Category: Travelling
-
Bali’s Most Popular Places Keep Eroding What Made Them Popular
Every place in Bali that turns into a tourist magnet started out as something specific. Canggu had surf, empty beaches and rice fields. Ubud had art, ceremonies and a feeling of calm. Uluwatu had cliffs and some of the best waves in the world. Kuta, long before the bars and the traffic, had a wide…
-
Sunrise Over Mount Batur: A Lesson in Nested Calderas and Poor Footwear Choices
There is a particular kind of alarm clock that only makes sense on holiday: the 2am wake-up call for a volcano sunrise. Bleary-eyed and slightly disbelieving, we set off through the dark Balinese countryside towards Mount Batur, one of the island’s most recognisable landmarks and, as it turns out, a rather more geologically interesting one…
-
Skulls, Scent, and a 900,000 Rupiah Boat Ride: A Morning at Trunyan
There’s a version of Bali most people never see, and it sits about two hours northeast of the terraced rice fields and beach clubs, at the edge of a volcanic lake inside a crater most tourists photograph from a distance and never actually enter. Trunyan is a village on the eastern shore of Lake Batur,…
-
Ayam Betutu Since 1978: Finding Men Tempeh in Jembrana
Some places announce themselves with a menu. This one announced itself with a laminated sign bolted to a temple-style pillar. Four numbered promises, signed and dated 2021, before I had ordered a single thing. It told me everything about the kind of place I had wandered into. The Road There Jembrana sits at the far…
-
Before the light – Bali
I am going to revisit this site in my memory again and again, a morning at Pantai Matahari Terbit, Sanur, being together, awaiting the sunrise. We arrived while the sky was still deep indigo, the town asleep around us, just the sound of the tide and waves washing ashore. The promenade was quiet at that…
-
Watching the Temple Dance upon the Waters of Lake Beratan
There are moments in Bali when time seems to loosen its grip, moments away from the traffic at Jl. Padang Tawang, Canggu, when light and water and silence begin to drift together. Standing at the edge of Lake Beratan in the middle of the day, I watched Ulun Danu Beratan move as if it were…
-
A Visit to Saint Thomas Aquino Catholic Junior High School
Today we had the joy of visiting Saint Thomas Aquino Catholic Junior High School, and it turned into one of the most memorable moments of our trip. By pure luck, our visit happened to fall on a special day when the students were dressed in traditional Balinese clothing. Bright colours, intricate patterns and proud smiles…
-
A Visit to Tanah Lot, Wrapped in Waves and Quiet Light
Tanah Lot is a magical place. It is where the sun performs its final ceremony of the day, sinking slowly into the horizon while the temple glows in warm colours. I arrived without that spectacle, yet seeing the waves pounding the shoreline gave the place its own quiet enchantment. The waves were the true storytellers…
-
Bali Behind the Postcards
Canggu Through Family, Not Tourism Most people talk about Bali in terms of beaches, cafés, scooters and surf. But this time, none of that really describes my experience. We are staying in Canggu, yet not in the way travellers usually do. We are here to visit my girlfriend’s family. She is Balinese and now lives…
-
Reigniting My Love for Photography
Lately, I have felt a strong pull to return to photography, and it has sparked in a way I did not expect, through my own state of mind. I wrote recently about chasing rainbows, about longing and hope, shadows and fleeting light, in The Rainbow I Keep Chasing. In that reflection, I realized something: the…