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A sign at Ngurah Rai airport welcomes you with, ‘Drug Traffickers will be shot’. It’s good to see one country in the world that’s taking drug offences seriously.
And so you’ve arrived in Bali.
The twenty minute taxi journey to Sanur, the oldest tourist resort in Bali, tells you a lot about the island, and how the country operates. In a word: Tourism. You’ll pass loads of tiny shed like ‘shops’ which mainly sell sarongs, rings, necklaces, wood carved animals and t-shirts. These stalls prove to be either intriguing or irritating, depending on your gender. More on that later.
We booked into the Bali Hyatt, a 5 star hotel by the beach, surrounded by 35 acres of award-winning tropical gardens. It truly was a wonderful place to stay. We were welcomed with garlands of frangipani flowers and shown to our air-conditioned rooms, each with its own balcony, offering either a garden view or a sea view (the latter for those who are willing to pay a little more), mini bar and television. The staff were friendly, if a bit over friendly, constantly saying good morning/afternoon/evening, folding their hands together and tilting the head forward in the Hindu namaste greeting.
Unfortunately, eating at the hotel proved to be very expensive. Eating and drinking in Bali can cost very little, but the Hyatt has five-star prices, charging around 80,000 rupiahs (five pounds) for a club sandwich when you can get it for less than half this in the tourist restaurants outside.
So eating out really is the thing to do. The restaurants and bars in Sanur offer a wide range of food, ranging from Italian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, European and, naturellement, Indonesian. Indonesian food was very tasty indeed. Bali is the home of the Satay, pieces of diced meat or fish on skewers, grilled or barbecued over a wood or charcoal fire, then served with various spicy seasonings .In a tourist restaurant a filling main course and a drink can be had for less than a fiver.
For all the beer drinkers out there, you’ll have to get used to the limited range of lagers in Bali. The main beer on the island is Bintang. My first thought after taking a sip was ‘This is worse than Carling’. However after three days I would drink nothing else. It has a taste that grows on you, something I have not experienced with any other lager back in the UK. I even bought a Bintang t shirt, which goes to show how much I loved the stuff. Other than Bintang, menus may have only two other types of beer on offer, usually Heineken and Bali Hai. I strongly discourage anyone to have Bali Hai, a taste that can only be compared to the weakest shandy on earth. But beer is cheap in Bali, hardly causing a dent in your wallet at about £1.50 for a large bottle.
In terms of wine, don’t even think about it. Since most of the wine is imported, they charge upwards of 400,000 rupiah (24 pounds!) per bottle. So wine is a no-no unless you’re Bill gates. Cocktails are reasonable, only costing four or five quid each.
But it is when you leave the safe confines of a restaurant or hotel, and wander on to the streets that the irritation or intrigue that I mentioned earlier begins to seep in. As your sandal hits that kerb you will be harassed by locals trying to sell you things. The streets are lined with stalls and shops manned by middle-aged women and men trying to get your attention. “You very pretty miss, you like sarong, I sell you good price…Nice watch for the gentleman, you buy, you buy…” And so it goes on. Even if you decide to ignore the people trying to talk to you they’ll either follow you down the street for half a mile (yes, seriously) or shout ‘HEY! HEY! OI! EXCUSE ME! SIR!’
I have very little patience for such antics, and little or no interest in the stuff on sale. Women however, might enthralled by the gold and silver jewellery and sarongs for at seemingly low prices. This is where the art of bargaining comes in.
Say a seller is trying to flog you a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses. Firstly, he will start off with some ludicrous price: 450,000 (27 pounds). So you’ll offer him 60,000. He stares at you for a second like you’re afflicted with some mental disability and shakes his head. He says no, no, ok, 400,000. You laugh and say right, 80,000. More shaking of his head, more adamant stares are thrown your way. Eventually you say 100,000. He laughs, you turn to walk away and he grabs you by the shoulder. Ok, ok, my friend he says, 100,000.
In actual fact this interaction did actually happen between me and a seller in Bali. A pair of (imitation?!) Ray Ban sunglasses for 6 quid? Bargain! And all I had to do was bargain and pretend to walk away. On a serious note, I don’t really blame them.
In 2002 and 2005 bombings by Islamist terrorists in the town of Kuta killed over 200 people, nearly all tourists. Since then tourism in Bali has dropped a staggering 40%. So making a living has proved that much harder for the residents of the island. Still, the methods of the sellers out there are irritating. I remember one particular day when I was looking at t shirts near the beach in a walled-off compound, when a woman came up to me and asked me where I was from. I replied England. She said “Ahh, England. My name Judy, I help you.”
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t her name, she just volunteered an English name in an effort to relate to me somehow. “No thank you, I’m just browsing.”
She then puts an arm round me and guides me to her stall, despite my protests, waving pairs of shorts and sandals in my face. I kept glancing over to the wall of the compound, contemplating whether to do a runner and vault it. You’ll find yourself in many situations like this, though don’t be put off by them, its all part of the experience after all. There are some mountainous regions of Bali where seller’s tactics are more aggressive (if you touch what item they’re offering you’ll have to buy it or else!).
