Kuta Beach - Bali, Indonesia

  Kuta, Bali, Indonesia
Sunday, October 26, 2008

Once we finally got off the bus for good, we were joined by a Korean man that was looking to share a taxi to Kuta.  The taxis around the bus terminal were all asking for 150,000 Rp, which we knew was way too much (thanks to the Indonesian woman on the bus.)  They would not agree to use meters, so the three of us started walking out down the street in front of the terminal.  It took about 10 minutes and a half dozen inquires with taxi drivers before we finally found one that agreed to use his meter (Bali Taxi, the most reliable taxis on the island.)
It still cost a little more than the Indonesian woman said it would (30,000 - 50,000 Rp), but since we got to share the cost with the Korean man, it ended up costing us 55,000 Rp.  I believe that metered taxis cost more at night in Bali, but for all I know his meter was rigged to overcharge.  We arrived at Hotel Sayang Maha Mertha and promptly checked into our cheap basic room.  We had reserved this room ahead of time via the Internet at a cost of US$12 a night mostly because it would give us access to a swimming pool and deck.  This hotel was situated in Legian beach which is a little to the north of Kuta beach and supposedly is a little quieter of an area.
Within a few minutes of unloading our packs, we decided to head out and see if we could dig up some food.  A quick walk around town and we found a few restaurants that were still open, but a far greater price than anything we had yet seen in Indonesia (cheapest dish being around 50,000 Rp.)  The best looking place was having a transvestite fashion show and some of them were now slow dancing to horrible music, so we opted to eat some raisin bread and donuts from the variety store instead.  We were both really tired from the whole day of travelling, so we went to bed shortly thereafter.
The next morning after waking up we walked to the lobby restaurant of Sayang Maha Mertha for our included continental breakfast.  They play traditional Balinese music, which is very relaxing and makes for good ambience.  We have been staying at this hotel for a week now and although they play the same songs every day, they haven't got tired yet.  We still have another week to go here though, so we'll see if I feel the same way when it is time to go.  One piece of advice that I've learned about breakfast, do not order the orange juice; it is just really sugary Tang.  The other juices that you can order are all blended real fruit smoothies/shakes, so the Tang that I ordered this morning is disappointing.
The Sayag Maha Mertha hotel is one of the nicer places that we've stayed at for this trip, but considering that we've been staying at the cheapest hostels, this may not mean much.  The main problem with our room is that we reserved a cheap fan-cooled room (125,000 Rp/night) and without air-conditioning, we need to keep the windows open at night or it turns into a sauna.  There were probably more than 100 mosquitoes in our room when we woke up, and I had close to a dozen bites.  We enquired to find out if we could upgrade our room to one with A/C (so we could keep the windows closed all the time), but the place was completely booked.  However after we explained about the mosquito problem, the receptionist said that the cleaning staff would look after it and they have every day since.  They poison the room while we are gone and leave us with mosquito coils for the night.  The mosquitoes have not really been much of a problem since the 2nd night.
The pool at the Sayang Maha Mertha hotel is L shaped and is situated on the side of the restaurant with chaise loungers lining the sides of it.  Although we read that this was a popular hangout for surfers, it seems to me that most of the guests here are European couples on vacation.  As you walk the streets of Bali, it is obvious that there is way more male Aussie surfers visiting here than anybody else, but at our hotel it seems to be mostly young females interested in perfecting their tans.
There are two exotic birds in equally exotic cages at the corners of the pool.  One is a mynah bird whose vocabulary is truly outstanding.  I have heard him cough (like the dog in that Seinfeld episode), laugh (in several different styles), imitate cars (engine starting, reverse gear beeping), whistle (human and other birds) and speak in many different languages.  Lisa taught him how to say "Canada" which took all of five minutes.  The mynah bird talks all day which keeps us laughing while we are lying down at the side of the pool.  I am not sure what the other bird is, as I've never seen anything quite like him before, but the mynah bird replicates every noise that we've heard him make.
It is hard to believe that we are in the rainy season here on Bali because it has been sunny for almost the entire day, every day.  It rained once at night for an hour or two, but by the time we woke up it was another sunny day in Bali.  It is so hot and humid here that I am now hoping for more cloudy days to help alleviate my sunburns.  We are so close to the equator here that both Lisa and I got burned by the sun pretty badly on our first day on the beach.
