More meat this time

So, I have a little more time on my hands now, I figure I'll provide a more substantial update as to what has transpired in the last 48 hours.

We left Adam's sister's place near Itaewon at 5am to catch a shuttle to the airport. I got about 2 hours of sleep max so already you know this is going to be a great start. Get to the airport, fly out as usual blah blah blah. We stop in Singapore for one last taste of the first world before we're off again to Denpasar, a city on the island of Bali in Indonesia. I have been having some pretty bad sinus congestion in the last few days and the ascent and descent felt like someone was inflating a balloon behind my eyeballs.

It was after sunset when we landed in Bali, but the humidity was still striking, especially coming from cold Seoul. We both had our jackets too. Probably gonna send yet another package home. Anyways, as soon as we left the terminal, the touts were on us like we were giving out prize money. We wandered into the parking lot and it got waaay worse so we hoofed it back towards the terminal. We denied about 16 cabs who wanted to take us to Kuta for $10 (equivalent) and somehow managed to have this French hippy and her crew give us a lift into town for free.

We knew we were in Kuta because of all the Starbucks and KFC signs. Kuta is the tourist trap town and the streets were crawling with sun-kissed foreigners, some who looked like something they sell at the aforementioned KFC. Looking like fresh off the plane tout-bait with our massive backpacks and Lonely Planet in hand, we made our way up the promenade and towards Poppies Gang I, the hostel street. Keep in mind it was dark, and with cabs honking at us and people holling trying to lend us motorbikes we were almost at our wits' end.

We found the street after a few wrong turns. It was actually not so much a street, but a dark alley. Yeah, a dark alley in Indonesia at night. Seemed fine though as there was a healthy stream of motorbikes whizzing down it. We checked prices at a few places and settled on a room for about $15. It was no Bellagio and the shower was more of a drizzle than anything, but the bed served its purpose of allowing me to sleep in it and that's all I needed.

So the next morning we woke up bright and early to try and find another hotel because we thought we got shafted at $15 for two people a night. Apparently it gets cheaper! So we went and found a place for $10. Shower worked but there's no air conditioning. We both had a nap and I think we agree that shelling out more for air conditioning is probably not worth it. We also booked a ferry to Lombok, a nearby island, for tomorrow morning. Hopefully it won't be as big of a tourist trap as Kuta, but we'll see.

After a $2 lunch, we made our way to the beach. This town is loaded with surf shops, bleach blonde Aussies with surfboards and motorbikes with board racks, so we knew the beach had to be something worth checking out. We checked it out. We also rented surfboards and decided to fail miserably at trying to surf together. Adam failed pretty hard, but my fail was so epic, I ended up heading home, sick and exhausted, to take a nap afterwards. Basically we went out too far and the waves were a lot bigger up close and the ocean essentially had its way with me. I swallowed a ton of salt water, had my shorts nearly yanked clean off and got tossed around like a rag doll. With all the strength my body could muster, I swam to the shore and almost died on the beach.

So now that you're all caught up, I'll drop a few first impressions. First of all I am THRILLED with how cheap everything is here. $2 meals, $10 accommodation for two people, and apparently taxis are really cheap if you can convince them to use their meters. I bought a $1 pair of flip flops and several 20 cent bottles of water.

Speaking of which, the water is necessary because, as you can imagine, it is HOT here. Like, the evenings aren't too bad, and that's why we think no AC is doable, but the early afternoons are like, sticky disgusting hot so don't be surprised if a lot of my updates are posted in the afternoon from the comfort of an air-conditioned internet cafe.

The vibe around Kuta is certainly a strange one. It is essentially a town that caters to foreigners that have way more money than the locals. As such, the locals have picked up things that said foreigners like to do. There's t-shirt and clothing shops selling frat boy novelty shirts and Western rock paraphernalia, cyber cafes aplenty, sports bars showing cricket and soccer games, tattoo parlors with ugly tribal flash on display; and all of these things being touted by working class Indonesian families. Even the souvenir logos for Bali are done in a hip, young Bape-ish font and color scheme. They have us all figured out! So basically the vibe of this place is like Logan's Run, where it seems like everyone is in their 20s and completely indulgent, but instead of the people over 30 going and committing mandatory suicide, here they hook up with a 20 year old Indonesian girl and sit at a bar and drink.

Ok that's it for now. So far the trip has been a little rough, but I'm just getting used to it. I'm at a point now where I'm starting to ditch my uncomfortable clothes and pick more climate-appropriate things up, so hopefully once we get to Lombok, and once I finally get a full 7 hours sleep, I can start making less-cynical posts about my trip so far. Thanks for reading all of this! Pictures soon!