We head out late at 8:15 in the morning, carrying giant packs and a thermos of coffee.
Bali is a cramped, lovable mess and the first thing you need to do to escape it is grind your way through Denpasar. It's a slog as always, I would say Canggu, Seminyak, and Denpasar are all in a state of permanent gridlock but that implies a grid.
But it's early on and spirits are high, and they lift further as I spot Buff Peasant, my favorite statue on an island full of my favorite statues.
harvest grains, keep gains
The Buff Peasant sighting means we are almost beyond the lands of jostling mopeds jamming every street, parking lot, and sidewalk. Beyond is the picturesque countryside that drew everyone to Bali decades ago so they could completely disregard it and pile themselves up in hip beachsides doubling as surfer vomitoriums.
Serf’s up fellow peasant, catch you on the flip.
The roads themselves aren’t much coming out of Denpasar but after weeks in the suffocating traffic any stretch of open road is like rain in the desert. Being able to actually use the top gears is more than enough to keep our serotonin pumping.
About 45 minutes out we hit the east coast. The mountains wind into view and the road gets less boring. High arches of banyan trees over the highway take the sting out of the mid-morning sun while foggy mountains and terraced rice paddies shine through the gaps. Bali is a beautiful place, but it’s not often that it looks like the brochures and for once I remember to enjoy it. The road looks great and moves fast all the way to Padang Bai.
It deserves a picture but we were racing to make the ferry.
The country around Padang Bai is pretty as you could ask for, but the town itself is more Long Beach than Hollywood. I speak metaphorically of course since actual Hollywood is a drug-addicted toilet and actual Long Beach is awesome, but when it comes to downtowns Pedang Bai is a workhorse not a showhorse.
It’s probably worth noting that they check your passport and international driver’s license at the harbor gate. They even checked my motorcycle endorsement. If you’re one of the clever ones stickin’ it to the man by riding dirty/handing out bribes this might not be the day trip for you.
Due to the late start we miss the early ferry and have to wait for the next one. Suri let me look for a schedule for a while before telling me there isn’t one, apparently we’re meant to just wait around until the next boat arrives like the industrial revolution never happened (I've since been informed there's "kind of" a schedule posted but the early boats leave as soon as they fill up.)
The next ferry pulls in around 10 and we get waived into the belly, parking next to a group of Dutch adventure dads riding the only other motorcycles aboard. The bikes are rentals, judging from the matching dual-sports and clumsy riding, the rest of the autos are a mix of passenger cars and tiny mopeds (motorbikes if you believe the signs renting them.)
Our ferry sits while more passengers trickle in, but this one doesn’t fill up. There are fairly aggressive vendors selling snacks onboard and the dads buy six beers causing the the other vendors to swarm. I didn’t buy anything for fear of being hassled all trip, but right before departure the vendors vanish leaving me super jealous of those beers. We shove off at 10:40.
The ferry is a huge industrial affair with plenty of comfy seats or mats to catch a nap. The cabin is air-conditioned. The boat chugs along slowly and you don’t really feel the waves.
Mt. Agung looms huge as we depart so we find an upstairs deck to stare at the coast like proper tourists. From there we sit outside next to some intricate contraption of heavy fishing line and empty water bottles that caught my eye. The line was strung in patterns between the steel outer rails. I knew some form of fishing was afoot, since this is Indonesia, but the workings of this Rube Goldberg machine were way over my head.
About halfway through the trip the noise of the plastic bottle clattering off the railing made an old man spring to the rail and grab the line, holding it overhead. After another strike he yanked the line, his body acting as the fishing rod while a captive audience looked on at his performance. The man made a show of hauling the line hand over hand, yanking and maneuvering to keep it from catching against the side of the boat. I was half-convinced that this was all a genius street performance until he leans all the way over the rail and lands a baby tuna. The crowd makes noises of general approval and I shudder to think what might happen if the skinny dude tried to land a 300lb daddy tuna with such methods. At least there were plenty of life vests around.
