Kuta, Bali

After 30 hours of travelling we kicked off our journey in Kuta, Bali. Kuta is a bustling beachfront surfer/party town. Given that it’s only two hours from Perth and six hours from Melbourne, saying that the place is overrun with Australians would be an understatement. They are everywhere! So much so that all the local hawkers welcome you with a fake Australian “G’day Mate!” as they try to charm you into buying some of their junk. We let a few of them know we were Canadian, until one of them responded “Oh yeah, Justin Beiber!” and that was the end of that.


The Balinese people are all extremely friendly. Hindu is the main religion on the island. Everyday they make three offerings to the gods. Small handmade baskets are left everywhere with what ever they can offer and a stick of incense. Its really special to see. The smell of incense is everywhere on the island. We don't know if its the religion, but there is no doubt that the people as nice as anywhere we've ever seen or been.   

Kuta beach is nice and it has great waves for surfing; the water is packed with surfers and the beach is lined with surf schools. We didn’t try any surfing, but it was fun to watch. Behind the beach are all the beautiful resorts. We quickly figured out that you don’t need to be a resident at the resort in order to benefit from the facilities; all you need to do is buy a drink. Once we figured this out we ended up spending a couple of afternoons in some beautiful resorts with giant endless pools and picturesque scenery.

The back of the beach is lined with chairs and mini-fridges with locals selling ice cold Bintang, the local Indonesian beer for 2$ a bottle. As soon as you would sit down the sales people would be all over you offering necklaces, woodcarvings, sandals, sunglasses, manicures and massages. It was pretty easy to turn them all down, but the fun part was that after we made it clear we wouldn’t buy anything they would pull up a chair and hang around and chat with us. We got to know their names, and if we went back the same beer vendor the next day, they would all remember us and chat away again! Of course, we also got to enjoy a couple of beers with some of the many Aussi’s in Bali, they definitely made for good company when having beers on the beach.

We went out a little, but not too much, we were only in Kuta for four days, and one of them was a wash due to the jetlag. Our most adventurous night was when we went into an Australian bar we received a flyer for; they said theyt had live shows every night. Not exactly what I expected, but AJ did get to meet Katie Perry (have a look at the picture - it’s a dude). We’re now headed to the Gili Islands.