Further to Day One

After I'd calmed down sufficiently to allow my brain to work again, I decided to try and find some meaningful photo opportunites in Kuta.  The following photo's aren't necessarily pretty but they are what we saw and they remind me of how I felt about this town.

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.

 This was our introduction to Bali at midnight on September 9 this year.  We had had a flight delay in Brisbane because of damage to our plane and consequently we were an hour late leaving while Virgin seconded one of their domestic planes and towed it from the domestic terminal to the international terminal.  There is no in flight entertainment on domestic planes however Brenton and I had our laptops in our hand luggage and both had movies on them.  yaaaay!  I must say that Virgin were fantastic in that they sent someone from management who came around to groups of people in the terminal who were waiting and explained exactly what was going on.

Then we arrived in Kuta.  OMG was this a cultural shock to the system.  I had booked the hotel myself through Wotif.com because Flight Centre were unable to get this particular hotel through their wholesaler.  I had booked a Superior room but when we arrived, there was no Superior room available and we were put into a family room that according to management there was a much better room.  When we walked in the door it was a two room suite and it looked clean and respectable.  I didn't look in the bathroom until after the porter had left.  When I did I was really shocked at how dilapidated and filthy it was.  I swore on the spot that I was NOT getting into that shower over bath whilst I was still breathing  lol.  Considering that it was about 1am at this stage I was not in the frame of mind to march downstairs (2 floors) and ask to be moved.  We were buggered.


We just had a quick wash and went to bed.  At 3am I was woken by blood curdling screams and yelling and people running around.  I'm not one to panic so I got out of bed and snuck a look through the curtains.  In the courtyard below were half a dozen people laughing, drinking, screaming and chasing each other around the gardens.  I was tired and cranky by this point and not being one to walk away I went out onto our balcony and yelled down at them and asked them to consider other people.  I could have saved my breath for what it was worth.  They yelled and carried on and stomped up and down the stair for another hour.

The next day I complained to reception about the noise and apparently I wasn't the only one and the people concerned were spoken to.  I later found out that the troublemakers were Javanese rowdies who were in Bali for Ramadan or something (I didn't quite get what ceremony it was).  This carry on and noise went on the entire time we were there (5 nights) but fortunately we were moved the next day into the room that we had booked.  Let me tell you, I'd said enough about the bathroom of the first room so that they must have scrubbed the next one to within an inch of the grout lol.  Here is a picture from the balcony of the right room.

This was a lovely pool.  The roof on the right is that of the swim up bar and the roof on the left is the open air restaurant leading to the reception desk.  The only small complaint that I had of our correct room was that it backed onto a very busy and noisy street.  We soon got used to a continuous buzz of the millions of motor scooters that went past 24/7.

We're going to Bali !

One sleep to go (sorry Kathy I couldn't resist)  hehehe!  For those of you not in that loop, we have a client at work who is eagerly awaiting the world cup football and has been counting down the sleeps and regaling us at each phone call.  My one sleep is the time lapse until our departure for Bali. 

I will attempt to write each night about what we've seen and where we have been each day so please feel free to drop in here and see what we've been up to.  My son and I rarely follow the path well worn on holidays and we have been known to get ourselves delightfully lost with the benefit of discovering things that are unexpected. 

So, am I excited?  Probably, but I'm also terrified that I will forget something (like the passports) or that something will go wrong at the last minute.  I know you all know how I like to have all the bodies buried in the correct place and the feet all lined up :)  I haven't packed but I have organised.  Tomorrow will be time enough for a quick panic session.

Speak to you from Bali soon.
Cas x