In Lombok and I am again floored how completely different these microclimates can be from one island to the next. We left a neon green rainforest in Padang Bai, but some trick of sea depth or trade winds left the hills of Lombok dry, brown, and scraggly.
looking downright Mediterranean
We ride out with the pack of adventure dads and a few kilometers in they peel left, riding off to a vacation of a lifetime. I'm stoked for them. Maybe someday I'll get five buds willing to make a trip like this with me.
The riding is crap in Mataram, just so you know. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth to get your hopes up about leaving the traffic and pollution behind and then arriving to baking city streets choking in road dust.
It gets better. Way better. Suri had told me about the monkey forests we were approaching and they were everything a monkey forest should be. Once you get inland the rainforest returns in force. Huge trees poke through the canopy as you get a little altitude under you and the roads twist through dramatic views of mountains and forests.
Troops of monkeys huddle up around the guardrails, hassling tourists and eating trash, completely in their element. At the first few turns there were cars and motorbikes pulled over feeding them and taking pictures, but after a few bends in the road no one was stopping for the monkeys anymore and the bands fearlessly roamed the shoulders looking for scraps and mischief.
Again this should probably have a picture but it's a daytrip not a photoshoot.
Between wild monkey bands and the jaw-dropping views I had to keep forcing myself to pay attention to the road. The mountain roads climb and eventually descend in a series of hairpins. There’s a western tendency to lean hard into the turns, taking them fast and wide like it's a racetrack. That's the exact wrong way to ride out here.
Oncoming trucks go as fast as they can manage, using the center of the road just because they’re big and they can. Sixteen year old kids who know these roads like the back of their hands and hate being stuck behind trucks ride like complete maniacs. You feel pressure to make passes you absolutely should not make. Lanes are not a shared concept. We pass a truck that very obviously took a head-on and now waits for someone to figure out how to get it down off the mountain.
It didn’t look like the kind of wreck anyone walked away from.
not gonna buff out
My advice, just like in the rest of Indonesia, is to forget everything you ever learned riding western. Leaning into the middle line (if there were one) as fast as the tires allow is a terrible place to be when a truck comes barreling around the corner taking up all of his lane and three-quarters of yours. Treating these like western roads is a great way to go skidding off the side of a jungle cliff, and it’s not like the nearby villages are sitting around waiting to form search parties. Going off-road here pretty much means the closest thing you’ll get to a eulogy is some wandering monkey jacking off on you as he rifles your pockets for oreos, which admittedly for my life does kinda capture the gist. Anyway, use heavy caution. If you need to rubberneck then pull over and take a picture, but do that carefully too if you’re around the monkeys.
The jungle ride through the mountains is about 30 to 40 minutes and then another half hour of similar but mellower foothills before you ride into Bangsal Harbour. As a whole the ride is amazing. Well worth the trip, and the trip to get to the trip. I’ve been on two wheels across most of the United States and a half dozen other countries and this is one of the best routes I’ve ever stumbled across.
I’m still on cloud nine as we drop off our faithful steed in long-term parking before getting on a boat to Gili Trawangan, where motor vehicles are prohibited. The beach is pretty empty this late in the afternoon. The only other European on the beach is glaring at me with the stylish antipathy that newly-minted bules* sometimes have for each other near the perimeter. I flash her my most chipper smile, in hopes it further ruins the authenticity of her journey.
The slow boat to Gili rides low on the waves, and we get some big ones which I appreciate more than Suri does. If I can't see land I hate heavy seas, but for no rational reason they become rollercoaster rides when I'm in sight of land that I definitely couldn't swim to if I had to. Oh well, good to know irrational fear works both ways I guess.
We splash into Gili Trawangan just in time for an amazing sunset, more than ready for dinner and drinks.
Start: Seminyak, Bali 8AM ish
Finish: Gili Trawangan Island 6:00PM
Stops:
- Motorcycle from Seminyak to Padang Bai
- Public ferry to Lembar
- Motorcycle to Bangsal Harbour
- Public slow boat to Gili Trawangan
Difficulty: Medium - if the weather holds it's an easy ride for easy riders, but pretty dangerous if you're the type that has to pass everything that slows you down.
*Bule, Gringo, Barang...the words change from place to place but the meaning is pretty universal