Day 3 – Tanah Lot bike ride adventure

Today is a lazy day. We got up early (must be jetlag still ^_^), enjoyed our in-villa Balinese breakfast, got mixed juice and watermelon juice for a change – and fell right back asleep on the pool lounge after discovering our secret housemates – a little birdie and its mom living secretly on the poolside tree. Mother bird is smart. She would fly back to the tree, look around, then suddenly disappear. Had I not been starting at her discreetly, I would have never discovered the nest with the baby bird.

At 2pm we finally decided to get our lazy bums up and do something. Today’s plan was to either go to Tanah Lot, or walk around in Seminyak and shop at Geneva (wholesaler for little gifts). According to the villa, Tanah Lot, the temple of the Ocean, is located 45 min north west of Seminyak. After a few struggles (from Vic), we decided to ride the villa-provided mountain bikes to Tanah Lot. With a general map in hand, and a rough direction from the villa employee, we set out for our adventure of the day.

In Bali, they drive on the left
In Bali, the roads are not even
In Bali, there are motorcycles everywhere
In Bali, it is about 100F (38 Celcius) in May
In Bali, no one rides bicycles – especially on the main roads
In the whole world, riding a bike to a tourist location in the summer heat without a clear map… they call that ‘crazy’

And yet here we are, two Asian tourists with very thick sun screen lotion, riding alongside locals on motorcycles, disregarding the ‘you’re nuts’ looks, checking out the rice fields on the side while yelling ‘Turn Left’, ‘Turn Right’, ‘Are you still behind me’…

Finally I see the ocean far far ahead. We stopped for a brief water brake, all of a sudden, I had a blackout when standing up.. too dehydrated.

At last we arrive there. We parked our bikes, and went to get ticket to the humongous park.

The special place is the temple in the middle of the ocean. When the tide is down, you can walk over to the temple. Unfortunately when we got there it was high tide. We still enjoyed the view and the ocean air, and had this HUGE coconut to replenish our fluid - to be honest, I don't really like coconut unless it was really really chilled.

We then began our adventure again - going home was all about memory - there were no signs back, we had to use our memory to turn left or right. The sun was half down already and we were worried we'd get lost in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, both our memories were still kind of good and we managed to get back to the city without any wrong turns.

We biked directly to Made's Warung of Seminyak (we liked the food so much we wanted to try it again). Surprisingly, this warung was so much bigger and nicer, yet at the same price and with equally excellent food. Awesome find!! We were so hungry that we ordered a full table of food...we stuffed ourselves, and quickly rode back home - we went to bed with the amazed gazes we received from our villa staff after they heard of our adventure....