Indo Fantasyland

After Kuta, we had no idea what to expect of Bali, but Sam was eager to try some surfing in water, not plastic bags. On the advice of some fellow surfers we ran into in Kuta, Kyle and Cassandra, we headed to a spot on the southwest coast of Bali. January and February is the rainy season in Indonesia and somewhat of an off season for surfing, so we were glad for the advice. When we arrived, we found that the artsy restaurant and bungalows nearest the beach had rooms available (apparently a rarity) so we got ourselves by far the artsiest bungalow we've stayed in, with paintings, modern decorations, big tile counters, very clean and nice, for $20 a night. As a bonus it also had the most unique toilet paper holder we've found in Bali, it was your typical monkey god statue with a very large, uh, male member, cheerfully horizontal but modestly hidden by the TP.

We stepped blinking onto our balcony and took a look around. The steps to the beach were just a few yards away. The surf break was directly in front of us, beautiful waves, double overhead on the sets - too big for me! A pleasant and reasonably priced restaurant was right there on our left, with delicious frapuccino-like iced coffee, good pizza, Indonesian food, and even edible Mexican food! (That's a first on this trip.) The owner was a Canadian expat and author of the Lost Guide to Bali/Lombok which was full of good advice, though some of it a bit late (like the watch out for Kuta bit.) The beach was blacksand and completely deserted. A river ran out to the beach on the left, and there was a palm-tree lined headland topped with a temple to either side. The area only had about ten guesthouses, most of the rest of them empty this time of year, and a small town at the top of the hill with a few houses and shops. In other words, a complete Bali-surf-fantasy, the kind of thing we did not think existed anymore. We spent two nights there, Sam got to slide all over the place on his single fin, and I got to read, go for runs and make tracks on the unmarked beach, and do some drawing. Oh yeah, and we both got to eat a lot! Our B.C. friends were there so we also got the scoop on Bali and life in Canada as well. (Summary: both are great, but not in February.)

Unfortunately our room was booked after two nights, but our friends had rented a car and were heading to the airport near Kuta to fly to Lombok, so we figured we might as well tag along. The flight had seats available (only $30) so feeling a little tick-like, we decided to follow our friends a bit more - they had done lots of research and seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going! The flight was, um, well Indonesian airlines are probably blacklisted for a reason, but it wasn't too bad and only took 30 minutes. The worst part was when the captain said something in Indonesian that sounded remarkably like "crash position, please" in English and then immediately put the plane into a nosedive, straight into, oh, the Mataram airport landing strip. Normal descent? Lucky crash landing? Anyway we seemed unscathed so we grabbed our boards and shared a taxi with our friends to, oh no, Kuta. Yeah, there's a Kuta on Lombok too!

Like Kuta Bali, Kuta Lombok is a surftown. That's about where the similarity ends. The town is small and pretty empty of tourists this time of year. There are many beautiful deserted beaches and a long craggy barely populated coastline. There are a few dozen unimpressive guesthouses both on and away from the beach, and a dozen or so restaurants. After some walking around, we found a pretty good deal ($18 for a huge room with a private outdoor bathroom, A/C, and hot water) at a haunted looking hotel with huge parklike grounds. We later found out that it was government-owned; it had probably been previously abandoned for awhile by the past owners when the first version of the Lombok international airport deal fell through. (The new deal is supposed to go through resulting in an international airport next year. Or maybe that's what the real estate mafia tells us, not sure.) Anyway the hotel pool was in good condition and the rooms were clean, which was all that mattered to us.

