First Glimpse of Bali Indonesia

Kuta Beach, Bali Indonesia

Day one of our 2 week long vacation and we have arrived at the first of our locations, Bali Indonesia. It is an Island just south of the Java (the biggest island in the archipelago). It is beautiful here. We landed at the airport just after 2pm. It was crazy landing because one minute you are over water and the next you are on the ground. The airport is literally on the beach. The flight was rather uneventful I slept the entire way while Mina fell in love with Justin Beiber. She watched the "Never say Never" movie. Apparently, he is just a regular kid and now has gained her respect. I'll have to watch it on the flight to Australia and see for myself. In the airport itself we were able to make it through customs pretty quickly because of our handy dandy diplomatic passports :) They seriously are a huge time saver. The terrible thing about the airport here in Bali is the overwhelming smell of smoke. EVERYONE in Indonesia seems to be a chain smoker and it doesn't matter if there are a million signs everywhere saying no smoking people do it anyway. It is nauseating.  I'm serious! Just as I am writing this a guy just sat down next to me and lit up. Gosh... so bad!

Once we got into our taxis, which they spell Taksi here, we headed to our hotel. We are staying at Aston kuta hotel and residence. It is really nice so far. It is a bit too far from the beach from what I would like but that's ok, guess I will get some good walking in this vacation. We changed into some trekking clothes and went off to the beach. Words can't quite describe how beautiful it is so I'll just have to put some pictures up later. But seriously, the boats along the water with the sun and the crystal clear water is stunning. This is definitely paradise. Walking along the beach quickly turned into CHAOS though. Once you get into the "shopping" district you take your life into your own hands with the crazy motorbikes and taksis everywhere. They are constantly honking trying to get your attention so that you will get in their car. It is so annoying!

We ate dinner/late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe here. Now, for those of you who don't know it is about 8400 RPs to a US dollar. Our entire meal was over 1 million RPs. It sounds kinda crazy right? Guess that just shows you how bad inflation is here in Indonesia. So I kinda got to feel what it would be like to be a millionaire for a few minutes. Now, here is the fun part of our day, and by fun I mean endless walking in kinda circles. Seriously, I think we traipsed across the entirety of Kuta Beach. Don't get me wrong it was fun looking at all the shops and running across a few "questionable" items but after a few hours of that it gets a bit tiresome. The culture here is so different from Bangkok and it was interesting to see the architecture. It is a mixture of Hindu and Muslim art. Indonesia after all is predominately Muslim. By the time we got back to the hotel it was about 7:30 pm. We were all quite tired and now I do believe it is time for bed. Early to bed, early to rise, am I right? Tomorrow is hopefully surfing lessons and a beach day. I'm pretty excited for that after seeing the waves today they look awesome! I'm looking forward to all Bali has to offer and am hopeful that this vacation will turn out to be the best ever. No worries, I'll blog about how surfing goes or how I fail at it, most likely the latter. That's all folks!

Random fact: The Cigarette lighter was invented before the match.