Did you ever find yourself on a jungle beach thinking, "If only there were somewhere I could buy a T-shirt that was both obscene and insulting. Or maybe a penis carved out of wood." Well, you will never find yourself lacking those things here. Crap stalls o'plenty. As with most beach destinations you can find your T-shirts, souvenirs, sunglasses and beachwear, and being a developing country, you also have your bootleg CDs and DVDs. Massage is popular here. Presumably, some of it is legit. I expect that the women who ride around on motorbikes after midnight asking if you want a massage are not.
Here is a transcript of a typical walk down the street for me in Kuta: "Massage?", "No", "Massage?", "No", "Massage?", "No", "Taxi?", "No", "Massage?", "No", "Drugs?", "No", "Women?", "No", "'Shrooms?", "No". I left out the "Mistuuuuuuh" that often preceded the questions.
Oh, yeah. 'Shrooms. The area is known for magic mushrooms.
The heart of Kuta is, of course, the beach. Along the beach is a tree-lined walkway, then a road, and on the other side of the road is commerce. Fast food, hotels, bars, hawker centers, food carts, convenience stores, etc. Beyond this is a warren of alleys lined with kiosks and shops, massage places, hotels, bars, restaurants, travel agencies, internet cafes, etc. Beyond that is the next major street which is the club and bar zone. A bit to the side of that is the fru-fru shopping zone.
When I arrived at the bus station in Denpasar at 10pm, I shared a taxi with a young Finnish couple that were on the bus with me. I had to haggle a bit. (Funny, I seem to be better at that when there are other people involved.) We also went to check out a hotel together. It was down a long, winding alley between the beach and the party zone. Although I was not impressed by Kuta, I do like the hotel selection there. The place I stayed was a nice big brick building with a great pool area, a lush courtyard, an open dining area leading to the open lobby, and even a Hindu shrine. My room was immaculate and modern with air-con, cable TV, a good balcony, and cost about US$20. It was far enough from the mayhem to be very quiet.Having been on the bus all day, I was starving. It was after midnight, so I asked the friendly hotel clerk if he could suggest a place to go that would still be open and was not American fast food. He pointed me in the direction of the club zone. This little foray would be my introduction to Kuta.
I made my way down the alleys to the club street. From the first glimpse, I saw that Kuta was everything that I feared it would be but hoped it wouldn't be. The street was packed with drunken white people stumbling in and out of clubs and bars. If you took a picture of that street, you would not be able to tell it from any other party strip in the world. While walking down the street looking for a restuarant, I was offered pot, mushrooms, and hookers. That first few minutes there set the town for the rest of my visit.
I was having a pizza craving, so eventually, I settled in an open air restaurant with pizza on the menu. I was the only person there. Before I even ordered, this guy sat at my table without so much as looking at me and started looking at a menu. There were 20 empty tables in the restaurant. The waitress came back and he ordered, still not acknowledging that I was there. I was really curious to see what this guy was up to. This was not normal behavior. Eventually, he started talking. I was polite, but not warm, waiting for the sales pitch or the angle. We just ended up talking. The conversation was fine, if a bit odd. He told me that he was originally from Nigeria. His family fled to LA several years ago and he is now living in Jakarta. He has a girlfriend in LA who was visiting. She was asleep back at the hotel. He decided to go out and do some clubbing while she was asleep. We talked through the whole meal--politics, relationships--but it never felt quite natural. I was still waiting for the surprise. None came. We paid our bills parted company.
The next day, I took a walk along the beach. It was OK--very long, very wide. It had a lot of families as well as 20-somethings. There were definitely a lot of young, attractive people. It wasn't great for swimming though--the waves were better for surfing than swimming. Even though the beach looked just fine, for some reason I found it all depressing. Maybe it was just because I knew what was on the other side of the street from the beach. Thankfully, that stuff did not encroach on the beach--no bars blasting music or any of that stuff. A few drinks sellers and surf-board renters and not much else.In the evening, I met my friend James. James was the reason I planned to be in Kuta at that time. He was nearby with his coworkers on some kind of "team building" trip. James and I met in 2002 in California when he was doing an internship in San Jose. The last time I had seen him was in 2003 when I visited him at his place in Victoria, Canada. Since then, he has moved back to Taiwan, which is where I had been planning to meet him before he told me about his Bali trip.
James and I went to a couple of bars in Seminyak--a town neighboring Kuta. Seminyak does not seem nearly as crass as Kuta, but unfortunately, is quite a bit more expensive in terms of lodging. We talked all night. There was no awkwardness at not having seen each other for over 5 years. At one point I was vehemently accused of being anal retentive because I don't do drugs or one-night stands. We had a really good time, even though it was a Sunday night and there were very few people out and about. We ended up looking for a karaoke bar, but instead got directed to a place that had the little private karaoke rooms. Oh, well. We did karaoke for an hour until the place closed at 3am.The next night, we repeated it all over again, except the night ended a bit earlier with a woodfired pizza in a relaxed restaurant rather than in a karaoke lounge. We parted with the plan that I would visit him in Taiwan within the next few months. He flew back to Taipei the next day.
I spent the next day relaxing and preparing for my departure from Kuta the following day.
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