Now it was time to face the local mafia - i.e. moto and boat rental guys that lurk outside the hotel security gate all day, waiting for us, practically the only tourists in town. Luckily we'd already been warned of the most common scam there: they rent you a moto, but keep the spare key. When you park it on a beach or something to go surfing, they take the extra key and steal the moto and make you pay $1200 for it (the thing is probably only $700 new!) But you have no choice since of course the police are in on it, as well as a dozen or so large locals. FYI: the police in Indonesia are pretty much never on your side and should be avoided at all costs. Even the guidebook recommends running away if they try to pull you over while driving! Apparently running away is not a crime so you are not going to pay any extra and as a bonus you might actually get away. But we talked to a girl who ran away so much that they eventually set up a roadblock and threw the girl and her friends in jail because she couldn't pay the few hundred dollars worth of tickets she had racked up. So she spent the night in jail, bought the guard a few drinks, and he let her go in the morning! Crazy! Anyway the moto-scam. We told our guys that we wanted a guarantee that they would not steal our bikes, and they said ok for at least the immediate area. Outside of this area there are stories of machete attacks, etc, so we figured that was reasonable. We didn't have any problems, but two other people did get charged $1000 each for this scam while we were there, so be careful if you go! Lombok is great but you have to be on your toes while you are there.

The next day we chartered a boat from the same group and headed out to Garupuk, the main surf break there and the only place that was breaking, out on a reef in a nearby bay. This bay featured the typical emerald green and turquoise blue waters, picturesque brightly painted fishing boats, green crags at the entrance to the bay, virgin yellow sands inland on the beaches...yup, pretty standard. The surf was great for a few hours, which was plenty long for us! I mainly got paddling exercise, being a little afraid of the 1 1/2 overhead waves and reef. The sun was intense and even Sam got sunburned to the point of peeling later. This is saying a lot since by this point Sam was already super dark from Laos. I of course did an imititation of a Thai tourist and turned lobster red. But after awhile the wind and rain picked up, and 20 people in helmets with longboards showed up on a boat marked "Sengigi Surf Camp" or some such, so we happily retreated to our hotel pool. Later we got delicious food at the Family Cafe (really the only good place in Kuta Lombok that time of year) - get the chicken sandwiches and Brasilians (cinnamon, coffee, and chocolate smoothees) if you go!



Next day: repeat. In the afternoon we took the bikes and checked out some of the other beaches - no surf but Cassandra and I went for a jog and admired more scenery. The surf break was getting a little crowded though as more and more people figured out that this was the only spot breaking on the whole island, and the wind started picking up. So Sam and I decided to go to the Gili islands, to avoid the Rip Curl Search coming to Kuta Lombok in two days.

Cooties in Kuta

Bali - time for some beaches! Time for some R&R after some interesting but not very vacation-like travels in Southeast Asia. We had changed our tickets up a bit in order to get out of Thailand, and we decided to skip Singapore - sorry, we're just not city people, and Thailand kind of killed our budget already. We still ended up with Singapore in our passports though because Cathay Air couldn't check our bags through. I guess Cathay did not trust Valuair not to lose our bags (frankly neither did I, with a name like that.)

Our Valuair flight was very, uh, value - ancient seats that don't recline, $5 for a sandwich, etc. Almost like flights at home! It got in late to Bali got in late because of thunderstorms. We'd heard that you are often mobbed in Indonesia by taxi drivers, bracelet and sarong salespeople, etc, but we had to go looking to find even one taxi driver in the downpour. We bartered him down to $10 to get to Kuta, the nearest resort town. This apparently was too much bartering because the taxi dumped us off a block from the wrong end of the wrong street. I hung out with the pimps and hos for a bit while Sam ran around looking for a place to stay. We eventually found one and crashed out at about midnight - for about 10 minutes. Then we heard a huge commotion outside followed by a woman with a Hindi accent shouting for the next 4 hours straight "When you gonna change? You say you gonna change, so when you gonna change? You say you not gonna change? When you gonna change?" (and repeat) I guess she caught her man with one of the hos from my waiting spot. I wanted to shout "shut up and get a divorce" but instead we just had the management knock on their door three times. At dawn she eventually stopped only to start up again at 11am. So Sam heroically ran out and after looking at a zillion places, found us an even nicer hotel for half the price ($15 a night) just down the road - Hotel New Arena is super nice and is very clean and has a really nice pool if you decide to stay in Kuta due to kidnapping, insanity, or some other ailment.

