Our flight into Bali arrived almost an hour ahead of schedule which meant that we had plenty of time to make New Years celebrations, or so we thought. Arriving in our first foreign country on New Years Eve seemed like an idilic notion and a perfect way to start our trip, however in hindsight arriving late at night on one of the busiest celebratory days of the year was not the wisest idea! Our taxi driver doubled up nicely as traffic conductor, at numerous times getting out of the 'taksi' to clear the gridlock. Many of the major roads were closed to non pedestrian traffic and those that weren't were crammed full of cars just big enough to fit on the narrow road and scooters, oh so many scooters! Chaos was the only word we and the taxi driver could use to describe it but we made it to our hotel and saw the New Year in with a Bintang.
We spent the first 3 days in the town of Kuta, which is the busiest, most popular resort area in Bali and the budget accommodation capital of Indonesia. This is where the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 occurred, so a visit to the bomb memorial listing the names of those killed in 2002 was in order to pay our respects.
The weather here is around 28-33 degress and about 85% humidity, so it's hot and sticky. The 5km beach at Kuta is a surfers dream with big swell on most days. Unfortunately, it is not the cleanest beach and the sea is quite murky so it doesn't make for somewhere to relax and cool off from the heat, and because we're not surfers we decided to make our first move over to the smaller town of Sanur, 30 minutes east. We stayed in a small hotel down a quiet lane just a short stroll to the beach and the town is more relaxed and quieter than Kuta, much more our style (read that as we are now in our cardigan wearing 30's and can't party like we did in our 20's).
A few travel errors to report so far:
Know how much a taxi from the airport should cost before arriving so you don't pay quadruple the amount.
Don't enter the wrong pin number 3 times in at an ATM or it swallows your card, one of us didn't already know that!
Don't be nice to the street touts as they will run after you for hours offering sunglasses for one dollar, no, two for a dollar, no, three for a dollar!
No dodgy stomachs to report yet, although no flushing toilets either.
Next stop Lombok or Ubud, we haven't decided yet, and will let you know when we have!
Ryan & Jo
