Sanur is a cosy, little town which lies quietly along Bali’s south-eastern coast close to Denpasar. With the popular Kuta-Legian-Seminyak triangle and the beautiful Bukit peninsula not too far away, Sanur is the perfect place to be if you want to enjoy a peaceful and not-too-touristy-Bali while being close to the action. This is one of the main reasons why we chose to spend there the last part of our stay in the island before leaving for Australia.
While Sanur’s beach may not be the best beach ever – in fact we never got to swim there, to be honest – we found it so photogenic that we kept coming back with our camera, especially at dawn or at the end of the day.
As I was flicking through my pictures of Sanur as in a sort of stroll down memory lane I thought I’d make a post and share a selection of those shots. From a very high-level perspective, some of the images are pretty much unrelated and only just attempt to convey a very general sense of place, although other pictures in the set focus on the fishermen who populate the beach from the early hours of the morning.
As usual I’ll use the captions to tell the story behind the pictures and to make my comments.
A man stands close to one of the gazebos in the pre-dawn light.This guy was observing me with curiousity while I went back and forth with my camera and the tripod. When I noticed him I said hi and tried to chat with him – my understanding is he is a fisherman, although I’m not sure. When I asked him if I could take a picture of him he was happy to pose. I took several shots paying attention to the first morning light, its golden tinge, its direction and its interaction with the guy. This is the shot I liked the most.Sanur’s beach becomes even more photogenic when the tide is low. The bumps of sand coming out of the water allowed me to create a sort of texturized foreground.A row of traditional fishing boats creates a quite colourful ‘rythm’ in the early morning light, while a lonely Balinese lady walks by the shore.Another one with the fishing boats, but this time I was facing the opposite direction and letting the distant Mount Agung – a volcano and the highest mountain in Bali – into the frame.Starting early in the morning, Sanur’s beach populates with fishermen standing in thigh-deep water. This man in the picture was the first one to arrive. Having caught him alone in the frame allowed me to transmit a sense of loneliness and space.A Balinese man saying morning prayers on the beach.One of the fishermen looks at his feet while holding his fishing rod. Many fishermen use hats, including conical hats, some (like the guy in the photo) also use helmets. I wasn’t able to figure out why 🙂I thought I’d also include a shot, like this, showing a larger field of view and the context in which the firshermen in the previous picture were.When I saw this offering basket close to my feet I immediately pictured this composition in my mind.This picture was taken by Romana, who approached this guy and asked him if he wouldn’t mind having her and the camera around for a while. The guy was very nice to her and fortunately continued to look natural as if the camera wasn’t there at all. When I was processing this picture in Lightroom I tried different settings, but I thought a ‘bleach bypass’ effect would work and went for it (although it’s just a matter of taste)This is Leming, one of the fishermen we befriended on the beach. He was very happy to pose – with the full moon raising slowly behind him and a dramatic sky as backdrop I went nuts for a couple of minutes trying to capture as many compositions as my mind could see. After going through all the other shots i think this is among the ones which work best.This is Leming again. This time he was wrapping up his fishing session and preparing to call it a night, while leaving the full moon behind his back.A full moon raises above Sanur’s sea, while a fishing boat at rest reflects in the raising tide. This was actually our last night in Bali, our last night in Asia and the end of the biggest part of our trip. The mood of the picture is probably a reflection of our mood that night: thoughtful, melancholy and a little bit emotional.
Our memories of Bali include also our fairly intense social life in Sanur. In fact, I want to dedicate this post and the pictures to the people we’ve met there who made our stay special:
Samantha and Stuart, the minds behind Travelfish.org – Travelfish has helped us so much during our trip to SE Asia. Thank you!
Audrey and Daniel, ms. and mr. Uncornered Market themselves- in the travel blogosphere you don’t need any introduction. Guys, you are a great inspiration!
Emoke, friend of a friend who met us and provided an insight on how living in Bali is like. We loved meeting you and who knows, maybe we’ll join you one day!
Leming, the fisherman in Sanur’s beach – I hope you enjoy the pictures and thank you for being so nice and commenting on one of our last posts 🙂
Angga and the other guys from the Balindo Paradiso Crew who helped us in Merta Sari, when we stole a motorbike without even knowing it 🙂 It’s a pity that we didn’t get to drink Arak together. I wish you all the best for the future and a great career in the cruise industry. Your knowledge of Italian and Portuguese amazed us 🙂
Yesterday we moved to a little seaside place called Amed, on the east side of the island. As I’m typing this post from our guesthouse balcony, I can hear the waves crashing in the sand and I’m enjoying a stunning view of a volcanic beach and thinking just how beautiful this island is.
