Two weeks as nomads in Bali
After Yogyakarta, we flew toward Bali, and I wrote about the doubts I had about going there previously. It was not as far as touristically heavy as I imagined, and maybe because J did try to avoid the largest city, Denpasar, when planning our stays. In Bali, we stayed for a few days in C’anggu, a town by the beach on the southwest of the island. The trip to Bali was already disturbed before it started, as AirAsia moved our flight from Yogya to Bali. I understand it is something they are accustomed to doing, so be prepared it may happen if you travel within Asia. And then, we moved for about two weeks to Ubud, inland, known for being more traditional and full of digital nomads.
When arriving in Bali, we got the hostel car to drive us from the Denpasar airport to C’anggu. It is a long drive already, as there is little space on Balinese roads and lots of scooters. People here do live on their scooters. But, here we are!
Let’s see, how was it to be a nomad in Bali?
How was Canggu?
Canggu has all the vibe of a typical small seaside resort, made for foreign tourists and surfers. Its streets are full of shirtless Europeans driving their scooters recklessly, with a surfboard on the side of it. It has many places to eat, but only a few mainly focus on Indonesian food. You can find the perfect Instagram restaurant, expensive (for Indonesia, cheap compared to the same in Europe), with nice looks, and tasteless. But, if you look well you will also find affordable gems and places where locals eat.
We stayed in Canggu D’Homestay, which is a set of two buildings of two floors with a nice swimming pool, and a counter to book tours. Here, service is minimum, and apart the common areas are small, and not made in a way to be convivial. There is no area to put a computer or anything outside of the room. The rooms are nice and very luminous, with a nice terrace in front of it. The place is close to the beach, and you can observe a lot of people surfing every morning, so, I’d say it’s a great place for anyone looking for holidays, but, it was not the best for us.
Around, there were several restaurants, including one decent nasi campur (white rice with several Indonesian dishes that you can pick, either meat or vegetables), Varuna Warung Canggu, and many places offering English-style breakfasts, where we took breakfast so as not to bother too much during the mornings and be active as soon as possible. Out of the other places we went to, I’d say, skip Sunday kitchen (price x3–4 compared to meal prices in Indonesia, around 10 USD, nice for pics, no taste, the right choice if you eat to put photos in Instagram). We enjoyed a lot Warung Sika, a nasi campur excellent and with super large servings for 2–3USD and full of surfers just jumping out of the waves. We also enjoyed a cheat meal at Naked Bun, excellent burgers, a bit overpriced, but truly great and fully homemade. So I think they are definitely worth the price! And, we also ate in a small stall held by a grandma and her grandson, Warung Jawa Timur. Good, and at local prices, so around 2 USD per person.
Overall, the experience in Canggu was mixed, but we spent only a few days here and could not really create a routine and find regular spots. If the city is known to be a spot for nomads, it did give me the vibe of a holiday beach town, mainly prized by surfers. There are some really good places to eat and stay around for longer stays, and hostels that do seem to target nomads, we just didn’t pick the right one for this experience I think.
The place in Ubud was a hidden gem!
Then, we moved to Ubud, inland on the island of Bali, and stayed in Buda Cottage. To be honest, Buda Cottage is not really in Ubud. It was a few kilometers out of the city, in the middle of the rice fields, away from the main road. Roads in Bali are usually small outside of Denpasar, and two cars can just cross themselves. People over the island move with scooters and do learn to ride them at a very young age. The scooters allow them to go anywhere, and secondary roads are sometimes just large enough for one scooter to pass, in between the rice fields. The access to our hostel was this kind of path, a cement pavement meandering between two rice fields, and reaching a bunch of bungalows built around a very nice-looking swimming pool. The bungalows had a small terrace, a good bed, large enough for our two big bodies, and a table and two chairs. The bungalows and the place are made traditionally, and the roofs are partly open on the sides, although they do protect from heavy rains. There is a common area in which you can eat and they offer a simple and excellent breakfast, with a roof, opened on the garden.
The place makes you feel like you are in the middle of nature when the light goes down. Bali has a climate that is perfect for life. There is vegetation everywhere, and animals too… Frogs, geckos, birds. When the sun starts to get down, you can get a full concert from the reptiles and birds around. It’s a nice way to get soothed before sleeping, and it makes you feel like you are in the middle of the jungle, yet, it never feels like you hear anything that could threaten you. From the way the bungalows are built, there are spaces between the traditional roofs, and geckos and frogs may make their living under the roof and their frame, yet, even if we tend to be afraid of moving stuff… we did accept them quite easily. The place, the feel to be totally in the middle of nature helps, and it goes with the vibe.
How did we feed in Ubud?
The place is a bit away from Ubud town center, and walking there is not a real option as maps don’t show a trail, and the road has some parts that could be tricky to walk beside it. There are usually no places planned for walking beside the road, and they are usually only large enough for two cars to cross. Also, several turns are blind due to the shape of the terrain. And, the distance doesn’t help either. So, we organized our days according to it.
The cottage does offer a very decent breakfast, eggs the way you ask and toasts, with a delicious topping, so… we took our breakfasts there. When we wanted to do something in town, we ate there and found some excellent places, including some that serve the Bali specialties. Te most recongnizable is the babi guling, a dish made of pork, and pork skin. It is a huge change compared to Java, as Java is nowadays mainly muslim. We went to Babi Guling Gung Cung, and it was excellent, and very well served (we chose the one including everything). When we spent easy going days, we tried some nearby places and settled for the poke bowl shop, which served large portions of well-realized dishes and not only poke bowls, for a very decent price, around 2–3 USD per dish. At night, we usually ordered through grab, since it was the most convenient option. Despite the place being hardly reachable, some of the riders did come all the way to the hostel although I tried to meet them on the road most of the time. We asked several times from the first place we tried downtown in Ubud, Warung Makan Bu Rus, which had great food. Prices remain around 6.5 USD for two people with drinks. But, if you go there, it looks like a stall from the outside, but the venue behind it is very interesting, with separate salons around a garden, and the view all around feels traditional, with shrines for the ancestors, and tables where you will eat sitting on the floor, on a nice carpet.
How we organized our days in Ubud?
So, we were in Bali during the second half of October, and even if it was supposed to be the dry season, it did rain regularly, and the rain was heavy. I did understand why people here prefer to use thongs, because, water can raise very quickly. Yet, all the places are built like that, and the water systems to distribute the flow to the rice fields also seem to be working efficiently to drain the rain. So, we did start to use more thongs when going close by.
It usually rained during the afternoon, so we tried to log in 1 or 2 hours of work early, go out before the rain, and then end our working day in the afternoon.
During the week, we tried to stay 2 or 3 days at the hostel to rest, as we found out we can not do things every day and stay rested enough to both work and discover new things.
And, for the first time, we were amongst people trying the same kind of nomad experiences we were doing. We met a Mexican-Polish couple, Yulitza and Jan, who were giving their biology classes online from the hostel. There was also a Russian freelancer working from there for a month. Buda, the owner, did try to introduce people together, which is a great quality to have to help people talk to each other.
Overall, the experience at Buda Cottage was great. Despite being a bit isolated, the internet of the cottage did work all right, and it was a nice and inspiring place to stay and work from. The Ubud vibe is much nicer and peaceful compared to what it is by the sea, and foreigners here do seem more easygoing.
Canggu is a great place to go if you enjoy a more active and buzzing lifestyle. Ubud is a great place if you prefer a more laid-back rhythm. So, it was definitely for me a nicer experience to be in Ubud in this context, and it was very inspiring.
