Exploring Northern Bali with a Stranger

Last fall, I went on my first ever trip to the beautiful island of Bali. I stood under some waterfalls, hung out with monkeys, frolicked through rice terraces, and did all that other super basic stuff that every other backflipping content creator does here. Oh, and I got invited to stay at this crazy jungle mansion. That was dope. Despite all the crazy experiences I had here, my absolute favorite was an adventure off the beaten path with a total stranger from my hostel. It went something like this. So this is Radley right here, and I just met her at breakfast. In order to meet people at hostels, you just gotta go sit next to people at breakfast, and just be like, yo, I'm David from Wyoming, a state that doesn't exist. That's why you've never met anyone from there before. Have you ever met anyone from Wyoming? Yes, I have. So I have a really fun adventure planned for today, and what I need to know is, would you be down to just hop on the back of my scooter, and follow the adventure wherever I send it, and just trust some random dude at a hostel? I mean, yeah, why not? And just like that, me and my new Canadian travel partner set off across the terraces of Abud to explore a part of Bali that I have never seen before. So our secret destination today is Hidden Canyon, Beji Dude Wang. So the reason we came here is because I, you know, I feel like every spot I've hit so far is just somewhere cool I've seen on Instagram a million times, and I was like, oh, that's a cool pic, I want to go there. I wanted to find somewhere to go that looks cool, but you don't see all over the internet, and I was just doing much research last night and came across this, and I have never seen it before on Insta, so I think this is the right type of place. This is a baby waterfall. Oh, we got baby waterfalls. This thing's crazy. You have to be so careful, though. This place, it feels like the subway of Zion, if you've been there. Like, it has the same vibe. So, really cool place. The grassy river slowly transformed into a rocky cave. It almost felt like a Utah slot canyon combined with the volcanic landscape of Indonesia. It's unlike anything else I've ever seen. Guys, we're in the last canyon, and there's a rope swing. I jump up, are you sure? You just jump up there and then slam into that wall at full speed. That is all of the trash that we found in our walk today, which was only three kilometers. That's so sad. Guys, clean up after yourselves. That's so pathetic. Oh, yeah, there you go. You're a real 1DX adventure girl. After we had our fill of volcanic caves and swinging like Tarzan, we hopped on the scooter and set off on the next adventure. It took us from the Instagrammer-filled cities of southern Bali up and over the mountains into northern Bali, a much more unpopulated and chill region. We started out with a stop at the Hondera Gate, which is honestly just an overhyped entrance to a golf course. So here we are at the golf course about to shoot this gate, and in order to get in, you have to have a selfie ticket. Are you ready to use our selfie ticket well? So excited. We have to make every second count. Oh, yeah. We hopped back on the Mario Kart, grabbed some questionable street food, got stuck in a rainstorm, and eventually made it to our final destination, the Ilingaling and Kroya waterfalls, which kind of felt like Oregon on steroids. The lower falls were beautiful and had a cliff jump, which always puts me in a good mood, but the reason we came was for the upper falls. All right, here it is. So this might be the prettiest waterfall I've seen in Bali yet. This is amazing. How is it? It's so pretty. Oh, she needs pictures of her hair while it's dry, and then... And then I'll jump in, okay? Pictures first. Gotta get the hair pics on fleek. At this point, it started raining, and that's when things took a turn for the worse. The water turned from a beautiful turquoise blue to a muddy, nasty brown, but the weather wasn't about to stop us from going off the natural water slide. All right, so Radley and our guide went up over there on top of the waterfall in order to do the slide, and I'm gonna meet them there because right now I'm gonna drone it. So I can't wait to show you guys that steezy drone nonsense. It's raining really hard right now. I just droned Radley going anyways, and catching it, I actually hurt my finger a little bit. I got a finger stuck in a propeller. It does not feel good, so I'm probably the reason drones aren't more accessible to people. So yeah, let's go do this water slide. Little did I know that this would be my GoPro's last video of the trip. The water threw me down so hard that the wrist strap on my GoPro stick broke, and it sunk to its watery grave. I dove down 20 feet and was able to touch the bottom, but it was so murky that I couldn't see it and just accepted that my GoPro was gone forever. I headed back to the U.S. the next day, so I didn't have any time to wait for the water to clear up. I thought that all the memories made on this trip were gone, and that this YouTube vlog would never exist. Luckily, I got a message from a local guide the next week saying that they found it, and my friend Jack brought it back to the U.S. I was pretty stoked. So what were the takeaways from this journey? Well, I learned that northern Bali is by far the most underrated part of the island. I learned that some of the best adventures are off the beaten trail, and I learned that every stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet, so why not start up a conversation at breakfast? How do you feel about doing this spontaneous scooter adventure with some random dude from Wyoming? I am so glad I said yes. That was so much fun. Yeah. Oh, and my GoPro taught me that life is fragile and can end at any moment, so better get busy living.