Welcome to Bali!

Megan and I arrived at Ngurah Rai Airport in Bali, Indonesia at around 2200 on 20 Dec 2007. We stayed in Kuta which is a resort town a few miles south of Denpasar, the largest city in Bali. There is a large beach (our hotel was about 1/2 a mile away) with nice waves and every kind of restaurant you could imagine, from Mexican to sushi, Italian to McDonalds. The streets are small and congested and we saw people from all over the world.

Everything in Kuta revolves around getting money out of tourists pockets (obviously this is an overstatement but you'd be hard pressed to prove me wrong). Early on the 21st we went outside before breakfast to get an idea of our surroundings and as soon as we walked out of our hotel we hear

"Yes, please come to my shop. I give you nice price."

A little further.

"Yes, Hello I give you morning price. Please look here."

"Transport?"

People were selling goods like bootlegged DVDs, paintings and other artsy stuff, and fake brand name merchandise ( watches, clothes, sunglasses...etc). There were also selling services like guiding, transporting, and massages.

We were able to amuse ourselves at there cleverness and joked back with them frequently. One thing I found worked particularly well was to just repeat everything they said. This usually frustrated them, made them think you were an idiot, or made them think you didn't speak English and then they would leave you alone.

There are many "real" stores in Kuta also. When I say real I mean they had name brand stuff and real prices.

Here is a picture of Kuta Square...


The other thing we noticed was the prevalence of motor scooters. I use the term motor scooter and not motorcycle or scooter because they look like a scooter but are fairly fast like a motorcycle. Most had 100-125cc engines and could comfortably carry 2 (or more in some cases) people around the mountainous island. We figured there there were about 5 motor scooters for every 1 car. There are many advantages to having a motor scooter on a small island in the tropics. They are able to go around cars when the traffic backs up, get 100+ miles per gallon, take up very little space in parking lots, and are very inexpensive (new ones are $1100-$1600). Since the weather isn't cold the only disadvantage is having to ride in the rain from time to time. Most people were traveling by themselves but we saw up to 4 people traveling on one a few times and 3 traveling many times. Motor scooters are much better than a public transit system due to their compact nature, efficiency and independence.

Besides the motor scooters and the barrage of sales people we noticed a lot of offerings that are put up in front of peoples shops, houses, and everywhere in between. These add a very nice touch to everything. The offerings were very different in type, size and color. The most typical ones were about 4 inches square made of some type of palm leaf. On the leaf was a few different flowers, some rice, a cookie, and some burning incense. Usually I don't like the smell of incense but I discovered that when it is outside incense is much more tolerable, even pleasant.