After our initial sunburns subsided a little bit, we decided that it was time to learn to surf.  We wanted to go with one of the bigger schools, so we walked the beach and collected flyers from the more prominent places.  Of the three big schools that we looked at, Odyssey seemed to have the best deal, as we could get semi-private lessons (two people) for the same price as the other places offered regular four-person classes.  They also had 2.5 hour lessons vs. the 2 hour lessons that some of the other schools offered, so that made the choice easy.  The cost was US$40/each and although we say places offering lessons as cheap as US$20, we wanted to ensure we'd have a English speaking teacher and good surfing equipment.
Our surfing lesson started with learning a bit of the surfing jargon and then some onshore lessons on how to stand up once we were in the water.  After about a half hour, it was time to hit the waves and I guess the onshore lesson really paid off because I got up on my very first try.  It definitely helped that I had a teacher holding my board and pushing just when I needed to really go, but that gave me a lot more confidence for future runs.  I was going to be happy if I managed to get up only once during the entire lesson, but I got up on almost every try.  The only times that I had trouble is when the teacher didn't give me that extra push, my paddling skills were obviously lacking.  Lisa didn't get up on her first try, but on her second attempt she was standing up as well.
Lisa cut her foot open on a shell or piece of dead coral near the end of the lesson, so I was all on my own for the last half hour or so.  My shoulder were really tired and sore though, as I had been trying my very hardest to paddle hard enough to get up on my own.  Lisa ran to grab our camera and was back in time to take pictures of my last three runs.  Although we were not starting very deep, I was able to ride each of them until I ran out of water which gave Lisa time to grab some pictures of me in action.  It is a pity that we only brought the water proof camera with us though, because the 3X zoom was not really enough.  Odyssey had a professional photographer that used the same camera as me (except with an L-series Canon 400mm lens) but it cost 200,000 Rp to get the pictures that he took.  It may have been worth the money, but he didn't get any good pictures of Lisa since he only hung out taking pictures for the first 10 minutes or so.
A few days later, Lisa and I rented the same type of surf board that we had learn on (except this one had a single hard fin vs. three soft fins from before) from a guy on the beach.  We rented it for two hours (he said three hours was fine) for 50,000 Rp, although he initially asked for 70,000 Rp.   The water was really crowded with surfers this time, probably because it was later in the day (we went early in the morning for our lesson), but also because there was a surf competition going on that had a chunk of the beach closed for recreational surfers.  It was also Sunday, which may have meant more Balinese surfers did not have to work that day.  Although most of the surfers were Indonesians that looked like they were born on a surfboard, I spoke to one American who had only learned to surf three weeks ago.  He said that he had surfed every day of those three weeks and these were the best conditions he had yet experienced.
I was worried that I would not be able to paddle hard enough to get up on my own, since I had not been able to during the surfing lesson.  This concern proved to be unfounded though as it wasn't as hard to get up once I went deeper to where the waves were first breaking.  I found that leaning forward a little more than I previously had meant that I didn't have to paddle quite as vigorously and I was finally able to get up and surf on my own.  Of course I wasn't hitting every wave perfect and Lisa got a number of pictures of me wiping out with a wide variety of methodologies. 
One time I ventured out a little deeper than I meant to and found myself sitting further out than the experienced surfers.  As I realized this, I started to paddle myself in but turned around to see the biggest wave that I had yet seen in Bali.  With nobody in front of me, I knew this would be about the best chance I'd have for a long run this day and paddled as hard as I could.  I leaned forward and caught the wave just as it broke which sent me much faster than I had ever gone before.  Knowing that the ground was just sand (with very few rocks, shells or coral), I decided to give it a shot and got up on my feet as quick as I could.  I rode this wave the whole way into shore and achieved a better run than I had ever hoped to make.  Alas, Lisa did not watch this run and I have no pictures of the experience.  Fortunately I got up a number of other times and Lisa took a few pictures of those runs.  I really wish that she had captured the look on my face for that big run I made though as I cannot think of a time when I have been more excited.
By the time the wave settled down a bit I tried to turn, but this is a skill that will likely require future surfing lessons.  I was able to move the surfboard a bit but I didn't really turn what-so-ever.  I have a feeling that a smaller board will make turning a little easier, but I don't think I'll be ready to use a smaller board for awhile yet.  These large boards do make balancing rather easy and right now I am happy to simply surf in a straight line.  The day surfing left me in a rather sun-burned state again though, so I'll have to wait a day or two before I try again.
