Pemuteran, Gilimanuk, Mengjangen and North West

After a few hours navigating your way out of Denpasar by car, you can head for the coast road and drive up the entire west coast of Bali. The west coast is pretty undeveloped and is just a long line of tiny villages, palm trees and empty coast.

Eventually you will hit the north west tip of Bali and a town called Gilimanuk which is basically just a port where trucks catch ferries to other parts of Indonesia.

If you bypass the tip, you can head around to the north coast road where you will drive past the small port where tourist boats head out to Menjangen Island. If you ask around the port you will be offered a price of around 1,200,000IDR per boat for a snorkelling trip. Probably best to head past the port and onto a small, more touristy town called Permuteran and book a tour from there.

Permuteran is a beautiful little town with just a handful of guest houses and restaurants. Most offer beautiful rooms with breakfast and will arrange a tour of the Menjangen islands mainly for snorkelling purposes.

There is also a stretch of black sand beach at Permuteran which is home to a man-made or man-assisted coral reef. The reef was started around 1995 using a metal frame which was helped using electrodes and other technology to rapidly grow coral.

Today, this partly-artificial reef is a beautiful example of real living coral which is home to an ever growing tropical fish population.

Also in the area is a turtle sanctuary where they capture various turtles and breed them, then re-release the babies into the wild once they are large enough to defend themselves.

Inland you can hike up too many steps to a couple of tiny temples built into the hillsides. These small temples are pretty deserted and populated by some pretty wild and hungry monkeys, so watch out.