Jalan-jalan in bahasa indonesia means to walk or to go for a walk. In this case, to wander around without a concrete destination.

I had a terrible night due to being bitten by mosquitoes many, many times. Around 5am, I briefly considered to stay awake but managed some more sleep with episodes of startled awakening when I could hear the stupid things at my ear.

Breakfast made it better (Flo thinks I had a bad night because I was hangry) and we even got Balinese cake to try, courtesy of our lovely hosts. It was basically a small plate filled with sweet things including black rice pudding which many places offer.

We took our time this morning; Flo to get his credit card out of bank custody (YAY!) and I to catch up with the blog. Check out time was noon which enabled us to have a nice lazy start into the day. We then rode to Danau Batur which is a caldera lake. Basically, the landscape forms a crater with a 700meter “mountain” in the middle and a lake next to it on one side. It is supposedly a big tourist attraction, which is why I wasn’t especially keen to go. Flo continued by telling me about aggressive hawkers there and the monopoly one group has over tours up on the mountain…and I was more than sceptical after yesterday’s experience.

Already the road there was at least 10km of tourist shop next to tourist shop selling all the bric-a-bracs you could ever want. Or not.

Getting there, I had to revise my pre-made opinion: It is a beautiful spot. From up top on the rim of the caldera, you have a lovely view. Many restaurants line this street, all with the view as their main selling point. But we decided for a warung to save our wallets a bit. The lady in the warung was very nice, opening all the windows so we could enjoy the same view after all. Flo even instagram’d it…which is reserved for the most beautiful spots.

After lunch we decided to head down to the lake. The road led through an old lava flow field from 1969. The black rocks were pretty…the hawkers not so much. Reading that the hot springs “are the only ones in Bali with healing powers”, we finally turned around. Though not until Flo got pissy with a guy trying to sell us the hot springs or a bed for the night. Coming back up the road, Flo stopped for a couple of nice shots with Rocinante and the mountain; just to be swarmed before I could even take a single picture. They graciously gave us some space…but not enough that I could use my camera without zoom. *grin*

From here, the plan was to head to the north coast of Bali. It was a very nice afternoon for riding, almost a little too cool up in the mountains with heavy clouds above and through lush forest. Having had such a bad night, I was really tired so Flo looked for accommodation along our route. The closest one was about three kilometres from the main road through an impoverished looking village into a narrow driveway. We nearly missed it because the sign was so tiny. However, the name was “Villa Manuk” in the village of Manuksesa and Flo already told me to not get too excited as we might not be able to afford the “villa”. How right he was.

The villa turned out to be a three star hotel with only four rooms, all costing much more than we wanted to pay. But we got super lucky and were offered a room with 50% discount as it is low season and no customer was around. With the 50% discount, it was still the most expensive room yet but too good an offer to not take it. Flo had checked out the place and called it “a gem”.

That’s pretty much how it turned out to be. Once we accepted the offer, we were led to the dining area by the spring-fed pool without any chlorine in it to wait until staff had prepared our room. To make the wait less long, we got a complimentary welcome fruit juice while fresh flowers were cut for our porch. You’d think the service might be less awesome if you get a 50% discount but not here. We were pampered all the way around.

After dropping our luggage in our now ready room, we jumped into the pool. Staff rushed out to prepare two sun beds for us including two pool towels so we wouldn’t have to use our shower towels.

The location is great. From our room, as well as from the pool actually, you look out towards the mountains clad in rain forest. It only got prettier when the sun set.