After 5 days in Amed, we decided to move on to Lovina in the north of Bali. We hired a driver and chose a route that passed by the amazing Gunung Agung with a stop at Besakih, aka the Mother Temple, where I was made to wear a sarong even though I wore long pants for the occasion. Luckily there is no evidence that implicates me in this unmanly behavior. The temple is on the side of Mt. Agung, which last erupted spectacularly in 1963 and has amazing views of southern Bali. We also stopped for lunch at a restaurant that had stunning views of Lake Batur and saw the jaw dropping Gunung Batur, which is Bali’s most active volcano. When we arrived in Lovina we were very picky about our hotel and checked out a number of places before choosing Nirwana Seaside Bungalows. Lovina was not very busy considering the amount of accommodation available and most places were offering large discounts.

We soon settled into the same old routine with the only difference being that we didn’t have to leave the pool for a beer run since the pool had a swim up bar. Lovina was a little more compact than Amed and we had a lot of restaurants to choose from right outside our door. On our third night we discovered a wonderful Thai restaurant and the food was so good that we returned again even though it was our intention to spread our money around to as many restaurants as possible since they are all hurting. All the restaurants were trying to lure our business with special happy hour offers and cocktails were as cheap as $1 each. We ended up staying 4 nights in Lovina with our days spent by the pool without ever making it to the ocean less than 20 m away. Amie and I also did another 2 dives even though we were sure it would not compare to Tulamben. We dived off Menjangan Island in western Bali where we could see the volcanoes of Java in the distance. The diving was quite good with some nice drop offs but no major sightings beyond a yellow fin tuna that I thought was a white tipped shark at first. There were some amazing table corals that once you got close to them had thousands of clownfish and other smaller fish living on them like skyscrapers in Manhattan. We also got to explore a small cave and found a pigmy seahorse that is so small that one usually needs a magnifying glass to find it.

After Lovina, our last stop in Bali was Ubud and to be honest it was not a place I wanted to spend a lot of time in and I was determined not to enjoy it. Ubud, like Kuta, is where you go to shop and the women were definitely willing to give it a shot. On our second night, at the hotel’s weekly Balinese feast, we met three hilarious Australian sisters who were able to break me out of my bah humbug attitude. A few beers later plus a couple of shots (OK, maybe more than a couple) of rice wine, I was ready to enjoy myself. We all had a number of beer sessions later in the week, some of them getting so boisterous that the hotel owner had to warn us not to wake the river spirits. After a number of valiant attempts, Amie and Bobbie were shopped out and not a dollar too soon as our bags were already pretty heavy and our wallets pretty light.

On our last day, after a couple of repacks, we managed to pack everything in and we were off to Hong Kong. It was after 10 pm before we finally got to our hotel in Hong Kong but our day was not yet over and we hit the town for one final hoorah. We went to the Intercontinental Hotel on the harbor where we were able to snag a window seat and watch the lights of Hong Kong as we sipped on $10 beers. Despite the cost, I still managed to enjoy it, but maybe it was just the company. The next day it was pouring rain so instead of wandering the streets of Hong Kong we relaxed in the room and watched game 6 of the NBA finals live. Then we made our way to the airport and headed home.