There are a lot of “tour guides” on this island. For some, it’s the path to affluency.
It works like this: purchase a new, little car for about 200 million Rupiah (~20K CAD). No down payment, no security (loans are stupid easy to get here, for now). Learn a little English, or not. Sign up for Gojek or Grab and work 16-18 hours a day, six days a week to afford the payments. Get your name out and offer yourself out to thrifty tourists for 600K IDR (about 60CAD) for a ten hour tour.
Congratulations, you are now a tour guide. AKA, glorified driver.
There are many easy, one day tours around Canggu and Ubud. It’s almost a set piece. Waterfall, temple, coffee plantation, market, chocolate factory. And for most visitors to the island, these are great ways to get an easy peasy introduction to the top attractions.
But if you’re going to stick around a bit, and have the time to do some research (and we most certainly do; in fact, it’s exactly *what* we do!), then you can create your own tour that hits all the sights that many tourists don’t get to see.
It’s not either/or situation. But if you have the option of seeing a waterfall with dozens of other tourists, or finding one that is totally empty, and 2.8 times more beautiful, then the choice (at least for us) is obvious. Plus, if you understand what the Kopi Luwak coffee craze is all about, you really don’t want to be wasting your time there.
So we made our own tour. And in the process, we had a most beautiful waterfall all to ourselves, lunch in a most beautiful and affordable warung, the thrill experience of a bamboo bridge (again, all to ourselves), and two beautiful beaches.
And an impromptu stair workout.
This is the second of my Diaries series, longer form vlogs that document our Le Grand Voyage Partie Deux. Please enjoy, share, like, and subscribe. But not necessarily in that order.
Om suastiastu from Bali!