Tribe Travelling

Nestled amongst the wonderful backdrop of Jimbaran Bay is the very well known Jimbaran Bay fish market (pasar ikan).

Only some 30 odd minutes from Nusa Dua, we made the mistake of leaving it a bit later than ideal and arriving towards the end of when most of trading had been done at around 9am.  Reflecting on this, it would’ve been a much better idea to have arrived earlier at around 7am when there is supposed to be more hustle and bustle and things to see.

The first thing that greets us, or more importantly what greats our kids is the extremely pungent smell of thousands of fish.  Not surprising, given it is a fish market, but for first world noses that obviously are far to used to only ever seeing fish when accompanied by fried chips in paper wrapping it was literally an assault on the senses and ensured most of the trip was spent with fingers pinching their delicate noses to stave off the worst of the smell.

The actual fish themselves arranged alluringly on slabs of ice, were of great interest, however, and the array of the different species created great conversational pieces.

There was a covered area where even more exotic and much larger fish species were on display but unfortunately, we weren’t able to explore this area in much detail as Emily had decided she was all fished out.

So instead we wandered up the pier, past the extremely ripe fish laid out to dry in the sun and caught great views of the fisherman’s baskets and fishing vessels, including the traditional Jukung (double outrigger Balinese canoe).

The trip is definitely worth it solely for the views and what really did seem genuine authenticity and while we didn’t do it, I imagine picking out your our own seafood choices and getting them cooked at one of the many nearby warung BBQ’s, would make it even better. If only they could wrap it up in some newspaper, we would so have been there!