June 23 through June 26

Flying from Australia to Bali was not very memorable because I slept through almost the entire flight. Although the landing was interesting because we kept getting closer & closer to the sea & at the last minute land popped up out of nowhere for a landing strip. The airport is right next to the sea, which makes it exciting as you come in & see nothing but water surrounding you. From the beach near where I am staying you can see airplanes land, which is fun to watch.

My biggest single concern about Bali was getting through customs. Not because I had anything to hide, but because it has been big news in Australia, due to a girl from there being jailed for possession. You hear how things get put in people's bags. I was still groggy from the plane ride when I went to get my luggage. Thankfully my bag made it here but before I could pick it up a porter had grabbed it & my other bags. I was a little in shock & for some reason thought they were customs. So I let them take my bags to what actually was customs. There I passed through without a second look (even though I had honey which was not allowed into the country). Then the porters wanted there money so I gave them 50000 rupiah (about $5 US) because that was the only note I had. The person before me got a full check, but I didn't so maybe it was worth the $5. Then I got my shuttle to the hotel (Troppo Zone), which took me through the city. It took around 30 minutes & was an interesting ride. I knew right away that I was no longer in Australia. The streets are lined with people sitting & at their little shops. It was dark & a little dirty & basically all looked the same. There were motorbikes everywhere, one way streets & what seemed like a turn every 5 seconds.

When I got to the hotel I got a cup of Orange Juice which was good & the Bali "do's & don'ts" from Grumpy, who is in charge at the hotel. He told me it I met a Bali woman in the bar she was a prostitute, no exceptions. He also told me not to shop anywhere the first few days & to not trust anyone on the street. There were lots of other things, but those were the important ones. I got a security locker which only I have a key to for all my important documents, which made me feel more secure because I had the only key & the locker was busted if I lost it, which would have cost me big money. He told me not to leave anything in the room because it would get stolen, which of course made me feel less secure. The first night I only ventured out a little to get some bread & water. Although during my 10 minute walk & shopping I probably got 10 offers for various legal & non-legal things. The big things you get offered are drugs, girls, massages (which are actually massages), Oakley sunglasses, to look at someone's shop, raffle tickets & transport. I had experience with this before from Fiji so I just politely ignored the people. The cool thing about the trip was the realization of how cheap things were in Bali. The bread & water cost me under 50 cents (about 5000 rupiah). If you are still having trouble with the math 10000 rupiah is about 1 USD & 1 million rupiah is about $100 USD.

After a good nights sleep I got up to realize that I got a free breakfast provided by the hotel. It is really good & on the advice of Bela (a guy from Australia) I took the omelet & pancake with honey. After that him & I started talking & we ended up deciding to go to Waterbom Park. That is the local tourist attraction which is a big water slide park. It is comparable to Noah's Ark back home with some cool rides. It cost us about 200000 rupiah, with the transport included. The water park was cool & there we played water volleyball, rode around lazy river on tubes, hit the water slides & had a beer in the pool at the bar (there are bar stools in the pool!). It was my first tastes of the local beer - Bintang. You can get it really cheap here & it comes in huge bottles. Plus it has good taste, better than about 2/3's of the Aussie beers I tried. After the park we came back & decided to head to the beach for a massage. The walk to the beach is about 20 minutes from the hotel. It takes less time with 2 people because it is easier to ignore the vendors who are tenacious. Once down to the beach we walked for a little bit until we saw a group of women who did the massage. After some intense negotiation we got them to give us a massage for 20000 rupiah each for one hour. It was the worst massage I have ever had, but was still ok & given the $2 cost I can't complain too much.

After that we sat on the beach for a while talking to some of the people & watching the sunset. We also got 2 pineapples for 10000 rupiah. The lady sits there & cuts them for you in a cool way that allows you to eat them like a popsicle (well almost). After that we went back to our rooms to get ready for a night out. My room has 2 twin beds, a great air conditioner, a TV (which only has one channel not in Balinese, the BBC), a refrigerator & a personal bathroom. The night out was fun, but I basically drug Bela back to his room, which at the time I thought was because he had drank too much alcohol.

The next day which was June 25, could be called the laziest day of my life :) I woke up at 8am to go check on Bela after the night before where he had gotten very sick. He was a little better but not in breakfast shape so I went by myself. There I talked to the leader of our 2 day tour who said that it was canceled because there was only 2 of us. I let Bela know this, which was good because he still felt terrible. He said he had never been that out of it before & as we looked thought about it he had not even drank that much. He thought it was possible that he was drugged, but he had luckily not lost anything. Either way he felt a little better by the end of the day. After talking to him he went back to sleep & I decided to get some rest because I was still tired from the Australia trip, not to mention the 4 hours of sleep the night before. However, the rest of the day turned into one big sleeping & reading fest. I decided to re-read the Da Vinci Code which I had first red in Australia. I did venture out to buy water & got to the Internet, but that was the extent of my days activities :) Pretty thrilling isn't it ;)

Sunday, June 26 was much more action packed as it became the day where I planned the rest of my Bali trip & my Kuta shopping day. The shopping was an adventure all its own. I got home exhausted after all the dealing. I came away with 2 pairs of “Oakley” sunglasses, 1 Billabong shirt, 1 Bintang shirt & a Nike Wallet for about $13 USD total (130,000 rupiah). Although I was offered pants, wooden carvings, perfume, cologne, sarongs, porn, massages, watches, DVD's, CD's & transport to name a few. It was a rather educational & tiring trip. The only really bad thing was I got hit by one guy who was mad because I didn't buy his product. It wasn't hard & was in the back, so I just kept walking. I decided it probably wouldn't matter who started it staring from the inside of a Bali jail. It is funny because other than instant anger that was the other though in my mind. It is important to note that this was the lone exception. People touch you here a lot but it is mainly trying to drag you in the shop & they are totally peaceful. I also did a lot of research on DVD's which you can get here for about $1 each. However, I am not sure if I could send them home, so didn't buy any. A funny thing about Bali is that there is about 7 type of shops & they all offer almost exactly the same thing. I think people would figure out if you have 200 competitors selling the same t-shirts (not kidding about the 200), you would be better to open a different stand type. But that doesn't seem to happen. There are different type of shops in different cities, but within the city it looks very similar (Ubud & Denpasar had a little more diversity than Kuta). Anyway I went back to the hotel & read more from my book before going to sleep. I was still catching up from the Australia trip which has been great, but it was tough & I had gotten very little sleep. Especially considering I stayed up for almost 2 days straight before I left Oz trying to get everything done from my computer I could before sending it home.