A surprisingly cheerful bull. 1985.

 Kembali means “return” in Indonesian, and that’s what I’ve decided to do.

I wanted to go back anyway and a few things recently made me think, why not just go? I was on the web yesterday, (Thursday) and the prices were right, so I just booked. I’m staying at Harrad’s Resort Hotel in Sanur for eight nights from Monday 20th.

Would you believe I don’t have a booking after that yet? Heh heh. Nothing like living dangerously. Xmas and New Year are heavily booked and it’s hard to find a good hotel, but I hope to find one tonight. It may be a 3 star on the road into Denpasar, but it looks OK, so I’ll book a few nights and see how I go.

I also phoned my friend Peter Dunn today because he has a villa in Kerobokan and goes up there often. We’ve been friends since the early 1970s in Blythe Avenue, Yokine, so we go way, way, way back. Pete worked at TVW for a long time but has been a commercial director at STW9 for a long time too.

He won’t be there when I am, but I just wanted to see where his place is and what it’s like. It’s on the west coast north of Kuta near the Kerobokan jail where Schappelle resides. Hmmm.

He’s given me a map and address and the phone number of his daughter, who will be there, so I may get to see it. Also a powerpoint slide show of the villa. Nice! Can be done!

One slight problem is that the flight gets into Bali at 2345, so I won’t be out of the airport until 1am or so. It’s too late to get a room at the hotel, so I face sleeping at the airport until I can check in at midday on Monday. I believe the hotel may come to the party and make a room available at a reduced rate. I have to find out.

Uh oh. I’ve been finding myself increasingly weak in the legs, so I swallowed my pride and bought a walking stick today, a high-tech aluminium one, though!. The footpaths in Bali are notoriously uneven and high/low, and if I trip and fall, I go down HARD and can’t get up again. However, I may just use a photo monopod as a walking pole too. Still deciding.

A new problem has arisen: gallstones. I’ve been noticing dull pain in my left side below the rib cage and thought the worst, of course. The Big C? Family history.

So a diagnosis of gallstones was a relief, if you follow my logic. But it’s a new problem to understand and live with. I don’t know enough about it yet, but low fat diet is the mantra. Yeah. So what’s new?

In keeping with that, I’ve just cooked an Indonesian rendang curry, but using kangaroo. I hope I haven’t cooked the ‘roo too long so it goes tough. Looks great, though.

Meanwhile, I bought a new Pentax K-5 last week and a couple of delicious Pentax lenses, so I’m reducing what I take to Bali to one camera body and two lenses. Radical, huh? (Well, maybe one other camera. Well, …. maybe another one, too. Uh oh.)

Nusa Dua family 1983. This was a Pentax shot.

The point is, the Pentax still camera also shoots Full HD video, so I don’t need to take the Canon HF10 camcorder. I’ll feel naked! But I hope this will allow me to do more photography and video without feeling as if I’m bag-bound. Bali is just so photogenic that it begs to be explored. I hope to get out more this time.

Beach Cremation boys. Another Pentax 1983 shot. One of my favourites.

I’ll also be able to do slide shows and edit video, which I love doing. I hope to post the results more often than in November. We’ll see. I’ll have more time this time, three weeks of it.

The rendang curry is very nice, very hot, but the ‘roo is a little chewy. Very nice, but not as good as beef. More work needed.

Minnie’s barking. By a stroke of luck, my neighbours (who looked after her in November) are here until the day I get home, when they go to Rottnest, so it’s worked out perfectly. They have a beautiful dog, Lola, and She and Minnie get on fine, so although I hate leaving Minnie, she’ll be happy and OK. Next door’s kids love her too, so that’s great.

Oh the bugs in this BlogSpot software! How can they release such rubbish?

This time, I’m talking a Jaycar 802.11 high sensitivity WiFi adapter which I hope will allow me to stay in my room to use the web. The hotel in November was annoying – I had to go to the lobby to get within range. We’ll see what happens this time.

OK, enough for now. I’m taking my 2005 Bali slide show/DVD images and I plan to totally revamp it in BluRay HiDef with new material while I’m up there. The possibilities are now infinite. Video, motion, animation, web publishing, wow!

