We were planning for a friends trip in the summer of 2024 and after much contemplation we finalised Bali as the final destination. Its a long way to Bali and we decided to take a stop in Thailand (spending 4 days there). I had been to both places before as a kid and although that was initially a bummer I was certain it would be fun to visit these places with friends. Both the countries we selected either did not need visa or had visa on arrival. That was one less headache for us. Our trips dates were from 25th May to 7th June. (nearly 2 weeks)
We had a direct flight from Bangalore to Phuket early morning of 25th may which was a Saturday.
Day-1:
We arrived in Phuket at nearly 11am and booked cab to our hotel which was near the Patong beach- "Charm Resort". The ride from airport was around 1 hour. We had booked 2 suites there and we had forgotten how crazy the rooms were: 3 BHK Penthouses with jacuzzi in the balcony. So we were overwhelmed on walking inside the room. We checked-in went for a quick walk around the beach, had lunch and came back to the hotel for enjoying the jacuzzi (it was quite hot outside). The jacuzzi took nearly 2 hours to fill completely but it was definitely worth the wait it was quite fun. After spending a good few hours with it we got ready for the evening we were going to the famous walking street of Phuket. The vibe here is crazy and insane it is really some different kind of world out there with all the sins for sale [strip clubs + weed + shows and what not]. A large part of Thailand's economy seems to be resting on the shoulders of this industry. It is very sad to know this and at the same time realise the benefit of tech boom we witness in India, we truly are privileged for that.
That night we had nothing else on agenda, we headed down to a nearby place for dinner and rested for the night, all of us were super duper tired from the jacuzzi.
Day-2:
We woke up rather late, tired from all the roaming around yesterday. We naturally missed our breakfast. Got ready and decided to head towards Starbucks for breakfast. After a good coffee breakfast it was time for the 1st stop of the day-
Big Buddha:
It’s a long drive from main Phuket area. We reached there and I was stunned by the views! Maybe my expectations were quite less but it was a real surreal view.
We clicked a few pictures, and walked atop the stairs that lead to the big Buddha.
After going there we saw people writing their wishes on a leaf like paper (gold platted) and attach it on a thing. I initially decided against it, but then thought if my wish actually comes true, it will be fun to come back here and checkout that wish. What a déjà u that would be.
I wrote down my wish and attached it. I did so on the 5th stand (because 5 is my favourite number) I wanted to do it on the 1st stand but it was too crowded. Maybe my stand will also get crowded when I come back. I really hope I get to comeback after my wish is fulfilled. Seeing me, all my 4 friends copied me and they bought the leaves, wrote down their wishes and attached the leaf.
We made a move from there and went to “wat chalong” a combination of 3 temples. We went inside the 1st one, it was very big! We decided to move on assuming the remaining two will not be bearing much difference.
From here we headed to old Phuket town (famous for food, shopping and massages). We ate an authentic Thai place. From their post roaming for a bit we moved along to our resort. The crowd and vibe at the old town is crazy and a must visit.
We came to our resort, got some 7 different kinds of beers and hoped into the hot jacuzzi.
Day-3:
We had pre-booked a phi phi island tour for today (or atleast that’s what I thought) we had our breakfast in the hotel early morning and just right in time our driver came to pick us up.
Today was our last day in Phuket!
On reaching the destination we saw many people waiting in queue to get on a speed boat that was supposed to take us around. There we were given something called “beach shoes” for 300 THB, these were a bunch of super comfy footwear meant to be worn on beach. They also had the benefit of protecting us from pebbles, pointy sea plants etc.
In this tour we were supposed to go on a tour of 5 or 6 islands (I don’t even remember at this point).
We hopped on the boat and it started sailing for the 1st point which was about an hour far off. We hopped in the water, this was just supposed to be a quick swim in the sea kind of a stop with the backdrop of a beautiful rock mountain. From here we went to phi phi island spots.
At this time I realised we might not have done the correct kind of trip. The trip I was anticipating was that we go to phi phi in the morning, spend the whole day there and head back to Phuket in the evening.
This looked more like a bucket list kind of tour where we very rapidly hopped between 5-6 islands without proper relaxation or spending time at one place for long. In all we came back to Phuket by 6pm and it was a very exhausting tour. I won’t recommend it to anyone, ever.
During these multiple hop on hop off journeys where I was feeling extremely nauseous at some points (more specifically when the boat goes into parking mode, when the motor is turned off and we are at the mercy of the waves) I realised that sitting at the back of the boat leads to the least amount of turbulence. It made sense from a physics pov too, retrospectively.
The final ride to Phuket was something of its own- my hat flew off in the ocean due to a sudden strong gush of wind, water splashed on my face at a high speed disrupting my hair and waking me up from a quick nap. Moreover we were the last to de-board because the final park of the boat happens the other way round.
After such an exhausting day we had dinner at an Indian and Turkish restaurant on patong beach, had a quick round of foot massage at a nearby parlour and were quickly packed for the day.
We had an early morning flight the next day to Bangkok.
Day-4:
We took an early morning flight to Bangkok. Originally we didn’t plan on including it in our itinerary but we got the best flight to Bali only from Bangkok. So we used that reason to explore the city for one day.
We landed and on our journey to hotel we realised how slow the traffic here is!
I never thought I’ll say this in my life but the traffic was worse than Bangalore.
For anyone aware of how traffic works in Bangalore it’s a very bold claim.
We had brunch at a cafe and headed out to explore the city.
We started with Arun Wat.
It’s an old temple, very majestically built. But did not spike our interest much.
We crossed the river from there in a ferry at dirt cheap price and landed to Wat Pho.
It’s a massive complex! It has so many temples and ways around it, it’s no less than a bhool bhulaiyya.
We visited all the famous Buddha temples here. These temples were truly beautiful and peaceful.
Made me wonder a lot about the history of Thailand, who ruled over, dynasty etc.
We were supposed to visit the royal palace next but we got to know that it closes at 3:30pm daily. And it was well past 5. So we decided to head back to hotel, rest for sometime and prepare for the evening.
We started by visiting the famous Nana Plaza. Well it is quite overrated honestly. I didn’t find it appealing and I felt phukets walking street was much better.
We took next stop at Soi Cowboy, which is considered to have a similar vibe. It was again kind of like a disappointment. Bars were too shady and with non friendly staff.
We headed back to our hotel where we had one of best dinners of the trip at Bawarchi which is an Indian restaurant. The taste was better than most places in India.
We had an early morning flight again tomorrow so we called it a day in preparation for tomorrow’s flight to Bali.
Day-5:
We landed in Bali a little late in the evening, somehow all flights to Bali had an evening arrival time only.
Our stay in Bali was divided into 3 legs:
First we stay in Cangu (seminyak) then in Ubud and then at Uluwatu.
Our airbnb was a crazy one!
We had decided to visit Mexicola club here which was near to where we were staying.
The vibe there was insanely lit. The first thing I saw on entering was people standing on the table and dancing. It’s a very common thing there for crowd to dance that way.
We decided shots were the only way that we could match this energy! So we had a few shots and headed to the dance floor.
Bali is swamped with Australian crowd as it is located so near to the island continent.
We found an Australian group there who danced with us, and we had a lot of fun!!
We did dance with many people on our previous trip to France but the people this time were more welcoming and friendly.
We ended the night on a high and went back to our airbnb to rest.
Day-6: Exploring Bali
We went for an early breakfast ast a nearby restaurant called baked. It had amazing food. We saw many people working there like it was some sort of local Starbucks.
The agenda for today was visiting the famous “Tanah lot temple”.
We didn’t have much expectations but ok reaching there our minds were blown. It was a very beautiful place and had stunning views.
We clicked many pictures from all possible angles. The palace is located in the sea and you can only visit inside it during low tide. Unfortunately for us that day visiting the temple was closed due to high tides. Well, the scenery more than covered for it. The temple is supposed to be associated with water god.
After spending a good few hours there we headed on to the next plan for the day- Finns beach club. It is regarded as the best beach club of the world. I don’t know if this is a self pat on the back or it is genuinely true. That’s what they say in their tagline. We had pre booked a table at Finn’s.
