Our routine in Pemuteran involved starting and ending our days with a combination of swimming, reading and playing Loot. In the mornings we were either collected by a car for a trip or wandered into Pemuteran at some leisurely hour. The kids have devised a complicated underwater sign language using their hands and feet (it was gratifying as a parent to hear them come up with a sign for thank you!) and Leo has come up with the joke of the trip so far: what do you get if you cross Santa and Elsa? Ho ho ho let it go! :)
We’re not sure of the actual name of our street, but we knew it as Jalan Barky Dog named for the many dogs that barked as we passed. The dogs are free range, but are all seemingly well-looked after pets. They’re not aggressive, just a bit barky at strangers. As the week wore on they became less and less bothered barking at us. The dogs we saw around the temples in Pemuteran and Ubud were often hungry looking and sadly in pretty terrible states. There are a few charities trying to help but they don’t seem to have as much traction yet as Soi Dog in Thailand.
We walked up and down Jalan Barky Dog at least a couple of times every day, enjoying saying hello to all the friendly locals and being completely embedded where the locals live, rather than sequestered in some tourist precinct. We were there to see the beginning of Galungan decorations coming down and to hear a couple of house parties in the evenings, complete with gamelan and chanting on a loudspeaker. It might sound offputting but to a backdrop of thunder and lightning while skinny dipping in our private pool in the dark - it was surreal and atmospheric. Such good memories!
We decided to do one thing every day, a bigger ask than it sounds, but it gave us some direction and plenty of time to relax. One day this meant an afternoon at Menjangan Dynasty, a resort on the white sand/coral beach Pasir Putih - a little taste of how the other half live. Arriving at the resort, security checked our bags and the underside of the car using mirrors!! We swam in the sea and the kids loved the infinity pool with its view over the sea and out to the mountains. The food was great too, although we’re yet to find a beef rendang that rivals our Christmas dinner!
Another day we got up at 5.30am(!!!) for a three-hour walk in the monsoon forest, Bali’s only national park, Taman Nasional Bali Barat. The early start avoided the heat of the day, but not the mosquitoes which were very pleased to see (eat!) us. The walk took us mostly off tracks through the forest. At times we crawled under low-hanging trees and the kids did some swinging on vines and ‘abseiled’ down a rock. Just like Tarzan :) We saw a large troupe (collective noun?) of grey monkeys that just wandered past, unlike those in the Ubud monkey forest they paid us no attention. It was an amazing sight! We were also lucky to see the rarer and more timid black monkeys playing high up in the trees, and even a road-side monitor lizard from the car.
We had a late afternoon trip to a trio of temples. Pura Melanting was quiet, peaceful and had stunning Hindu designs. At the monkey temple Pura Pulaki, we watched monkeys fight each other and steal and speedily dispose of offerings brought by locals. Here people pray inside fully fenced areas as the monkeys are a touch aggressive, kind of like a reverse zoo with the humans inside the cages. The final temple was on the seaward side of the road and would have had a beautiful view of the sunset had it not been overcast. The slightly pink clouds were still nice though.
We did manage to get our snorkel off Pemuteran beach too, in the middle this time. They’ve won acclaim by stimulating coral growth using electricity, which seems to be working as coral grows off skeletal underwater structures, shaped like bowls, slides, stars, alligators and all sorts. As ‘off the beach’ snorkelling goes, it is very good indeed and certainly worth the time to do. We spent most of our time at a site called Biorock but there are several others nearby as well.
The kids and I squeezed in a jewellery making class with the lovely Louie and her sister Anna from a local jewellery shop. We’re all now the proud owners of new handmade bracelets and /or anklets. It was a very pleasant couple of hours making and chatting. Louie told us that the locals like the slow pace of Pemuteran and lower tourist numbers, although employment and cost are an issue. They’re concerned about foreign ownership of land, which is making it prohibitively expensive for them, and are cautiously optimistic about the new airport, hopeful it will bring jobs for local people.
We had our final Pemuteran dinner of babi guling, a Balinese dish of suckling pig, and chicken skewers at Frangipani. Delicious!!
We’ve loved our time in Pemuteran especially the incredibly friendly people, the open air restaurants (we’re only really inside to sleep), Heihei the villa-visiting chicken, our daily great coffee from Bali Balance cafe, the helpful and kind Wayan and her husband Putu, our little pool shaded by frangipani trees, listening to huge thunder claps and the gamelan music that sounds remarkably like deep house. Leo will particularly miss his big plate of mango each morning!
It was great to have a full week in Pemuteran as it took a couple of days to figure out everything worked and once we did it was a fantastically peaceful stop with plenty to do. Like always, we can tell just how good Pemuteran was by the speed conversation naturally turned to how soon we might return. Great moments.
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