Bali Beach Days

Our last two nights in Bali were spent at The Alchemist Bali Forest Resort Oasis. We found this charming forest cabin on Airbnb. (Click HERE to get $27 off your first AirBnB stay.)

The Alchemist was actually VERY cheap, so we were a little nervous about staying there at first. When we arrived, we were pleased by how amazing the staff was and how much detail went into the property. We stayed in the “One Love” cabin. There are three other cabins on the property and two treehouse rooms. Unfortunately, the treehouse rooms were fully booked up before we found out about them. Our cabin was just as beautiful though!

This place was like something out of a fairytale, especially at night. So pretty!

There is a nice restaurant and bar at the property. We ate most of our meals here the last few days in Bali. Everything was so amazingly fresh and yummy, especially the breakfast bowl. Nom, nom, nom.

There are so many beach resorts in Bali that we could have stayed at that would have put us right on the beach. We actually wanted to steer clear of the touristy resort areas, which is why we chose The Alchemist. It is a bit away from all the main tourist spots but in a great location to scoot to some of the most beautiful beaches in Bali. We were able to rent a scooter from the property to use each day for only $4!

When we first arrived at The Alchemist to check in, it was already around 2pm. We had a quick bite to eat at the restaurant before hopping on our scooter to check out Balangan Beach. This beach has about a half kilometer of beautiful, gold sand surrounded by limestone cliffs. It was only about a 5 minute scooter ride from our place, so super close. There were a few shacks on the beach that sold food and random beach items. It was low season when we went so there didn’t seem to be much of a crowd, thank goodness.

You may be looking at the photos and wondering why it looks so dirty/rocky. These photos were taken at low-tide and what you see is actually reef. We were able to find several sea creatures at this time of day, which was pretty neat.

We spent about two hours at the beach before we drove the scooter back to our place. We played several rounds of cards (I won all of them, naturally), had a yummy dinner at the restaurant and called it an early night.

The next morning we woke up somewhat early and had breakfast at The Alchemist Restaurant before heading out on our scooters. We decided to check out Padang Padang Beach first. This was about a 30 minute scooter ride. It probably would have been a bit shorter but we got a bit lost because Adam didn’t listen to my directions and assumed he knew where he was going. Men. Or maybe it was the other way around…

Padang Padang Beach, also known as Pantai Lubuan Sait by the locals, is a beach that is very popular for surfing. To get to the beach, we walked down a flight of concrete stairs that went down through the rock, making it feel like we were inside a cave. There were even monkeys walking around. They were super cute but definitely a bit more feisty than the monkeys at Monkeying Around in Ubud

This beach was a lot smaller than Balangan Beach but just as beautiful. It was about 100 meters long and surrounded by rocks. The water was pretty warm and very clear. The sand was pretty nice too, a little seaweed here and there but super soft. I think I prefer the beaches in Thailand and the Philippines over the ones in Bali, but I love Bali as a whole because of the many things you can do on the island without having to worry about long travel time. This was definitely one of our best vacations yet.

Just before noon, the beach started to get very crowded. We took one more dip to cool off before walking to a nearby restaurant for lunch.

I forgot the name of the burger place we stopped at for lunch. It was just a quick walk from Padang Padang Beach and was super yummy!

After lunch we hopped on the scooter and went to Balangan Beach (where we went the day before). We stopped at the top of the cliffs at the lookout area first. It was so beautiful. ❤

The photo of this view makes me want to go back so bad. 😦

As you can see, the beach looks way prettier in the photo above than in the photos from the day before. We arrived at the beach before low-tide so you don’t see any of the reef in these photos.

After sunbathing for a few hours, we headed back to our place for some dinner and more rounds of cards. We had another full day of adventure ahead of us, but unfortunately, our flight was the next night so we had to do some packing up as well.

We had so much fun exploring the Bali coastline by scooter. This was definitely one of the more memorable parts of our trip. Check back soon to read about our last day of adventures in Bali!

If you haven’t seen our video of our Bali trip yet, check it out HERE!