By this point Sam had seen a fair bit of Kuta and was contemplating heading straight back to the airport and getting out of Bali. Only our nice room and hotel pool convinced him to stay. Kuta, Legian, and Seminiyak are three beachfront towns on the south coast of Bali. Kuta has basically assimilated the others, borg-style, and the whole strip is now one massive smelly dirty tourist trap. When one thinks of a "beach" one usually thinks something like rocks or sand (you know like they make glass from) next to water. However Kuta has its own definition: a solid layer of trash and plastic bags, next to a thick layer of trash and plastic bags floating on sewage. Maybe I exaggerate, maybe not, do not find out for yourself! We didn't attempt to swim or surf but the surfers we talked to said the plastic bags do really drag you down.

Inland from the "beach" Kuta consists of a bunch of super-busy roads and a bunch of narrow alleys thickly lined with tee shirt, sunglasses, and trinket shops, as well as the ubiquitous Circle K (I guess Circle K and not 7-11 has the monopoly in Indonesia.) However nobody could possibly shop because walking is a huge strain due to the need to constantly flatten yourself against the nearest wall or awning or other fat tourist (or whatever) to dodge high-speed motorbikes zooming down the shoulder-wide alleys, then run a few steps, and repeat. If I was a shopowner I'd put a bunch of roofing nails down 100 meters up the street every day so that the tourists could actually get enough peace to look at my goods!

Anyway once we got used to it Kuta wasn't so bad - our hotel swimming pool was quite enjoyable - so we spent a few days hanging out and shopping for a surfboard for Sam. We'd also found the cheapest place to eat near our first hotel - $1 nasi goreng, $0.70 gado gado, mmm. Indonesian food, or rather the tourist version of Indonesian food, is quite tasty. Nasi goreng is good old fried rice, usually with a fried egg on top, made delicious with Sam's favorite - "Sambal" sweet chili sauce, like a sweet Siracha sauce. Mie goreng is chow mein. Gado gado is steamed veggies and tofu with peanut sauce. Satay is meat on a stick with peanut sauce. There's also various curries and of course cap cay, which I never really did figure out but seems to be veggies or meat with what appears to be ketchup on them - but maybe I didn't find a very good place to order it. For the adventurous, you can also try babi guleng, roast pork served with a side of fried pork skin (often with the hair still on it), roast pork skin, blood sausage, and some stuff we couldn't identify, plus chili sauce. The roast pork is delicious hot but usually this stuff is cooked sometime last week and served cold - or rather luke warm, depending on ambient temperature.

Shortly before Sam finally found the most impractical board possibly for Bali's surf, a sweet little single fin, we ran into Kyle and Kassandra from B.C. Canada, some fellow surfers who gave us advice on where to go next, a semi-secret surf spot on the southwest coast. Glad for the advice, we hightailed it out of Kuta straightaway!

Double Big Mac, Super Sized

With Bangkok International Airport now open, there were plenty of sleeper seats on the midnight ghost from Laos into Thailand. We first went up to the restaurant car and partied in style, where we kept our seats until closing by giving one of the staff shots of our whiskey all night. Then we crashed out in our comfy bunks and arrived in Khaosan road bright eyed and bushy tailed, ok only a little bleery, and just in time for Chinese New Year. Oops, as in, everything is booked! It took some walking around but we did eventually find a place. Our first priority taken care of, we went straight to, you guessed it, those sweet, sweet golden arches. I got a double cheeseburger which went down smooth, but Sam foolishly got himself a double big mac (do they even have that at home?) with four burger patties, which he regretted soon enough. Ah, the joys of being back in the land of tourists after so much time at the village in Laos. I have to say, I haven't been sick since that meal. Either it was the ultimate cure, or the ultimate poison compared to everything we've eaten since.



We didn't have a lot of time before our flight to Bali, so we booked a trip to Koh Chang, one of the nearer Thai islands, famous as a backpacker destination, where Sam had stayed in a shanty beach bungalow just over two years ago for $3 a night. When we arrived fairly late in the day, we were surprised by the change since the tsunami - the whole strip had been coated in a tidal wave of fancy resorts! Even the shanty beach bungalows were now fancy, upscale looking beach bungalows, beachfront for $120/night, shanty bungalow a few meters from the landfill for $40/night, book well in advance!

