Tag 68 - Eliminated

Published: 13.07.2019

07/07/19

Today is Sunday, so we don't even try to go to the police station and instead go on a trip. Right after breakfast, we head to Canggu, a small coastal town north-west of Denpasar, which is supposed to be more relaxed and less touristy. We find a relatively central parking space and visit a flea market run by expats and other westerners. Everything here screams Instagram, social media, and cult - nice to look at, but not much more. We continue walking through the town and realize that it doesn't have as much charm as advertised on the internet - maybe we were just in the wrong places.

So we decide to explore the coast a bit, hop on our scooter, and after a few minutes, we stop at a Vietnamese restaurant that offers a beautiful view of rice terraces. There, we order a coconut and an iced tea.

After the refreshment, we continue through small towns and narrow roads, which eventually lead to a temple built directly on rocks in the water. Apart from two locals running a snack stand there, we are the only ones.

As we pass the 'pier' of the temple, we unexpectedly find a black sandy beach at our feet. We stroll along the beach until our path is blocked by a river estuary.

We walk back the same way. Some swallows nesting in the walls built along the way scare us away. We stop for a few minutes and enjoy the fresh breeze and the spectacular view of the waves.

We continue along the coast until we reach another 'water' temple, but this time there is an entrance fee and we are not dressed appropriately - we decide not to visit and instead go to a café that we spotted on the roadside. However, it's not a regular café, but one that sells coffee made from beans that have been eaten, digested, and excreted by a civet cat. We've heard about this kind of coffee many times before, and now it's time to try it.

The service is excellent; we are given a tour of the lush green garden where the plants are grown for tea and coffee. We are assigned a nice table right next to the rice fields. We are also given a board with 13 different types of tea and coffee - for free! Only the cat poop coffee costs €3.20, which we order as well. We try the different varieties with varying levels of enthusiasm (favorites: lemongrass tea, coconut coffee / not so good: turmeric tea tastes like sweet and sour sauce) and then taste the cat's brew: maybe it's just our imagination, but it actually tastes a lot better than regular coffee - milder, more aromatic, fruitier (at least that's what we, as coffee laymen, can say about it).

However, we politely decline the offer made to us at the exit to take one variety home for €6.

We drive back to Kuta, to our accommodation, and meet Ian and Lucy there, with whom we later arrange to play beach volleyball at the beach. When we arrive at the court, some of Ian's surf students join as well. We play for about half an hour until a large group of locals kindly ask us to leave so they can play. Ian emphasizes that it is actually a public court, but in this situation, it's best not to argue with the locals because they believe they have more right to the court.