The next morning, I woke up pretty early from the time
difference and noticed some of the early-bird surfers making their way out,
board in tow. Bernard was among some of
the first up, due to his jetlag, so we were all able to head out before most
people were awake and walk around. We
stopped to grab breakfast at a local spot, which we deduced would be good
because it was already pretty popular with locals; no idea what the name was,
as there was no sign. It was basically
ordered buffet style, so I stood and looked at all the options, not knowing
what pretty much 95% of the options actually were. Animal?
Mineral? Vegetable? After a while, a woman approached and I
“body-languaged” that I wanted to order; she grabbed a small whicker plate-bowl
(not a flat plate, but not really the shape of a bowl either. Is there a category for that?) with a paper
liner and spooned a big heap of white rice onto the bowl and then waited for me
to point at what I wanted. She did know
a few words, like meat or vegetable, and I was able to decipher which meat by
either clucking, mooing, or lifting my nose and oinking…no I’m not kidding. When she served up my portions, she only put
a few mouthfuls onto the plate-bowl, and when I looked around, I noticed
everyone else had a variety of foods and flavors on theirs, so I picked about
four options and paid the whopping ~$2 for my full plate. This ordered buffet style meal with several
different types of food piled on top of rice, is what we later discovered is
called Nasi Campur, and is a staple meal in all of Indonesia. After breakfast, we walked back to the
hostel. Jared was still having ear
trouble from Papua New Guinea, and wanted me to go with him to get checked out
and see if he needed any more medications.
He rented a moped, and the two of us headed out to a hospital clinic on
which we had gotten good references. I
waited around in the lobby area, while he got checked out. Diagnosis: you don’t seem to have an ear
infection. Summary: no s#*( Sherlcok,
he’s had a full round of antibiotics.
Anyway, point was he was fine. We
made our way back to the hostel, and met up with Bernard to head to THE
BEACH!! It was about a 7 minute walk
from our place, down the main road, to the beach. Once we hit the sand…we were a bit
disappointed. We were kind of hoping for
those beaches they show in the commercials and movies. It was not that; lots of people, no actual
open space to lay a towel down on the sand, but all lounge chairs, which was
fine, because the sand was kind of crummy and dirty. Normally, we would never purchase a lounge
chair, but these were about 50 cents, so we splurged. A woman came over and we each ordered a local
beer, Bintang. We did get into the water
a couple times, mostly to pee after a few beers, but the water was littered
with garbage. What part of Bali was
everyone else going to? How was this
spot popular as a nice quiet beach with good surfing? Oh yea, that was the other thing, there was
no place we could see to surf, zero waves.
We later found out, that at the particular time of year when we visited
(January) trash flowed over from the island of Java and littered the beaches of
Bali. We also found out that surfers
actually had to drive (most on a moped with an attached board rack along the
side) to some other location to go surfing.
Clearly, Tripadvisor or Lonely Planet, or whatever Jared had used to get
information on Bali, had misguided him.
Anyway, I still enjoyed being in the sun and sipping a few beers. When we got hungry, we ordered food from the
same woman who brought us beers. We had
no idea exactly what we were ordered, but there were pictures to guide, so we
decided on nasi goring and mee (or mie) goreng, which ended up translating to
fried rice (nasi) and noodles (mee), but like the best fried rice/noodles
ever! After lunch, we walked back to the
hostel, along the way being very tempted to get an hour long massage for
$5!!! BAH! I opted out in the end, vowing I would return
later. Back at the hostel, I hung out in
the pool with some of the other people, exchanging information and stories
about the area. Everyone had been to
Kuta Bali (the crazy tourist area) at least once, and every single one of them
had lost something or had something robbed.
But we did hear ridiculous stories, urban legends they seemed, about
bars where you order one shot and receive three, or clubs where you can drink
for free from 9pm to 11pm. This place
can’t be for real, right? We decided
that we would take a gamble on the night life and be drunk teenagers for a
night…if we could handle it. After a lot
of lounging and chatting, we made our way out to dinner at the same place as breakfast. The great thing about nasi (rice) campur is
that you can pretty much have a different meal every time. There were tons of different sautéed vegetables,
beef, eggs, chicken, and so many things I couldn’t place or had never seen,
such as tempe, which is like tofu, in that it is made from soy, but tastes
nothing like it and has a completely different texture. The soy beans are actually whole or sliced
up, so it very solid and crunchy.