Finns was like nothing else I have seen before. The vibe there is so energetic and party driven. There are different areas of the club- one purely dry with normal tables, one on the swimming pool deck, on inside the swimming pool and one on the beach. The beach and swimming pool tables area is separated by another infinity pool (without any tables) and has a bar of its own.
We partied there for long! About 6 hours for sure. Met many people from different countries, danced with even more people.
We had a booking to visit Nusa Penida for the next day so we got back home and slept our asses off.
We had also had party smart tablets just to make sure we wake up on time the next day.
Day-7: Nusa Penida
We had a tour booked from GetYourGuide and the driver was supposed to come to pick us up from our villa at morning 6am. So we had to wake up early and get ready. It was a big task convincing everyone to get ready as some people were trying to evade the trip because they were feeling too darn tired. Anyway I was able to successfully convince everyone that we have to visit the island. The driver came on time and took us to Sanur Harbour from where we had to board a ferry.
The harbour infrastructure was pretty awesome and well structured. Almost felt like a mini airport terminal. The boat was comfy and we prepared for the 1 hour ride to Nusa Penida.
I had very basic expectations from this island as I thought it’s only famous for that one picture which everyone takes when they visit here.
On reaching the island we had our GetYourGuide driver waiting for us at the shore, we identified him and hopped on in his car.
First stop was at “Broken beach”. The photos don’t do justice to how pretty this place is! It felt like I was sprung up from my sleep. It was such a beautiful place. We clicked a bunch of photos here and this is where we realised that our guide is no less than a professional photographer. He clicked the best photos of everyone!! He said he does this day in and day out and hence is pretty good at it. And no kidding. His skill set is a testimony to the fact that tourists come here primarily to click photos and that’s how all the guides have also evolved themselves to be quite proficient with it.
Moving further ahead and exploring even stunning visuals we clicked more photos, had lunch at a nearby place and headed to the most famous beach view point named “Kelingking beach”.
After reaching there we realised that the waiting time to click a photo with the beach in backdrop was around 15 mins. Our guide told us this waiting time goes even higher on busy days.
Well the photo was definitely worth the wait.
After this we headed to the stunning diamond beach. I felt this was the best view point of the island. With adequate crowd and breathtaking views. This was our last stop for today and post this we headed to the port to catch our ferry leaving at around 5pm.
While returning I randomly happened to ask the boatman if we can sit on the 1st floor of the ferry as it felt more open and exciting. The person told me we can but we will have to buy a beer for that. That was our ticket just one beer per person. We thought it was definitely worth the ROI and bought one beer each and hopped on to the top floor of the boat. It was the best decision!
On reaching our villa at about 7ish pm we all were so tired that we decided to go for a massage. Our villa was on the main Street of canggu so it was not really a challenge to find a good place nearby. After walking around for about 5 mins we finalised on a place and had the traditional Balinese massage. Needless to say it was the best massage of my life.
I have never felt so relaxed. And this massage was quite cheap, around 1.5k per person. You spend 3 times that amount in India and you will still not get a massage half as good as that was.
Day-8: Onto Gilli island
Today we again went to the Sanur harbour as we had to board a ferry to Gilli island. Gilli is known to be even a step ahead in terms of partying compared to Bali and it was also the place where we decided we will engage in scuba diving. The ferry was relatively longer- around 3 hours. Knowing the price we need to pay to go up on the deck, we purchased beers and went straight up. We got some stunning visuals of the sea and many great personal clicks. We also got the chance to spot several dolphins on the way.
The boat took a stop at Nusa Penida and then went ahead to Gilli. On reaching Gilli we found it was a really small island.
Gilli only has bicycles or horse carts operating on the island. So to go to our hotel with luggage we had to hire 3 horse carts. While I’m someone who’s strongly against using animals for labour I was left with little choice here. The resort we had booked (Ashton sunset resort) was average. We first and foremost had lunch and then rested for a while. We then got to the beach which was just in front of us to watch the sunset. You would expect that at a sunset resort the sunset would be very beautiful and it truly was!
I also did horse riding on the coast and the person clicked amazing pictures of me while doing that. Indonesia earns a lot of its GDP through photography is what I’m guessing. That guy even took the horse in the sea till the point where it was comfortable. It was an amazing experience.
