I´m a tourist, get me out of here
Trip Start
Sep 2005
1
44
52
Trip End
Sep 2006
Bali,
Indonesia
Thursday, May 25, 2006
I've been in Bali a week now and had a fairly interesting time. I arrived into Kuta which is very Costa del Bali. Very commercial and built up. But even there the people were very friendly, especially the Balinese women. When I first arrived I went for a walkabout with my scotch mate Dave. I felt pretty good but must have looked very stressed out or something, because lots of people asked us if we needed massage. They are really into their natural therapies. As well as all the usual stuff like Indian head massage and reflexology, we were offered some pretty unusual massages. "Massage with love" - they tell you what a really great person you are when they massage you. "Massage with happy ending" - they read you a nice story at the end of the massage. "Massage boom-boom" - I haven't a clue about this one. Actually I'm only guessing with the first two about whats involved, but I'm sure all of them are very holistic
01.Welcome to Kuta beach
.Everything is really cheap, accommodation, clothes, whatever you want. Though I still haven't bought any clothes. Well I haven't found a T-shirt yet that says, "NO TAXI REQUIRED". It's unreal the amount of times you get asked "Hellooo, taxi?" by some guy pretending to turn a corner with an imaginary steering wheel. You don't get rid of them if you just say "No" either. They nearly always say, tomorrow, the next day? Maybe the problem is made worse by the lack of tourists, as it's out-of-season at the moment. The suicide bombs havenīt helped much either.
The low points have been getting stranded in a dumphole mountain village because the bus-driver forgot to stop and pick up passengers - there was only one bus a day. Having to rid my toilet seat of an army of ants and an advancing column of reinforcements coming down the wall. The footpaths are deathtraps. They are riddled with gaping holes, with a 3ft drop into dubious looking water. The place where I'm staying at the moment has a few too many cockerals for my liking. Cock-fighting is pretty big over here. I was thinking the other morning (at about 6am) of introducing a new event - extreme cockfighting. You get all the cockerals of the village and put them in a barn, then I go in and fight them all at once, with only a chainsaw
02.Kuta Surf
. The prize for the winner is a deluxe comfy bed, in a secluded shady courtyard, where the only sound is the gentle trickling of a fountain. Apart from that it's been all good. The food is excellent, if not a little on the spicy side. What the potato is to the Irish, the extra-hot chilli is to the Indonesians. I think there'd be a great market out here for cool-mint flavoured toilet roll. (Fortunately all the rooms I've stayed in have a fridge) Last night I went for the local speciality - Balinese suckling pig(let). It was the best pork I've ever tasted. (excluding my maīs sunday roast of course) Even though it's only a little baby piglet they manage to make three courses out of it. Each one is delicious, but the highlight for me was the third course, which was a mountain of delicately spiced meat, topped off with a lots of chunks of crackling. Because it was a young pig, a "Babe" if you like, there wasn't a trace of hair on the crackling and not much fat. It was out of this world.
06-05-31
I'm still in Bali - tropical paradise my elbow. It's the worlds 4th most populace nation, and they all harass you day and night into buying something
03.Balinese Hod-carriers
. Taxi, t-shirt, woman, sunglasses.....it's like a bloody power-selling convention. I've given it my best shot but there's no escaping it. I've been up to the mountains, the north of the island, the east and the south. Even the so-called deserted resorts are hiving with local harassers. It helps a little if you walk around with headphones on, as it puts some of them off. But still lots of them aren't that easily deterred. I kid you not, when I was out jogging, guys on mopeds would drive alongside me asking you if "you need taxi". Please! To go to the beach you have to run the gauntlet of traders hell, millions of little stalls and side-shops, and everyone of them comes out and hits on you. "Hello boss, you buy sunglasses", "Looking, looking", "Massage", meanwhile guys on mopeds sidle up alongside saying "taxi boss", "what you doing today" "where you go". You feel like the Pied Piper of Hamlet.
I think it's starting to get to me a little bit. I've tried just standing in the street and screaming, but nobody notices. The motorbike men kept coming up and offering "taxi to hospital". I've tried covering my face entirely with a scarf and sunglasses and wearing a padded jacket like a suicide bomber, but I started getting hassled by the "polisi". I considered buying hard drugs but you can only buy them from the polisi, and I'd already blotted my copybook there. Ah well, only 2 hours to go, then I'm off to Hong Kong.
The food has ranged from excellent poor. In Ubud I had that Balinese suckling pig, which was out of this world. Food for the gods. In Kuta I've had the runs 5 times from the hotel restaurant. I'm still working my way through the menu. Well, it's not so much a menu as a list of different flavoured diarrohea-inducing recipes. I must suggest to them introducing a "diarrohea of the day" to their menu. Get me out of here.
