The beach
…is a book written in 1996 by Alex Garland and turned into a blockbuster a few years later with Di Caprio acting alongside Virginie Ledoyen in Danny Boyle’s movie with the same name.
“The beach” tells a common story of nowadays’ travellers, who look for that unique place that does not come on any edition of the Lonely Planet or that it has at least not caught the attention of the masses.
Currently Bali is under the rainy season and what that means in practice is: heavy rains, strong winds and currents that swallow large chunks of white sand from beaches and also lead to… an increasing amount of trash on the shores of the island, particularly on the West side coming from Java (only a few kilometers away). Anyone visiting Bali will quickly become aware of the problem.
The island has for the past years been booming with tourism activity, particularly after Elizabeth Gilberth’s infamous Eat, Pray, Love put Bali on nearly everyone’s bucket list.
However, after visiting plenty of beaches, they just didn’t live up to the reputation. Overcrowded and dirty, the trash is just so abundant that it simply takes over the whole experience but the locals keep telling us: “it’s the rainy season, very different during dry season”. This is no option so we just stubbornly kept on browsing around.
And since this story is about the beach and not trash, let’s get to it…
After checking pretty much every shore on the map and some serious googling, there was one beach that did stand out. Ironically, mostly because very few people talked about it, just a couple of blog posts on it.
Taking a step back, what makes the beach described on Garland’s novel so different? Well, let’s see:
* it’s fucking hard to reach — thus, probably empty and an awesome experience
* requires you to swim across from another island as nobody would dare to take a boat
* some drug dealers run a plantation on that island
* sharks also inhabit those waters
Did we do something like that? No, not at all :) But funnily enough, a steep 20 minute hike down a hill is enough to keep 99.9% of the island visitors (according to my thorough research) at bay and nobody seems to care about Nyang-Nyang beach.
No warungs, no cafes, no resorts, just a few isolated sellers on the hill that make sure you keep hydrated as you go…
Once you reach the beach, you know you have made the right choice: a white sandy beach, clear water and hardly anyone around makes the hike more than worthwhile. This is what happened:
The sky is clear and the sun hot (surprise!), so making ourselves a bit of a shade is essential. As we arrive at the bottom and position ourselves between 2 old shipwrecks, the clock tells us it’s already past 2PM. This means that the sun is already making its way down, making the construction of a little shed an easier task (since a roof is no longer necessary). What do we have? Not much! Tiny towels, 1 sleeveless t-shirt, 1 dress, 1 sarong and… lots of bamboo around!
It was good enough for a few hours, thankfully there was nearly no wind!
On the left side, nothing but white sand and the front part of an old ship. Looking at the right, another shipwrecks made the perfect scenery for some really cool pictures and provided enough entertainment for the whole day…
But the day went by quickly and in no time, it was back up the hill ;) — this is what awaited us:
Can’t get enough? We committed to post one picture a day to Instagram.
Niedoskonała wersja polska dla rodziców.
