From KL to Bali

From KL to Bali

Tuban, Indonesia, Asia

I called it a night on the train at about 11pm and slept for most of the ride. I woke up a few times to check that my bags were all still where I’d left them. I have locks on all my zippers for my big backpack, but that wouldn’t stop anyone from picking the whole thing up and taking it. Of course, nothing like that happened and all was good when we pulled into KL Sentral at 8am. I hopped onto a train and went over to Suzie’s Backpackers to try my luck with the managers there.

They are great people over there and they let me use their shower and WIFI for the morning. I almost felt bad about being back in KL and not going out to see anything, but then I remembered that I’ve seen pretty much all there is to see. The couple of things I didn’t see would have taken a lot more than two hours, and that’s all I had at the moment. So I used their internet to plan a couple more things and was on my way at 10:30am. I got the Skybus over to the LCCT (Low Cost Carrier Terminal) and breezed through check-in, immigration and security with enough time to spare for a Dunkin’ Donuts stop 🙂

The flight to Denpasar Bali took off and landed on time and the only difficult part was getting a visa and then waiting in a horrendous queue to get through immigration. I seem to have a knack for picking the lines that only have one agent working, while the rest all have three so I get to watch everyone else around me fly through. Not cool.

I got through and picked up my bag which had now been waiting for me for about an hour. I jumped in a taxi (which I prepaid for) only to find out that he had no idea where he was going. He brought me to two other hotels before we got to mine, and he only found it because he asked about 17 people for directions. I think he was bringing me to the other hotels because he would get a commission if I stayed there, but I finally got it through to him that I have already booked and paid for somewhere else.

My hotel is not in an easy to find or a nice part of town, however, the hotel itself it beautiful. There is a little courtyard with the rooms looking onto it. I have my own room with a queen bed, my own bathroom and a TV. I don’t want to get spoiled here, but it’s nice to have these luxuries for a few days anyway. I headed straight out to find something for dinner and had to walk through some fairly dodgy alleyways to get to the main road, but I suppose everything is going to seem dodgy the first time you do it, and when it’s dark, and you don’t know where you’re going, and no one speaks English to help you out.

I found the main road and could start to see what people were talking about when they said Bali is mental. I’m staying in Tuban which is right next to the ultra-touristy Kuta and the main road must be used by all of them. There were just thousands of people buzzing by on their motorbikes or in taxis. I found a little place cooking up some satay on the side of the road, so I pulled up a plastic chair and asked for one order. I got a huge scoop of rice and about eight skewers. I’m still not sure what kind of meat I ate, but I’m guessing they would have told me it was a mixture of chicken and beef. I’m not so sure, but it was pretty good anyway.

I’m back at the hostel now and going to call it a night. I think I might try to find another hotel to move to tomorrow. This one is nice but the location doesn’t seem great. Regardless, tomorrow I’ll be exploring the part of Bali that EVERYONE sees, Kuta!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *