Indonesia: Bali (Day 4 Cont'd, Thursday, 073009)

Back at the hotel, I order breakfast--included with the $11 per night for two people rate, and dine contemplatively on the bench outside the room.



(It isn't 'til our next meal that I am to understand that the lime is not simply for show. Banana with a squirt of lime? Who woulda thunk? Delicious.)

Eric returns in a flurry, since we have, as I indistinctly recall, made plans with Carlos and Francois to rendezvous. While Eric's in the shower, I again reaffirm my decision to cease and desist all drinking, half because its horrible aftermaths, half because, should I come down with Japanese Encephalitis, I want to be able to tell that my brain is swelling for reasons besides alcohol consumption (half because I'm paranoid?).

We scooter out of Seminyak and through Kuta, where we pass the site of the 2002 Bali Nightclub bombings. There's a memorial and plaque commemorating the dead on one side of the street, and an empty lot on the other, where they refuse to rebuild out of a sense, I think, of outrage.

We also pass a number of designer diffusion/aspirational lines (euphemism for "cheap shit that designers make to sell to trashy Australians in Bali"): Versus (cheap Versace), D&G (cheap Dolce & Gabbana), and Polo (cheap Ralph Lauren).

We meet C&F at...Bubba Gump's, which I only realize is a reference to that dreadfully long film when we arrive at the restaurant, where signs on the table read "Run, Forrest, Run!" and "Stop, Forrest, Stop!" and a bench outside has a pair of sneakers that you can tuck your feet into, along with a...box of chocolates. Apparently, it's a fairly well-known chain. I'm appalled, but we're moving immediately on to Nusa Dua, where we've been told have better beaches.

Unfortunately for me, in addition to this:



...there are also swathes of sand covered in tangles of dried-out kelp and trash, and hovel-type structures (no photos; I rarely remember to take photos of the ugly and un-picturesque, though I start to prevail over that as the trip goes on).

This juxtaposition of gated resort area against poverty throws my boohoo-people-are-oppressed-look-at-the-disparity sensibilities into overdrive.

15 USD gets you a lounge chair, a meal, and access to their pool, and, of course, a strip of the resort-owned sand. We're at By the C [rolling my eyes], and their menu is "Continental," meaning Mexican, Aloha, and standard burgers. I order a poorly made virgin Pina Colada called a "Punch Colada," and a papaya lassi. The fish in the fish and chips I have is appallingly bad, and the burgers the boys have are only slightly better (and I get to feel virtuous about not eating beef in a Hindu country), causing the boys to wax rhapsodic about the Mahi with spinach and a mushroom, garlic cream sauce we had yesterday (again, I only remember this indistinctly). Eric also has a nice melon cocktail, and this becomes a general rule over the trip: decent to great drinks, decent to horrible food, which is not limited to meals that are resort-made and "Continental."

We pass the time chatting with the Australians--though really Carlos is a Jewish-Mexican and Francois a white South African (specifically Afrikaner, I think). Eric and I are treated to the intricacies of Australian bar laws, where, in an inept attempt to curtail binge drinking and bar-fighting, law stipulates that bar-goers cannot buy drinks at ten to the hour, can't enter or re-enter a bar from 2-5 a.m., and have a four drink maximum when purchasing a round (sort of like, "no double-fisting"). Additionally, we learn that South Africa, 'til very recently, had anti-pornography laws, which led to folks sending themselves Playboys when abroad, but which meant that such materials were frequently shared among deprived South Africans, and that South Africa also had "informants," so that you could be arrested, forced to pay a fine if/when you were caught, and furnished with a criminal record.