The big news is that I moved into my new ‘home’ yesterday. Opposite the beach, and behind a 24 hour minimart. An upstairs room with ocean views, a ceiling fan and hot water. What more could a girl want?
There is a ‘but’ though. The wasteland beside the hotel has a workshop in one corner, where arc welding, hammering of metal, and angle grinding often takes place throughout the night. Ear plugs and arak I think!
Knowing that a good discount could often be negotiated, for stays of longer than 2 months, I had taken to the streets and lanes of Kuta, determined to find suitable accommodation within my very limited budget. As I was to be working as a completely self-funded volunteer, money was tight.
My basic requirements were that I wanted to be near the beach so that I could continue to practise my surfing, and I wanted hot water. I was going to be working at an office in Denpasar six days a week, starting at 9am and not getting back till about 6pm - so I clearly wasn’t going to be spending much time ‘at home’.
I found many delightful little places around the lanes of Kuta, which I had never before noticed. Mostly traditional family settings, where a couple of spare rooms would be rented out to tourists; usually surfers. The sticking point for me was the cold showers!
I did eventually find a few possibilities. The difficulty was finding someone on duty, who could authorize the discount. It seemed that the couple of days that I had chosen for ‘househunting’ were also important days for ‘ceremonies’. I ended up with a long list of places to re-visit “when the boss comes back from his village”….
Finally, tired and frustrated, I gave up for the day, and went surfing. After an invigorating couple of hours I decided to re-visit a small hotel behind the mini-mart - even though the previous day I had been told they no vacancies.
In Bali, things are not always what they seem.
“Sorry, there are no vacancies”, also means….. “All the rooms are full at the moment, but in half an hour some guests are leaving, and several rooms will be empty!”
It seemed that I had a choice of 3 rooms today! Was it because this time I had a surfboard under my arm? Perhaps without the surfboard, the staff were suspicious of my motives? A woman alone, wanting to rent a room for a couple of months? Maybe they didn’t want ‘my type’ in their family run hotel!! But a surfer – that’s different…….
Now I get it. This might explain why nobody else could offer me a good price either? The reason that I was told to “come back later” by everyone, probably had nothing to do with ceremonies at all. It could have been that I just looked out of place - until I brought the surfboard along?
Oh, and I was on local TV the other day, interviewed, as a ‘westerner’ for my views about the Bali bird flu deaths, and the recent bombings in Java. Would these incidents affect my plans to travel around Bali, and did I feel nervous because of the bombings? I’m not sure how useful the interview was though, firstly because it was all in English, and secondly, because it was conducted at the side of the road with hundreds of motorbikes roaring past! I don’t think they could hear a word I said…..
The bombing turned out to be an accident by some village fishermen, mishandling dynamite that was intended for use in illegal ‘fish bombing’.
And as for the bird flu… I don’t think it’s that easy to catch the disease unless you actually handle the sick birds. In my view, bird flu is a case of ‘chicken revenge’! If you saw the way these poor creatures are treated here, you would understand why the chickens want to kill the humans……
Regulations are in place to stop people keeping chickens in and around their homes. Mind you, downstairs the guys have some pet birds that they are training for cockfights – they certainly don’t look sick. In fact these birds are quite magnificent looking creatures, whose owners seem to love them dearly – but then they enter them into the barbaric sport of cockfighting. It is supposedly illegal here, but everybody turns a blind eye.
If I had the choice, I’d rather be a cock than a chicken in Bali though! You don’t see the cocks tied onto motorbikes by their feet, bouncing off the side of the exhaust whilst being driven off to meet their grisly deaths!
At least the cock has a pampered life, and has a 50/50 chance of being the winner……
