Two developers and two months in Bali. What conclusions did we draw from the journey?

Hi, Habr. My name is Sasha, I am HR at FINCH. Recently, our company sent employees to Bali for a month . Rest and work. The story on the collective trip did not end - two of our guys decided to stay in Bali for another couple of months.

I, bored in Moscow, decided to ask them about life on the island - the answers turned out to be contradictory, and Bali ceased to seem heavenly. Below is a brief retelling of our conversation. I hope it will help you understand how the island is arranged and whether it is possible to work there.

Sasha (hereinafter simply C): Hi, tell me, where did you move after the rental of a corporate villa ended?

Cyril Selfie on a background of foamy ocean and green forests

Kirill, back-end developer (hereinafter simply K): I already studied Changu enough, I wanted to change the picture and live in Jimbaran.

I was looking for accommodation for a long time, but eventually found a guesthouse with a normal kitchen. For the price it turned out strange. Although formally, on a booking, a house costs $ 48,000 / month, in fact, it cost me at $ 28,000. All local Bali traded, and the owner of the house was no exception.

Dima and stones, stones and Dima

Dima, android developer (hereinafter simply D): I also live in a guesthouse, but next to Changu, along the coast. There are 7 rooms, a shared kitchen, a swimming pool, a shower (common), water and cleaning are also included.

In Bali there is no such housing, to which we are accustomed to in Europe. Such, where you rent apartments with own kitchen and a shower, with similar planning. When I searched, I found 3-4 options in Changu, where there are such numbers, but there were no free dates. If I came for a few months, I would definitely shoot something like that.

S: And what about the internet? Last time, everyone complained that the Internet in Bali is disgusting wherever you go.

K: Listen, I have a problem here. My guesthouse is the worst place in terms of internet on the island. The average speed in the daytime is 0.5 megabytes (not to be confused with megabytes).

D: I'm fine. Internet in guest is enough to work. The speed is about 3 mb / s. You can watch YouTube, but movies download for a long time.

K: In general, the Internet in Bali is a kind of lottery - you never know where it is, and where it is not. I live on top and it seems to be the opposite here, everything should be fine with a connection, but nothing of the kind. I have two SIM cards with disgusting speed, although it happens that you come to the beach some strange and some of these SIM cards start to give out a speed of 70 MB / sec.

C: Ok, but tell us about your life now: how you work every day, what you do in your free time, when you work, etc.

K: I start working somewhere around 3:00 pm local time (it is 10:00 am Moscow time). Before that, I get up, go in for sports, and go to see the island. As a rule, this is a new place every time: a beach, a temple or a waterfall. Sometimes I go to the market for groceries. Then come back and work until 23 and sleep.

Photos from daily outings

D: I have a similar schedule. 2-3 times a week in the morning I go to the gym, after breakfast and start working. At this time I am doing tasks for which no customer specification is required, because they are still sleeping — I start working at 5-6 in the morning in Moscow.

I work until lunchtime local. Then I have a snack and still work when the Moscow office wakes up. In the evening I usually study the beaches.

S: And on the weekend?

D: On weekends I went to waterfalls several times, to Ubud, and that’s all. Well, plus a few times went to Bukit, where the best beaches. At least they say so. On weekdays, so far to go will not work - this is the hour of the road in one direction.

Bali Waterfalls

I do not surf, although I really want to. I just can't get together and just take the board.

K: By the way, I also don’t surf, because it takes a lot of time and effort. It seems to me that if you do something, you need to do it constantly, thoroughly and seriously. So many do - come to the island, and surf 24/7. A couple of times to go is not that.

Instead of surfing - trips to beaches with broken ships

C: Okay, what about food on the island? What do you eat?

K: If you eat here without frills - simple foods and rice with pasta, then life will be wonderful. I have here a protein diet consists of seafood, mostly fish. But I also eat meat, the truth is expensive - 500 grams = 500 rubles. This is certainly not the cheapest store, but still.

Seafood is incredibly cheap here. Recently, I bought a kilo of sebas for 300 rubles + spent 100 rubles on cooking in the local market. I often cook for myself, eat in varungas - the main thing is not to forget to warn you that you need to “know spicy”. One goes somewhere 600-800 rubles.

The most expensive on the island - dairy products: cottage cheese, cheese, kefir, etc. Here you can pay 200 rubles for a pack of soy milk, but what to do.

D: I cook my own breakfasts and dinners at home, and leave for dinner. One meal at home is 100-120 rubles.

C: What about the locals?

D: They say that they constantly steal in Bali. This is exactly the truth. Kirill, if you remember, there was a case when they wanted to steal several thousand rupees from my exchanger.

K: Yes, it was.

D: Actually, I heard a lot of stories that phones are pulled out if you are standing on the side of the road. Most of this kind of tin occurs in Kuta and Denpasar, and I live in Changu and it seems to be normal for me. But I try to keep the phone in my pocket)

K: While you are not groomed, local people are constantly trying to deceive - this is 100%. Recently, a local grandma sold me rice at a price higher than normal. On the menu, he sells for 5,000 local, but when she cooked and gave me 4 servings, she said the price tag was wrong, the correct price was 8,000 rupees per serving. And such garbage all the time.

