bali'd
Day 12 – 12/03/12
Start – Bingin Beach, Bali Finish – Bingin Beach, Bali Distance travelled – 0km (scooters still don’t count) Words by - Johnny Bang |
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Contrary to yesterday and the night with Kevin, we woke up fresh and early. We got a good surf at Uluwatu which crossed off one of my life goals (for surfing at least). If anything it was a little sad to see a place get so thrashed by surf tourism. But I guess we are surf tourists ourselves, and it’s no less clean most of the other, non-surfing beaches. I think after seeing the place in so many surf movies my utopian expectations were bound to be unfulfilled. The surf was about 4-5ft but after a few hours the tide came up and buried the swell. This, combined with the extra 50 people in the water, meant it was time to leave.
The reefs and paddle-outs are not as scary as I had been lead to believe - but that might change when we score it a bit bigger.
A long walk back to our scooters and a little old lady sold us some cold bottled water. It was only when I opened the bottle and tasted the water I noticed the seal was already broken and she sold us tap water in an old bottle (we got scammed by a little old lady). I’m going to call it getting ‘Bali’d’ from now on. I drank the water anyway, because I bought it already – but I’ll come back to the subject of drinking Bali tap water soon.
We got a call from the freight company today, and after meeting our agent and a bit of running around it looks like we should have the bikes tomorrow morning at 11:00AM. I can’t wait. We were waiting with the agent when he got the news this afternoon and he was genuinely surprised and stoked that they were actually giving us the bikes. I don’t know what to make of that (it was as if he was surprised that whatever they did actually worked). I asked what the costs were going to be and was told something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it – we can talk tomorrow’. I don’t like the sound of that – I hope we don’t get Bali’d again.
Our agent is actually a pretty nice guy, and I asked him today if he, or the locals drink the tap water (I thought they did). His response was to ask if I was serious, laugh, and they make direct eye contact and sternly tell me to never drink the tap water. Even after the conversation have moved onto other subjects, every 5 mins he would again remind me to never drink the tap water. I think I am going to stop drinking the tap water.
In other news, all these hostels, board hire and scooter hire has increased my daily budget 600% (from $10 a day to $60 a day). I will hope to make it up with a downgrade to free camping and street-meat when we are back on the road.
So now the plan is get our bikes and get to Jakarta by Monday morning so we can lodge Myanmar Visa applications. Then maybe we can think about another surf…
The reefs and paddle-outs are not as scary as I had been lead to believe - but that might change when we score it a bit bigger.
A long walk back to our scooters and a little old lady sold us some cold bottled water. It was only when I opened the bottle and tasted the water I noticed the seal was already broken and she sold us tap water in an old bottle (we got scammed by a little old lady). I’m going to call it getting ‘Bali’d’ from now on. I drank the water anyway, because I bought it already – but I’ll come back to the subject of drinking Bali tap water soon.
We got a call from the freight company today, and after meeting our agent and a bit of running around it looks like we should have the bikes tomorrow morning at 11:00AM. I can’t wait. We were waiting with the agent when he got the news this afternoon and he was genuinely surprised and stoked that they were actually giving us the bikes. I don’t know what to make of that (it was as if he was surprised that whatever they did actually worked). I asked what the costs were going to be and was told something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it – we can talk tomorrow’. I don’t like the sound of that – I hope we don’t get Bali’d again.
Our agent is actually a pretty nice guy, and I asked him today if he, or the locals drink the tap water (I thought they did). His response was to ask if I was serious, laugh, and they make direct eye contact and sternly tell me to never drink the tap water. Even after the conversation have moved onto other subjects, every 5 mins he would again remind me to never drink the tap water. I think I am going to stop drinking the tap water.
In other news, all these hostels, board hire and scooter hire has increased my daily budget 600% (from $10 a day to $60 a day). I will hope to make it up with a downgrade to free camping and street-meat when we are back on the road.
So now the plan is get our bikes and get to Jakarta by Monday morning so we can lodge Myanmar Visa applications. Then maybe we can think about another surf…
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