walk-way and down past an obscuring hill, I was shocked to see a massive hotel complex, complete with it's own swimming pool, water slides, massage shacks and even 3 camels lying lazily under a tree. On the beach were quite a few middle aged, rich sons of Russian billionaires, chugging away on cigars! I looked around for Roman Abramovich but couldn't see him. I didn't actually realize it but, today was Russian Christmas, and they were putting on a big show on the beach. Somewhat disgusted, I walked around the beach and then suddenly saw a group of guys getting onto a little boat with surfboards and bodyboards at hand. At this point I dropped everything, ran up to them and asked them to come with them. They were a family from South Africa, staying at the complex and quickly, after a little bit of my persuasive and comic charm, they accepted my offer of paying my way on the boat by letting me head on out with them. The boat drifted out, past the reef and behind the peak of some lovely little waves. Nothing massive, but still a big load of fun. The reef underneath was surprisingly shallow and I hit my back on a few of them, but it was nothing too bad as the waves were harmless really. After an hour out at sea, the boat came back to pick us up and we headed on back for a couple of beers on the beach. And even though we got bitten by the local mosquitoes, which were obviously having a field day with all these tourists kicking about the place, my first trek out to Balinese waves was a very pleasurable one :-)