Merry Xmas.

This caterpillar will turn into a butterfly. Ain’t that amazing?

First, I had a call back from Vivid today. Last night they sent me a warning that I had almost used my second 3GB of data allowance and would have to spend another $29 to renew.

This is iniquitous. When I was with the previous ISP I used to buy 2GB of data a month and rarely used the full amount – usually about 1-1.5GB. Suddenly with Vivid I’m using 6GB a month?? I’m not doing anything different.

The guy on the phone from Vivid asked me what I remembered downloading. I listed about 1GB of programs and he said, er, did you visit a game site? NO! He wouldn’t reveal what had been going on but I suspect my connection is being hijacked by others. I don’t know how – I’ve got WEP enabled, same as my old modem.

Anyway, he gave me 1GB of extra data free, but I don’t think I’m going to continue with this. The signal strength is just too erratic. I never get better than a yellow LED, and it’s mostly red or it drops out. This is impossible.

So it’s back to the search for a stable connection. I think I’m just going to have to start shouting and stamping my foot to get a landline connection. Wireless is fine for cafe surfing, but you can’t rely on it.

Anyway, back to the main heading. I don’t mean a wi-fi connection.

Early this week I got a Facebook invitation to be a friend of a woman I used to know at Channel 7. She left in 1988 but we have a friend in common so we still know each other to say hi, which is sort of all we ever did any way. She married a very high achiever and highly intelligent guy who talks on “the wireless” (that’s radio to you young ‘uns) and lives in Melbourne now.

Recently I’d done a CD rip to iPod music thing for her via our mutual friend, hence the Facebook friend request.

As I say, we’ve always known of each other and said hello at all our meetings, including at the 50th anniversary reunion last year, but she was always so glamorous, so vivacious, so different world, that I never really got to know her. She was just this bright, gorgeous woman who disappeared in 1988. We lost contact except for our mutual friend.

So for once, I answered the request and said, sure, I’ll be your friend, and added a little note on Facebook about other news of our old life and friends. She replied very nicely and we started a little conversation on the Facebook page. I said, er, this is a bit public, I’d prefer if you contacted me by my email address if we chat more.

So she did email me, and the most amazing dialogue has developed. As I said, we had never really spoken before except to say Hi, how are you, bye, and suchlike.

Well, she has a very sympatico (that’s Spanish, yeah?) persona and we started really connecting, with her in Melbourne and me here in Perth. I’m not talking romance! This is better than that, a meeting of minds. She had lost contact with some old work colleagues and was happy to hear the latest news.

But more importantly, she was interested in my latest doings and enjoyed my prose, so I felt I could open up and talk. She studied psychology at Uni and has a good knowledge and a great mind.

Well, try and stop me! I don’t want to sound vain but I like to write and I like to be funny and she seems to enjoy it, so we’ve just found we can’t stop talking. And more importantly, we seem to have quite a lot in common, on several levels. We’ve both discovered that we have far more depth than either of us knew about. I don’t mean we didn’t know ourselves, I mean we didn’t know each other, and now that we do, we really like each other. Ain’t that amazing? Worked together from about 1977 to 1988 and never knew each other except to pass in the corridor. Now, 22 years later, we feel like long lost buddies.

Who’s this chap with the screwed up face? Moi, 1984, holding my Pentax Super A. Great camera, and the new one will be a Pentax too.

This story has a long way to run yet; it it started with a simple friend request on Facebook and I now feel like a caterpillar changing to a chrysalis and soon to be a butterfly. (A Monarch, of course.) I’m meaning in the “move to Bali, drop the carapace of Perth” sense. Maybe a bit more.

However, something’s not right. I’ve been feeling more and more tired, weaker and weaker, needing to sleep sometimes twice a day, unable to walk more than 20m without severe fatigue. I had an abdominal ultrasound today and I will await the doctor’s report, but a big red patch on the screen as I stood up and severe pain as she ran the probe over me makes me a little apprehensive. Moving to Bali might be a bit beyond me after all.

But tomorrow, Sunday, I’m going to buy a new camera, the perfect camera, and that’ll make it better! Hah!

