My first weeks in Bali

Phew. Time has been flying by since I arrived!

I woke up early on my first morning to a precious gift that I’ve received nearly every day since – fruit pits and bat excrement all over the kitchen floor. My pet fruit bat, Larry, flies in every evening to the same cozy spot in the thatched ceiling to consume delicious treats and leave bits and pieces behind for me to clean up every morning. LOVE YA, LARRY.

 


After my morning cleanup routine, I was picked up by our office assistant, Wayan, who kindly motorbiked me to work (I definitely wasn’t ready to brave the Bali traffic myself). We spent about 30 minutes weaving through congested roads to get from Seminyak (where I’m staying currently, at my boss Momo’s house) to the office, which is located on the southeastern end of Denpasar. See fancy map for details.

As you can see, Bali is very large and I've only seen a little bit of it so far.

A few of my coworkers watching a video at lunch hour.

The MDPI team is super friendly, funny, and hard working. The organization has done some amazing work since it started four years ago; from establishing Fair Trade supply chains to collecting catch data from tens of thousands of fishing trips and using that information to improve fisheries. MDPI was born from the seafood industry, specifically a seafood distributor called Anova, which has given it a very unique perspective as an NGO. Rather than focusing solely on protecting an ecosystem while blindly ignoring communities’ needs, MDPI has worked with fishing communities, seafood suppliers, processors, distributors, and retailers (along with governments, academics, and other NGOs) to ensure that socioeconomic and environmental goals can be achieved. Yayasan Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI) translates to Community and Fisheries Foundation Indonesia – the focus is on people and fish. MDPI’s mission is to empower fishing communities to achieve sustainability by harnessing market forces. The motto is “Happy People, Many Fish!” – how great is that?

Suluban Beach

I spent my first weekend getting comfortable with motorbiking again (my field season in Vietnam was three years ago, after all), knowing that Wayan couldn’t be my personal chauffeur forever. I motorbiked back to Momo’s house on Friday after work, thanking the technological gods for Google maps, which was telling me where to go (in my headphones, Mum, don’t worry, I wasn’t looking at my phone while operating a motorbike in traffic). To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting – there is a flow to the traffic, and for the most part things don’t move too quickly, and it’s easy enough to pull over to figure things out if needed.


On Saturday I travelled to Uluwatu, which is on the southern tip of the island (~2 hours away from Momo’s house in Seminyak). It was gorgeous, and I’m looking forward to checking out some of the beaches and surf breaks in the area properly in the future. On Sunday, I zipped northeast to Ubud (~1 hour away), enjoyed a delightful meal and checked out the yoga scene, then headed south to Sanur. There was an “Ocean Day” event being held on the beach that brought together a number of different organizations working in ocean conservation, waste reduction, beach cleanups, and more. It was a great way to get to know a few of the conservation groups and meet some awesome like-minded people in Bali.

The most important person I met at Ocean Day was this seahorse mascot of the Genius Café!!

While at Ocean Day, I learned of an organization called Trash Hero, which has chapters all over the world. Trash Hero Sanur hosts a weekly beach cleanup that I attended the next day (right after work). It was extremely cathartic (love me some trash cleanup – I’m looking at you, Trash Mountain), and a good reminder to try to use as few disposable plastics as possible, especially while living here. Afterward, the cleanup crew had dinner and drinks at a café on the beach – yum!

Just bein trash heroes.

The next week at work flew by (and included a quick day trip to Singapore which I’ll write about in a separate post). It’s been fascinating to learn more about the work that MDPI is doing, and start to figure out what I can contribute (mostly science-y stuff which is likely too dull for the blog). Above all, it’s great to have a supportive and interesting group of people to work with!

I spent this past weekend on various adventures with my coworkers – on Saturday morning I went snorkeling through a coral plantation (which felt like being at a garden shop but underwater – holy moly the purples and blues and greens were so incredible!) and enjoyed a fresh seafood lunch on the beach. I spent Saturday afternoon checking out potential apartments to rent followed by a mellow hour of reading at the beach in Sanur.

After a mere three hours of sleep, I woke up at midnight to drive to the northeast end of the island and hike Mt Batur for sunrise – along with probably a thousand other tourists. It was incredible though, and I was thrilled to get out hiking! I’ve already started to scope other volcanoes to scramble in the coming months.

Until next time,
A.

Looking out at Mt Abang and Mt Agung at twilight.

My intrepid trekking partners - Timur, Wildan (my coworkers), and one of their friends!