By the time Monday rolled around, I was pretty excited to be leaving Australia and head to Asia, in no small part because Australia was quite expensive and I had heard that southeast Asia (with a few exceptions like Singapore) is much cheaper. Plus I was just ready to check out somewhere new and different.
My stop in Bali was only for a few days (flew in on 4/9 and out on 4/12), so that I could make it to Bangkok in time for Songkran and meet up with my long lost roommate Adrienne. So I didn't really have time to see more than the Kuta area that's right by the airport (and neighboring areas of Legian and Seminyak). At the airport in Bali, I had my first issues with a language barrier that was a little frustrating, but at the same time it kind of felt nice to get out of my comfort zone and feel more like a world-traveler.
As promised, Bali was cheap. I stayed in a hostel (Kayun hostel) that was as nice as anywhere I stayed in NZ or Oz for about $17/night with free internet and breakfast. One awesome thing about it was that the bunk beds were built into a concrete wall, so there was no squeaking of bed frames when people got in an out of bed and if a person below or above you moved, you'd never feel it.
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
By the time I got there on Monday and got to the hostel, the sun was setting, so I just walked around to check out Kuta and get some dinner. I was a little disappointed to discover that virtually everyone in Kuta was either a tourist or trying to sell something to tourists, often quite aggressively, and it just seemed like a dirty overdeveloped rundown area without much in the way of culture, presumably a tourist draw because of its waves, proximity to the airport, and its nightlife, as there were a lot of bars and such. But then when I paid about $4 for a good dinner at a nicer restaurant, including a bottle of water that by itself would've been $4 in Oz, and then returned to my cheap nice hostel with free wifi, I was pretty happy to be in Bali.
PS: The meals served on AirAsia flights look NOTHING like the pictures on the website. Nothing! I should've taken a picture so I could've put them side-by-side. Maybe next time I'm on an AirAsia flight I'll remember.
Day 79 - Tuesday, April 10
It was a nice day - hot and sunny, so I decided to just do a self-guided walking tour of the area. I walked up the main street through Legian to Seminyak and then over to the beach and walked down the beach back to Kuta and then walked around Kuta area for a while, checking out some of the shops and whatnot. After Fiji, NZ and Oz, the Kuta beach is definitely nothing to write home about it. What little bit of sand there is was quite littered with trash. Chairs and umbrellas were all crowded next to each other and the beach was generally filled with people trying to rent you a chair or a surfboard or sell you something else. But the waves did look quite nice, so I decided I would rent a board the next day and give surfing another try. A few pictures of the beach:
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
I was also disappointed to find that although you can find a lot of cheap clothing, any genuine clothing from American companies was more expensive than in the states. I was hoping to buy a pair of board shorts because the one pair I had brought with me really needed to be retired after all the permanent stains they had picked up over the first 3 months of the trip, but even though there's 50+ surf-clothing stores in Kuta selling board shorts of the standard American/Australian surf companies, they're all more expensive than in the States.
Here are a few pictures of the what the alleyways that dominate the Kuta area look like:
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
Later that evening I headed back to the beach for the sunset, which is apparently a popular spot for a bunch of the local kids to play soccer when the end of the day coincides with low tide. A few pics from sunset:
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
Basic things in Bali were about 1/5 the price of Oz, including bottled water, which was about 20 cents for small (0.5L) bottles and 30-40 for large (1.5L) bottles, making it a pretty easy decision to avoid tap water entirely. Unfortunately alcohol is heavily taxed in Bali, so alcoholic drinks were relatively quite expensive ($2-$5 per drink).
Still needing some board shorts and giving up on finding a nice pair at a reasonable price, I managed to bargain one of the little alley shop sellers from $25 down to $3 for a pair of board shorts that will no doubt fall apart the first time I wear them, but hey, they were $3.
Day 80 - Wednesday, April 11
As I mentioned above, I decided to do some surfing on Wednesday. There are a lot of places around Kuta that will rent a board for $5 for the day, but after my board short bargaining experience I had decided I could get a better deal than that and didn't really want one for the whole day anyway. I think it was in this endeavor that I really realized that at some point looking/bargaining for the lowest possible price is often not worth the savings. After speaking to a couple of shops and couple of people on the beach, I ended up renting a board for $3 for 3 hours. As with the last surfing effort, waves successfully ridden were few and far between, but I managed to avoid any injuries and enjoyed spending a few hours out on the water, paddling around and playing/falling in the waves. However, I almost didn't go surfing at all because when I came across this lovely section of sidewalk, I was really tempted to pull up a chair across the street and just spend the day watching and waiting:
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
I took a bit of a nap in the afternoon in anticipation of staying out late that night, having heard that the hours of 12am to about 4am are when most of the bars are busiest. For dinner, I decided I was going to try to find somewhere a little more authentic. Every restaurant I had eaten at, and virtually all of them I'd seen, were empty save for a few tourists, without a single local. So I opted to wander off the beaten path a bit, and eventually came across this place, where there wasn't anything in English and there were actually Indonesian people eating there and no tourists. In addition to seeming authentic, it also only cost me a dollar, and with no menu or published prices, for all I know the normal price was less than that and $1 was the tourist price. A picture of this fine establishment:
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| From Bali (Kuta) |
When I eventually went out at 1130, things were still pretty dead (I guess it was a Wednesday). I checked out a few places, but with the prospect of waking up for a flight in the morning, I didn't really party it up. So I never really experienced proper Bali nightlife, but now that I'm 30 [sigh], I'm probably too old to be partying until 4am anyway.
After spending a few days in Kuta, I think I'd like to come back to check out the parts of Bali outside of Kuta that I've heard good things about (like Ubud) as well as the Gili Islands and Lombok that are a short boat ride from Bali and are supposed to be really nice. So hopefully I'll make it back. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do with the 600,000 rupiah (about $65) that I had leftover when I left and didn't exchange.
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