D: I first paid three times more for a taxi, but I bought Simka five times more expensive.

K: I had a similar story when I was thrown into a million in the exchanger, but then I came back, started to figure it out and beat off my money.

In fact, how much the locals want to squeeze money from tourists is amazing. I had a story with a laptop. He began to hang, cut down and run again. When he passed out and was unable to start, I began to look for services where they repair Apple technology. I found one, they told me there - pay $ 500 for diagnostics, wait two hours, and we will check everything for now.

Two hours later, I come back and they tell me that the problem is in the adapter, which is connected to the motherboard. It is necessary to change, and it costs nehily money - 18 000₽ only for work on a laptop, without details. On the same day I found a Russian guy, who is also engaged in repairs. He disassembled the laptop in front of me, wiped the dust and said that my tracks were cut. The tracks are the contacts that connect the motherboard and the adapter. It is evident that these are incisions and they have been made recently.

The guy helped me: restored the tracks for £ 5,000, the computer started working. I was lucky. But in fact, in fact, with the laptop, they didn’t do anything in the time I arrived - they just cleaned it. Apparently the problem is high humidity.

C: But with all this, they are extremely religious guys.

D: Yes, there are churches, offerings and other attributes of religiosity everywhere.

Temple in Jimbaran

I went to a yoga place several times (Udara-Bali-Changu). It is cool and unusual. Went to the local dude else, who is considered a healer. He is Orthodox and heals you with different prayers. I had discomfort in my back because of sedentary work. He read a prayer and everything seemed to be better. Maybe a placebo effect of some kind. Andrew Baburin is his name.

Yoga Place looks something like this

K: I don’t care about it at all, I don’t believe in it.

Q: What else do you remember from what happened on the island?

D: I once got raided by police. It should be 8-10 people block the road and catch all the whites. And in Moscow I managed to make international rights for Bali.

And so they stop me, I get these rights, they look, but they can’t break them - there is no equipment. There is a book, there are international laws and everything is released. For one stop rights paid off. So would be a few thousand gave.

I also rented a custom bike. Balinese constantly assemble themselves from parts of some kind of motorcycles with a manual transmission. It looks very cool - just like a Mad Max motorcycle.

Posh Balinese motorcycle

K: I have already traveled almost the entire island on a bike. As for impressions, I don’t know - recently, here I was climbing the volcano, on Batur. This is that small one. He rose with a guide and paid him a coin.

S: Something somehow boring your life passes, Kirill.

K: Yes not. It may of course seem like I'm bored living, but I feel good here. For a month I was not tired of the beauties of Bali, and the only regret that I had here appeared to be that I was not tanned enough.

In general, nothing has changed in me. Neither physically nor mentally. The only thing I can say is that Bali has very high humidity and because of this the skin is not as dry as in Russia.

Cool, that there is no need to bother about appearance. Not that I did it in Moscow, but here it’s quite simple - shorts, T-shirt and went. In general, I advise you to take as few things as possible with you - 2-3 t-shirts are enough and as many shorts that you can constantly wash. Here, there are laundresses everywhere, where you take everything you need and they wash you for a penny: for three T-shirts and a pair of shorts, you can give 8,000 rupees, which is 40.

D: Returning to everyday life - I now, in fact, already became a bit boring. Two months is the maximum that I can spend here.

Rest without snow - this is what you can do all year round. But in general, being on the island for a long time - it seems to me strange. I'm still more about the city, infrastructure and all that, but there are people here who purposefully move here to live. I do not really like it. For me, this is a big village. Yes, and homesickness appeared.

K: You can probably live here all your life. Here is a cool nature, summer. But it seems to me that everything here is right around here and distracts from work. I used to have from 10-14 hours of work per day, and now only 8. From the point of view of professional growth in Bali, it is difficult to somehow develop.

It is difficult to think about development, when you can get to the azure ocean in 10-15 minutes.

D: Yes, it’s hard to work here. It all comes down to self-discipline. You need to set the time yourself when you start work and strictly observe it. Because in another case, the deadlines break down and you have to spend time completing tasks in the evening, and there you will not notice how night falls.

In short, in theory, you can once again go here for the New Year holidays. Just for a month after hours, hang out, relax.

S: And what about the main expenses for a month?

D: In total, I spent more than 55 000 rub: 20 000 rub for housing, 32,000 rub for food, 4,000 rub - bike, 250 rub for connection. Tickets did not count.

K: I don't really think so, but I think a lot has happened.

S: What can you advise those traveling to the island?

D: Don't try durian. He didn't come to me - he has a strange taste, like rubber. Not to say that it was bad, but the second time I definitely would not eat it.

K: I tried ice cream with him. The smell is disgusting - I did not eat, threw it away.

For my part, I can say that there are a lot of living creatures here, we must be ready for this. Ants dofiga. Especially in the first guest there were a lot. The serpent saw, and next to me in the water - in the ocean in shallow water.