03.13.26
For two days I visited the small coastal village of Candidasa, on the east coast of Bali, investigating if it could be a long-term stay. My opinion right now is It’s nice for a weekend or maybe a week, but probably not for much longer. I was pleasantly surprised to find my resort ($28) right on the ocean, but currently the beach is all torn up since they’re putting in a boardwalk, making it more like Sanur. We’ll see how that pans out. But I had a nice outside pool and deck area, plus a surprisingly good restaurant, and really all I wanted was a base to check out the area. Within a 10-minute walk I found several restaurant choices, but overall they were mostly local cafes, called warungs. Which is fine.
Since there were some things worth traveling to, I rented a bike for the day and visited Taman Ujung, AKA The Water Palace, which was stunning, a word I don’t often use. It consists of 30 acres of water treatments, shrines, and lots of beautiful landscape, and was very Zen-like. On the way back I found one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen in a long time, called Virgin Beach. It was in a small bay with cliffs on each side and had the whitest sand with very calm water. It reminded me of a beach we found in the Philippines two years ago. They have a pool you can use, plus daybeds and cafes, and it’s a place to return to, for sure.
Finally, stop number 3 took me to Goa Lawah temple, also known as the Bat Cave, since it was built around a cave with, well, a lot of bats. The cave is too small to enter, but I was able to view and take pictures at the entrance, and while I was there they were also doing an Indonesian ritual, so I sat and I meditated with them as they did that. Overall the shrine is quite small, but on the way to Candidasa, and worth stopping at.
When I reflected on the day I did a deeper dive with Gemini AI and looked for other cities on the island of Bali that might have what we are looking for. I went through the same screening process for Vietnam, and there’s about five cities over there worth checking out, and about the same number in Bali. So overall my four-day jaunt was a worthy one.
