The Great Bali Trip 2009 - Friday

(Been a long couple of weeks. Apologies for the lack of updates. Had work and a life to attend to, no more spare energy left to blog. No time to process pictures either. Will edit posts with pics later. :P)

Woke up relatively early for some hotel breakfast which wasn't life changing. I think I had toast, cheese & bacon - it was dry. And I had asked for boiled water because it was either that or papaya/banana/watermelon juice, coffee or tea. None of the options appealed to me. Unfortunately, boiled water tasted salty. Note to anyone who's going to go Bali - always drink bottled water. Always. Everything from the tap tastes salty. If you're anything like me and prefer your water to not taste of anything, always choose bottled water. And not any bottled water, mind you. Don't go for the one branded "Club". Club tastes weird. Go for the one manufactured under Nestle. That's still okay. But mineral water in generaly has that slight weirdish minerally taste anyway which really bothers me, but hey, give me some water with hint of mineral than full on salty one any day.

Took a walk by the beach with Suanie. It was really, really nice. Breezy, sunny, sandy, wet. Got our feet and slippers wet every time the waves decided to come and splash on us. It was fun attempting to avoid it while laughing at ourselves silly for not quite being able to run away from it. At this point of time, it felt like I didn't have a thing to worry about. All the worry just slipped away as the waves rushed back to the ocean. It was so liberating to just not care. Felt like I never wanted to go back to Real Life. It's been so long since I last felt like this. So... free.

Tonnes of tourists by the beach of course (mostly mat sallehs). Hot ones, old ones, young ones, fat ones, fit ones. There were so many white people it was almost as if we were in Hawaii. Almost. They were everywhere - sun bathing on rented beach chairs under rented beach umbrellas, surfing with rented surfboards, getting touted by #@($*@ touters selling everything from fruits to beads.

Walked back towards the paved roads and chanced upon a Starbucks. Maybe not by chance. I bet Suanie was subconsciously drawn to it because she has this Starbucks tracking device embedded into her nose and her nose led us to it. Just can't run away from the damned Starbucks. Of course we had to go in. Had our brunch of ice lemon teas (which wasn't salty) and sandwich and we were off towards Legian.

We did too much walking on this day. We passed by never ending rows of shops selling everything from tshirts to seafood and it just kept going and going and going. After a while all the shops started to looke the same. We must've walked for hours under the frying hot sun in the 1000% humidity level thinking we could get to this place called Kudeta from Legian by foot. Straight road only what. Straight straight straight. Straight my ass. We just kept walking until we felt like we couldn't walk anymore (about 3 hours I shit you not) and then decided to stop to ask for directions. Only to find out that there were still too many kms left and that it was nearly impossible to get there by foot and not die of exhaustion by the end of it (I exaggerate here. Of course you could walk it, you could walk all the way to bloody Ubud if you want to. It's not impossible, but you gotta be out of your bloody mind if you really wanted to, that's all I'm saying). Right there and then, we decided to grab a cab. And I like to quote Suanie here that "That was the best Rph30,000 (about Rm11) we've spent in Bali". That cab was practically life saving. I think we didn't even bother bargaining. Even if he charged us 50 bucks we might have taken it...... actually no, 50 bucks is a little too much. Maybe 20. or 30. Not 50, though.

I have to honestly say that I was a little apprehensive about Ku de ta at first. You know how when you get a recommendation from a friend (in this case it was Suanie's friend Ah Seng) telling you how awesome this place/food/drink/movie/book is and no matter how much you try to tell yourself not to do it you will, consciously or unconsciously set a certain level of expectation which is of course a level much higher than when you didn't know anything about the place/food/drink/movie/book? Ku de ta was like that for me. After hearing (or rather, reading) Ah Seng's rave about the place I was worried that it would end up to be some overpriced stupid tourist trap for silly rich tourists who didn't know better and therefore, not meet my expectation of it being a scenic, ambient chill out haven I had imagined it to be. I was already constructing a nasty email to Ah Seng in my mind which would begin something along the lines of "Dear LYING SON OF A BITCH! KU DE TA SUCKED..... etc."

So I was right. It didn't meet my expectations.

Kudeta trashed it to a bloody unrecognisable pulp.

The place was in the middle of nowhere, and the exterior of it was very unassuming. But once you enter the actual place itself, it felt like an oasis. Tastefully decorated with stones and wood, the entire place gives you a up market lounge/chill out area feeling. It feels like... a cross between Luna bar and Bar Savanh but a million times better. We managed to get an awesome corner overlooking the beach to catch the sunset. But eventhough it was really cloudy and we didn't manage to catch too much of the sun, being there itself was the best shit that happened to me in a long time. We didn't even say much to each other. Suanie and I were contented just sitting/lying on the couch, stuffing our faces with pork ribs and the best pizza in the world, guzzling down bottles of ice cold Bintang, and chilling. It was bliss. Suanie blurted out something like "I wished you were my boyfriend!" Ghey. lol. It is a great place to bring your partner. I don't care how much this fucks up your expectations of this place but I very highly recommend that you make a mandatory pit stop here if you're making a trip to Bali. Evening is best. No sun? No matter. Just being there is so bat shit crazy amazing you won't even miss the sun. Seriously, just go there.

We stayed till the sun had set, and decided to leave at about 6 plus? As if we had completely forgot about treacherous afternoon, we decided to try walking back to Legian via the beach route. No sun what, sure can! Yeah right. After about and hour or so, when Suanie suddenly realised that it was a terrible idea, we walked towards the tar road to hopefully flag down a taxi. Thankfully for us there were motorbike touters who happily accepted our Rph30,000 offer to zip us back to our hostel. Another fantastic Rph30,000 spent ever. The ride through the teeny tiny lanes of Kuta with the breeze in my face transported me back to Batu Gajah times where my cousins would take me joyriding around the village.... sigh.

Friday ended pretty damn perfectly.

Read Suanie’s version of our second day here.