So, as you might imagine, if you read my last blog, I was fairly tired when I arrived in Bali. I was only supposed to stay one night in the first hotel, but the next morning I woke up about five minutes before check-out so I decided to stay an extra day. A day I spent mostly in the pool and with my books and music blaring loudly through my headphones!
I stayed in the Ari Putri hotel and it's an awesome place. Though anywhere half-nice in Bali is *really* nice, and I have stayed in some lovely hotels in my time on this fair earth!
The day after that I headed out to Kuta beach, which I had already been warned was not that nice and that I probably wouldn't like it. Well, those people who warned me - dead right.
If I ever do become a super-famous novelist, and then ever set a book in Bali, this is a quote I want to remember - "If God made Bali, the Devil shit out Kuta."
Actually, it isn't that bad. It's just that I've been travelling in some lovely places, a lot of them rustic, or simple, or at least not super-commercialised. Kuta is like the antithesis of everything I have been loving about this trip. It's just full of Australians, mostly young and mostly pissed, on a week or two week holiday. It's basically like some of the Spanish islands, or Crete maybe. I'll put it to you this way, imagine you're on holiday somewhere and the people in the room beside you are a group on their Leaving Cert holiday . . . no imagine you're the only person in the entire area not on a Leaving Cert holiday. It's basically like that. It's okay, but it's not what I can away for you know?
And as for accommodation, well in Kuta it's either very nice and very expensive, or it's very cheap and very shit. So after one night in a very shit place I decided I'd speed up my plans and headed out to Ubud a little early.
I'm glad I did. It still wasn't that cheap, but God was it nice! Check this place out! It's basically built around a bunch of working rice paddies and it just looks amazing. If you look to the right there, I lived on the top floor of the second building!
As you can see, gorgeous scenery all round, flowers and statues everywhere. You could "sight-see" just walking around the hotel grounds!
The staff were so lovely as well. They were friendly, but not in the sort of annoyingly sycophantic way you sometimes get in Bali/SE Asia where you're sometimes left wondering if the only reason someone is being nice is because they walk a big tip. One of the days it started raining at about 1 and it didn't stop til 6, and I was basically in the hotel restaurant the entire afternoon because I couldn't get wifi anywhere else. Can't get it in the rooms, which is fine because you can get it by the pool and more or less everywhere else, but because of the rain, couldn't sit by the pool. Anyway, was just downloading stuff and writing up some of that last blog and chatting to the attractive (married) girl there and she didn't seem to mind that I wasn't buying anything and was clearly just using all the bandwidth because some American dude complained his was going really slow . . . I said nothing!
And on the good days, I could sit by the pool and just let the stuff download in peace while I swam and read Lord of the Rings, which I have been demolishing at a ridiculous pace. If I'm not careful, I'll have read the whole thing in two weeks!
Haha, loving it!
This, by the way, is the pool! The awesome, awesome pool, which I think I saw more of than anywhere else in the whole of Ubud! There's (what I presume is) a kid's area at the front there, and then the deeper pool as you go back. Nice and cold too, when you're basically melting away in the sun. I'll be a nice shade of black by the time I get home if this keeps up.
I sat in that third chair . . . nah, I'm kidding, I sat somewhere different all the time. I'm not that much of a psycho . . .
The second day I went out white water rafting, got picked up at about 9, which was far too early, so I mostly slept the entire way to the rafting spot. What can I say, I dislike mornings, also, I think I might still be on Thailand time, or possibly some other strange unreal time.
The rafting was cool but the equipment was a bit shit and I'm not sure my guide was all that good, we got stuck a few too many times along the way, going down the wrong way past a cluster of rocks or whatever.
And then there was the tipping out! We hit this one rapid and me and a guy from Singapore went out the side, not really much choice, we just went. Now, I was holding on, but while they were getting him back in the raft was still moving and when we hit the next rapid my grip went and I got ripped away from the boat and taken down the river. It was probably only three or four minutes, but three or four minutes is a long time on a river like that. Most of the time it was okay, I can swim, I was in a life jacket and I was able to cheap fairly afloat, but in a few spots, where the rocks were higher I was getting beaten left right and centre and pulled under quite frequently so I actually did get a little worried in places. Not that I panicked or anything, but there was definitely a moment where I was forced to think, "Jesus, this would be a really shit way to die."
Eventually I washed out into a deeper part of the river and that was better. I was able to get my feet down, grab a rock and just hold on until a raft turned up. This wasn't my raft, but they still pulled me on board and we went down one more rapid, me dangling out of the back, before my own crew caught up and took me back aboard.
I'm not gonna lie, when we stopped for our break about ten minutes later, my hand was shaking like nothing else. That'd be the adrenaline, rather than anything else by the way! Nah, at least some of it was fear.
Still I loved it, I just wish I had a video of the whole thing! That'd make an awesome post! Ah well, maybe when we go in Australia.
So got back to Ubud around four and swam in the pool, showered and stuff and then found I couldn't actually sit down because my legs and backside where bruised to bits! Damn rocks! Why couldn't you be more soft and caring???
There are signs everywhere warning you about these monkeys, telling you not to provoke them and to only feed them in the presence of wardens because they can be quite unruly. I saw one jump up on a guy's leg and pull a bottle of water from his pocket, then run down the path with the bottle of water. It then opened said bottle, tipped it upside down until it was empty and tried to drink from it afterwards . . . stupid monkey.