Transport in Bali is cheap. The local shared taxis or ‘bemos’ cost very little, and the air-conditioned taxis plying for hire everywhere are also very reasonable. However the roads are blighted by hundreds of people speeding along on scooters and mopeds. It is these scooters weaving around all over the place that can turn a 20 minute journey into almost double that, if you’re unlucky.
People of all ages ride along on these carriages of death. Shockingly, whilst in a traffic jam in a taxi, I happened to glance through my window and see a baby of no more than a year old sandwiched between his mum and dad on the scooter. None of them were wearing helmets needless to say. What if there was an accident and that baby went spinning across the road like a ragdoll, a grisly stump where its head used to be? I shuddered at the thought. I was amazed not to witness any accidents whilst I was in Bali, considering the scooters outnumber the cars by at least 3:1.
The taxis can be a nuisance. If you’re walking down the road and a taxi passes you- and they will, one every 5 seconds- they’ll honk their horn and slow down, looking at you and yelling ‘Taxi, taxi!’. You shake your head and continue, and watch them drive off only to hear another horn blasted at you and the same thing will happen again.
In the north east and west of Bali, away from the hustle and bustle of the towns lies the mountainous regions of the island. You can hire a car and driver for the day for £25-£30 to take you up there. After passing through the numerous villages on the way up you’ll eventually hit the countryside. It’s a nice change from the urban areas, since you’ll see numerous terraced rice fields with workers bent double planting the seedlings in the muddy water. Other than the rice paddies you’re surrounded by fields of green, trees, flowers, coffee plants, it truly is the world’s garden, and one of the greenest places I’ve been. Unlike some African countries Bali does not suffer from a lack of rain, and in some areas the fertile soil will produce three crops of rice a year.
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One of the highlights of the holiday was definitely when I got the chance to ride an Elephant. It may have cost $50, but it was worth every dollar. I was on an elephant called Laura, according to the Elephant trainer. She was 14 years old, which is a young for an elephant apparently. Her skin felt like a car tire as I climbed up on to her back. The hairs on the top of her head felt like a welcome doormat. I got to ride on her for 15 minutes, as she took me though some gardens at her slow, lolloping pace. I could feel every step she took, as her shoulder blade brushed by my leg every few seconds. I felt sorry for her though; every few minutes the trainer would hit Laura on the skull with a spiked hammer, presumably to encourage it. Poor beast I thought. I would have flung him off into the ravine if it was me.
The capital city of Bali, Denpasar, is half an hour away from Sanur. There isn’t a lot to say about it, apart from that its dirty (streets lined with rubbish), noisy and busy. We went to the two main markets there- two colossal buildings filled with everything you could imagine. Then my mother got conned into buy some fake perfume from some random guy on the street selling them from his backpack. My family and I tried to warn her that it was probably not the real thing, and that 100,000 rupiah was too much to pay, but she didn’t listen. Later, she found the perfume in Sanur in the supermarket, 30,000 rupiah cheaper than she had bought it in Denpasar. She was livid.
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One of the main attractions around Bali is the numerous temples you can visit. There are so many on the island the government don’t even bother to count them. When visiting a temple it is important to show respect. Upon entry you are required to wear a sarong and a sash around your waist. To the uninitiated, a sarong is a length of cloth wrapped around the waist and worn like a skirt. You may feel silly wearing one but it is a requirement if you want to enter the temple. Every statue and tree in the temple grounds even wear one! To be honest there isn’t a lot to see in a temple, though if you happen to visit one during a temple festival (held once a year), you’ll see people preparing food for it, making dough, and praying.
The weather more or less stayed the same while I was in Bali. The temperature during the day was between 30 and 34 celsius, usually accompanied by a pleasantly cool breeze by the beach, or no breeze at all, if you’re up in the mountains visiting an active volcano for example, which we did.
Batur volcano (Gunung Batur) is the most popular active volcano on the island. The summit is 5,633 ft above sea level..Its latest eruptions were in 1974, 1998, and 2000. Our driver, a chubby man called Bobby who spoke English moderately well drove us through the villages at its base.
The lava flows make it hard to grow much food. In pockets of fertile soil onions were grown through polythene to conserve moisture. Attempts to cultivate tomatoes were less successful and in places they had withered on their stalks. Bobby warned us that the locals used aggressive sales tactics up in Batur, and told us not to touch anything the people tried to sell us.
It was on one of the last days that I tried parasailing on Sanur beach. The boat roaring out to sea and dragging me up into the air was a bit daunting, but once I was high in the sky I was treated to an amazing view of the south coast of Bali. It was only then I realised how much I had enjoyed the holiday, and appreciated all the island had offered me over the two weeks. Yes walking the streets can be a bit annoying, and watching scooters and mopeds slaloming around the cars and holding up traffic can evoke feelings of terror and frustration, but its all worth it. There is loads to see and do, tasty food to try, and as much beer as you can drink.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to my local to ask if they sell Bintang. I can’t live without it.
Copyright © 2009 Richard Sayers
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