I suppose it all depends how old you are, which in turn
determines what you want from a trip to Bali. Remember that Bali to Australians
is as Spain is to the English. And Kuta is the Balinese Magaluf. It’s a large,
busy, touristy, built up area with unbelievably bad traffic, and a pretty
stupid one way system. But it has a very long beach stretching from the Seminyak
area all the way up to the Discovery Mall, an American style shopping centre
which has pretty much everything (there is a little bakery in the discovery mall
which sells hot savouries and sweet stuff, really cheap. It’s amazing). It’s
true that if you fly to Bali and stay only in Kuta, then you have not really
been to Bali, and you won’t have experienced the real Bali and all it has to
offer. But Kuta does make a good base for the south of the island, for all ages
and personalities, and I recommend at least two nights here just to experience
it no matter who you are.
Kuta beach is the main attraction and has a good vibe but it’s
not that great. There is always quite a lot of rubbish on the beach, but it is
wide and it is long. It’s really easy to rent crap surfboards on the beach
front and have a surf lesson but if you want to ride something good you should
look across the road from the beach, to the little surf shops. You can get up
early and join the joggers on the beach at first light, running barefoot along
the warm waters edge and dodging the washed up coconuts. And at sundown the
beach becomes packed, waiting for some of the most beautiful sunsets you will
ever see. Sun worshippers line up along it all day, and there are plenty of
surfers in the water. Kuta beach has a couple of breaks all along the beach but
in monsoon season, the waves tend to be a bit of a beach break close out, and
the wind will be on it by midday so early surfs are the way to go here. The
break in front of the lifeguard station isn’t bad, and airports reef is worth
experiencing, just for the Jumbo’s going over your head and feeling close
enough to touch, whilst you are dangling your feet off your board in the warm Indian
Ocean. No sharks to worry about here either. In fact you don’t have to worry
about sharks anywhere in Bali. They just don’t come close to shore due to the
lack of food stuff.
There are several areas along the beach, like the slightly
pricier and upmarket Seminyak and beyond that, Echo beach. But I stayed in the
Legian area. It’s pretty cool. And there are a few little gems to be found
here. One is the
Balcony Restaurant, above
Un’s hotel. Food is amazing. And across
from it, is a Circle K that does surprisingly good machine coffee. This is a
great tip if you hanker after a European like latte. In all the restaurants a Bali
coffee (which is good) will cost you between
5000 and 10,000 IDR but a latte or cappuccino
can cost 30,000 IDR (as much as your meal). You do have to keep remembering
that 50,000 IDR is only £3.50 though! In the Circle K, a cappuccino is a large
one, and costs 8000. And outside the shop are a few tables and chairs with free
wifi. I found it a great place to meet and chat with interesting locals. These
Circle k’s are all over kuta. Two minute’s walk towards the beach from the
balcony, you will find the surfers café, which is really good, and also rents
boards. They have a couple of guitars you can play too. Opposite that is a
little laundry that washes clothes for about a quid a kilo. And you can have it
back in the same day.
Other top tips for places in this region include Poppies
restaurant on Poppies 1, which is a little more expensive, but still dirt cheap
by European standards, and the Bali summer restaurant which murders well known
pop and rock songs after 7 pm every night. The gay waiter loves to dance to
this on the street to entice people in and it makes for a great atmosphere. A good meal in any of these will cost between
30,000 and 100,00 IDR depending on whether you go Indonesian or western. But
you won’t find locals eating here. Walk away from the beach and the more built
up areas and you will find the little local warungs. They look pretty
rudimentary, and they are. But here the food is great and you can get all of
the Indonesian dishes as good or better than the restaurants standard fair, at
a quarter of the price. I spent a month eating at least one meal a day as a
local, and never experienced any stomach trouble. I even drank their drinks
with ice. So don’t be a pansy.
Jalan Rya Legian, the main street, is where you will find
all the night life. It’s lined with gift shops etc, restaurants, and bars and
in the rainy season, they are all relatively empty and desperate for your
clientele.
The two most famous night
spots here are the Bounty, which is to be honest, usually a pissed Aussie cock
fest (full of 18 – 25 year old aussie men) and the Sky Garden, which isn’t bad.
It has four floors, an all you can eat £5 buffet and a lounge as well as the
club area. Remember that Legian street is the seedy area of Kuta, and the
pretty Indonesian ladies dressed in red are the high end prostitutes that work
out of these clubs. And any other Indonesian girl that expresses interest along
this street is probably one of the slightly cheaper Kuta bar girls. It’s not
all fun just for men here either. Kuta is also famous for the kuta cowboy, a
group of young long haired, tattooed (mostly Javan) men who make themselves
available to the middle aged and upward western women, turning the
stereotypical south east Asian sight of fat old white skinned pensioners with
beautiful Indonesian 25 year old women on its head. Some middle aged women
watch eat pray love, and want to cut out 87 minutes of it and go straight to
the ending I suppose, and why not. It’s a crap movie and Julia Roberts gets fat
while she stays in Italy. Step away from the pasta Miss Roberts.
