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From the beauty of Bali to the captivating scenery of Flores and the monsters of Komodo.

Indonesia, part 1

Si_lad
2004-03-26 22:00:32

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Bali

Kuta

The flight to Bali turned out to be in two stages. Singapore-Jakarta and then Jakarta-Bali. Each leg took around 2 hours. The flight, on Garuda airlines, was comfortable and we were well treated. I’d heard many bad things about Garuda, but I couldn’t see any problem at all, in-fact I really enjoyed the service I received.

On arrival at Denpasar airport we dropped one of our rucksacks into left-luggage, as we only needed one, and decided less weight would be best. We were travelling pretty lightly – less than 18 lbs. each – but had accumulated lots of "stuff" we wouldn’t need to lug around. It cost us around UK£1 a day to store our stuff. We walked out of the airport and caught a bemo into the nearest town – Kuta. It cost 10,000 Rps each. Kuta is a large resort style place. Lots of buildings and building sites and immediately I took a bit of a disliking to it. It’s a popular Australian resort – lots of bars, clubs and hawkers – in fact it felt like one of those tacky Mediterranean tourist spots in Spain or Greece.

We strolled around for a while until we found a suitable place to stay – the Segara Guest House. It’s 200m to the beach on a quiet street and very clean. Not bad value for 16500 Rps per night. After check-in we all strolled to a nearby bar – "Casablanca’s" for the night. We took Dibs home early as she felt a bit tired, but afterward Heath and I sat until later, drinking cheap cold beers watching a live band and some extremely drunk Aussies!

Ubud

Deciding that Kuta wasn’t the place for us, we took a shuttle bus for 7500 Rps to the centre of the island – Ubud. Shuttle buses are popular amongst tourists and a good – if a little expensive – way to get around. Once in We were dropped off outside the post office and here we collected some post from poste restante, whilst the ...