A Day in Kuta - Oct. 3, 2010

 October 3, 2010

Senne's Summary: Went to Kuta, saw lots of places to shop but didn’t really shop, saw the surf beach, finally found the dental floss!

Today we slept in until after 10! We missed breakfast! I haven’t slept in that late in weeks!

We decided to just shower and head straight to Kuta. We found a taxi right at the end of our block. Well actually the driver was taking a nap in his car, but woke up when he heard us talking. He offered to take us to Kuta for 70,000 (we were told to pay a maximum of 100,000) so we hopped in his car. He was really nice and told us all kinds of interesting things about scooters, accidents, buying scooters with "the credit" (kind of like renting and the bank just takes it back after three months 😉). He was very sweet and dropped us off right at Discovery Mall in Kuta.

When we exited the cab a very nice man cornered us and started talking to us. You’re not going to believe this but I, Lisa Marta, was the “Grand Prize WINNER!” (insert sarcasm here). He was quite an actor and very good at keeping us cornered. “I’ve been doing this for three months and I’ve never seen a Grand Prize Winner! I so excited!!!!” he told us. When we finally managed to get away from him (without getting in the cab to go to the resort to pick up my prize) he was very sad because not only would his boss not give him his bonus, I bring him bad luck. We’ll have to be more diligent about paying attention when we get out of cabs obviously!

After we managed to escape we headed into the mall. Interestingly, in the mall stuff was pretty much the same price it was at home. I did buy some new flip flops, but that’s all. We’ve actually done really well at slipping into the “no shopping” role. You wouldn’t believe it if you know how much we love shopping, but we just aren’t buying anything. (This backpack/limited space thing is definitely good for the budget!)

OH! We also found a drugstore in the mall that had dental floss!!! That was very exciting 😀 They didn’t have hair detangler though… so when mine runs out in a couple of days expect some scary (scarier than usual!) pictures of my hair.

We wandered through the mall for a while, had a lunch that was forgettable and then headed out to the beach. The beach is amazing… wide and long! It seems to be mostly for surfing and not swimming though.

We walked along the walkway at the top in the shade at first. It was packed with people selling cold drinks, massages and miscellaneous other stuff. The cold drink guys had lawn chairs set up so that if you wanted to buy a drink you could sit in the chairs while you drank it. A very clever tactic as once they had you in the chair the massage people and selling people had you cornered 😉 When I figured that out I decided to stay thirsty for just a little while longer!

We walked down to the water’s edge to check out how cold the water was, and it was lovely. Not cold at all. Steve thinks he needs to come back and rent a surfboard one day. I’ll just rent a beach chair and read my book. Sounds like a perfect day to me 😀

After walking on the beach for a while we headed up to the streets to see what was happening and see if we could find a drink without being surrounded by massage people. (The massage people are horrified by my toenails and also desperately want to give me a pedicure. I haven’t had one since May and only have scraps of nail polish left on them! “Yes, You need pedicure lady?!”) We managed to find a little bar called “Uncle Norms” and went in for a drink. We were both so hot we decided to try a beer. Neither of us are big fans of beer, but sometimes when you’re hot it just tastes good. This is one of those times! A wonderful bonus was that they brought us chilled towels when we sat down 😀

There was also this beautiful little girl across the street working with her mom while she sold bracelets. The little girl was about 3 and super cute. She totally ignored the men that walked by, but when ladies walked by she’d call out to them, “Hello Lady!” Once she noticed Steve and I were watching her she started performing… dancing and smiling.

Steve managed to sneak a couple of photos of her from our table. When we left we walked by and Steve asked her mom if we could take a photo of her. She said yes and we gave her a little bit of money in return. She knew exactly how to pose… it must be part of their money-making plan.

We decided at this point to start looking for a taxi to head back to our hotel, but instead ran into a parade for the Kuta Karnivale!

There were a couple of elephants, lots of bikes and all kinds of people including the Hare Krishnas (not the same ones from Italy… a whole new batch!).

We walked down the parade route and finally found a taxi at the end. He wanted us to pay 300,000, which is 3X too much. We told him we’d only pay 100,000 and walked away down the street. He called us back, and then would only go down to 150,000 so we left. We headed back down to the mall because we knew there were a lot of taxis there.

Traffic waiting for the parade to end.

By this time there was a fair bit of “condensation” on me and I was thirsty again. We stopped in at a little restaurant and decided to go for the Red Fanta again. Steve asked me if I wanted two. I thought that meant one for me and one for him, so I replied, “Yes.” Then Steve ordered FOUR Red Fantas. The waitress looked at us like we were odd… go figure. Anyway, we did drink them all and felt thoroughly sick afterwards. It did remind us of one of the advantages of being a grown up though… if you want red pop and ice cream for dinner nobody can stop you!

I managed to find a taxi while Steve was accosted by some girl wanting him to do a survey and I arranged the ride back for 100,000. I’d like to say it was my excellent negotiating skills, but it wasn’t… he just said 100,000 and I agreed 😀

When we arrived back at the hotel we had a swim and caught up with all the other guests. That’s a nice thing about staying in a little place like this… everybody chats with each other and so far everyone here is very nice.

After our swim we were determined to find the Fortune Cookie restaurant we had been looking for the previous evening. We managed to find it this time! We didn’t turn off on the little side street when we were supposed to yesterday. We found it, and the restaurant was terrific. The food was very, very tasty!

After dinner we came back and had another swim (condensation problem again!), chatted with the other guests, and then headed to bed.