Bali

Arrive in Bali; everyone tries to sell you shit "sir taxi!" "boss, you need transport?!" "money, money, good price". First days I stay in really luxurious hotels for the price I would pay for a hostel in Australia. Takes some getting used to the life in Bali, but after a couple of days, I do it.

Surfing

I went surfing, good lesson; one teacher and three students (instead of 13 and one instructor like in Australia). As much as I learned the lesson was also for a large part just an opportunity for our teacher to impress us (and any girls on the beach that were watching). Tricks he did included: walking upside down on beach, backflip and surfing on his head. I really like surfing though and the waves were so much easier to catch here, they were also a lot larger. I had few times when I was able to kind of stear away from my course, so I was surfing along side the wave.

Edit: went surfing with the same teacher again and once I got to know him, he actually turned out to be quite humble and very positive and nice :) It was just that he loved to have fun.

Went out in the touristy area of Kuta (which is where I was staying as well). I have to admit, they have cool clubs, with multiple levels, outdoors and sick ass dancers trying to mesmerize you.

I eat in restaurants up to 5 times a day (breakfast too). Generally a good meal costs between one and two euros! The servings are quite small, so often I have two or even three main courses.

I go downhill cycling! I'm in a group with a Dutch couple, two girls from New Zealand and a French couple. They drive us to the top of a mountain where we get to see a view of an active vulcano which is so amazing, that it almost doesn't seem real (see pictures)! The Dutch couple is about my parents age and come from Huizen and it's good to talk to some people from back home again. In general have fun with the group. Get to see all the rice fields and beautiful little towns with all their thousands of temples! EVERY house here has its own temple! Whenever we speed past a village, literally ALL the kids run out and yell "hello!" "what's your name?!" and they want you to high 5 them (the game seems to be: who can wack the foreigners hands the hardest :P). My guides keep feeling sorry for me, because I travel alone and continuously ask me where my girlfriend is, to which they generally add, that I should just 'take one' from our group :P The Indonesian people here still say some Dutch words like: Knalpot (uitlaat), Handoek and the police cars read: polisie :D

I booked my cycling tour with a local travel agency (they all read: tourist information, which they are not :P). But this one had a really friendly female owner, to whom I talked to for an hour.

Next I go to the holy beautiful monkey forrest temple complex tourist trap, where the first fucking monkey attacks me and murders my hand! he thought there was something in my pocket and that's all good, but then he BIT my hand. So now I maybe need to get rabies shots, even though everyone assured me they don't have rabies. Other than that, the monkeys were cool and the temple was of extreme beauty (see pics).

So then I went to see a traditaional indonesian dance called: Kecak. I was shown all these beautiful, yet inexplicable scenes. To me it looked like Mortal Kombat. There's a ring made up out of men chanting this repetative hallucenegenic song. Then there's these two beautifuly dressed up girls (who are also quite hot themselves) dancing and then these crazy scary looking contenders keep coming up, but they ALL lose to these two dancing bitches, that just stand there dancing! First up is the scared white ninja (he obviously doesn't stand a chance against the dancing duo, because he's a scared pussy whimp). Next up is obviously the ferocious elephant mouse monster who is still pretty scared. Then finally enters the courageous condescending sabre tooth king and after they all suffer horrid defeat, our last contender is the fucked up red ninja dog..... all no match for our unreactive dancing hoe's :P So then all the town's women are up on stage with two dancing toddlers infront of them (see pic).. the toddlers keep dying and then the women come and resurrect them, till they finally go and die for good. See now all of this already would've been worth my money, but that's when they just go ahead and.... light a bejesusly huge fire right in the middle of the temple (what the fuck!!!!!!), which, everyone thinks is gonna catch on fire! So then crazy jumping horse man comes out and he just..... fucking KICKS the fire! I shit you not, he KICKS the giant fire! Like fire and sparks flying everywhere! Lucky enough for you, I've captured this scene on film (by film I mean photo, I don't mean film, by which I mean: I didn't get a video of it). So then right in what seems to be the middle of the show a dude in a red nylon jacket comes out and goes "this was the end of Kecak", so we're all like "okay, sure". Now this is what I got from it, mind you, I did not read the story. I did not have the paper with the story on it, but in a way... I'm gald I didn't ;)

Observations about Bali

During the kecak, they had at different moments, all the women and all the men up. Now in both crowds I noticed two particularly well shaped bodies. Amongst the men there was this one dude who was reasonably buff and had a six pack, and amidst the women there was one beautifull slim woman, with just a liittle bit of muscle to make her not look too scrawny. Now I realized that these were just my superficial western standards. Here, they were both just members of the crowd. Like the woman was probably "you know, the skinny one that should eat more rice" and the guy was probably 'the strong one'.

People in Bali are super friendly, they always smile and I have yet to see anyone angry, EVEN in traffic! it's easy to feel superior as a Westerner (especially if you speak to them in English). I have started to think however, that the way that they don't take themselves too seriously here, is much more a strength than a weakness. When compared to Europe, this place just lacks a feeling of hurry and stress (though the street scene is really chaotic, the minds of the people are not). Also it lacks an air of hostility.. everywhere you look is friendlyness and not 'just another fight waiting to happen'. The only annoying thing here, is funny enough due to our influence, which would be capitalism driving everyone to try and sell you objects. Also you can see that there is no mass production here. Everything is hand made. Food therefore is extremey healthy. I'm not dissing western society, we obviously have a lot of things over this country, but it's not all good.

Meet a cool French dude, with whom I share a room (saves u both 50.000 rupiahs). I really came to love Bali in the end and mainly its people. Before I left I passed out a few tips (money ones) at my favorite restaurant, surf shop, transport dude and fruit shop :)