Kuta Beach

Made it to Kuta yesterday, the beach hub resort of Bali.  Think Santa Monica full of foreigners in Indonesia but everything is about 10 times cheaper and more charming, with little Hindu flower incense sacrifice things outside every doorstep.  It is overly commercial though, with more McDonald's than I can count, Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe, etc.  It's a little much for my taste, actually, so I'll probably leave for quieter more splendid places in Bali tomorrow but not before I take my surf lesson today (Kuta being a world-famous surf mecca).  I've always thought it quite a tragedy that as a native Southern Californian I never learned to surf.  I'm not sure one can really learn to surf in two hours but I'll give it a try.  I'm a quick learner, though that's tempered by the fact that I'm physically clumsy.  

Bali is nice.  It is refreshing to be back in a humid sticky vibrant interesting place again after my detour into modernity (boring) in Malaysia and Singapore.  And of course, it is most refreshing to be paying dirt-cheap prices again for everything (though that seems to have the effect of making me buy more things...).  Bali seems to be the cheapest of all the places I've visited, even at marked-up tourist prices here in Kuta.  But the people are fun and nice and it has none of the roughness of other poorer places I've been to.  Even after just a day, I can see the magical appeal of this place, and that's before I've gone on to see the cultural wonders, natural beauty, and amazing diving on offer elsewhere in the island.  

After seven weeks on the go, I think it's a sign of how much I've adapted that, upon landing in Bali, I found the touts refreshingly familiar and haggling for cheap things a fun exercise, rather than a tortured hassle.  Yesterday when I was checking out some fake Ray-Bans from a vendor we broke into a laughing fit haggling with each other, all in good fun (I didn't buy them and I told him I was just looking but that apparently only made him bargain harder).  

I have more pictures but they seem to load slowly so I'll try again later.