I saw one try to nick a girls backpack too, but a warden rushed over and scared it off! Brilliant.
There was another Aussie girl who was just saying, "Oh God, oh God, this is hectic," over and over as she legged it for the exit! Very funny. Dunno why, but they didn't seem to bothered about picking on me. Maybe I look mean or something!
The temples themselves were pretty nice, though they're all closed to the public and you can only see them from the outside. They're open air temples though so you can get a pretty good view of them. They seem to be mostly Hindu orientated, which makes sense since most of Bali's population is Hindu, with a significant Muslim population. This makes a bit of a change from where I've been before - Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are mostly Buddhist countries.
One of the really cool things about this whole place - and much of Bali in general - is the stone carvings everywhere. There's a selection of them as you scroll down. You'll find these everywhere in Ubd and Bali. In fact, as you drive from place to place, many of the villages seem to deal prodominately in the production of large scale sculptures of fantastic quality. This is the kinda stuff I reckon places in the West pay millions for. Some of them were really fantastic. 
There's some I particularly liked, though I have no pictures, made from black stone left over from various volcano eruptions on the island. These are really cool looking. 
This fella at the end is one of my favourites. There's also loads from the hotel put I figure you're probably going to get sick of looking at these so I'll just put them all up on Facebook and you can scroll through them at your leisure? Fair plan?
So what else did I do in Ubud . . . well nothing really springs to mind actually, which probably sounds a bit boring but other than the day of rain it was actually quite pleasant. In some sense it's nice to be chilling out and on my own after a couple of hectic months. Hostels are great but it's been really nice to have a private room for the last while. You don't need to worry about needing to piss in the middle of the night, or about needing to get something out of your bag when everyone else is asleep and you can read with the lights on instead of with a booklight! It's quite amazing!
So then after Ubud I had to head back to Kuta, but only for a day while I found somewhere to get a leather jacket, which was actually easily accomplished. Went in the afternoon and had it the next day. It helped that there was one more or less my size ready made that could be taken in quite easily, though I must have looked at about 15 different designs. This one is quite sober actually. It kinda looks like a grown-ups jacket . . . God, what have I become. I may have to festoon it with badges, though I'd rather not. It's a bit new to start poking things in it just yet!
Finished in Kuta, I didn't really want to spend any longer there than I had to so headed back to the Ari Putri hotel where I started in Bali - letting things come full circle if you will!
Dumped my stuff in my room and threw on my swimming stuff and headed straight for the pool, but as I was walking to it, I saw this familiar shape, and for a second I was like, nah, can't be, but then I realised, yup, that's Fran . . .
Fran is from Reading and if you glance back at the Chiang Mai post this is the same drunk lady who woke me up with a torch in the face to tell me she really enjoyed her trekking. Jo-Anne is here too, just finishing off a PADI dive course! Small world though, eh?
Actually, funny story, when I was leaving Kuta the hotel guy was like, "Awh, why are you leaving?" and rather than be honest and say, "Coz Kuta is a shit hole and I hate it, I went with, "I'm going to stay with some friends." I thought I was lying, but I guess someone out there has my back after all!
So just hung out by the pool all day and then later that night we went and got some food down the road. There was a fairly terrible live band planning old 80s and 90s music, including a full cover of Sweet Child of Mine which I'll be honest, nearly killed me.
Afterwards we headed back to the hotel pool and despite the fact that it was dark, and late, and we'd already have a few drinks, they proceeded to provide us with more alcohol, while in the pool. In Bali, the worlds "health" and "safety" have yet to be strung together you see. Anything goes!
For some reason I didn't sleep well that night. Went to bed at one, woke up at four, eventually fell back asleep, woke up at 6, then 7, and then 9. Read for a bit and then eventually wandered down to the pool for more sitting around doing f-all on my last full day in Bali!
I could tell you about the day . . . but really it went pool, book, pool, lunch, pool, book, pool, book, etc . . .
So unless you want me to tell you about Lord of The Rings and what that scamp Frodo was a-doing, we'll just assume it was a pleasant day.
Me and the girls went for dinner in the Cat & Fiddle Irish bar and while it wasn't in the least bit Irish the had a half decent live band and they had CIDER!!! It was Bali cider, but it was good! And way too easy to drink!
And then when we'd had some drink and some food and were sated we headed back to the hostel. Fran has an obsession with the Rattlin' Bog so I brought my copy of the Feckin' Book of Everything Irish down to their room so she could copy the lyrics while we played a few games of shit head. We also read through the "phrases" section while playing and eventually it turned into a game of how many of these does Shane know. Most as it turns out.
Some of the favourites from the night were:
"Did you get your gee."
"I'd ate the tyres of the ruck that brought her knickers to the launderette."
"She's bet down with a shovel."
I won most of the games of Shithead, but pivotally, lost the final game! Doesn't really matter who wins shithead, you see. It only matters who loses!
So that's Bali my friends . . . I'm all set to leave now and head for Australia . . . Scary!
Talk to you soon,
Shane.
Wow Bali sounds and looks amazing (excluding Kuta!), that now may well be my next desired trip seeing as Im in Asia already!!!
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