This entry will test if anyone is actually reading this. No-one ever comments. I think I’m talking to ghosts. Is anyone actually reading this? Will anyone take 30 seconds to comment? Otherwise I’m wasting my time and may as well write a book or watch TV.

Cheers

I don’t think this is working. The change to Vivid Wireless and Gmail is just driving me insane.

Don’t believe the advertising! Speeds of 40Mb/s on 4G WiMax technology? Rubbish. Maybe if you’re 10m from a phone tower in a Liberal Party electorate with the wind at 13knots from the NE.

My experience so far is that I just cannot get better than a yellow signal strength LED (out of red/yellow/green) and mostly it’s red. Even if I can get a yellow, I only need to shift my body position and it goes to red. In other words, nowhere in my house or near neighbourhood can I get good signal strength, despite being only 1.5Km from the phone towers that I know about at Karrinyup. I can’t directly see them due to the trees, but they should be pretty close to line of sight from me.

Just to start typing this blog entry, it took me more than 5 mins of shifting the modem to get the Gmail system to stop saying “Wait”. I’ve had to power cycle the ViViFi modem because it lost the signal completely at one stage.

It can be good. I downloaded a software item yesterday at about 300KB/s or 2.4Mb/s, bu that’s a  far cry from 40Mb/s they advertise.

I’m also finding Gmail is as slow as a wet week too. I don’t think I can rely on it as my only email supplier. It’s useful as a portable email system, but I won’t be happy to be totally dependent on it.

This blog software is also so full of bugs that they ought to mount it as a display in a Natural History Museum. This is impossible! I’ve just tried to add a picture to this item, but after waiting 2-3 mins, I just can’t get any response from the Google Blogger. So no picture.

Another example, I just pressed Enter twice to move down two lines and the cursor just disappeared! I have to use the mouse to click on where I want to be to continue. I can’t work this way. I typed the entries in Bali in my room in TypePad and pasted them into the blog, so I didn’t notice it too much then. But I shouldn’t have to do that!

So the search resumes. I’ll have to go back to trying for a land-line solution, ie ADSL over the copper wires. WiFi is great for its intended purpose, but it’s not 100% reliable.

So for the Liberal Party to say we don’t need a National Broadband Network of optical fibre and we can just use wireless instead is just crap. They don’t understand technology. Fibre is rock solid, immune to interference, with HUGE capacity that doesn’t degrade.

I heard a good analogy on the radio a few days ago:

Railways were the big nation building challenge of the 19th century, connecting the cities of Australia with high speed high capacity transport.

Roads and freeways were the big nation building project of the 20th century, adding to the high speed passenger and freight connections across the country.

Nation wide fibre-optic connections are the nation building project of the 21st century. They are the 21st century analogy of railways and roads to increase our industrial and scientific capabilities.

The stupid opponents of the NBN are a ball and chain around our ankles. We spend more on gambling than the NBN will cost! High speed, high capacity fibre optic cable is necessary for our future.

Bunkum. Bunkus.

USS Carl Vinson off Fremantle, May 1983

• The photos shown today are new scans from my old slides of 1983 and later. I’ve got shelves full of ring binders with thousands of film slides. If I’m to have any chance of moving to Bali, everything has to be reduced to electronic form, so I’ve now embarked on scanning everything I have and ditching the physical things. Wow, it’s hard to throw things away, but… what am I to do? No-one will ever take them off my hands, they’re hardly museum stuff, yet I can’t just bin them without keeping some record of 40 years’ work.
• I’m sure you know by now how computer-centric I am. So was it just a coincidence that my room number at the Bali hotel was 2e8? Computer nerds will know what I mean.

Star trails, June 1983 from Northcliffe, WA

• I’ve just been chatting to the newsagent in my local shopping centre. I noted that the price of a magazine that I used to just buy automatically every month up to about 5 years ago, Popular Photography from the USA, has risen yet again this month. Even though the A$ is now on par with the US$, and the magazine’s US cover price is US$3.99, the price here is now $16.50!!! That’s risen from $14.95 last month.

  When  I used to buy it, the A$ was as low as 0.70c to the US$ so we accepted that the exchange rate and transport costs made a local price of $8.95 just something we had to live with.

