Leads the travellers away from the busy beaches and tourist traps to exquisite rice paddies and pristine seashores of Bali. This book helps you discover the best of Bali's diving, surfing, sailing, hiking and bird watching. It is packed with photos, maps and essays by some of the well-known Bali insiders.

East Of Bali lie the islands of Nusa Tennggara, one of the least known, but most fascinating parts of Indonesia. The natural and cultural wonders of this area--Komodo dragons, ikat textiles the Pasola spear fight--are legendary, but were until recently off-limits to all but the most intrepid travelers.

Well–travelled divers all acknowledge that the best diving in the world is found in the warm waters of tropical Bali. Bali is located in the famous "coral triangle," the center of the world's tropical marine diversity, and the island is blessed with a stunning variety of dive sites—shipwrecks, quiet black sand bays, crystalline hard coral reefs over bright white sand, lava ridges draped in gorgonians and soft coral, and current–swept pinnacles, swirling with fish. Diving Bali is a comprehensive diving guide covering all of Bali and it's surrounding reefs. It presents in great detail some of the best dive sites in the tropical western Pacific. Our seasoned diver–authors have an aggregate half–century of experience exploring these waters, and each site receives thorough coverage, including detailed maps, color photos, and a full description of access, conditions, and facilities. This Bali diving guide features: Practicalities: Detailed travel information for every budget, including accommodations, transportation, prices, seasons, and dive operators. Information: Local history, diving lore, site conditions, and more than 50 maps. Photography: More than 100 color photographs by top photographers.

Surfing today evokes many things: thundering waves, warm beaches, bikinis and lifeguards, and carefree pleasure. But is the story of surfing really as simple as popular culture suggests? In this first international political history of the sport, Scott Laderman shows that while wave riding is indeed capable of stimulating tremendous pleasure, its globalization went hand in hand with the blood and repression of the long twentieth century.ÊÊ Emerging as an imperial instrument in post-annexation Hawaii, spawning a form of tourism that conquered the littoral Third World, tracing the struggle against South African apartheid, and employed as a diplomatic weapon in America's Cold War arsenal, the saga of modern surfing is only partially captured by Gidget, the Beach Boys, and the film Blue Crush. From nineteenth-century American empire-building in the Pacific to the low-wage labor of the surf industry today, Laderman argues that surfing in fact closely mirrored American foreign relations. Yet despite its less-than-golden past, the sport continues to captivate people worldwide. Whether in El Salvador or Indonesia or points between, the modern history of this cherished pastime is hardly an uncomplicated story of beachside bliss. Sometimes messy, occasionally contentious, but never dull, surfing offers us a whole new way of viewing our globalized world.

Black sand that has healing power, why you should not whistle while strolling down a beach at night, Bali's most beautiful and least-visited rice terraces, a very special gift to take home from Bali, a workshop where Batiks are created with unique natural dyes, a place to petition the spirits for a baby, the flute-playing pigeons of Ubud, an enchanting village of traditionally styled bamboo roofs, a haunting reunion of some of Bali's most outrageous demons, one of the world's best unofficial streetart exhibitions, a tree it is impossible to plant, an ancient fertility statue with "more than the usual quota of penises", a mysterious breed of cattle, a village of the deaf, a miniature version of Java's Unesco-listed Borobudur, fantastic tranced bull races, the world's most spectacular traditional fishing craft, an architectural wonder of Bali's Christian heartland, Bali's only colonial-era rubber plantation ... Bali offers countless opportunities to step off the beaten path and is home to any number of well-hidden treasures that are revealed only to residents and travelers who are ready to explore. Secret Bali - An unusual guide is an indispensable resource for those who think they already know Bali or would like to discover its hidden places, taking you far from the crowds and the usual clichés.