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Padang Padang, Dreamland, Bingin, Suluban and Nyang Nyang. Five beaches below the cliffs, and how to string a couple of them together in a day.
The Bukit keeps its beaches out of sight. From the road you see scrub, walls and the occasional temple gate, and then a set of steps drops through a gap in the limestone and the coast opens up below. Each cove is different enough to be worth its own morning, and they sit close enough together that you can see two or three in a day.
Padang Padang is the easiest to reach, about ten minutes from the grove. The cove is small, walled in by rock, and busy by mid-morning. Dreamland is roughly the same distance and the opposite in character: wide, open, with room to walk. Both have shade and something to eat close by, which matters more than it sounds once the sun is high.
Bingin and Suluban are around fifteen minutes away and ask more of you. Bingin is a stairway down past warungs built into the rock, with a reef that draws a crowd of watchers through the afternoon. Suluban runs in under the cliff through a cave mouth, and at high tide the sea reaches the sand, so the hour you arrive changes the place entirely.
Nyang Nyang is the one most people skip. The walk down is long and there is nothing waiting at the bottom, no warung, no umbrella, nobody selling anything. That is the point of it. On a weekday you may have the sand largely to yourself, and you will want water and a hat before you start down.
A good day takes two beaches, not five. Go early to the one with the walk, eat somewhere along the way, and keep the afternoon for the cove with the shade. Tides matter more here than distance, because a beach that is generous at low water can be a strip of wet rock three hours later. Ask us the evening before and we will tell you what the water is doing.
