Day 3. Our first day in Bali 1/2

 13-11-1999

When I was back in Belgium, one week before departure, I contacted with my HAM radio (radio amateur) a station in Bali. I told him about my flight and asked him not to pick me up at the airport as we were going to be very tired from the 24 hour flight. Unfortunately, Anom was at the airport, and of course we missed him.

When arriving in Bali, note you are not allowed to take your portable telephone with you. To avoid problems, I did not declare my phone and passed through the control post without any problem. 

I have no photo's from the airport, but the arrival post looks very old. After luggage pickup, you immediately have someone who wants to help you carrying your luggage. Most of these people are taxi men who try to get you in their taxi.  So, if you can, tell the man not to pick up your luggage, and tell him you will carry yourself your luggage. 

We first went to the money exchange. In this country, every visitor is a millionaire. The best exchange rates are given on big US $ banknotes. Try to get 100 US $ notes and exchange these into their currency the Indonesian Rupees. 1 US $ = 7200 IDR when we arrived. If you want to compare with the current rate, go to The Universal Currency Converter and check out the exchange rate. Tony exchanged 500 US $ on arrival, but later is was not a smart move. You get so many IDR you won't be able to fit them in your wallet! Try to exchange 100 US $ once you are running out of money, but do not exchange more. Every shop in the tourist places can offer you almost the same exchange rate. And if they can sell you something, don't worry, they will accept US $. Do not try to exchange BEF, no one will accept them.... even not the banks. 

Another important notice about money and money exchange, check the amount you received. This country is corrupt, so recount your IDR to be sure they gave you the correct amount. 

You can go to the tourist places and if you are from Europe, you can even go to the bank automats and withdraw money with your standard bank card. Eurocheque and Cirrus are both recognized! BUT BUT! check the opening hours. I heard from some people that their card was eaten by the machine, because Eurocheque/Cirrus are only accepted during office hours. So DO NOT WITHDRAW money with your bank card from the bank automats out of the office hours! You can lose your bank card.

Visa and MasterCard are of course widely accepted!

We only booked the flight. At the airport we booked our hotel for the first night. Hotel Kuta Aman Gati was our first hotel, and was far the worst hotel we booked. The price was too high (35$) and the rooms where dark and not very clean.    Make sure you have a mosquito net. And I advise you to use the net EVERY night. I think I lost 1 liter of blood. These mosquito's sucked me dry ;-) Do not forget to take some anti-mosquito milk...   On the right you can see the garden of the hotel.

We couldn't resist. We absolutely wanted to go to the sea and the beach. The temperature around 11 AM was already 29°C. We put our feet into the warm water.... hmm about 26°C. The beach in Kuta was deserted! You can see it is low season. And with the publicity about the problems in East Timor seems to frighten a lot of tourists. But hey, East Timor is about 5000km away from here. This is a peaceful island. Paradise on earth! On the right, you can see the picture of a cyber café we visited. Me and Tony wanted to send out a mail to our family and tell them we arrived in perfect conditions! The girl was the owner of the cyber café.  I bought myself some fake Nike sandals for 15.000 IDR. Bargaining is the message, or should I say bargaining is the sport of these people!

As you can see, Kuta is located at the lower end of the island. It is only about 8 minutes driving from the airport. By taxi, you should bargain to south Kuta for 10.000 IDR. 1.5 US $. If they do not accept this price, don't worry. Every 5 cars, there is another taxi waiting to serve you.