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Published: December 16th 2007
Suckers! The day after Wayne’s 40th I was feeling decidedly seedy. A good sleep in, a hearty grease-laden breakfast of egg and bacon and taking it real quiet was in order. A couple of Panadol sealed the deal.
Later on around 1pm, we decided that we’d try find Lauren a new set of board shorts and headed off up the road in search for a shop. We bumped into an equally seedy Wayne and Cathy headed back the other way - said some quick hellos and made some rudimentary plans for later, or maybe the next day.
Near Legian Street, we were approached by a bloke with what looked like a fistful of cards trying to hand some to us. We didn’t see the harm in it and so Jane and I took one each. The cards were some form of tear-open-for-a-prize thingy. I opened mine and I’d won a t-shirt, Jane opened hers and she won a special prize - the possibility of either a digital camcorder, a free holiday (but you have to pay for airfares and meals still + other conditions attached) or US$500 in cash. Well…the little bloke went beserk! He was so happy
that Jane had won and that it meant that he would get US$50 as a bonus. The only catch was that we had to instantly go with him to Jimbaran Bay and look at a new resort development and then they would bring us back here no charge for the trips - there had to be a catch…
…there was! It was one of those holiday vacation package schemes where they try to make you buy a dream of a perfect holiday for the rest of your life in advance. I’ve really got nothing against these schemes - apart from the fact that if you have a mortgage, the money is better left in your home equity and saving you interest…also, you are forced to holiday only with these guys and their partners. I wont go into more detail - you’ve probably endured the hard sell before! It’s all very tempting - but just remember the magic words - “I can buy a second-hand package on eBay for half what you guys want to sell it to me for”. Once I uttered those magic words, they gave us our gifts and beetled us back into a cab and sent
us on our way. Oh, and of the possible 3 prizes Jane could have won…I bet you were all guessing that she got the free holiday - at one of there resorts? You betcha!
The really funny thing that struck me was that this new hotel development was directly across the road from the Intercontinental.
Once we returned to roughly where we were originally snatched from, we continued wandering down Legian Street looking at various shops, as you do. One thing our captor had said was true - at 1pm the heat was really oppressive, we’d spent approx 2 hours in aircon comfort dancing with the salesmen and getting a free ride around town and at 3pm when we returned, it was noticeably cooler and a nice sea breeze had kicked in.
We didn’t find anything of any significant interest - most everything you see for sale in Bali seems to be the same thing, store after store after store. There seems to be some regional variations - but most seems to be pumped out from one massive construction line hidden away somewhere. Cheap trinkets. I much prefer to buy quality crafts directly from the person who
made them - get a bit of history behind the item and behind the person behind the item. It makes it all worth so much more to me.
The rest of the day and evening was spent reading books, generally not moving very much and nursing what was left over of my hangover.
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