Amed - view from our room's balcony. When we arrived yesterday we were a little bit disappointed with the type of accommodation we found at first. But then we decided to rent a motorbike, left the big backpacks into the motorbike rental shop and went exploring. It wasn't too long before we found this little gem. A room with wi-fi (not so easy to find around here, yet so important for us), sea-view and breakfast, for the equivalent of only 11 euros per night. You can see the black, volcanic sand, some Jukungs (typical balinese wooden boats) at rest on the beach and the laundry from the guesthouse drying in the afternoon sun - Yes, that's the way they dry clothes around here, and that's where our clothes are now, too 🙂
The other day, on our trip from Ubud to Lovina, we met a Dutch couple who told us that they didn’t like Bali.”It’s too touristy“, they said  – yeah, it’s true, some parts of the island are crowded with tourists. Just like Thailand, Bali is probably one of the most advertised destinations in Southeast Asia. So what?
“There’s always someone trying to sell you something” – yes, that’s true also, but this happens everywhere we have been in Southeast Asia, where there are tourists around. I guess we got used to it and we don’t let this spoil our experience. Also, as annoying as it can be, we need to understand that this people are only trying to make a leaving and feed their families – most hawkers don’t have a different way to earn money (the other day on the beach I had a very interesting chat with two ladies that sell stuff to tourists –  spending an hour chatting with them was really interesting as it helped me understand more about their world and the way they see us foreigners).
In the end, I just don’t care how touristy this place is. I fell in love with Bali from the moment we stepped out of the plane. We felt a great vibe and we knew immediately we would enjoy our stay here.
During our taxi ride from the airport to Ubud, we got almost emotional with the scenes passing in front of our eyes through the car’s window – young girls dancing in traditional costumes in the school yard, entire families in colourful Balinese attire on their motorbikes, houses that looked like temples with shrines and statues of Gods, beautiful stone and wood carvings everywhere on the roadside, lively temple festivals, old women walking around bare-breasted… and this was just what we saw on a one hour drive. We were both full of excitement to see what else this exotic island had to offer.
Some people who visit Bali prefer to hire a driver with car to move around, but beside being significantly more expensive, having a driver can be limiting and sometimes frustrating. As we’ve heard that some of these people who offer to drive you around for a fee can act as ‘informal guides’ giving you a perspective on Balinese culture and traditions, we thought we would try the experience. So we hired a driver for a day at the beginning of our Balinese adventure in Ubud. First off, he didn’t seem to know much about his own country – of all the many questions we asked about culture and traditions, most of them remained unanswered or if there was an answer, it was confused and (in some cases we found out later) rather imprecise. Second, communication was a major problem because we don’t speak Balinese or Indonesian and he didn’t have good English. Lastly, he drove us to all the tourist traps around Ubud, rather than helping us discover what’s beyond the beaten path.
I don’t doubt that there may be good drivers in Ubud, but it just didn’t work out for us. Actually, we soon realized that if we wanted to see something interesting we needed our own transportation, so we rented a motorbike and since then we got hooked on it. It’s quite easy to drive in Bali. The roads are ok and with Emanuele’s experience driving in Sicily, which is where he is from and where he was raised, Balinese roads don’t seem scary at all 🙂
The motorbike is allowing us to see a different Bali, sometimes even outside the tourist areas and the guidebooks. Most importantly, it’s enabling us to soak up this island at our own pace and with enough independence.
I can say, whether it’s ‘gatecrashing’ a temple festival, mingling with the locals and hearing their stories, waking up at sunrise to enjoy spectacular views, or just driving our motorbike through the rice fields and the luscious vegetation, the Bali we are experiencing is proving so energizing, inspiring and rewarding, that we’ve moved the date of our next flight to Sydney to the 18th of May… Australia can wait! 🙂
Now, I’ve selected a few pictures we shot in the past few days, which I wanted to share with you. I hope you enjoy them.
The rice fields
Some rice terraces we saw yesterday on the road to Amlapura, the closest town, to which we were driving in search of an ATM (yes, there are no ATMs in Amed, where we are now)At the rice terraces in Tegalalang, near Ubud.One of the rice fields close to our first guesthouse in Ubud.
Balinese Dance
At the beginning of the Kecak (pron. Ke-Chak, typical balinese dance) two men light the fire that will remain at the centre of the stage during all the performance. During the show, not less than 50 men bare-chested in their sarong sit around the fire and accompany the dance by singing a rythmic, almost hypnotic, Ke-chak sound. I wish I could have shot a video to show the performers in action!A snapshot of the Kecak performance.Balinese dancer performing Legong, another traditional Balinese dance.One of the musician of the Gamelan ensemble accompanying the legong dance performance.After the show we approached this other musician from the Gamelan ensemble. A very nice man, he also thanked us for watching the show and asked some questions about us.
