Kuta-Bali

Arrived on schedule (noon) at Denpasar. Visa were quickly arranged, as for all the other passengers. Easy earnings for the state of Indonesia, 25 USD p.p. Luggage present, bike-boxes OK. Two cars took us to our accommodation, a motelroom in a beautiful garden. The accommodation appeared to be located in the same street and just 200 mtrs away from the place that was bombed in Oct. 2002. Now a beautiful monument is on the spot. (Also the Bounty disquotheque is close, Pascale 🙂 ). Since the bombings tourism in Bali has dropped dramatically and the industry suffers a lot. Many restaurants and hotels have plenty of vacancies, it’s a sad thing to experience. It seems
that terrorists always have succes, one way or the other.
First impressions: sticky heat. I was not prepared for this wet heat. Wet t-shirts all the time, without doing a thing. Then: it’s a highly populated area, very heavy traffic in the streets. But they behave, and speeds and noise are never high. Then: everyone seems to run his own retail- or workshop. All buildings, big or small, are doing a trade and they all advertise it via huge billboards. There are so many of those that you can’t distinguish one from the other and it’s almost impossible to discover the (work)shops behind them.
Our first day we suffered a bit from jet-lag. Walked along the beach, had some beers and a nice meal and then slept for nearly 12 hours. The second day we biked to the cap[ital, visited the Bali-museum. This museum was founded by the colonial rulers in 1932, the Dutch. It was still in tyhe same shape and nice. Afyter that we went to the Arts Centre, where we were supposed to see contemporary Bali arts. Nothing of this was there, it was a dilapidated place, nicely built, but negelected. (Too few visitors after Oct. 2002?) Aftern that we biked back (alltogether 40kms), got wet from the rain and got completely lost in the end. We had to ask our way at least 5 times (everone very helpful, great smiles), but did get home in the end. Indeed: without a proper map in a small scale (don’t exist) or a detailed description of the route to follow you don’t get very far here.

Our "room" in Matahari Bungalows in Kuta.