Poppies 1 and Poppies 2 are now famous streets that run parallel
to each other, from Jl Rya Legian down to the beach. These two tiny streets are
lined with bars and warungs, and also the street vendours selling the bintang t
shirts and vests, and wooden penis shaped bottle openers beside the fake
Raybans and Rolex watches. Wander down at your leisure and have a bintang when
it all gets too much. You will also be offered many opportunities for “sexy”
massages by women with no teeth, a quick way to lose your wallet or take a
little more home than one can buy in Kumbasari art market. Weed is just not
worth buying here even if you get offered it. The penelties can be as severe as
25 years in prison or even the death sentence for trafficking, and the locals
are a wiley bunch. They are not going to risk that just to make a tenner out of
you so 99.999% of the time they will be offering you some dried up leaves they
picked off some random bush. My advice, don’t bother. Mushrooms are the legal
high in Bali and you can just walk into one of the many shops and buy them quite
legally. As a local told me, you don’t get in trouble for taking mushrooms; you
get in trouble for the people you kill while you are on them.
Hotels here range from grandiose, like the Stones, and the
Hard Rock hotel, to positively luxurious around the discovery mall area. But
for the budget traveller, Un’s and the POP! Hotels are pretty good. Around £20
a night gets you breakfast, a pool and aircon, and the POP! Is exceptionally
clean. But you don’t see that many westerners staying at the Pop!, although
that was fine by me.
Once you have had your fill of £3.50 all over body massages
and the bars and cafes of Kuta, there are some great places within easy reach
and renting a moped is pretty straight forward. Without doubt, a moped or a
motorcycle is the best way to see Bali. Hire one and explore the whole island. Everyone
offers them, for 50,000 IDR a day, but haggle. You can get 20k knocked off
easily. Make sure you have an international driving licence and check that the
documents for the bike are in date. The police here pay a lot of money to
become a policeman (the price of a quarter of a house) and need to recoup the
money somehow. Traffic is crazy here, so just be as crazy as everyone else and
you will be fine. The petrol cap is under the seat and petrol is ludicrously
cheap. Its easy to fill up at a petrol station here, you get in your little que
with the seat up and the cap off and when its your turn the guy fills it up for
you. Alternatively, these crazy Balinese can be found all over the island with
a little rack of twenty, 1 litre glass bottles full of petrol on the side of
the road in the baking hot sunshine. Stop and let him do all the work. It’s
more expensive and a lot more of a fire hazard I suppose, but a bottle is
around 5000IDR and you will only need a maximum of three.
Places to see from Kuta:
Uluwatu
Amazing spot with a temple on the cliff overlooking the
famous surf break. Well worth a visit, some great photo opportunities, and also
it’s cheap. Plenty of monkeys knocking about too so no sunnies and no water
bottles on show. After you have seen the temple, go down to Uluwatu proper.
Head down over the concrete steps to the little surf village. It’s cool and
laid back. Find some good music here on a Sunday night too; everyone who is
everyone in the surf scene descends on Uluwatu for Sunday evenings. Head south
from Kuta following the signs for Nusa Dua and you will pick up the signs for
Uluwatu.
Nusa
Dua
The spot for the rich and famous. This is where the Clintons
and Obahma’s go when they visit Bali. Super expensive plush hotels (not my
scene). But, at the front of the beach entrance is an awesome little warung to
eat, and squirrels run up and down the trees beside your table taking the food
out of the local children’s hands. The Pacifica Museum is here, and Balinese
dance for the tourists in the theatre. The beach is a beautiful golden / white
sand mix and the swimming is good here. Walk out to the tiny headland in
between the two beaches for a great view of surfers getting barrelled, and
mangled, on the Nusa reef.
Sanur
I have to admit I thought Sanur was pretty lame. It’s where
middle class or old people go when they are either not adventurous enough to
explore, think they are above kuta, or too cheap for Nusa. Quite an average
beach but quiet, lined with local stalls. Do yourself a favour and stay home,
or go to the garden centre. Unless you want to fly to Bali to sleep. But that’s
just my opinion.
Tanaha Lot
Yea, quite cool. A temple on an island that gets cut off by
the sea. Go take some photos of it and wander around the huge tourist market by
the car park there. Head west from kuta through Seminyak and towards Echo
beach. You will pick up the signs for it.
Kumbasari
Art Market
This is a must. Everything you find in the tat shops of kuta
or the arty shops of Ubud, but at a tenth of the price. You have to haggle
quite hard though! It looks like a 5 story concrete car park when you pull up,
and smells like a fishmongers knickers, but when you get inside, you will be
pleasantly surprised. From Kuta head up the main road to Denpasar, past the
fire station, past the hospital, then it’s on your right. This is seriously the
place to buy all your gifts and mementoes.
Get
tattooed.
I met so many Aussies who were over in Kuta just for the
week, didn’t go anywhere, but went home with a big fat tattoo. Apparently it’s
pretty cheap, and a half sleeve can cost under £200. Buy a bintang wife-beater
vest while you’re at it, and try to grow some tits. Then all you will have to
do is say Sheila occasionally and you will be able to get Australian
citizenship! ( I have to say here though, I met some seriously nice Australians
on my trip, some with tattoos, and some without).
