One night in Kuta ... is plenty

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September 29
After a hectic day back in Bangkok I board a plane to Bali. I nearly miss it because I was looking at the arrival time and had set the alarms and everything for 7am. But then, out of paranoia, I checked the ticket one last time and realized it was a 6am flight. Yikes. Oh well, up at 3am and into a taxi.
Get to Bali and it’s hot and my debit card doesn’t work. Kuta is horrible and I spend one night there during which I rang my stupid bank which has stopped my card for spurious reasons of fraud. Back off Barclays, you interfering goons. Thanks to you I changed money at a place that cheated me and you ensured I was a victim of fraud. Good work.
Joyfully leave busy, sleazy Kuta and get on a bus for Ubud, which is much more pleasant. When I get off the bus at the mini mart I am accosted by Joe who takes me to Dewi Antara homestay. There is a chamber with a mouldy-looking bathroom but it has hot water. The family who run the place seem nice, the toothless gramdmother is always trotting about leaving offerings to the spirits (part of the compound seems to be a temple) and when the son and heir isn’t asleep I try to expand his English vocabulary.
As soon as I arrive, son and heir tells me there will be a big cremation on Sunday, so of course I have to stay around for that. Joe, meanwhile, wants to ‘hang out’. This means spending quality time at the mini mart. Joe’s life seems to revolve around the mini mart. He drinks there, sleeps there, play chess there … Him and friends sit out the front and smoke and complain about not having any customers. He has one friend who suggests I pay him two and a half times the cost of a car for a short motorbike journey. He spends a lot of time sitting outside the mini mart.
My first couple of days in Ubud I don’t do a lot - I want my leg to heal and I have some computer stuff to catch up on and I need to adjust to how touristy everything is. It also rains a lot, so sitting in a café with wifi makes sense when it’s pouring.
I allow Joe to take me on a day tour - we do a couple of important temples, rice terraces at Tegallalang and Gunung Batur, the volcano at Kintamani. Sadly Joe is not a very good guide, he is grumpy and tired and doesn’t give me basic information. He has lunch, but when I need to eat he has no idea where to go. I am glad to get back. Once at Dewi Antara, Joe perks up, tries to put his arm around me and suggests he has a nap in my room. Er, no.
Later that night he returns when I am getting ready for bed and I am in a towel putting something on my porch so I tell him I’m going to sleep and go inside. Joe tells the son and heir that he is ‘very disappointed’.
But he’s friendly enough when I see him next. I’ve decided to go to the Gili Islands and he says he can arrange a ticket for me, except he can’t so I do it myself.
Before I leave, there is the cremation which is quite impressive. The Balinese build pagodas and a bull that someone rides and hundreds of them get together and carry bamboo scaffolding supporting these structures down the street, while wearing traditional costume. It’s hot, so they keep stopping. The procession grunts down Monkey Forest Rd to the sanctuary where the dead body has been dug up to be transferred into the bull. Then the whole thing is burnt. I thought all of this would take hours, but we’re done by about 1pm.
Later I go to ARMA, a big art gallery in Ubud, and see paintings of traditional cremations which are just like the ones I saw earlier.
Next morning I’m on a shuttle bus at 7am. It appears I’m on the Eka Jaya fast boat to Gili and apparently one of their vessels sank in a freak wave a few years ago and I wish I hadn’t read that. Sometimes you can do too much research. Or research that is pointlessly timed, anyway.
I feel tired as I didn’t sleep much - it was raining and the roof leaked and then the fan went off and it was incredibly hot and I seemed to spend all night either sweating or being dripped on. Not restful.
The boat is tiny and bumpy and the sea has a bit of swell and waves occasionally crash over the boat. I do not enjoy the trip, but cannot maintain high level anxiety for an hour and a half, so eventually I calm down.
On Gili Trawangan a villager finds me and we walk to his homestay, which is in better shape than Dewi Antara. I quickly realize the cafes and restaurants are very overpriced for what they are, and there’s not much to see here. I almost make plans to leave straight away … In the end I stay three nights and I see people on the return boat that came over with me so they must have thought similar.
I have a spirulina shot at a kiosk thinking it will be good for me and my battered leg and am charged 20 per cent tax on it. Stuff you, Scallywags, I won’t be back. Nor would I bother with the Gili Deli after the meanest chicken sandwich I have ever seen (chicken must cost more than gold at that place) and a powdery iced coffee (they take a great misplaced pride in the quality of their beverages - it’s all hype).
The best value meal I have on the island is a gado gado at a small local place. Internet is hugely expensive too - six times what you pay in Bali.
But it’s nice enough I guess.
My second day I take a boat to Lombok and a get a young guy to drive me to Senggigi beach. Lombok looks mainly poor and bit grubby, with mosques and tourist hotels on the beach. The coast road is a nice drive though, as is the return on an inland route. We stop at the Monkey Forest where the bored monkeys are unimpressed with my lack of bananas.

I thought I’d spend the day on Lombok, but by 1.30pm I’m done. There are plenty of boats back and forth at least and the price is 10,000 rupiah. It was suggested I get my own boat, but this costs a little more at 190,000 rupiah. I can wait for the public boat.
The other salient aspect of Gili T - which isn’t or isn’t an attraction, depending on how you rate these things - is the number of young men who just hang around to ‘help’ tourists. They especially like to help solo women tourists. I had several - including two 18-year-old children - wanting to help me ‘be happy’ on the beach.
One guy with long hair and tattoos - attractive to many I’m sure, but made me want to run a mile - attached himself to me when I went for a walk and offered me all kinds of things, including a massage and drugs. That was my first night and I was almost weeping with tiredness after lack of sleep and the exhausting boat ride and I just could not get rid of him. Unfortunately I saw him again and he was determined I spend the sunset with him but I hid in a café. Then the other guys found me, but I went for a walk and they all fell asleep.
It’s tiring evading blokes when you don’t want to hurt their feelings, but you just can’t be bothered with them and wish they’d leave you alone. But hey, if you’re craving attention, it could be just the thing. And some women do go for that tanned beach bum look. Some of them are handsome, but too many tattoos for me. Especially when they are lumpy.
Joe back in Ubud had lots of tattoos, including one of a flower on his forearm accompanied by 5.45 in large figures. I asked him what that meant, and he said it was the time of sunrise …
When I get back to Ubud, Joe is outside the mini mart and he takes me to Dewi Antara, and I am back in my slightly decrepit room. I’m not sure if this is progress or not, but there is a writers’ festival in Ubud and that sounds interesting, even if I can’t discover where you get tickets. And the son and heir tells me there is an outing on the Sunday. Joe doesn’t follow most of this conversation, but he is quite keen for me to pay him to go on this trip. I want to go - a day with the locals could be fun. Meanwhile Joe has drunk too much arak and fallen off his bike and is covered in sores. To me now, he can only be known as Mr Scabby.

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