Lisa also managed to get up a couple of times all on her own and I took pictures of the whole experience.  Lisa didn't go quite as deep as me though and had the problem of other surfers running into her.  I reminded her of the advice that Mark (whom we met in Jakarta) had given me earlier though: use your board as a shield and a weapon.  She used the board as a shield and did not get hurt at all, although it is still kind of scary to have people run over you.
Surfing is one of the most rewarding activities that I have ever tried in my life and it is something that I would like to do a lot more of.  I am glad we still have a month to spend in Indonesia, because I want to do this as much as I can while we are here.  I cannot imagine a better place to learn than Kuta, although I plan on going early in the morning from now on to avoid the crowds.    I also must remember to bring a lot of fresh water with me because I found that I was drinking a liter every 90 minutes or so.
Besides the surfing, we have not been doing a lot of activities in Bali.  We have mostly been eating, tanning at the beach or poolside, drinking beers and fruit smoothies and sleeping.  A few days ago I finally located a free wi-fi Internet connection though, right at the MiniMart on the beach.  They serve food and beer (and everything else a convenience store would have), so Lisa and I have sat down there for hours at a time drinking beer, enjoying sunsets at the beach, all while using a free Internet connection. 
This solution sure beat the Internet Café that we used before.  We went to a cheap place (7,000 Rp/hour) that was empty (so we could use their entire bandwidth), but the PCs were old pieces of junk.  They were running Windows XP with only 96 MBs of RAM (on the best machine they had) and had all kinds of junk software/malware running in the background.  On top of that they over charged us (although only 500 Rp) because of the 10 seconds it took the supervisor to stop the clock due his smoke break.    Considering that we had a timer program which we stopped before the one hour mark, it seemed odd that the supervisor had to run in and stop the clock at all. 
Regardless, the MiniMart is a popular hangout with the younger local crowd and they could care less if we bought anything at all while we sat and use their neighbors' free Internet connection.  They have some of the cheapest beer around anyways and offer air-conditioned seats inside, so I hope this solution lasts beyond the Bali Festival and surfing competition that is currently going on.  For any travelers reading this, the MiniMart that I am referring to is at the end of Jl. Benesari in Legian beach (not the one on the beach in Kuta).
We have found the prices in Bali to be higher than they were in Java, but with a little looking around we have found some great deals (even better than anything we found in Java.)  For example, the cheapest beer we have found is 13,000 Rp for a large (620 ml) bottle of Anker beer.  This can be found on Poppies I at a nice open-air establishment called Warung Bali Agung.

Bali Agung

We have also found some great deals for meals.  There is a place called "Under the Mango Tree" on any alley very close to us where the most expensive dish they serve is 7,000 Rp.  They have a great fried vegetables dish (that was actually more of a vegetable soup) at 5,000 Rp that I really liked and also a Special Fried Rice dish for 7,000 Rp that is great. 
Another place worth visiting in the Gong Corner (which we think is place the Lonely Planet calls the Bamboo Corner) where you can get a t-bone steak with veggies and fries for 20,000 Rp.  They have a wide variety of cheap and delicious meals and drinks but are about a 15 minute walk away from where we are staying in Legian (an alley off of Poppies I in Kuta).  Their food has consistently been excellent and it is worth the walk, especially if you feel like a night out in the Kuta craziness afterward.  Yet another cheap place is the Warung Brasil Bali on Jl. Benesari which supplies current English papers free to read while you wait on your meal.

Brasil Bali

They serve a wide variety of pizzas for 20,000 Rp and they take awhile to prepare, which gives you lots of time to catch up on the world's events from the Herald Tribune or Jakarta Post.
I have written a majority of this journal entry while sitting at "Under the Mango Tree", drinking a number of deliciously potent coffees at a mere 1,500 Rp each.

Under the Mango Tree

  I love strong coffee so this is the best stuff I've had yet on this vacation and also (by far) the cheapest.    Coffee was relatively expensive in China so I am making up to my addiction for the lost time now.  Anyhow I will continue this story later because now it is time for me to hit the pool. 
Okay I am a geek and brought my computer to the pool deck.  I had one other experience that I wanted to write about, dealing with the sales people of Bali.  The main shopping street here, Jl. Legian has been nicknamed Hassle Street for good reason.  The people selling t-shirts, sunglasses, massages and food are rather relentless when you walk past them.  They all want you to just look but if you do go in for a look, they do not leave you alone for even a second.  I have been in the market for new sunglasses, and probably some new sandals soon, but it is hard to enjoy the shopping experience here. 
