New Session
Ok well after reading over that lot of waffle I realise that I was about to launch into a detailed approximation of the balinese people & culture. Pretty boring really and hard to give an accurate impression so I might as well get on with it and tell you what I’ve been up to.
Yeh, Yeh flew into Kuta flustered and insecure, had no trouble finding a cheap, trustworthy, safe place to stay. I’ve found that there is virtually no dishonesty in Bali. Since they are hindu they all believe in “Karma”, so they don’t dare do anything evil. They blame any theft or dishonesty on the Javanese. The Javanese, of course blame the Madurans, and I’ve yet to discover who they blame.
Anyway this guy I met at customs – who had never even left NSW before – and I cling together for security the first few days. We got a bemo (read taxi) out to a few well know surf spots (Uluwatu, Nusa Dua, Cunggu) and had some either poor or overcrowded waves.
Since the surf was relatively poor, we met up with a couple of girls from England and together we rented a car for 3 days and drove around for some sight-seeing. I did most of the driving and had whale of a time. (1) If there’s nothing in front of you put your foot flat to the floor. (2) If there is something in front of you, put one hand on the horn, change down gears and pullover to the other side of the road. Simple really. The same rules apply no matter which side of the road you are on. Believe it or not there is the occasional spot with things vaguely resembling traffic lights. Only the particularly conscientious bother about them, and only saints bother to indicate; left, right or hazards for straight ahead. They drive, predominantly, on the left (correct) side of the road so right hand turns are the fun ones. The procedure here, is to laugh at the tourists who stop and wait for a break in the traffic, just go where you want to go, observing the two golden rules outline above.
As you might guess I thoroughly enjoyed driving in Bali, and the howls of delight from my passengers will hold testimony to how good it was. They each had a go and each relinquished in turn, within minutes, back to my capable hands, each perplexed as to where I found joy in watching two buses come toward us at 100 km/hr side by side on a one land road, with 8ft deep drains (for the wet season) on either side and an army of Wayne Gardners buzzing around you like the proverbial bees and honeypot. It was great.
Where did we go is rather secondary to the joys of getting there. Ummm, one day we went surfing, one day we went to Ubud, which is supposed to be the cultural centre of Bali, full of peace, beauty, and inspiration. All we found was a few Byron Bay type hippies remeniscing on the lost Bali of old, countless crappy mass produced artworks (read sourvenires for the uncultured, ignorant trourists), and an army of local’s trying to sell overpriced tickets to a “cultural festival” – a quick hodge-podge of balinese dances, squashed into one hour for a thousand odd tourists. One everynight and a special 3 hour gala if you go on Saturdays. This is what I saw in a quick 4 hour stopever, so either I missed the true Ubud or the hippies are right and the real Bali has been crushed by the hordes that arrive, a plane load every ten minutes, 6 planes an hour, 24 hours, 365 days.
The next day we went up to Lake Batur, which is a lake in a dead vulcano. There is a road over the lava flows which was pretty wild, hard to describe. Use your imagination – molten rock flowing down the side of a mountain, which cools, goes hard, then some more molten rock rolls over the top, ad infinitum – and hey presto – a mess of very hard stuff. The only other redeeming feature of the place was the best fish I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant by the lake. Other than that it was dry, dusty, not fertile, and generally dirty. A bit of a disappointment when you’re expecting rainforest.
Whew 7 pages and I’ve only covered one week…
Second week… Scott went off on his surf boat tour to Lombok & Sumbawa, so I hung around Kuta at a loose end. The girls flew out, there was no surf anywhere, so I just sort of hung around – down to the beach, out to eat, look at shops, talk to tourists – yep… hanging around. A few days of this I got bored, so I (mum & dad shut your eyes) rented a motor scooter and ventured out on the roads, with surfboard, in search of swell. Down to Ulu, up to Chungu, not that great. Except one surf at Kuta reef (I finally worked out how to get a boat out there) which finally put a huge grin on my face. Phil would have been delirious. A powerful left with a workable wall that just grinds on down the line, never losing its power, never ending, and never too fast to crank off (or attempt) a roundhouse cutback. It was perfect – for half an hour – then about another 30 surfers joined us 6 and it became drop-in city. Bliss is never eternal.
