The day started off well; I was told there would be time to see the sea. Then the dreaded word was spoken - "Shopping". Off we went to a gigantic store, full of clothing stacked package upon package about 1.5 metres high. There must have been thousands of every single clothing item imaginable. The ladies in my family dived into shopping with gusto and even got the men involved. They walked away from the sarong section carrying nearly 20 of them. They are great family people and so, when they shop, it's not for themselves but for dozens of relatives. I'm not a shopper but they insisted I should buy something as a souvenier - I bought a knitted shirt.
During the morning our driver took us to a wholesale fruit market. We walked around looking for people selling snake fruit. We found one place and the 11 Cambodians started sampling the fruit and discussing a price. Earlier, I'd told people that Cina had asked Vuth to buy 50 kg of the fruit. What I didn't know was that others in the group also wanted to buy. The price in Cambodia is about $5 a kg as it's not grown here. In Bali it cost around $1.50 a kg.
I got fed up standing in the sun, waiting for the arguing over the price to end, and so I wandered back to the van. I sat on a wall, in the shade, and various street sellers came to me. I was impressed that they all spoke a reasonable amount of English. It was Sunday, and very quiet, so I suggested they should be at home with their families. One man tried to sell me silver bracelets but I refused. He said I could give one to my wife but I told him I didn't have one. He then suggested my sisters so I told him they lived far away. He kept coming up with ideas but I didn't buy, even when he offered me a large bottle of Chanel No.5.
Another chap appeared with a stack of baseball caps. He told me they were half the price of those around our hotel and I believed him as here he was among the locals with not a foreigner in sight. I'd have bought a batik one but he disappeared while I was talking to Usman. Usman plonked his bag on the floor and introduced himself and told me about his children. He saw my reading glasses that have the eye pieces joined together with a magnet. I'm quite proud of them so I showed him how they work. "Oh, they are like mine", he said; he had exactly the same kind. I didn't need another pair but he was so nice I decided to buy a pair. In Canada I paid up to Cdn$50, including postage; his were less than US$15. After that he wanted me to buy a pair of sunglasses to bring him luck as I was his first customer. Our driver had the same kind and so I fell for it and now I'm the proud owner of a pair of Polaroid glasses I may never wear. While we were talking I noticed most of the men were smoking. I commented on it and our driver said 80% of Indonesians smoke. They are very cheap so that is one reason why they do. It was a far more interesting time than watching people bargain for fruit. The fruit arrived at the van on the heads of ladies hired to carry them.
Next stop, the seaside. Hurray! Time to walk on the beach and get away from busy streets. About five of us left the vehicle to cross the sands to the ocean; the rest sat in the van. It was scorching hot so even I was happy to return to the vehicle. I think it would be lovely to go for an early. morning or evening walk as the beach was enormous and very clean.
We had the inevitable Chinese lunch. The meals are always good but, after a while, one Chinese meal starts to taste like any other Chinese meal. I insisted on having a beer and was happy to see four of the men willing to share. Meakara and Saly do all the ordering so the rest of us just sit back and wait for whatever to arrive.
It's interesting driving around because we see lots of very nice bus stops. They are elevated off the ground by about a metre, presumably so the drivers can see passengers. The funny thing is that I never saw anyone at the bus stops and I never saw a single public bus. Our driver said most of the working folk use motorbikes as the streets are too narrow for larger vehicles. If they use the bus they have to walk a long way home.
Bali airport is very impressive and I suppose it's purpose built for tourism as it's the main source of funds for the island. There are shops galore and everything is very tasteful. We got to the counter before the rest of the passengers arrived, and it was a good job, because of all our baggage. Our check-in lady with Malaysia Airways was wonderful. She spent about half an hour sorting out our seats so we could be close to each other. Vuth and the younger men always needed to be near the old folks to be able to translate when meals and other things came along. We also had seven boxes of snake fruit that weighed almost 200kg. We nearly had a hernia carrying them from the carts to the weigh scales. How the tiny ladies managed to lift them off the ground, and put them on their heads, is beyond me. We were so grateful we gave the check-in lady a large tip. She declined, saying she was doing her job, but we insisted. She was lovely and super patient. I just felt sorry for the ever increasing queue.
We arrived in Kuala Lumpur about 9pm and had booked rooms in a transit hotel at the airport as we had an 11 hour layover. We couldn't get into our rooms until midnight so I did a lot of mooching around. The room was lovely; the bath towel was so heavy, if I'd stolen it, it would have taken up my entire baggage allowance. It was a shame to have such a nice room but to only be able to use the bed until 5am when I had to get up.
Thus ended my Bali trip. Whether I ever return is a mystery. If I do, I won't be shopping and visiting temples. I'm sure our driver wanted us to see the best of the Hindu culture, but a few less temples would have been nice. It's a very clean and orderly place, the people are friendly and it's relatively cheap. I'm not a shopper so the streets of endless tourist stuff leaves me cold. I'd have loved to have wandered around the coffee plantation and the rice fields but rain stopped play.
Now for a bit of technical stuff. My friend Dave has told me that nobody's looking at the actual blog. Instead, people are receiving the daily notice and are reading my news that way. It's very embarrassing because the figures are posted of people visiting my blog and at the moment it's generally zero. So Dave is suggesting that you should take a look at the blog by going to https://peterheyes.blogspot.com and he'll be happy to see visits going up from zero. I'm told it's a lovely looking blog!
He's also put on something where you can share on Facebook, if you feel like it.