Guys stand on the street with a pair of sunglasses, saying "one dollar."  When I show an interest, they do not let me look at them but instead usher me off to a store where they have a bag full of fake Oakleys and other expensive brands.  They try to pass them off as the real brand and ask for the corresponding prices, like 350,000 Rp.  They are so obviously fake that it is hard not to feel insulted and when I say that they're fake they argue that they are the real thing.  Anywhere else where I've traveled, there have always been fake sunglasses, watches, etc and nobody has ever tried to pass them off as the real thing.  However after I give them a funny look and walk away, the price drops in a hurry; from 350,000 to 200,000, to 100,000 to 50,000 to 20,000 Rp.  At 20,000 Rp I should probably just buy them, but I have yet to find some that I really like anyhow.  I would prefer having no brand labels on anything that I buy, but especially when they are so obviously fake.
I want to buy a Bintang beach towel, but since I hate having to bargain hard to get fair prices, I suspect that I'll end up not purchasing a great deal of souvenirs here.  Bali reminds me of Yangshuo where the price starts at 2000% of where it should be and that is not how I like to shop.  The good news is that I finally found a place that sells a shot-glass.  As a collector of shot-glasses from places where I've traveled, I was disappointed that I did not find one in all of China.  I hadn't seen one on the trip through Java either, but there is a Bintang store here that sells one for 12,500 Rp.  This is a proper shop with labeled prices, so no bargaining is necessary.
The last few days have been much of like the rest of our time in Bali, comprised mostly of relaxing in the sun, eating, drinking and sleeping.  I finally found a better deal for drinking water though.  Previously we had been paying around 4,000 Rp for 1.5 liters from the MiniMart or other random convenience stores, but now I figured out that the "Club" brand from the Circle K convenience stores costs only 2,500 Rp for 1.5 liters.  The same stores sell imported Evian water at over 20,000 Rp for 1.5 liters.  I am not much of a connoisseur of different types of water, but I am curious if anybody can justify spending nearly 10X the cost of domestic water for imported water.  I can barely stand the taste of Toronto's chlorinated tap water, but there is no way I can tell a difference between Evian and this cheap Club brand that I am buying now.
Yesterday we rented a surfboard again and went surfing for the third time.  We rented another beginner board, but this time the board had only two small outer-fins and no fin in the middle of the board at all.  The waves were not nearly as big as they were the last time, so although I found it quite easy to get up reliably, it did not have the same type of adrenaline rush that I was getting with the bigger waves of the previous time out.  However the smaller waves give me time to evaluate my technique, even if I don't know how to fix the problems that I notice.
One of the local Indonesian surfers noticed me for a couple of runs and offered some advice.  I had trouble understanding him, but I think he was telling me that I need to keep the board down (either that or I need to crouch more perhaps).  When I look in some of the pictures Lisa was taking, I notice that the nose of the board seems to be kind of elevated in the air, so perhaps I am standing too far back on the board.  I tried moving further up the board, but on the first attempt I over did it and the nose got caught under the surf and sent me flying. 
I think really I just need a lot more practice and then I should be able to figure this stuff out on my own.  I still only have a few hours of experience after all.  Unfortunately I got sunburned yet again, so I'll have to wait a day or two before going out again.  I am getting pretty dark now, but I think I'll use some oil to get myself a little darker before going out in the sun all day again.  I have never used oil to speed up tanning before because I thought this would also speed up the sun burning process, but the surfers swear by it and they all have perfect tans.  Apparently applying the oil right after the morning shower (before drying) will give the best results, so that is what I will try. (Thanks Mark for that tip)
We have started to plan the next phase of our trip through Indonesia and it looks like Ubud will be the next stop.  Although local transportation can get us there dirt cheap, there is a service which will pick us up at our hotel and drop us off at the top of Monkey Forrest Road for 60,000 Rp./each.  Public bemos (mini-buses) are much cheaper but we would have to get to the right bemo terminal in Denpasar to take advantage of them.  The Perema tourist service also makes the run, but their prices seem to have really gone up lately.  We read about people using it from Kuta to Ubud for 20,000-30,000 Rp over the past few years, but according to their website, it costs 50,000 Rp now.  They also drop you off in a rather inconvenient place apparently, so that is why are paying 60,000 Rp from our hotel.
After Ubud we are planning on using the public Bemos to get to Padangbai because the route between Ubud and Denpasar and the route between Denpasar and Padangbai use the same bemo terminal in Despasar.  We are hoping that keeps things easy to figure out and neither of the trips should last more than a few hours.  We are also considering using the Perema service because that may help us avoid going back to Denpasar for a transfer.  Since we plan on being in Ubud for at least three nights, we should have lots of time to figure out the best option from there. 
