Bali-Echo Beach

For the second part of Ryan and Alecia's trip they took off to see Phuket, Thailand, while Drew and I went to Bali, an island in Indonesia. It sounds weird that we didn't go somewhere all together, but we had the Bali trip booked a long time ago, and by the time Ryan and Alecia were looking at things, flights to Bali were pretty expensive, and all of the rooms at our villas were booked. 

Drew and I got to Bali really late Thursday night. We had hired a driver to come pick us up, so we went straight to the Villa Phoenix that we found using AirBnb. The villa was in Canggu, near Echo Beach. It was a perfect place for us, as Canggu is much smaller and more relaxed than the bigger tourist towns of Kuta, Depensar, and Semayak, which are all further south near the airport. 

The villa itself was beautiful. It had four rooms, and the owner lived on site with her tiny puppy Kiss. She was in and out most of the time, but there were two really friendly Balinesian women who would cook us breakfast every morning, clean up etc. There were surf boards you could borrow, a beautiful pool to cool off in, and a cabana over a pool of lilies and reeds. You'd never have to leave if you didn't want to. 

It was a five minute walk (if that) to the nearby Echo Beach. The beach itself was a mix of sand and reef. The waves were very big, so between that and the reef, it wasn't a great place to swim. But, along the beach was a little town with a few shops and restaurants where Drew and I spent two nights in awe of the sunset, watching the surfers. 

This was our dinner the first real night. We had satay, which is a very traditional, popular Balinesian dish. We also had grilled Mahi Mahi, yum, some salads, and Beef Rendang. And, of course, fruit smoothies of all sorts. 

One thing Bali has a lot of are dogs. They look like strays, because they wander about on their own, covering the streets and people's front stoops. However, most of them do have a "home" or a family that feeds them. But none of them are allowed inside, none of them are fixed, and all are willing to beg for food. We never saw an aggressive one; they actually made our stay more enjoyable as we got to watch them everywhere. 

Why did you go to a surfing beach instead of a swimming beach one might ask? Well, Drew and I indeed wanted to take surfing lessons. We have surfed once before on our honeymoon in Hawaii and loved it. Needless to say, I figured they would take us to another beach other than Echo that was more suited for beginners. But nope, we got thrown into the deep end on this one. We should have just walked away, but we decided to give it a go. We were hoping to look like this. 

But, in the end, we looked like this. 

We survived, but being rung in the washer is not a fun experience. I would not suggest Echo Beach for beginners. There was a point where I had been thrown around so much, I actually got seasick out there and had to come to shore for a break. That was very weird for me, as I have spent a lot of my childhood swimming in the Atlantic Ocean at my grandparent's beach house in North Carolina, and that had never happened. But, apparently, this was a different class of waves. Eventually I did get up about 3 times, but it was a hard fought 3 times. In the end, we still had fun, but I should have done more research for beginner beaches.