Lovina > Villa Manuk (31km by car)

From the beach back to the mountains. Today we are going to visit some hot springs and then drive to the the bush again. We found a hotel in Manuk Sesa, a tiny village halfway between Lovina and Mount Batur, a volcano that we will visit very soon. We stopped for lunch at a very nice Warung where we experienced local Balinese food.

Map.

Let’s start the day with a visit of the hotel where we stayed last night.

As always Bali like trees flowers and grass. Each room is a bungalow, like a tiny house surrounded by thick nature. I don’t remember how much we paid exactly but it might be $34 AUD for a room for two.

A number help us to remember where our Bungalow is because they all look the same :-)

This is the swimming pool for Max ;-) On the left side, under the roof, there is a bar which is certainly open during the high season (not now for us) and people can sit on stool in the water and order some drinks. On the background, under the other roof, there is the massage place. So much service for a low price like this!

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We finally left the hotel and reached Air Panas (Which means Hot water). There is obviously a hot springs where we can swim. But before we must crawl through the tourist traps!

After a short walk and a lot of “Tidak, terima Kasih” we get to the hot spring. The entrance is something like 5000 IDR ($0.5$ AUD).

How does look this hot springs?

Is that sculpture would tell us?

In fact, this is a swimming pool. Not exactly what we expected.

Yes a swimming pool :-)

Actually there is more than one. The sources seem to coming directly from behind the top pool which is hotter than the second one.

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Air Panas was good. We stayed there about an hour. We found a very nice Warung and order some lunch. Like often the woman who sell her cooking doesn’t speak well english so we communicate with body language and few Indonesian words that we’ve learnt. We don’t really know exactly what we are eating but it’s very tasty and often very spicy!

For dessert, we went just next door where (from what we guess) the daughter provides sweet stuff. Those jars contain something, something we can not describe as food we know. The yellow one looks to me like butter but it’s not. The black and pink one are like jelly created from plants that are picked around this area, then crushed, then mixed with water and whatever.

This is the most strange dessert I’ve ever tasted and it’s actually very nice. It’s weird, Jelly, sticky, sweet and local Balinese food :-)

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Now we are full up, the GPS is guiding us to the Villa Manuk, our next hotel. This is the main road on the left side and we turn right to go towards the bush.

The road is getting more and more narrow as we drive deeper in the Balinese forest. The road is steep and windy. Some of the turns we must use the horn because there is always a scooter coming from the other side.

When we arrived in the village, we passed through such a narrow street that we got stuck when a car arrived front of us. I wanted to be nice and start driving backwards until, a second later, I hit a scooter which was parked along the wall, rah! Everyone came outside of their house. Even two guys popped up above a wall to see what happened. The owner rushed out as well and was really angry which I understand. I just did not see the scooter when I drove backwards and bumped it down. Some of the guys spoke a bit of english and told us that 200.000 IRD ($20) to repair his scooter was fine.

Finally we arrived to the Villa Manuk :-)

This hotel is wonderful.

Front of us there is a bungalow with two rooms, one downstairs, one upstairs. On the left side there is our Bungalow.

The terrace.

Our room. This is very luxurious. I’ve been living outside for 1 year and a half so this is strange to be in a place like this.

They pay attention to details.

Another towels presentation for the top room.

The open bathroom. It’s very useful to leave in a warm country :-)

Look what we can find in our bathroom, a scorpion. The guy from the reception told me that these are not deadly. It would be only painful if they sting us.

This is the view from the Hotel, right on rice fields. The brown stuff front of us is actually a used to plant hot pepper.

Let’s have a walk around the rice fields :-)

In the middle of nowhere.

Hot pepper fields.

Houuuu :-) This is growing.

Very nice view.

There is our hotel on the background.

The GPS indicated us a Temple. We might on the right track now even if there is not really a track.

I expected that temple to be different, bigger or more important. One more time, some explication would be useful here.

We now come back on the “main road” walking underneath cacao trees.

We are still surrounded by lots of rice fields.

And more.

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Back to the hotel, we had a nap. It’s now 7pm and it’s dinner time :-)

The table is waiting for us.

I love the way they build this kind of roof. The structure is only made with bamboo and it must be so long to attach each piece of straw (or kind of) to create that very nice roof.

Dinner is served and respects the same details as the rest of the presentation here. Very nice! and good night :-)

Well no, “good night” is the wrong thing to say tonight. Around 7pm, a guy started to speak through a microphone like they do in muslim countries. It’s actually Ramadan (we discovered this today) and during all the dinner and unfortunately until 2am this night, this guy did not stop praying, talking and singing. He had some short 10 minutes break sometimes and was maybe replaced by someone else but during all that bloody night we could not sleep… This is a shame that the hotel did not warned us about this when we booked the place because we would not come here! This is adventure…