Back to Bali

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Back in Bali, we spent the first few days in the obscenely touristy city of Kuta, soaking up the air conditioned shops and thrilled by the wide array of food options. Kuta is Bali's most popular tourist vacation, particularly as a surfing destination for Australians and Europeans looking for a beach vacation. The streets are packed with surf shops, trinket stands, bars, nightclubs, coffee shops and relatively expensive tourist restaurants. If there is any Indonesian authenticity remaining in Kuta, it is hiding far from the swarming city center. After a few days of gorging on the thrilling array of varied food options and pushing our way through hoardes of desperate street vendors, we grew tired of Kuta's hectic pace and rowdy nightlife. We checked out of our hotel and took a taxi back to Sanur, returning to Lestari Homestay.

In contrast to the last time we'd been in Sanur, when almost every hotel in Bali had been booked, we returned to a completely empty hotel. Happy for business, the friendly owners offered us a very nice air conditioned poolside room (with a decently-sized bed this time) for the same cost as the budget room we'd had previously. The small pool was about six steps from our doorstep, and I fell into a comfortable routine of waking up each day with a swim in the rising sun.

We stumbled upon a small local warung a few blocks from our hotel, run by a super friendly local named Anna. The food was cheap, authentic and fantastic. Anna was always excited to see us, and made sure to prepare tuna steaks and spicy greens just to our liking every day when we came in. A pair of skinny white street dogs dozed in the open doorway, and fans slowly stirred the sticky heat above our heads. We ate there almost daily, between long walks through town and soaks in the hotel pool.

Time passed slowly as we waited to return to Thailand. We had used up most of the 90 days on our Thai visas already, so we were stuck in Indonesia until about a week before our flight to Tokyo. It certainly wasn't a bad place to wait. Brilliantly colored flowers bloomed everywhere, the wam ocean lapped at the white beach a few blocks from our hotel (although most of the beach was owned by the giant Hyatt hotel), and we ate fresh fish steaks at least once a day. Blurry re-runs of mediocre American TV shows played endlessly on the small hotel television, interrupted periodically by televised calls to prayer. We read nearly every book in the hotel's ecclected lending "library", struggled with the shaky internet at the local cafe, and soaked up as much warmth and sun as possible. The reality of a much colder American climate loomed in our subconscious as the end crept closer.

After a couple of weeks of daily pool soakings, we suddenly noticed that my hair had turned green. Not exactly bright green, but not terribly subtle either. It was particularly noticeable in the sunlight, which is of course abundant in Bali. No amount of scrubbing or washing in the hotel shower or ocean got the green out. I reluctantly sacrificed my morning swims and hoped the sunlight would bleach the green out over time. (It took a couple of months, but the green did eventually fade away.)

Finally, it was time to return to Bangkok. We said goodbye to Anna at the warung, packed our bags once again, and flew back to Bangkok one last time.

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