Amed might be far removed from the sunscreen-scented, mini-mart mass tourism of Kuta or Seminyak, but it won't remain this way forever. Photo / Christopher Adams
Amed might be far removed from the sunscreen-scented, mini-mart mass tourism of Kuta or Seminyak, but it won't remain this way forever. Photo / Christopher Adams
Christopher Adams battles Kuta's crazy traffic and beer bellies before escaping east.
It's 5pm on New Year's Eve and the traffic's at a standstill in the back streets of Kuta.
Being on holiday, I should just chill out and enjoy the ride. But I'm frustrated. The roughly 6km taxi trip back to our hotel, up the coast in Seminyak, will take more than an hour.
Gede, our normally serene driver, is similarly downcast. He wants to clock off and celebrate the New Year with his family in Denpasar, Bali's capital.
"Traffic," he mutters, shaking his head, "is stress." Crawling towards our destination, there's nothing to do but watch tattooed Australians in their Bali uniform - Bintang beer singlet, stubbies and Jandals - amble along the footpath.
The shopkeepers affect Aussie accents as they attempt to entice them into their stores, which invariably specialise in three product lines: stickers bearing offensive phrases like "Tim is Gay", penis-shaped bottle openers and, of course, Bintang singlets.
Traffic congestion is an unfortunate side-effect of Bali's ever-increasing popularity as a holiday destination.
Visitor numbers have tripled since 2001, despite the terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2005 that killed over 200 people.
The coastal areas near Denpasar - such as Kuta, Legian and Seminyak - attract a big chunk of the more than three million foreign tourists who now descend on the Indonesian island annually.
Unfortunately, the road infrastructure just isn't up to the task of moving them around during busy periods such as New Year.
That's fine if you're on a motorbike, which can zip around the edges of the jams.
But we're visiting with our two sons, aged 3 and 6, who insist I take turns carrying them on my shoulders when the traffic jam forces us into a sweltering march back to the hotel.
The locals in Seminyak are lovely, as they are across Bali, especially if you've got children in tow.
And if lying by the pool by day and hitting the clubs at night is the main aim of your holiday, then you've come to the right place.
But after two weeks we need a change of scene.
Fortunately, it's a big island and the hustle and bustle of Seminyak is quickly forgotten as we wind our way through rice terrace-laced mountains in Gede's taxi.
After three hours on the road we reach Amed, a remote stretch of the east Bali coast.
The scenery is dramatic, with the island's tallest volcano, the 3142m Agung, rising abruptly from the ocean. Our balcony at the Eka Purnama Cottages provides a sweeping view across the Bali Sea to Lombok and the slopes of that island's loftiest volcano, Rinjani.
The view from the balcony at the Eka Purnama Cottages. Photo / Christopher Adams
It's one of Bali's poorer regions, with a local economy dependent on fishing, salt-making and - increasingly - tourism.
Eka Purnama's American owner, George Cowan, must have thought he'd found paradise when he arrived in Amed 14 years ago.
On a whim, he purchased some prime real estate on a headland above the village of Banyuning and built a hotel, as you do. Cowan's been there ever since and runs the business with his Balinese wife, Iluh.
We're treated like family and our boys immediately feel like they're at home. I'm even cooked a special Balinese dinner on my birthday.
It's good value, too.
We spend less than $300 for a week in a comfortable bamboo bungalow located above one of the best snorkelling sites in Amed, a World War II-era Japanese shipwreck.
It lies on a coral reef in shallow water, meaning scuba gear isn't required to inspect its interior, in which thousands of tiny fish hide from the larger species circling outside.
Speaking of predators, an alarmed-looking Frenchman - a fellow guest at Eka Purnama - swims up beside me during my visit to the wreck.
He explains how, feeling adventurous, he swam around the headland from the beach on the other side of the hotel. At the halfway mark, with no means of a quick escape, the water suddenly deepened and an unidentified, toothy creature latched on to his foot.
"It really freaked me out," he says.
"Yeah, you're freaking me out too," I reply, before taking a moment to check the water below.
He swims off, leaving me to wonder who's next in line for a nibble.
Unable to relax, I head back to shore and take a break among the hundreds of fishing boats that set out at sunrise each morning to catch mackerel.