BIG WARNING TO EVERYONE WHO READS THIS: THAILAND'S ISLANDS ARE NO LONGER BACKPACKER DESTINATIONS!

The ironic thing was we went to Koh Chang because everyone told us it was the best island left, and to avoid Koh Phi Phi, Phuket, and Koh Samui at all costs because they were so built up! Oh well on the plus side we now had a 7-11 every 50 meters on Koh Chang, so we would never get too thirsty! Sure, you can probably try some of the lesser known islands, and if you're willing to commute to the beach by moto you can still stay for very cheap. But for Americans, I think Hawaii or Mexico are now a better bet, with cheaper airfare, similar priced accomodation and food, and better beaches too. If you want to see southeast Asia, and don't mind riverfront instead of oceanfront, Laos and Cambodia are quite nice! Northern Thailand (Chang Rai, Chang Mai) is also super cool. Bali is still a good bet and pretty cheap, with clean beaches, at least outside of the biggest resorts, but more on that soon.

Anyway sorry for the negative spin, just thought we'd warn you. Sam talked to the local workers in Koh Chang and here's what happened: after the tsunami, big international companies came in and bought all the beachfront property. They then built a bunch of big hotels, which were completed and opened only six months ago. Some hotels are still going up. Surprisingly, rooms were still mostly full despite the higher prices and the airport situation a few months ago. But everyone we talked with who had been frequent visitors to Thailand in the past vowed never to return.

We hung out at Koh Chang for a few days. By staying across the street from the beach we managed to find the fanciest room we've stayed in for the whole trip, in a brand new hotel, for not too much money (though Sam had to use his good looks and boyish charm to extract the price from the receptionist girl, while I stayed discretely away.) The beach was ok, though not super clean. I guess they built big hotels but didn't think too much about sewage treatment, or maybe it was the landfill they were digging up polluting the ocean, or both. I highly recommend renting a moto and cruising all around the island at top speed, as in, pushing it up the steepest hills and cursing all the way, then nursing the burning brakes on the way down in first gear. Oh well, safety first! We also checked out one of the waterfalls there, it was pretty small but the water was refreshing. All in all I guess the highlight of Koh Chang was this delicious place where you could get a whole baked chicken for $5, we ate that every night with 7-11 bread - delicious! Everywhere else was $10 a plate for a few prawns. FYI: there's nothing like a trip to Laos to turn you into a super cheapskate! Or to make you appreciate a chicken with actual meat on its bones!

Another highlight of Koh Chang was the snorkeling trip we took. Ok, it was kind of a small boat, packed with tourists, and the snorkeling spots were small. And though they explicitly promised that fins were included they wanted to charge extra for them! But it was all made worthwhile when a boat 10 times more crowded appeared, absolutely packed with Thai tourists in identical swimsuits and lifejackets. They totally entertained us with their beach antics!



Then it was back to Khaosan, for more McDonalds, naturally, and also stocking up on the world's best tee shirts for travel, as in, hand washing and wringing. (You know, all those 7 Up and Elmo shirts Sam wears everyday like a uniform.) Decked out in style, we then spent one day checking out the huge mall, MBK, once the world's third largest, though probably not anymore. It is actually worth seeing! There's an entire floor of cell phone shops, hundreds and hundreds of them! The tricky part is finding the shop you liked again once you leave it, particularly if you already paid for something and are trying to pick it up! Also the Chinese New Year dragon dancers in the mall were pretty cool, though for some reason they did not have elephants with them like the ones back at Khaosan.

Another fun activity in Bangkok was catching the river taxi down to Chinatown. Actually, it was more like a river local bus - packed to the roof, and leaves regardless of the lady with the stroller trying to get on, with one leg on the boat and one on the dock....In Chinatown everything was closed for Chinese New Year, oops again, but Sam managed to pick up a cheap guitar to occupy spare time on those Balinese beaches.

Soon enough our time was up! At BKK we had to have BK, of course, and also for a change from Mickey D's. Then it was off to Bali!