I am sick of Bali.
To be more precise, I’m sick of every single person I encounter while walking down the street harassing me to buy their shit. I literally can’t go 10 seconds without someone trying to get me to take a taxi, get a massage, buy their cheap crap, eat in their restaurant or rent their motorbike.
I’ve experienced this sort of thing before in Manila and Hong Kong, but never anything close to the degree which I’ve experienced it in Bali. In Java, at worst, someone would come up to me and want to practice English. They’d talk, ask about the Presidential elections and just chat. Here, you are a walking dollar sign. It has made my experience in Bali less and less enjoyable the longer I’ve had to stay.
I’m staying in Kuta which is sort of the tourist area, but the thing is, it is actually worse as you go into the island. When I took my day tour, I actually had about six women pushing and rushing up to my car door to sell me crap when our car pulled in to park.
it isn’t just that they try to sell you stuff. I actually understand that and get it. It is part of the territory when you visit a place like Bali. However, when they stick t-shirts and postcards in your face, they literally stick it in your face and will not back away when you say “no”, as if they were trying to find new ways to make sure you didn’t buy anything from them.
If you should make the mistake of buying something when you are on the beach, you will be mobbed by people who saw you buy something. They must think that anyone who will buy one thing will buy an infinite number of things. Again, it is as if they they want to make sure you never by anything by making the experience as unpleasant as possible.
I have also been highly annoyed because it has been so difficult to get a ticket to Dili, East Timor.
I first stopped at local places that had “Airline Tickets” on a sign out front. The first three places didn’t do international tickets. I eventually found one that only took cash and didn’t have a computer. Their “reservation system” consisted of calling some guy. When they called their “guy”, he kept quoting me different prices for a one way ticket to Dili based on how long I was staying. It made no sense.
There is one and only one airline which flies from Bali to Dili and their website doesn’t do online reservations.
I eventually just asked the front desk at the place I was staying where a real travel agency was. They made a call to their “guy” and worked it out, but to pay with a credit card, they had to send a courier over to get a photocopy of my credit card. There is no way in hell I’m going to make a photocopy of my credit card and give it to some “guy”. I eventually had to get a ride to the travel agency to take care of it in person.
East Timor has to be one of the hardest to reach countries in the world, which is especially odd considering it is just north of Australia and connected to a large country like Indonesia. There is also one and only one airline which flies to Australia and that flies into Darwin. The flights from Bali and Darwin are the only flights which service the entire country of East Timor.
My flight to Darwin was easy to book as was my flight from Darwin to Melbourne. The Darwin to Melbourne leg is by far the longest, but also the cheapest. Competition will do that.
I have to kill 12 hours in Darwin because my flight to Melbourne leaves at 12:30am Tuesday morning. I hope they have lockers at the Darwin airport.
I think I’m also becoming frustrated because I’ve been sort of mentally looking forward to taking time off in Melbourne and taking care of business. It is odd that when you take a vacation from vacation, you end up working and doing stuff. It really is an anti-vacation. Everything which is delaying that is making me frustrated and pissing me off.
Yesterday I did something I’ve never done before. I visited a spa. The area around my hotel has a lot of spas which are really cheap. You can get a massage, facial, body scrub, and a pedicure for $15. That’s about 2 hours of time. There is really very little overhead and labor is cheap, so you see a lot of spas around Bali. It was quite nice, especially considering I didn’t have to pay much for it.
I’ve heard spotty things about the Internet in East Timor, so I have no idea how often I’ll be able to log on. I’m sure I’ll manage at least one post, but don’t expect too much the next few days.