Padangbai is really only a planned stop for us because we need to go their port to catch a boat to the island of Lombok anyhow.  With nearly two months of time to spend in Indonesia, we want to avoid taking those all day trips (like how we got to Bali) as much as possible.  We have read that Padangbai has nice beaches and is more relaxed than Kuta.  I personally hope they have less taxi drivers there (since it is such a small place) because I am getting tired of saying "no" to the taxi drivers of Kuta nearly 100 times a day.  Nobody ever needs to look for a taxi in Kuta because it is hard to walk more than 10 meters without being asked if you need "transport?"
As I pick up on this journal, we are no longer in Kuta and are sitting in a comfortable bungalow in Ubud.  We stayed in Kuta for a total of 13 nights, the entire time at the Sayang Maha .Mertha hotel, which is actually in Legian (bordering Kuta).  The hotel did not try to overcharge us and all in all I am pretty happy with it, although I would try staying somewhere else next time.  I did not like how the windows in our fan-cooled room did not have any screens in them.  This meant that the room was either very hot or very full of mosquitoes.  I have so many mosquito bite sores on my body now that it is obvious we decided not to sleep in a sauna on most occasions.  I also did not like how our room totally lacked a sink, which made shaving a more difficult chore than it should be.  However we probably had one of the cheapest rooms in the Kuta area that had a swimming pool on the property ($US12/night)
Since we stayed at the hotel for over a week, they provided us with a free dinner for one night.  The meals at the hotel were considerably more expensive than the other restaurants that we found, so we only ate the free meal there.  The meals were good, but no better than what we had at the other restaurants we had found, especially the Gong Corner which was my favorite place to eat in Kuta.  The chicken parmesanga I ate would've cost 27,000 rp and the supreme pizza that Lisa ordered would've cost 35,000 rp and we also got two free Cokes with it as well. 
Although I had hoped to go surfing at least one more time, the morning that Lisa and I wandered down to do it was our last day in Kuta.  There was another surf competition going on that had a large part of the beach closed for recreational surfers and the waves looked very small.  We decided it wasn't really worth it, so hopefully I'll find somewhere to surf again once we are in Lombok.  It will be much scarier if I have to surf knowing that there is sharp coral on the bottom (instead of the nice sand that Kuta beach has.)    It is hard to beat Kuta beach in Bali as a place to learn surfing.
During our travels so far the Canadian dollar has really been hit hard.  During the planning phase of our trip, six months ago or so, a dollar was worth nearly 10,000 rp.  It has fallen considerably since then, but was still worth close to 9,000 rp when we started our trip.  It has since fallen below 8,000 rp and now I'm using 7,500 rp to estimate costs.  Essentially this has made everything about 25% more expensive then we had budgeted for.  Fortunately Lisa and I opened a US dollar account and put most of our travel fund into US dollars when the Canadian dollar was still mighty.  I presume that oil prices will not stay low forever, so hopefully the Canadian dollar will rebound again soon.
We booked our trip to Ubud through the travel agency at our hotel for a cost of 60,000 Rp each.  We knew this was not a great deal but expected to have a comfortable ride and a convenient pickup and drop-off.    We had a pick of three different times to go:   9:00, 11:00 and 13:00.   We picked the 11:00 option and were told that the bus would be at our hotel between 11:00 and 11:30. 
The bus came Sunday morning around 11:30 and it was already quite crowded with people and bags.  We had one stop at a hotel after that which filled every seat and left two people crowded into a single seat in the front.  The air-conditioning which we were promised was left off, even during the 15 minutes we waited for the last people on the bus (who were not ready despite being the last ones picked up.)  The bus was rather hot during this wait, but once the bus got moving there was enough wind that we didn't really need the air-conditioning anyhow.
The bus stopped at the top of Monkey Road in Ubud as they had promised us, although other people were complaining that they were promised to be dropped off elsewhere.  Most of the people on the bus stayed on for a trip to Padangbai and then Lombok.  I suspect that of the dozens of places selling tickets to tourists for buses all over Bali & Lombok, you may as well pick the cheapest option because everybody ends up on the same bus anyhow.  It also seems as though travel agents will promise you anything you want to hear in order to make a sale.  I would say these buses are considerably more comfortable then the cheap public bus that we took into Bali, but they are also considerably more expensive.