Next we rented bicycles for ourselves and headed to the scuba office and next day we were planning on doing the dive. The office was almost on the other edge of the island.
Gilli has a very unique geography it has a circular road all along the coast which covers the whole island and everything relevant to tourists is situated on this main road. Some of my friends were not sure about doing the diving but when we got there and talked to the people at Manta Dive, they were sort of relieved. These were professionals from Europe and Australia who knew their shit very well. They explained the basic nuances to us and we were ready to roll tomorrow morning.
We had light dinner someplace and went back to the resort to rest and wake up fresh tomorrow morning!
Day-9: Scuba and Party
We woke up early has breakfast and headed to the Manta dive centre. First up for us was training in the swimming pool. Getting familiar to how breathing under water operates and how to signal under water. The swimming pool we practised in had a maximum depth of 3m and we were planning to go as deep as 12m in the ocean.
They geared us up and we went under water in the pool for the 1st time. I can’t express how uncomfortable it made me. Till the 1st 3 times when we went under water it felt like why the hell did I sign up for this. I would so much rather chill in the hotel than do this. But eventually they made us swim there underwater and I got relaxed, my anxiety subsided and I was evicted to make the dive.
The only question I kept on asking all the instructors was “In no circumstance the mask covering the eyes and nose will come off underwater right?” This was the biggest fear I had.
The diving instructors we had were from Spain, France, England and Australia. 3 for the 3 of us and 1 who will roam around and click our pictures. Our other 2 friends weren’t participating in Scuba.
Lucky for me I wore contact lenses (I had asked them if that would work) as otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty that lies underneath.
We headed to the boat to take us to the diving site, it was around 15 min far off from the coast. While doing scuba, you enter the sea backwards. You basically sit on the edge of the boat and just fall down in water. What my instructor did was once I was on my back on the sea he made me take a quick peek into the water of what we are going to be seeing for the next 30-40 mins. And from that moment on I realised how beautiful it is going to be. At my first glance I saw a school of dory like fishes playing around, what a sight!
Then we kept going down. How they do it is they will adjust the pressure in your jacket to make you sink. At every 0.5m they would instruct us to attain equilibrium by pitching your nose and blowing out air through the ears. It worked like a charm and none of us had headaches or other problems even after the dive.
Words can’t do justice to how beautiful it is underwater. It’s a whole new world there. With so much peace so much beauty and so much realisation of every moment passing by. Because you’re breaching from your mouth at this point you realise every breath you’re taking and that is a meditative experience.
At this point I remembered a very beautiful line one of our instructors said during our training which is: “A 100 million years of evolution teaches you that you cannot and shouldn’t breath under water but doing just that will feel so surreal and beautiful that you will remember it for the rest of your life”.
I couldn’t have summed it up any better.
To relive what we saw: many colourful schools of fishes, 3 huge turtles swimming around, the beautiful sea bed with corals and a boat wreckage.
I didn’t even realise our time was up and just like that we were back on top of the water. It felt like conquering! Like we just won a war. The feeling was amazing. Something I’ll remember forever.
We got back, ate lunch rested for a bit and went to the famous pub crawl at Gilli.
It was a massive group of people majorly Australians and some Europeans. We hopped from one pub to another having a shot at every stop. We played beer pong with strangers, danced around, talked had drinks and overall enjoyed the night a lot.
We also ended the night with a banger live music performance.
We roamed around the island for some more time and crashed the hell out on our beds.
Day-10: onto Ubud
We had an afternoon ferry back to Bali island. The port at Gilli was totally unorganised, very random and extremely crowded. We made our way directly to the top of the ferry (with of course buying beers).
I was very sleepy somehow in this ride but there was a group of Spanish people who danced and sang continuously for the 3hrs that the ferry was moving. I wished to laud the girls on their levels of energy.
We took a cab to our new villa in Bali (ubud). The new house was even better than the previous one. We did splurge a little too extra on airbnbs.
We headed out for dinner and then has foot massage at a nearby parlour. We also picked up some wine for the night and partied at our villa only.
Day-11: ATV ride
We woke up a little late, as expected and went down to a famous brunch place called Milk and Madu. It had the most amazing food!!
Today was mostly for exploring ubud and ATV ride.
