Ubud to Kuta

I'm not particularly looking forward to Kuta - everyone I've met says to get out of there as quickly as you can.  But I've got to experience it for myself, so here goes.

I'm on the bus chatting to an Irish girl.  She and her partner are returning to a nice guesthouse on Poppies Gang, so I tag along hoping to get a room,  Sadly they're full, but no worries, just around the corner are three guesthouses I've extracted from Lonely Planet.  With my pack weighing me down in the oppressive midday heat and humidity I settle for the first - Rita's House.  Big mistake - while it's got a pool the rooms are overpried, and it wasn't until I'd settled in that I realised:

• The toilet doesn't flush (hence the bucket of water conveniently supplied)
• There's no toilet paper or bum gun
• The shower tap disintegrates as you turn it, resulting in a solid stream of water at waist height.  This was actually better than the pittance coming out the shower nozzle once the tap was reassembled.

I should have gone to the Berlian Inn about 20m further down the road.  Not to worry, it's only for one night.

So this is Kuta.  The same tacky tourist stuff I've seen before, only more crass.  The most popular items on display are wooden penis bottle openers, and T-shirts with the logo "Go to Bunnings, Buy some timber, Build a Bridge, Get over it".  Spare me!

But Kuta is really about the beach, so in no time at all I'm in my togs heading for the surf.

Now this isn't actually too bad.  After a couple of hours bodysurfing I wash off in the pool, forsaking the shower.  But as a beach it's not a patch on the clean white sands we have in NZ, and the bars all seem rather tacky.  Adequate I guess, but not my choice of an Asian beach holiday - Phuket resonated with me more.

So Indonesian memories?  Definitely worth a visit with Borobudur, Bromo and Lovina as highlights, but you're forever running the gauntlet of come-ons for taxis, massages, "special" batik exhibitions, blowpipes and other assorted junk you really don't want.  It gets so persistent you really just want to tell them to f*** off, but they're only trying to make a living in a fairly impoverished country, so copious No thank yous (Teeduck, terimah carsee) are the order of the day.

But hey, I've done Indonesia now (well, Java and Bali at least, though sure there's more of Bali to see like the east coast and the Gili Islands).  Now it's off to KL to meet up with Pauline & Nik for the Borneo leg.  The blog might get a bit patchy from hereon in - it's a personal thing, and I suspect we'll be flat out from now on.