Bali, Kuta

Bali, Indonesia is around 3 hours from Phuket, direct flight with AirAsia and cheap, $80. That's where Nils and I agreed to meet for a few drinks. Cheap flights 4 times a week only, so I arrived a day early to prep everything for the arrival of the Boss.

I booked some semi-decent hotel in Kuta which was supposed to be the heart of Bali parties. According to the hotels own homepage it was a 3 star hotel, I would consider if it earned any stars at all. The room smelled horribly and I guess the hotel knew the problem, because they had installed a smell thing which would automatically spray some kind of lemon spray to make the stench less. The bathroom was way below standard, there were small 1cm black worms coming up from the water outlet, that was kind of disgusting.

But the hotel had a decent pool and a bar as well, so it could not be all that bad.

Nils arrived the next day and it didn't take more than 15min before we were at a bar with a beer in the hand, welcome Marquard!
We did not have any particular plan, so I had booked the hotel for 2 extra nights and the idea was then that we would come up with something to do or somewhere to go.
The next day however, we spent the most of the day at the pool. Kuta was really warm compared to Patong, maybe because we were in the city where there was no wind and we were just roasting in the sun.

I expected going to Kuta to find some authentic Balinese cuisine, what ever that would be. I was a little disappointed when I read the menus and it was all American, Australian and European foods there, with a few local menus thrown in. There are plenty of chain restaurants, McDonalds, Buppa Gump Shrimp factory and whatever they are called, so people can really feel at home on Bali.

We wanted to try some buggy driving, similar to ATV, but bigger engines and sitting much lower like a small car. We signed up at one of the countless booths on the street selling tours. Everything set and we headed for the bars. When we came back to the hotel however the guy selling the tours were waiting for us. Unfortunately the only company doing the tours were celebrating the boss's son's marriage and so all tours were canceled for two days. Hmm, we had been talking about river rafting too and we decided to give that a chance instead.
Next morning we were picked up really early by a young guy Wayan. There was another Indonesian couple in the car on their honeymoon, the guy didn't speak that good English. We had approximately 2 hours drive ahead of us, I got the rear seat of the car, big mistake. Apparently we were a little late because of traffic in Kuta, so when we came to the country side, the driver drove like he was some kind of race car driver. The car literally jumped a few times, and with me in the back seat I jumped even more.
Kind of stressful when they are driving on the wrong side of the streets, especially for Nils who was in the front seat, but without the usual steering wheel and pedals, haha
Finally we arrived and stumbled out of the car more or less awake, shaken and not feeling all too good, but some fresh air in the jungle cured that.
We got out gear, helmet and life west and I started mounting the GoPro camera, because I really wanted video of this ride. We went down to the boat and found some half deflated boat and joked around that this was our boat. It was, haha. Our little Balinese guide found a pump and started working, but then I had to intervene and volunteered Nillerman to start using his humongous muscles for something useful. 10 minutes later the boat was ready to go and we jumped in.
The weather in Bali is close to 100% humidity so I was a little worried about how the GoPro would react once the camera got into the colder water. Of course it fogged up after a few minutes and eventually froze, so much for those videos.
The ride down was great, the young couple we had in the boat were really kind too and laughing all the time. We passed a lot of boats full of young red-neck Australian, they didn't look like they were enjoying themselves at all. In fact they were just in our way so we ran over a few of their boats. Afterall, he had put the two biggest weight in the front and we went do the river like a speedboat, haha
At the end of the ride we were had a 4 meters drop off a waterfall. We got reorganized in the boat and tied down the oars and set off. For a second I think people stopped breathing, but the landing was actually quite soft, I guess they tried that stuff before. This was my first river-rafting experience, maybe not the wildest ever, but now I am ready for more, yeah
Back in Kuta there was not that much to do actually. The disco's were full of the same kind of redneck teenagers as we met on the river rafting, not exactly. The slower bars were occupied with older guys couldn't hang with the younger crowd. We were stuck in the middle and had to search hard. But we found our spot in Kuta too, a Mexican place that served the best Mojitos on the street. At least the more we got, the better they tasted, haha
Kuta, I did not see much of it, but from what I saw, it is definitely not my cup of tea. Off to find a better place on Bali, I know it exists