Temple festivals and religious rituals and celebrations
Balinese women preparing offering baskets in a temple in Peliatan, south of Ubud. As the driver we hired in Ubud drove by this temple we noticed that there was something going on and we asked him to stop by. Fortunately we were allowed to get in and we also got to chat to these locals who were preparing for a major religious celebration. Usually women prepare offering baskets for the spirits or the Gods, depending on the case - Offering baskets can be made of banana or palm leaves and they usually carry - among other things - rice, flowers and incense sticks. Once the offering baskets are ready, they are laid down on the floor (if intended for the spirits and the demons) or on the altars (if for the Gods).As we were eating at this restaurant, the owner took a break to perform her daily propitiatory ritual. She laid some offering baskets on an altar, then she lit an incense stick, and subsequently dispensed some holy water on the baskets swinging her hands gently from left to right and right to left. On the background you can see someone tapping a calculator, probably summing up the bill of one of the customers 🙂Cock fights are theoretically forbidden in Bali, but people continue to organize them. As well as being a chance for people to gamble, cock fights have a religious significance. Often (but not necessarily) fights are held before a temple festival takes place, so the blood of the looser cocks is offered to the evil spirits to placate them. We were driving outside Ubud and came across this bunch of people. We tried to take a couple of pictures but in the end we decided to go away because we didn't feel comfortable pushing people to get to the front of the crowd, and also the environment didn't look so friendly.Balinese women carrying their offers on their head at the Samuan Tiga temple, not far from Ubud. Samuan Tiga - High priest dispensing holy water to a couple of devotees as part of a religious ritual.We were having lunch at a beach-front restaurant when this group of Balinese people came out of the blue and started performing a propitiatory ritual. They were sitting cross-legged facing the sea with some sort of hand-made altars made of bamboo and palm leaves in front of them. If you enlarge the picture you'll see one of the guys sitting in the front posing with his fingers in a typical asian V style 🙂
Balinese houses
A Ganesh statue in the courtyard of a Balinese house. Ganesh is worshipped as the "remover of obstacles" and it is quite common to see statues of the Elephant God in Balinese households.House or temple? House. But with a temple inside. Typical Balinese houses have a small temple at the front side - usually the side looking at Mt. Agung (which is considered to be the place where the ancestors dwell). Apart from the front temple, usually there are other shrines and altars distributed along the perimeter of the house (sometimes at the corners).This is our second guesthouse in Ubud. We left the first one because it was more expensive and its internet connection was terribly slow. The staff was also nicer here. This is a typical Balinese cottage, like many others in Ubud. These used to be family houses but then they were converted into tourist accommodation. Breakfast is usually served on each cottage's veranda.This is the door of our first guesthouse in Ubud. You can see a bunch of offering baskets on the floor. Also it is very common to see statueses like these at the front door of a house. Plus, typical balinese house doors, like the one in the picture, are made of wood and are sometimes finely carved (see next picture for a 'finer 'carving').Another of those statues that are usually found in front of the main house door in a Balinese house. This statue is dressed in a Poleng cloth. This cloth has a chess-like pattern with an equal number of white and black squares. This pattern symbolise the relationship between opposite forces (i.e. good and evil, etc.) and it has a spiritual significance for the Balinese.
…In the next few days I’ll post more pictures on our Facebook page, so stay tuned if you want to see more of our Bali images 🙂
Yesterday we left Ubud for Lovina, in the North. One of the first things we did when we arrived, alongside with finding accommodation, was to rent a motorbike, so we could be independent and free from touts and guided tours. Lovina is a nice place to stay (nothing too exciting but nice), but if you want to move around on your own and explore more than the main road, you need your own transportation.
Once we secured a two-wheeler, it wasn’t too long until we decided to go to see the sunrise at lake Bratan. Because of its ancient and very photogenic temple complex which features two multi-layered ‘floating’ shrines, Lake Bratan is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Bali, and one of the most photographed spots.
As the main source of irrigation for the surrounding region, Lake Bratan plays an important role in the life of the locals too. Actually, the temple itself is dedicated to the cult of the Lake Goddes to which devotees pay homage as a propitiatory ritual.
As I recently got myself a nice and light travel tripod – oh, that Low Yat Plaza shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur! 🙂 – I was looking forward to putting my new piece of equipment to work.
We woke up at around 3am and left one hour later. The trip wasn’t too bad: 40kms total, most of which up-hill – after all the Lake stands at about 1200 metres above the sea level. The road, was a tad curvy as all mountain roads, but not too bumpy… at that time, although dark as you can imagine, it was almost deserted.
When we arrived (we drove very slow) the ‘blue hour‘ was already kicking in and I suppose we had already missed the best sky we could have got. But nevermind! The light was great anyway, at least I liked it – and the tripod proved to be one of the best purchase I’ve made in the last few months 🙂
We stayed until about 8 so I had the chance to photograph the temple and the surroundings under different angles and types of light.
Ultimately the reward for interrupting our sleep and and doing a few kilometers up-hill was a stunning view, which we were able to enjoy in a sort of surreal, serene atmosphere, with nobody around, except a few local women doing their laundry in the lake and their children playing around.
Enough with words, here are a few shots – I hope they give you a sense of what it was like being there.
…I thought I’d also share a picture of lake Buyan (below), by which we stopped on our way back to Lovina, after a nasi goreng (fried rice) based breakfast on the shore of Lake Bratan…
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