As soon as we got into Bali we were attacked by sprukers trying to give us a lift to where we were going. We got into the car with one guy and he wanted to charge us 200000 rupiah ($20) to get us the 6 K's to our hotel.
We got out of his car and waited for the professional taxi service and got there for $5.
That pretty much sums up most of the trip, because we didn't go in the peak season there weren't as many westerners as usual to pick on so we got targeted a lot. The usual sale points were sunglasses, transport or food. And they would harass you to the point of blocking your exit from their shops and physically putting things in your bag to try and force you to buy it... This isn't to say the Balinese weren't nice people because there were some lovely people on the trip, but a lot of neighbouring islands would come to Bali to make money off the tourists and that was really annoying.
The drive from the airport on it's own was a real eye opener for us. It was only a 6 K drive but took over half an hour. There are NO road rules in Bali. In some ways the roads need a bit of flexibility because people always have to drift onto the opposite side (the roads mostly being single lane), but it also causes a lot of chaos and slows things down. People have no qualms about dumping a pile of sand in the middle of the road or parking in the middle of traffic, and there are scooters, dogs, chickens and pedestrians everywhere.
Kick ass pink tandem scooter in Kuta
We spent the first couple of nights in Kuta while we waited for Boris, Chris and the Belgian girls to arrive (Their plane was delayed), and after that we headed straight out of the city to try and escape the hawkers. We went up the east coast to a town called Candidasa and stayed there in a couple of resorts. (Top of the line resorts are around $80 a night which are VERY luxurious. We stayed mainly in a place at $35 a night).
Out there we had a crack at scuba diving on the USS Liberty ship wreck at tulamben, which was sheltering at Tulamben beach after a Jap torpedo attack and was wrecked when the volcano at mount Batu erupted in the 1960's causing it to topple over next to shore, making it accessible by beach which was cool.
It was an incredible dive. Bali is subject to a fair bit of overfishing (like all of Indonesia), but the USS liberty still had a fair bit of fish life (Although not many big pelajic species) it was really really good.
Another bonus from doing the dive was that Rachael managed to get her dive license on the day.
Rachael failed in Australia because apparently she has asthma and failed her dive medical (After paying $450 to complete the scuba course), but this was not a problem in Bali. Dive medicals are unheard of over there and a Dutch dive instructer just tested she knew what she was doing and passed her on the spot. How good is that, truly the Balinese way.
Rachael and Jose
Some divers off one of the shipwreck walls
Who needs a toothbrush when you've got CLEANER SHRIMPS. They'd go right up inside your mouth, they had no fear at all. It's nice to see that the fish don't just eat them after they clean their mouths out.
As for some of the Balinese people though...
Mantis shrimp
Leaf Frog fish
Coral trout?
After scuba diving we hired some Honda scooters for $5 a day and went and experienced the traffic first hand and explored the country side. Driving was really full on. We didn't have our licenses, but that doesn't matter in Bali, if we had been pulled over we would only have had to bribe the cop around $20 Australian to get off (If we were Balinese it would be WAY less).
Corruption is lithe in Bali, policemen actually have to pay the country significantly to become a police officer and then make their money out of bribes. It's a rich man's career over there.
One of our taxi drivers said he used to drive trucks from 14 years old, and had to rely on police corruption to keep his job. (Paying the officer $2 every day when he was pulled over to allow him to drive, and thus keep his job) He actually trained to be an accountant at uni, but then quit because he makes a lot more carting tourists around...
Trash Chicken. It's nice seeing chickens everywhere in Bali, they seem to have a good life. Hygenically it's probably not so good, but people were very tolerant of the chickens.
Roosters do not get such a good life in Bali. Cock fighting is officially outlawed in Bali, but with all the corruption it is everywhere. Every second house has roosters out the front for sale in baskets for cock fights.
Sad dog (Most dogs didn't look very healthy, I've heard this can be a hindu thing, some people think that if a person's been reincarnated as a dog then they've done something bad to get there..)
Kid's racing skiffs
Some Balinese kids near the hotel. They were eating some foul tasting berries off the ground. They didn't speak any English but that didn't stop them grabbing their parents to try and sell a guided tour for the area.
While wandering around I also found some local spearfishermen who took us out spearfishing some of the local islands (completely illegally). The dude (Jon) who took us spearfishing had a HUGE speargun he had lengthened himself.
He caught three small tuna's and a giant trevally on the day, these were cooked up proper bali style using slow cooking with coconut husks over chicken wire and occasionally slowing the cooking with some dirty water from the nearby pond (which everyone also washed in and disposed of fish scraps too). The fish was delicious, cooked perfectly.
Swimming in the filth water :D
Here also is a dude carrying some tables on a scooter. We saw ALL sorts of crap going around on scooters, there were up to FIVE people on one scooter, or about 15 sacks of rice or even full stalls selling food it was crazy.
That's probably enough really, we also went to the temples and the hot springs (both disappointing) and went rafting aswell.
Now we're in Innisfail getting ready to head out towards Darwin tomorrow. We're planning to head to some REAL hot springs tomorrow on the way through. The bus is back from the mechanic, we had to replace ALL the slave pistons because apparently they were all leaking, new seals had to be placed on the diff because it was also leaking oil into the brake housing, and we needed to get the master cylinder sleeve replaced and the piston lathed down to make it smooth again. In addition to this the mechanic also repacked all the wheel bearings, which I'm happy about because the rear left bearing was giving off a fair bit of heat after a long drive.
The bill in total was $1900... and after all that the brakes still feel as mushy as before... but at least they aren't leaking.
We're now broke so we've decided not to go to any more mechanics and do the work ourselves.
This evening we successfully tuned the gas to the new air filter (hopefully), which is one more job down. It's a long way to Darwin, so hopefully everything goes OK on the trip.
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