Travel Day 656 – Driving on Bali by Scooter, INDONESIA
01/09 Kuta via Balangan Beach to Pura Luhur Uluwatu
Since the Kuta area was obviously not representing the whole of Bali, it was about time to test out a scooter and drive down to the southern area called Bukit Peninsula…
Balangan Beach at Bukit Peninsula on Bali, Indonesia
After breakfast I rented a scooter from my hotel and took it for a little test spin around the block. Within no time I was completely lost in the entire one-way maze between Kuta, Legian and Seminyak. In the end it took me all morning to find a gas station, a money changer, a mall to look for a map and then find the way back towards my hotel. Unfortunately the only Bali road map available turned out to be as expensive as the entire guide-book for Indonesia had been and that was really not justifiable. So I decided to just wing it and see how the day would go…
It actually went quite well besides the slight error of driving accidentally into the airport instead of down towards the peninsula as intended. But after that, all was smooth sailing and I really enjoyed myself on the little scooter. It was simply great to just cruise around and have the fresh wind blow into the face while enjoying the scenery once outside the city. It was actually quite amazing to see how rural things were all of a sudden and Bali presented itself as a completely different place from what Kuta had been…
Monkey at Pura Luhur Uluwatu on Bali, Indonesia
The goal of the day was to drive south-west to visit the temple Pura Luhur Uluwatu, but since along the way there were a couple of nice beaches, it would have been a shame not to stop at least at one of them. So I simply drove down to the first beach on the map, the empty white sand Balangan Beach. For me this seemed to be the best of the beach options since it also came with a little stone Hindu temple, set right by the sand. But after all those months in the mountains, this perfectly deserted sandy beach with clear water was almost too good to be true and I ended up spending most of the afternoon there…
Unfortunately the time was ticking and I had to carry on at some point since I really wanted to see the famous Pura Luhur Uluwatu temple during daylight hours. So the scooter ride went on through the countryside until I finally found the temple set on a cliff at the southern end of the coast. The only unfortunate thing was that entire busloads of tourists had also arrived and were streaming towards the temple entrance…
Uluwatu Temple on Top of the Cliffs on Bali, Indonesia
Once inside the Uluwatu area, the second issue all of a sudden became the many monkeys roaming around and steeling stuff from tourists. At first I was a bit surprised when a local person leaving the temple gave me a wooden stick with the suggestion that I would really need it inside. And as soon as I continued walking, I knew what he meant since I could hear screams from people being attached by monkeys all around me. They would steel, flip-flops, hair bands, sun glasses and everything else they could get a hold of…
Luckily with the stick it was easy to fend the monkeys off, but after walking around the temple for a while, I simply had to get away from the crowds and sit down in a monkey safe distance. The cliffs rising above the ocean turned out to be the perfect spot, not only to sit, but also to watch sun set and to enjoy the business of Pura Luhur Uluwatu in the nice evening light. Wow, it had really been a great experience to cruise around on the Bukit Peninsula and I couldn’t wait to start exploring the rest of Bali on my little scooter… 
Find all Pura Luhur Uluwatu and Balangan Beach photos here.
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