After eating we explored the ubud palace then went to Saraswati temple. Both were mediocre tourist spots not so great.
Then we geared up for the highlight of ubud - ATV ride. This was also arranged by the house help and I have no complaints. The ATV ride was an adrenaline booster. With very steep slopes, cruising through dark caves, forests, waterfalls, streams it had it all. We couldn’t have asked for a better experience. The total journey was for 90 mins.
Towards the end one wheel of my ATV came off. I don’t know if my driving triggered it (I was driving it pretty fast :P) but it was definitely tiny bit scary. Those people were kind enough to offer me a new ATV from that point only (lucky me).
After completing the ride all of us were too darn tired and thought of splurging into a good massage. So we booked a very fancy place and took full body massages + hair spa there. It was dirt cheap and the service + ambience was top class. We went to Putri Bali spa.
From there we headed to a Sri Lankan dinner place where I finally got to eat good quality daal chawal.
The next morning we were supposed to wake up at 2 am because at 3 our driver from GetYourGuide was going to come to pick us up for the sunrise view at Mount Batur.
Day-12: Mt. Batur + Hot spring
At 2am our alarm clock rang and all of us were up to our amazement the driver was already waiting for us outside the villa. We got ready and quickly hopped in the car that had come to pick us up. We were supposed to go to 3-4 places with the first stop being at Mount Batur for sunrise.
We reached on the sunrise point of mount Batur much earlier and waited there for about an hour to capture the perfect moment. We clicked several pictures of the perfect moment and also of ourselves. There were many jeeps on that point all in anticipation of the sunrise. I saw around 4 drones being flown in top of us capturing videos and photos. After basking in the sun for a bit we headed to the next stop which was a plain land covered with volcano rocks from a volcano that erupted in 1996.
It was nothing much to see there just apart from the fact that these rocks on which we were standing were once inside earths belly and the only way they got here was because the heat from earth erupted out.
Here I bought 2 brackets made from these volcanic rocks for my friends.
Next up was the only Natural Hot spring of Bali. I fulfilled my childhood wish of dipping into the hot spring. I remember I had first seen this on Shinchan!!
The hot spring was exactly as per our expectations. Water neither too hot nor too lukewarm. The hot spring ponds were on the shore of a lake formed which also had some relation to the volcano. It’s apparently not allowed to take a dip in this lake owing to higher levels of sulphur in it.
The hot spring almost felt like a natural heated infinity swimming pool.
From here we headed to have some traditional Balinese breakfast- Nasi Goreng which is basically an egg over fried rice.
Then next up was coffee plantations where we tasted around 10 coffees and teas. We also went through the process of production for the famous luwak coffee which is basically made from a koala like animal’s faeces. It sounds disgusting but it is the only coffee in the world which is produced entirely by natural processes meaning it is not automated or industrialised much. This is also the reason why this coffee is insanely expensive.
Our trip ended here and the driver dropped us back to our villa.
We rested for some time and later had a booking to go to Cretya in the evening. Cretya is basically an overly bit restaurant. They have added bunch of things along with the traditional restaurant- Bali swing + rice terraces + statues and their pool.
We roamed there for sometime had food there which was very delicious!!
And since we were tried from our hectic morning and again headed for a massage 😛.
This massage was also very good.
Next day we were to go to uluwatu so we came back to our villa, drank some wine and slept off.
Day-13: Uluwatu
Our last day we had planned to spend in Uluwatu. One major bad planning that we did was that our current airbnb was around 3 hrs far from our resort at Uluwatu.
So inspite of leaving in the morning we reached there quite late. We had booked Radisson beach resort and it was such a beautiful resort.
Post checking in and resting for a bit we went for the famous Kecak (read: Kechak) dance which happens at the Uluwatu temple on the backdrop of sea.
The dance was extremely overhyped for us being presented as the best rendition of Ram Leela. To my distraught it was not the case and I was immensely underwhelmed with the performance. I felt we could’ve better spent this time in the hotel chilling in the pool. We came back, had dinner and drank some wine and slept for the final night.
Tomorrow was the day when we were flew out from Bali back to Bangalore.
Carrying many memories and lots of experiences with us.
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