Bali - Kuta Beach

By Rough Guy'd

Bali, Indonesia and my first taste of roughing it in my trip so far. Both of the previous destinations I’ve been to so far have been very comfortable and didn’t feel like I was far from civilisation. Bali was different and I could tell that as soon as I took a (shared) taxi from the airport to Kuta. Arriving at my pre-chosen place of lodgings, I found that they were pretty full and in the end, I ended up sharing a room with an older gentleman from Greece.

As much as I wanted to explore the place straightaway, I was starting to feel the lack of sleep quite a acutely (as the flight was relatively short) and a quick nap followed. So then, when you go to a tropical island paradise with fine white sand beaches, I felt obliged to check them out and enjoyed a very nice swim in warm water. Sadly even though the beach wasn’t too crowded, it more than made up for it with touts wanting to sell me all manner of things, ranging from the obligatory trinkets to massages, ice creams and all manner of other things. I swear the next thing I’m going to see is touts selling their services of keeping other touts away from you. Though I wasn’t planning on staying a second day in Kuta, I was too tired to see the nightlife there that night and decided on one more day.

The first thing I noticed on the second day is how important it is to get drinking water. Though water was available everywhere, I decided to take the longer trip to the supermarket to see the town a bit more. After lunch, I decided to go the sea again for more swimming. Though there is always a bit of risk leaving your things unattended while you go in the water, maybe I lucked out, maybe there were too many people to steal easily and not so many that your actions would go unnoticed, maybe there is a common courtesy to only steal legally by overcharging for goods but nothing of mine was stolen. Eventually I moved on when a woman came up to me and started giving me a pedicure, hoping if she did a good job on one nail, I would pay her for the rest. I had no intention of paying her anything and definitely didn’t when she applied nail varnish on my nail. Rather humourously, this ended up being a talking point for me for a few months after as I didn’t happen to carry nail polish remover on me and I had a single shiny toenail for quite some time.

Now, nighttimes were the times I treasured my Nintendo DSi the most as the rather modest light in my room meant you couldn’t read anything. One thing this part of my trip also taught me was to be comfortable with myself as many times throughout the rest of my trip, I would be alone by myself. Of course, I took many opportunities later on to make many new friends but more often, I was by myself and in these quiet times alone, I felt it was good to reflect on my life and why I should be thankful.

At a bit after midnight, I decided to go out and check the scene and I have to say, it was everything that I had been promised. Drunken revelry abounded, lots of people, partying and having fun. I stayed for a few hours to enjoy myself but not really being my type of place, I headed back after that, planning on my next destination on the walk home.