Traveller reveals side of Bali you thought disappeared 50 years ago
Is this the new Canggu? Travellers are losing their minds over a secluded side of Bali where there are spectacular shipwrecks, empty waves, uncrowded rice paddies and no tourists.
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Did you know there are still towns in Bali where people bathe in rivers? Where there are no nightclubs and tattoo parlours? Where beach clubs and Crossfit studios have yet to sprout? Indeed, a place where there are no tourists whatsoever (because the few visitors that are there probably consider themselves travellers)?
Well that place exists, and it's on the east coast of Bali, in a town that looks like the love-child of Ubud and Medewi called Candi Dasa.
This forgotten paradise is now popping off on social media, with travellers losing their minds over the beach town's frozen-in-time vibes.
Alex Boissett, a popular Youtuber is one of them, having recently visited Candi Dasa and returning a convert.
"We've come to explore the secret parts of Bali," Mr Boissett said in his video. "People normally go to Uluwatu, Canggu, Ubud, but... we're going to go to a zone where there are almost no tourists."
Mr Boissett raves about how on his first night he didn't see a single tourist, explaining the only restaurants in the area are local ones.
"What Bali was in the past is what you can find here in the east," Mr Boissett said, explaining that the few tourists that make the trek to the east coast of Bali usually come for the diving.
The main diving drawcard is Liberty Wreck, a US cargo ship torpedoed by the Japanese in World War II that limped to shore, sat in shallow waters for 10 years, then got covered in lava from a volcanic eruption and has now has created an incredible ecosystem for fish and turtles. This is an hour north of Candi Dasa, in the fishing village of Tulamben.
Other than the diving, some other things Mr Boissett noticed about the east coast of Bali are the honesty of the people (he said he left his phone and camera on a table while surfing, something he wouldn't have done in the tourist-heavy zone of Uluwatu) and the mountain views.
There's also a surf break called Jasri which gets much less swell than the Bukit Peninsula and Keramas, but which occasionally offers a nice right-hander.
Mr Boissett also had a special experience watching the local kids fly their kites as the sun set, and then being invited to swim in a river with them.
At a time where the more popular parts of Bali are drowning in tourists, it's refreshing to see such a place still exists.
As Steve Montell, an Aussie who has spent years of his life in Bali recently told Escape: "People like to say it's all over, but it's still good."
"People love telling you how crowded it's got, how it's gone, how people have discovered it, apparently, but it's still confined to that south east corner of Bali. When you look at the whole big picture - you go 15 minutes out of Canggu, it's not riddled with tourists and development."
"People say it's been overdeveloped, then they go off and have a latte. Bali was hard to get around in the 80s."
Steve also made friends for life during those early trips to Bali, telling Escape, despite tourism taking off in the last twenty years, from what he's seen, "The culture of Bali has remained constant with its people."
"They can be doing the offerings etc. and it's more important to grid lock the traffic to get those offerings down than it's not."
See also: Incredible photos show what Bali was like in the 1980s
"If you travel around other areas of Indonesia there's something missing [for me] - and then you realise it's the colour of that Hindu culture. So that's one thing that's remained really constant that's really cool."
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Originally published as Traveller reveals side of Bali you thought disappeared 50 years ago
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