Pokemon travel – Bali and Gili islands (Indonesia)

This is my second post in the series of Pokemon travel blogs, and this time we are going to explore Indonesia, in particular the island of Bali.

The first thing I found out in Bali was that the speed and availability of mobile Internet connection should not be taken for granted. In fact, it was so bad that I ended up playing the game almost exclusively when a wifi was available. Also, every single time I attempted to open the application, it failed on the first try and worked on the second.

Kuta

Kuta is the rowdy tourist capital of Bali, but really the pokemons don’t seem to be any different from everywhere else. This comes with one caveat – there was a picachu in my hotel room!

Balangan

After Kuta, I went south to the more rural Balangan with high hopes about finding some rarer pokemons for my collection. However, the sad truth is that there was almost never a good enough Internet connection for the game to work. Not even with wifi. So I’d recommend not going there if the sole purpose of your trip is to catch pokemon. If not, it’s a great place for surfing.

Ubud

The most immediately noticeable thing about Ubud was that only the blue team seems to operate there.The gyms were all blue and level 10, which was very boring as I’m a member of the Mystic team myself. Only fitting for the yoga capital of Bali though.

The Internet connection was tolerably good in Ubud, so it was even possible to play on the street. I didn’t see many pokemons on my walks however, which was a bit disappointing. Even those were not anything worth mentioning. 

It does make you wonder what happened there. Where have all the good pokemons gone and how did the Mystic revolution take place? I’d like to know how long it will last.

Gili islands

I also went to Gili Trawangan, which is the biggest one of the small islands on the northeast coast of Lombok (Lombok being the island east of Bali). Again, the mobile Internet connection let me down so I had to satisfy myself with only playing when in wifi.

The Gili pokemon looked angry for some reason, but the island was a lovely place. I was starting to see a pattern and based on my very limited sample of the Indonesian pokemon, I would dare to say that voltorbs and psyducks seem to be quite a common sight on the islands.

 

Pokemon travel – Southern Spain

Maybe you have wondered how different the Pokemon in different countries really are. So far, I’ve only explored the virtual fauna in UK, but now it’s time to see what other parts of the world have to offer. Our first visit is to Southern Spain. Playing is cheap and cheerful there, at least as a European since the roaming costs are tolerable and Internet connections and server availability are good enough.

Common Pokemons

Just like in UK, rattatas, pidgeys and spearows are abundant and can be found everywhere. However, after that things get interesting. Based on my subjective experiences, Ekanses and growlithes seem to be the next most common types. This is great news for UK visitors that have been struggling to accumulate enough candy for evolving those. The same applies to meaowthes.

To my delight, I also found quite a few of more rare types that I had only encountered two or three times previously, such as cubones, omanytes and kabutos.

I might have just been lucky, but it also seemed like eevees and its evolved forms were easier to find than back home. I found a beautiful jolteon next to a fountain, soon to be followed by an eevee.

I was also very lucky to find some other special individuals like doduos, pinsirs, rhyhorns and a very fine bulbasaur.

 

Pokestops and gyms

The main difficulty of playing Pokemon Go was the relative lack of pokestops, at least compared to London. You constantly run out of great balls and ultra balls, which of course is not ideal when encountering the creature you’ve been chasing for months! However, pokemons themselves seem to be plentiful even outside of heavily pokestopped areas.

No need to despair if you find yourself on an empty map like the one in the picture. You may still find some interesting ones to catch.

This picture is actually from an urbanisation, so it would seem strange that there are no pokestops at all, but I suppose it has to do with  the lack of notable landmarks to align the pokestops with.

I found gyms to be quite busy, and generally higher level than in London. Red team seemed to be dominating the town of Fuengirola, whilst Malaga was more yellow at the time of my visit. Whilst in London there is always a person around to populate the empty slot when a gym is taken over, it happened very often in Spain that blue team members were not around and I ended up losing the gym.

The most common occupants in gyms were by far Arcanines.

What Pokemons have you encountered on your travels? I’d love to hear about other poke tourists!