Just got back from Kuta beach and wandering the markets for the afternoon. When you walk into one of the shop bays you get pounced on immediately by the shop owner, “yes please, yes please! Good price for you!”. The personal space norm is much closer, and there’s a lot of hovering. They are just so anxious to make a sale, and I can understand why. Most of the shops have the same merchandise and tons of it.
The currency situation was a bit confusing until I figured out that roughly, 50,000 rupiah is equal to $5 USD etc. But its strange to have everything from 1000 to 100,000 bills in your wallet haha. It makes it psychologically harder to spend!
In the afternoon many of the women have their babies sleeping on mats in the shop in front of a fan. They are so trusting! One woman went away for about 5 minutes to make change and left her baby alone there with people wandering in and out. Many of the shop owners also apparently fancy an afternoon fiesta and barely wake when you arrive, sometimes they barely move and people are walking right over them. There are usually a few people around though taking turns selling. God forbid you walk into a bay when the owner is next door having a chat with their neighbor. Their friends start shrieking at them and shooing them before they miss their chance.
I met a few sweet French girls on Kuta Beach and hung around with them. It is just so incredibly hot here you have to swim every ten minutes. There were probably a hundred surfers fighting over one crappy wave and tons of learners bombing around as well. The entire stretch of beach is lined with racks of surfboards and people trying to rent them out. Ladies walk along the beach with trays of fruit on their heads hollering at you, “coconut! Watermelon! Pineapple!”. There are also ice cream men that check on you every 10 minutes or so to make sure you’re still all set.
As I mentioned before its all a bit overwhelming after leaving a country with so much space, privacy, and quiet all around you and nothing but beautiful nature to look at, but I am beginning to appreciate the warmth of the hustle and bustle and the abundance of bright colors and different languages being spoken all around me.
The hotel is nice in so far as the room I have is quite big, but without AC, but I have a sweet little balcony and private bathroom. The bathroom is quite strange however, there is a shower head that comes out of the wall with no enclosure at all and the drain is just a hole in the floor in one corner- the sink also have a faucet but just an empty hole where the drain would be and the water just goes onto the floor. There is a beautiful pool and gardens though, and it’s a five minute walk to the beach.
I went to dinner last night at a reggae lounge, the food was incredible. There were a bunch of Australians partying there, this seems to be quite the holiday destination for them. And I take it they really come here to party! When I was walking back to my hotel last night I encountered a gang of them drunk driving their mopeds through the side streets- scary!
People stand outside the restaurants and hound you to eat there. If you say you aren’t hungry they try for getting you to have drinks and you have to just plow through them. Every club and bar is competing with the next to have the loudest system so the streets are filled with a mix of music. I think a few days of this pace is enough for me so I am heading tomorrow to Uluwatu where it should be a lot quieter and more relaxing. Uluwatu is the southernmost tip of the “Bukit”, which is the point at the bottom of Bali. It is a world class surf break and hosts a temple that is supposed to be a must see.
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