Bali Hai's and low's
Hello Sailors!!
If ever there was a case of a place being completely fucked up by tourism then Bali is it. Real disappointment, dirty beaches, knackered pavements. They're so pre-occupied with building hotels they've forgotten about the surrounding environment.
As experienced travelers of...er...2 months we've identified the 3 ingredients of overwhelming, suffocating tourism:
1)
KFC/McDonald's (at least 1 every 50 yards)
2) Germans/Americans (fat, middle-aged,
white socks)
3) Touts (lots of em, everywhere, all wanting to engage in 'friendly
getting to know you' chat before flogging stuff)
We've been offered everything from 'cheap' drugs, rooms, "transport transport" to (more bizarrely) a full size bow and arrow (??) to a shoeshine...whilst we were both wearing flip flops??!!
Constant demand for money and endlessly repeating "no thanks" gets very tiring, interesting to note that we've both dealt with it in different ways - Beth goes for the more direct "whatever it is you're selling I don't want it" whilst I've opted for (on a good day) saying I'm "Keith from Holland" and happily telling them about my life in "Amschterdam" or (on a bad day) saying I'm "Karl from Germany" complete with stern look, shake of the head and repeating "nien, nien, nien"...
Fortunately
the highs far outweigh the lows, for example it's sooooo cheap out here. We're
on a comfortable basic daily budget of around 8 quid consisting of room for 3
quid (sometimes including breakfast), fruit and Bali coffee (they like it very,
very strong) - or that staple of any traveler in Asia's cuisine - the banana pancake
for breakfast, 'Jaffles' (a sort of toasted sarnie) for lunch and
'Mie/Nasi
Goreng' (noodles/rice with vegetables) for dinner all washed down with the local
tipple 'Bintang beer'.
After some dodgy financial dealings (The Beijing Guinness Scandal, The Rome Gladiator Scam) and struggling to get my head round the zero's (it's 14,000 Rupiah to the pound) Beth has taken control of the finances, moving from the role of Matron (as our course of anti-Malaria tablets has finished). Unfortunately we are now returning home a little earlier than planned due to lack of funds...!!
I have slipped into my new role of morning wake-up call with ease, usually consisting of a loud, always impressive (but non-smelling I might add), fart or burp (on a good morning both), means we can now sell our alarm clock for an extra couple of bottles of Bintang.
Despite the touts we managed to see quite a bit of mainland Bali: Ubud the arts & crafts centre, a Balinese dance (great costumes), paddled in the famed healing waters of Tirta Empul and looked out over the village of Kintamani to the volcano at Gunung Batur.
Feeling a touch of 'Delhi deja vu' from the madness of mainland Bali we jumped on a boat and headed to the island of Nusas Lembongan. Bit of a hidden gem as it's not advertised anywhere but it was how we hoped paradise would be, white sandy beaches, little bays & coves, amazing snorkeling on the reefs and all with the friendly locals carrying on with their daily lives happy that the hordes of tourists haven't arrived...yet.
Getting a taste for island hopping we packed a small rucksack of essentials (I'm talking 1 t-shirt & bog roll to last for 10 days here) headed 30 miles away to Lomobok & the trio of Gili islands, Trawangan, Meno & Air.
An 8 hour journey to get there by a combination of boat, bus, ferry and bus again but well worth it. It's how Bali must have been like 20 years ago, similar landscape: lush green countryside, rice paddies, rugged mountains but completely different religion and language, in Bali you can see daily offerings to the gods in small banana leaf packages everywhere, in Lombok the majority of people are Muslim Sasaks. We based ourselves on the largest of the 3 Gili's, Gili Trawangan, pretty un-developed (poplation only 1000), great to get in amongst it in the mini-jungle with the lizards and birds squawking in the trees.
There's
no Police presence on any of the islands, just a warden bloke on Gili Meno, a
fact that the local bars fully exploit by blatantly advertising "Fucking Bloody
Magic Mushrooms, Take You To Heaven And Back Again, No Transport, Needed"!! Get
yourself out there Clithead!!, one of the locals was telling us a monthly bribe
to the police in Lombok keeps their mushroom
business ticking over...
Desperate to show off my new lean, mean physique as a result of my 'no lard pie' diet, I put my name down for what was billed as "Gili Trawangan's World Cup Warm Up: England v Sweden", fully expecting a kick-about with palm trees for goalposts I arrived to find a ref in complete Fifa-approved kit complete with red & yellow cards, linesman with flags & whistles (although a spade to get rid of the horseshit on the touchlines would have been better), a huge trophy to make the FA Cup look like an egg holder and half the island waiting in anticipation...
At
3-2 a topsy turvy game threatened to go the Swedes way when in the last minute
Groover powered in a Terry Butcher style header, 3-3 and England broke their World
Cup penalty jinx to take the trophy. I'm not sure if Sven has any scouts in Indonesia
but the free beers for the winners made up for it...
And now armed with freshly
grown mullets, a 6-pack of Fosters (with stereotypes like these we can't go wrong)
and our working visa's (2 years in the cut & thrust of pensions has surely hardened
me to any employment the Aussies can throw at us??...) we head into Australia
for the final 6 weeks of our journey.
We'll miss the chaotic charm, but not the 'squat & wipe' style toilets, of Asia but Oz beckons...my birthday on 31st March as well (hint, hint!!)
See you soon Poms!!
Bruce & Sheila
