Expectations of Canggu

So far the expectation had very much been the reality of Canggu, it feels so far detached from somewhere like Ubud which still has a very local feel depending on where you go, but that’s why they call it the cultural centre.

When you’re driving in, you’ll almost certainly be stuck in the traffic at some point, the roads are absolutely packed with people, it’s genuinely one of the first places I’ve thought unless you’ve got experience riding a motorbike of any kind, I just wouldn’t bother, but there’s plenty of people that don’t pay any attention to that and make it worse anyway, including the local delivery drivers it seems.

Past that you’ll notice the huge amount of different shops, cafés, restaurants, luxury hotels, day clubs and pretty much anything else in between that you could want for when you’re at home right on your doorstep, with loads more being built, I really can see there being a fight for land in the years to come as it only seems to be getting busier and busier.

I say all of this but I actually enjoyed being back in the buzz of everything for a while as I’d felt quite detached from it, don’t get me wrong that was intentional and I’ll go back to that afterwards, but it definitely felt nice for a quick visit.

I remembered back to day one, just after I landed in the queue for immigration I met a guy named Zoli from Hungary who’d took me under his wing as he could clearly smell the Bali newbie on me and sent me a bunch of suggestions to do while I’m here, one of which was surfing in Canggu along with the details of an instructor, so that was the plan for today.

Surfing was incredible in a word, I’d never done it before but thanks to my instructor Windu I managed to actually stand up and catch a few waves which has seemingly started an addiction, don’t get me wrong I spent a lot of time under the water too but it’s all part of the process right?!

Feeling slightly gutted I only had a short time here after finding something I really enjoyed, I headed down to the next hotel in Uluwatu and checked in, since we started surfing at 7am I was way too early and went straight out for an explore, completely unexpectedly I ended up arriving at Uluwatu temple.

Again a must visit but watch out for the monkeys, definitely not quite as friendly as they are at the other temples, someone managed to lose their phone and a good few monkeys had managed to bag themselves some designer sunglasses, my advice is just don’t take it in, it’s almost like they should tell you this when you go in, oh wait…