Bali - Lovina Beach Weekend Trip

Hey guys,

My half time in Bali is approaching and I cannot believe it just yet that I have already been here for over a month.

It is also a good timing for me to tell you about my second week in Bali!

My weeks are in comparison to my weekends very unspectacular. In the week we are constantly busy with event management projects and homework’s. If you think college in Bali is easy peasy lemon squeezy, you are in Donald Trumps famous words: wrooooong.

So, we decided to make a trip to the north of Bali to Lovina Beach on the weekend. Lovina Beach is known for its Dolphin Watching tours, which was one of the things on my bucket list. (and spoiler alert: something I could finally cross off that list!)

We luckily found a driver who would take us for the 2 ½ hours drive to Lovina. Since it has been the Chinese New Year we decided to visit the Chinese temple in the evening as soon as we would arrive at our Hotel.

We stayed at the Hotel Chonos, which welcomed us with a refreshing smoothie. We decided to check out our rooms and meet up for dinner before heading over to the Chinese temple. Turns out that the hotel actually is “Dutch” so therefore we were able to eat proper Dutch food like we were used to in the Netherlands. It probably sounds bad if you read this now, but after eating Mie Goreng and Nasi Goreng almost daily it was really refreshing to have some western food as well.

Once we finished dinner we received a driver for visiting the Chinese temple. Since the weather conditions did not allow any fireworks that night, we wanted to at least experience a little bit of the culture. The temple was actually smaller than expected but gorgeous in the inside and is for Taoist, Confucius and Buddhists.

There were many local families dressed up in red to celebrate the new year, pray and provide offerings for the temple. It was so nice to see how the locals celebrated the New Year!

Our taxi driver then brought us to the Lovina Beach Club and told us on the way that he can make a possible tour with us the next day including the 6 am Dolphin Watching, two temples, the holy hot springs and the waterfalls. Perfect for us!

Once we enjoyed a drink at the Lovina Beach Club we went straight back to our Hotel to swim in the pool before heading to bed early as we had to wake up at 5 am.

Waking up was luckily no problem and the hotel rooms were so cozy that we had a good night of rest. I can highly recommend the hotel that we stayed it!

At 5.45 we started walking towards the beach as our tour guide picked us up at the hotel.

At 6 am our tour began, which started off different than we expected. Instead of having a few tour boats around the water, we were surrounded by more than 50 other boats, chasing one dolphin. We felt horrible and felt sorry for the dolphins.

Our tour guide noticed that we weren’t so happy about it and offered us to get away from the other 50 boats, which we appreciated a lot! Once we got away from the others, we saw a whole group of Dolphins, baby dolphins jumping and swimming like they should. He didn’t get too close to them, which was exactly how the tour should supposed to be. The rest of the time we just enjoyed the view until the tour was done at 8 am.

We sat down for breakfast after and packed our bags for checkout. Our next tour guide picked us up at 10 am to start of our tour to the first temple, the “Brahma Vihara-Arama” – Banjar Buddhist temple.

This place is something I can highly recommend to everyone! There are no entrances fees for the temple, it solely works through donations. We were one of the only tourist up there and we loved the peaceful and quiet atmosphere around the temples. We also had the most amazing view on the ocean and villages up there. If you are planning a trip to Lovina, definitely make sure to check out the temple.

Our second stop brought us to the Holy Hot Springs. These were also located in the Banjar area and honestly we expected a little bit more from the hot springs. But as we were a fun group of people we made the best out of it!

Once we soaked and washed our sins away with the holy water, we jumped into the car for our next stop: the Munduk waterfalls.

On the way to the waterfalls, it started to rain heavily, which still did not stop us from having fun. We put on our sarons, lend a view umbrellas from our tour guide and headed down bare foot to the waterfalls. We actually had so much fun in the rain, that it did not ruin our waterfall experience, it made it much more fun for us!

After taking a bunch of pictures of the enormous waterfall, we hiked back up to get to one of our last destination: the view point of the twin lakes.

We had amazing view of the lake Buyan and lake Tamblingan, before it got completely covered in fog. Right on time I’d say! Since it was already around 3-4 pm, we decided to grab lunch right at the restaurant in front of our trekking view point.

To our surprise, the food was not only good, but also extremely cheap! This is something very hard to find in touristic areas, but we were lucky that we haven’t been fooled by the prices.

Our last stop however, was a complete tourist trap. The water temple, Ulun Danu Beratan, is one of the most famous temples in Bali – and quiet disappointing for us. Not only were the tickets way more expensive than we were expecting – but it was also unbelievable busy and crowded! It is currently off season in Bali and I can only imagine how busy this place gets in the summer. The temple itself was pretty, but it was impossible to get in. The funniest part of being there was the fact that tourist actually wanted to take pictures with us – just because we were westerners! I cannot count on how many family pictures I had to pose on. It was quiet funny, and the people were so happy that we took pictures with them.

After completing our tour, we stopped at some little spots here and there to see beautiful rice terraces, or monkeys on the side of the road. Then, after a long day, our tour guide brought us safely back to Denpasar to our Hotel which we already considered home!

This was my update for second adventurous week in Bali. I hope you all have a great upcoming week,

XO Karoline