John Mee – Some programmer in Sydney

Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

Dear Whoever,

I haven’t really decided who to address this letter to yet, so since they have photocopiers around here I might just … cheat. I don’t know we will see how things progress.

Some students from Jakarta I met in Java. They were extremely friendly. One gave me a ride with them back up the road on the back of their motorbike.

Well I’ve been gone a month now, which is and isn’t hard to believe – if that makes any sense at all. Work at AMPOL is now just a block of life that has been forgotten. Seems like that was just a month in total, not twelve. In summary I spent the first two weeks in Kuta trying to find my feet, and then the last two weeks on an island off the coast called Nusa Lembongan. Things have been rolling along fairly sedately with only one major hiccup which I will come to later. Said incident was the reason for my sudden return to “civilisation”, but I was getting bored anyway.

Ok, in length, going chronologically I guess. I left Sydney in what felt like a total panic, with multitudes of loose ends and too much junk. As it turns out I’ve found that I am very well prepared and organised – least that’s how it feels from this end. Alice may have different ideas.

Walking through the terminal after going through customs felt like the loneliest, scariest time of my life. But thankfully that ended as soon as I stepped on the plane. Sat next to a large australian of similar age who works on an intensive cattle farm in Sumatra. Dad would have been fascinated. The flight makes you realise how big Australia is. It took 6 hours flying over oz – with great views of the Kimberlys – 1 hour over the ocean, then hey presto – Bali! Coming into land, looking at the mish-mash of low buildings I was scared, and started to wonder what the hell I was doing, but I consoled myself by thinking that this is a perfectly natural reaction.

Going through customs it was easy to team up with an equally bewildered Australian surfer and to get ourselves from the airport to Kuta proper (two boards, luggage and us in a taxi of Ford Laser proportions – yes we just put the boards through the window, no problem).

I was expecting to be attacked by hawkers and fleecers of all shapes and sizes, but in reality we were only approached by one balo who wanted to know if we wanted accomodation. The taxi is fixed price, you pay first to an office at the airport. The place was closer to deserted than the army of people wanting my money as everyone had told me to expect.

This is probably too late to describe Kuta since I’m used to it now, but anyway. The place at first is a maze of back alleys. Its seems there are no proper “streets”. Y’know like with bitumen, footpaths, two lanes, gutters etc. On the roads that do slightly resemble this the traffic is generally one way – although one way streets often change during the day to two way, or even reverse direction. Traffic is also a misleading word, since it resembles nothing like in Australia, since 90% of vehicles are little motorbikes, which flow all over the road, beeping buzzing and puring smoke. Typically a woman balances on the back of these motor-scooters – sidesaddle of course – and breastfeeds the baby on the way.

Gettting back to streets, it is a surprise to discover that many main roads are just one way lanes just wide enough to fit one vechicle – if one comes the other way, you or them must reverse until there is somewhere to pass. The surface is a mixture of bitumen, rocks or dirt and is very potholed. When it rains the streets become large puddles. This is all quite claustrophobic at first because you feel like you are lost in the deepest darkest back alleys of Redfern and there is literally no way out. It is difficult to navigate since main streets are easy to miss – being only 4 feet wide – and straight roads on the map usually aren’t, new roads are added all the time, so maps are never up to date.

Once you get things into your head that yes this 2 foot dark alleyway is in fact the eqivalent of Castlereagh St then things go smoothly.

Ok, so there is the layout of the land. Kuta/Legian (the two have merged into one) IS tourism. Everything here is for tourism and everyone is involved in tourism. All of Bali has been hit by tourism to some degree (its not that big an island) but nothing like Kuta. There are no houses where regular people live, just losmens, hotels, warungs (restaurants) and shops to spend money. There are cheap places $3/night and expensive places > $600/night. Most people come on package tours for 1-2 weeks, the rapid turnover of new faces is astonishing, but it is not too hard to find plenty of others sitting around for 2 months (The maximum length tourist visa). I had expected tourism (kind-of, well really, I hadn’t thought about it at all) but not on this scale. I was expecting more along the lines of what I saw going around Australia. i.e. there’s only a few places for backpackers to stay so its all one happy family as you exchange experiences, cook and generally travel together, bumping into the same faces over and over again as you all head for the same spots, with the same plans in mind.

Instead everyone has different ideas, times, plans, places to stay, so you don’t really get to know anyone for more than a week. The locals are as friendly as can be, but their English is limited and feet planeted. Its different to expectations, but then I haven’t really left Kuta.