Today we had most of the day on Nusa Lembogan.  After breakfast, we walked down to a nearby beach and rented stand up paddle boards.   It was mostly kneel down paddle boards as the water was quite choppy and neither one of us has done this often.  Not too far off from us was the party flotilla.  There are a couple of barges with slides, kayaks, food and drink, banana boat rides, paragliding, snorkelling, etc.  I think it’s a brilliant idea.  Fill a barge with fun water activities and then boats bring tourists out for a day or afternoon of water fun.  I think between that, the fast boats coming in and out as well as a surf break not far from shore, all created the choppy water.  We still had fun hanging out on the boards, standing up when we got to a less choppy area.

Then lunch.  Some days it does seem the only thing there is to do is eat.  I feel like I’ve been eating a lot.  We spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool until it was time to get the 4:00pm fast boat back to Bali.

We are staying in Kuta tonight.  Kuta is supposed to be known for it’s night life.  I haven’t heard anything nice about Kuta, but it’s near the airport and it might be interesting to see this wild night life.  We had a room at the Best Western.  The website I often use to book hotels is Agoda.  They have been great with their ratings, hotel info and ease of booking.  They are a parasite to your email as they send way too many emails so don’t look them up unless you actually mean to book accommodations through them.  Agoda often gives you a mystery accommodation as an option when you are looking things up.  It’s usually 50-80% discounted, but you don’t know which one it is until you book it.  I kept seeing this and passing on it.  This time I looked at the map that showed possible places it could be.  Most of them were on the beach and I knew I couldn’t afford them.  A couple were not on the beach.  But it was one night so I rolled the dice and lost.  We didn’t get a place on the beach, however it was a very high end Best Western and worth way more than we paid.

In the hotel I saw something I haven’t seen since I left the US – wait for it – wait for it – a shower curtain.  What what?  Top sheets on the bed and shower curtains in the bathroom are lost concepts on SE Asia.  This is definitely a high end hotel.

We went to dinner on tourist restaurant row.  It had a Bubba Gump, so that tells you it’s a tourist town.  We found Mexican food that was pretty good.  Then we headed off to the bar district to catch some of this wild nightlife.  Either it’s really low tourist season or I’ve spent way too much time at parties and bars over the years.  This did not live up to the hype, not even close.  Most of the places were blaring music and handing out flyers and drink coupons, but you looked inside and they were empty.  One bar had workers dressed in Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts and had that frat party feeling.  This is the place the clean cut frat boys on vacation flock to.  We decided it would have the better people watching so we sat ourselves down at the bar and I drank our free drinks.  It was good people watching, but by 11:30pm the bar was still fairly empty with only 5 or 6 people on the dance floor and maybe 15 others scattered around a bar that could easily hold a couple hundred.  There may have been more people working there than customers.  Our bartender was funny and looked like the Balinese version of Bruno Mars.  There was a tiny Asian lady with an older white man.  She was dancing and giggling and just having a great time.  That entertained us for quite a time.  There were three rough looking ladies that were dressed in high heels, low cut tops and short skirts standing near the entrance looking so bored.  Our guess is they were working ladies.  Then there were stilt walkers and women in green afro wigs out front trying to convince people walking by that this was the place to be.  The rest of the people in the bar fit the frat boy / sorority girl description.  Just to finalize the whole frat bar experience, they bar tenders had whistles and they put an armband with the bar’s name on it on us.  And half the drinks came in fancy souvenir glasses or had dry ice in them making them all cool and fancy.

As we walked back to the hotel, it didn’t look like many of the other bars we passed were any busier.  Amateurs.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore