Day One in Bali.

Let me give you some background first.  When I decided we would go to Bali I thought that I might just book everything myself but I was advised to consult a travel agent considering this was to be our first venture into Indonesia and anything Asian.  So I looked around and found Flight Centre to be helpful and I thought knowledgeable on Bali.  After several pot holes in their service, I eventually got everything arranged and in the week prior to flying out I asked Flight Centre to confirm our first tour which was to be on the first day of our holiday.  I was assured that this tour had been confirmed.

Day One consisted of waking up at 7am eeeeeeeeek!  An hour before we were to be collected for our tour.  We were out of bed and flannel washed (I still wasn't getting in that shower) and down to a smorgasbord breakfast within the half hour.  Breakfast in a hurry after very few hours sleep is not recommended but we were fueled and sitting in reception at 8am as our itinerary required.  We were still sitting there at 8.45am when I decided that this tour company wasn't coming.  I asked reception to phone them and find out when they might be coming.  The answer on that day was "we came but no one was waiting for us."  Now that was an outright lie and the hotel reception said so (not that we could understand the Balinese language but the inflection basically said it all.   There was an instance on this day where I decided I had really had enough of this hotel and we took off in a cab to see if we could find alternative accommodation.  I was in proper meltdown mode by that time.  The room was appalling, the tour company had no shown up, I was incredibly tired and my fuse was non existent.  I was on the phone to Australia asking Flight Centre what on earth was going on and my tone was shrill to say the very least  lol.  Here is a picture that Brenton took of me in the front of the cab going around looking for a hotel room that wasn't going to cost $400 US per night.

This little venture took around 3 hours and involved driving from Kuta to Seminyak, Legion and Denpasar.  At one stage I said to the driver "please just take us to the Australian Embassy and we'll catch the next plane home."  He did but the embassy isn't open on the weekends and this was a Saturday.  Lesson:  you cannot have a problem in Bali on the weekend and hope that our embassy will help you.  Fortunately cabs in Bali are very cheap.  3 hours of driving around cost 250,000 rupiah which is in the order of $28.00 AUD.  Can you imagine driving around Sydney or Melbourne in a cab for 3 hours?

When we got back to our hotel (Dewi Sri) I got the feeling that Flight Centre had had some sort of conversation with them and our Superior room had miraculously become available.

We decided to have lunch in the hotel and then go for a walk along Kuta's busy streets.  Pizza looked good but stayed down for oh 30 minutes?  I think that rather than the food being bad, I'd been in such a state in the morning that it wouldn't have mattered what I ate, it wouldn't have stayed there.

Here are some photos of the street scape of Kuta.

Take note of the electricity wires that were like spaghetti everywhere.  Also the motor scooters EVERYWHERE.