Club A-Med
Amed: black sand beaches, boats aplenty and a bloody massive volcano looming over you. Lovely. We stayed in Amed for 4 nights – quite a long time as far as our stays go, and while we spent a record amount of time relaxing on a beach reading, we still managed to do a few really fun and exciting things! Just to keep things fresh and to keep you, my loyal readership, on your toes, I’m mixing up the blog format this time. I apologize in advance if this doesn’t sit as well with you and if I’ve let you down in any way, shape or form, but this is how it is for Amed.
The Place
Amed is a village/town on the northern coast of Bali, eastern bit. It’s about 20/30km from Mount Agung, Bali’s biggest volcano and enthusiastic model for my photos. It erupted last year, and there is still a 5km no-go zone around it as its active (spoiler alert, it didn’t go off and we didn’t get melted into fleshy gloop by its lava). Guesthouse Putra’Lebah is RIGHT on the beach – why we chose it – and was reviewed highly for having lovely hosts. Indeed, we hugged them emotionally when we left; they were very lovely and looked after us well. They also make salt in Amed, from the sea. If you’re a parent of Billie or me, you may receive a salty gift upon our return (I know, we’re so generous bring such an exotic luxury home).
The Chill
For much of our time, we sat on the incredibly comfortable beanbag loungers on the black sand beach, 5 meters from the doorway to our room. Every time we got up we’d have to hop over to our door or the sea as the sand was wayyy too hot to walk on. We’d move our beanbags every now and then to stay in the shade (lest we melt non-volcanically) and go for the odd snorkel in the most gorgeous clear sea with coral aplenty.
The snorkel masks were a whopping £1 a day to hire each, a hell of a lot when you consider a scooter is £2.50. I truly don’t understand their economy here. A mango juice (they have mangos in abundance) can cost more than mie goreng – a cooked meal of noodles with veg, chicken, spices and an egg. How can this be? We chilled so hard and I read one of my books in two days. An American Marriage is great and gripping, go read it. Reading with us were the best friends we made on our trip – two delightful, smiley dogs, one of which would jump up on my beanbag and curl up against me. Every now and then they tried to hump, or fight, so that was always dramatic / a bit distracting.
Sunset, as with pretty much EVERYWHERE in Indonesia, was a real highlight. This time it set dramatically RIGHT at the peak of Mount Agung, creating a dramatic halo effect. Bravo Mother Nature.
The Water Temple
You would be forgiven for thinking this was a particularly enjoyable level of ‘Zelda’ (only my friends or brothers will get this, I’m guessing). However, you would be wrong and it was, in fact, a water temple – actually a Palace now I think of it so not religious at all. Ignore everything I’ve written so far. We bought fish food to feed the hungry carp and went for a swim in the swimming pool which was soooo refreshing and grand. It was a lovely place and I also bought a wooden recorder which I think will really transform Monsoon Radio’s live sound. After the temple, we took what at the time was a real exertion for us… a walk.
The Walk
Billie had found a website about walking in Amed and I had spotted one that went right from the Water Palace. Since we’d scooted there at great expense (£2.50) we thought we’d bloody well do it! The website simply said that next to the temple was a concrete lined waterway that irrigates the surrounding paddy fields and we could walk down it for about 3km then walk back. It doesn’t sound appetising as such (can’t say I’ve ever googled concrete lined linear walks) – but it was a mega highlight. Down we went and the paddies were just amazingly beautiful in the late sun of the day. Then we started coming across locals washing and playing (and having a crafty smoke in the case of two young lads). We thought maybe we’d be imposing if we went further but decided to go ahead and get the vibe and decide from there. It was all smiles and the kids shouting “HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?” repeatedly at us. It was great to see lovely locals in their daily lives.
Our concrete lined wagerway diverged and then rejoined it was a bit of a game jumping across it to take the path of least resistance. Billie and I both had a close call, but falling in would have been trivial. We saw it ran through a small, quite poor looking, village ahead so decided not to impose ourselves further and trotted back past the happy people to our scooter to race home for another mind warpingly impressive sunset.
The Dives
Well I’ve only gone and saved the best till last… I was adamant I would do some diving this hol and against my best efforts, Billie resisted (although very supportive I should go). So on the eve of our last day there we went to ‘Adventure Divers Bali’ which is the best rated (and most expensive I imagine, but you get what you pay for – still haunted by our manta ray experience, or lack thereof, in Nusa Penida). Billie sat outside while I spoke to charming American Christina, who talked me through their ‘refresher’ service. Sidebar – so I did my PADI scuba course when I was 12, but I assumed it had run out or something and that I had to dive once a year or something to retain it. Fortunately, I was wrong and they found me on the system – 2002 in Turkey. Nice! So no ‘try scuba’ for me, but a refresher course to simply sharpen me back up to my former 12 year old self. She went off to confirm and by the time she was back Billie had caved – it all sounded too good to miss and Christina worked her charm, so we signed her up for ‘try scuba’ (heh, amateur…) and we would be diving together the following day.
We arrived in the morning at the unearthly hour of 8am, and were given all the information and hand signals we would need by enigmatic German Roxy. Before we knew it we were in the water with cool dude Aussie Marnus – Billie and I just discussed Marnus and she thinks he was German; not sure how we’re so far apart on this – running through basic exercises and then we were on a dive through the coral reefs of Jemeluk Bay – fish aplenty! Very beautiful, but the best was yet to come.
Dive 2 was the USS Liberty Shipwreck. Its unique as a wreck as its literally a walk in off the beach jobbie, and you can snorkel it if you’re OK with seeing just the top half of it from a distance. It was torpedoed by the Japanese back in the 40’s when the Yanks didn’t get on so well with em. They made it to shore, unloaded cargo and left it on the beach where it sat for a few decades. In the 90s, an earthquake big enough to move it plonked it in the ocean, and since then coral has grown all over it. It was truly incredible to dive among it – there were masses and masses of fish amongst the struts and holes in the boat. Amongst other things we saw ‘sweetlips’, ‘trumpetfish’, ‘clownfish’ and of course a veritable forest of garden eels – they’re stuck in the ground and spend their lives poking their heads up and down…
We weaved in and out of the wreck and it was great to feel the scuba control we’d been learning in the morning. This time, our dive fella took pictures on my gopro (they kindly lent us the casing to go deep under). We were sad to come back up and back at the dive centre they were egging Billie on to come back do her open water course there, saying this counted as the first day – they were also honest enough to say it could count as her first day with another dive company on Gili Air, our next destination… More on that later…
The dive was a massive highlight of the trip and, as you’ll see in the next installment, will lead to many more highlights – think turtles as big as your dining room table (possible exaggeration) and sharks sharpening their teeth on our scuba tanks (definite exaggeration). Goodbye Amed. See you in Gili Air! (Not Amed, but you, the reader), it’s really great here…
2024 Update: Sorry gang, I never got round to writing the Gili Isles segment. They are fantastic and I suggest that rather read about them online, you jump on the next plane there and experience it for yourself.