Mar 16 - Up early and take a Grab to the train station, departure at 7:50 for Ketapang. Google maps says the Ketapang station (final station on the train line) is closed, but I asked and its not true. It is about 4.5 hours, going south around Mt. Agropuro. As densely as Java is populated (over 1,000/square km, the world’s most populous island), out here in the east there is a lot of unbroken jungle. We pull into Ketapang about noon, and it is a quick few minutes to the ferry terminal.
I doubt it is a good deal, but we are convinced by the ferry ticket seller that we should just get on a bus here direct to Denpasar. The buses are indeed out on the street, waiting for the ferry to start loading. We pay IDR 400,000 for the trip. The bus soon gets on the ferry and we make our torturously slow way across the channel to Gilimanuk. The good thing about being on a bus already (other than having a place to throw the luggage while on the ferry) is that in Gilimanuk we don’t have to slog it to the bus station.
/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Drive off the ferry and off across Bali, from the west tip along the southern coast, eastward to Denpasar. The difference between here and Java is striking. Gone are (almost) all the mosques, replaced by thousands of small Balinese Hindu temples. There is virtually one in every house compound. Also gone are the wild mountain slopes of the eastern end of Java, replaced with flat coastal topography and rice fields.
I had estimated this trip at eight hours, but it comes out closer to ten. We are really dragging by the time traffic slows and we enter the ‘suburbs’ of Denpasar. We also lose an hour, Bali is in a different time zone than Java.
The bus, which is actually going to Bima, dumps us at a bus station far away from Denpasar. This place is ominously quiet, but as we are getting on the phone to look for a Grab, a guy approaches and says he will match the Grab price to take us in. Since he is already here, we take the deal and start down the road.
I had read that traffic sucked in Denpasar, but did not know it was THIS bad. We crawl along for over an hour to do the 20 km. We aren’t even in the built up area near the south of the peninsula, but north of that.
The hotel (Chakra House) is artistically done, with a view over this part of town. Around the corner from the doors of our rooms is (one of) the house temples.
/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
There are no big restaurants nearby, so we get food at some street stands on the corner. Janet gets a grilled fish and Odette and I get chicken satay.
A bit later, some music starts up at a nearby temple, the Banjar Adat Jabapura. I wander over to listen.