Anyway, I knew about half of the things I ordered, but all of it was
good. As the sun went down, I went back
to the hostel to get ready for the night.
Chatting with a few people, I learned that everyone was actually going
to a bar down close by, and invited us to join.
Since we had another night, we decided to be social and hang out with
everyone instead of going out on our own.
We hopped in a for short cab ride to a bar called Casablanca. Splitting things like that can be so
difficult, because not everyone has small change. As we each handed the cab driver different
random amounts of money, I gave him a larger bill in order to take care of the
whole thing and get everyone else’s small change. Unfortunately, in the commotion, the cabbie
received all of the money and sped off.
The two boys were pissed, swearing and stamping. I tried to convince them I wasn’t upset and
to move one, but they were such party poopers for such a long time in the
bar! What a drag. Finally, I just decided to drink large
quantities by myself and join in with the other people. As the night went on, they loosened up a bit
and Bernard even got out on the dance floor!
We danced till…well not really that late, we were pretty jetlagged, but
it was still super fun, and we ended the night on a good note.
The next day, we woke up and again headed off to the
beach. Again, there was a lot of trash
and we decided to make that our last day in Sanur. We had a really good lunch again of nasi
goreng and mee goreng, and a few (more) beers while lounging, and popped into
the water occasionally to cool off (and pee).
After the beach, we walked around the main road a bit, which was pretty
much chocker-block full of tourist shops to buy clothes. Slowly, I made my way back to the hostel,
popping into shops occasionally. Back at
the hostel, we again hung out with some people in the pool, chatting with other
hostelers. That night was going to be
our big Kuta Bali night. We showered and
got ready and started pregaming at the common table with some of the other
travelers. Everyone again traded stories
about going to Kuta and how they had a great time but were filled with shame
and regret that next day. I put a few
dollars in my bra, and left everything else at the hostel. We did pick up one traveler Ed, who was
really nice and from the UK. He hadn’t
been to Kuta yet either and when he heard free drinks from 9pm until 11pm, he
threw caution to the wind with us. We hopped in a cab, argued over the fare,
until he finally agreed to our price. I
think the guys all had just started letting me handle haggling, because I will
not budge. I actually opened the car
door to get out (while he was driving [really slowly]), because he kept trying
to jack up the price. Anyway, off we
went to Kuta. I think we were all a bit
nervous about driving into some Las-Vegas-in-anarchy sort of place, but as we
neared and saw more and more tourists and English restaurants, we realized it
was nothing as crazy as we had imagined.
We got out of the cab and walked to the club, where I was sure there was
going to be some sort of cover or restriction on the 9pm to 11pm thing…which
there did not appear to be! We received
wrist bands, and entered the huge entry hall.
Inside there were several levels, and rooms, live dancers, live dj’s,
R&B room, Rap room, Top 40 etc. We
walked I think five floors up to where the all-you-can-drink room was, and
still assuming some sort of catch, immediately made our way to the bar. Within a few minutes, we each had some sort
of fruity cocktail in our hands. The
rest of the night was full of unlimited free drinks (there was no catch),
dancing, and TONS of Indonesian teenage boys!
Pretty much all of us had a great time, until someone wasn’t able to
handle his alcohol…I won’t get into details, but his name rhymes with…Lared
haha. The night in Kuta ended with Bernard
and Ed stuffing their faces with noodles, while Jared smashed up tables, and I
danced by myself at an open bar across the street, stealing puffs of hookah off
of random people. When we got back to
the hostel, the rest of us enjoyed a bit of time hanging out with other people until
the wee hours of the morning, I think Bernard stayed up till like 4:30am. Overall a successful evening, with absolutely
nothing stolen!
The next morning, I was the first up and SHOCKINGLY did not
feel all that bad. The boys all woke a
bit later, some more embarrassed over their behavior than others. That day, we were heading to Ubud, so we
packed up all of our things, and we able to relax for a few hours before our
ride came to pick us up. When the ride
came, we said our goodbyes to everyone, most of whom were heading to Ubud as
well within the next day or two, and set out for our next location.
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