  But the price then started to jump about 4 years ago: from $8.95 to $10.95 in one hit, then $11.95, $12.95, $14.95 and now $16.50, even though the exchange rate has been steadily improving and the US cover price has changed very little.

  Do I need to spell it out? We’re being fleeced. It’s legal robbery. Where does it stop?

  Yet in Kuta, Bali last week, the current issue (not the two month delayed issue we get in Australia) cost the equivalent of A$12! It used to be that magazines and books in Indonesia were hard to come by and very expensive, but I found the Periplus book store chain up there stocks all I could ever want. In fact, there was a wider choice and more up-to-date copies than here!!!!

  So why don’t I just subscribe and have it mailed to me? I did that some years ago, but despite filling in the subscription card in the magazine for overseas subscribers at surface mail rate, I found they just overcharged me by about 20% on my credit card. When I complained via email, it took months to get it sorted and they never explained the extra cost. Too bad. So I don’t trust them enough to subscribe again!

  I mentioned the latest amazing price rise to the newsagent and he said, yes, it’s Gordon & Gotch and they just couldn’t care less what the newsagent says or what the customers say. G&G is a subsidiary of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s empire and a monopoly in Australia. The newsagent has to take a contract with G&G to get his magazines to sell and therefore he has no say whatsoever in the pricing or what G&G supply him with. He can take on more magazines to customer wishes (as I’ve requested once or twice), but he can’t refuse what G&G dictates he carries.

  Worse, he has to pay up front for a certain number of magazines and books whether he thinks he’ll sell them all or not. If they don’t sell, yes, he gets refunded on the returns, but G&G have had his cash for a month or even longer, earing interest for them, not him. In some cases, he said, he has to carry cookery books for up to four years, so since he’s had to apy G&G in advance, that means he’s made them an interest free loan of the cost of the books which they get to bank and earn the interest on!

  What can he do? If he protests, they don’t care, and if he declines their terms, he has nothing to sell. Hmmmm. This is not the first time I’ve heard this tale from a newsagent, by the way.

  The answer is to download electronic versions from the Zinio web site. I’m going to have to do that, but the result will be that my local newsagent loses yet more of his business, which is already badly affected by the very poor supermarket in the shopping centre driving customers away.

  So on and on it goes. I wrote much earlier in this blog about all the shops and services we’ve lost in this area in the past 20 years. More and more businesses are being forced out by predatory tactics by the big chains and the monopoly marketing practices described above. We may as well all move to China now!

Hot chick, May 1983. I have no idea who she was, but she looked good.

• It was hot in Perth today, 34.9C (94.8F) and after working up a small sweat at about 5.30pm doing a maintenance thing with my car, I started the air conditioner in this room. It’s set at 25C, but after initially starting, it hasn’t run since! That means the room temp must be already below 25 degrees. stupid fool me!
• If it had reached 35C, we would have had day 1 of a heat wave, since tomorrow will be 37C and Friday 38C. Apparently three consecutive days above 35C is the definition of a heat wave. It’s not quite a record for November, as it has occurred before in 1933, 1958 and 1976 apparently. But it indicates that we’re already heading for a hot, hot summer.

  People say they couldn’t hack the heat in Bali. Well, if you’re in the shade in Bali or anywhere up there, every breeze is a cool breeze, I say. Yes, it’s much more humid, but you really, really do get used to it. This hot, windy, dry heat gets me down, I can tell you.

• I am being driven MAD by the bugs! Two kinds of bugs: the moths on this warm night are swarming to the light and will not let me alone.

  But the other bugs are also driving me mad: the bugs in this blogging software. It is riddled with them. Trying to use this as a word processor is an exercise in frustration.

  Although I don’t like harming the moths, at least I can spray the insecticide and get relief for a while, but there’s no spray for these stupid software bugs!

• So why don’t I close the flywire door? Well, when you have dogs who want to go in and out all the time, a flyscreen door is a pain. Minnie’s too big for a doggie door, so I took the fly screen off years ago. It might have to go back on. That means I’ll have to get up and open the screen door for her all the time, but that’s not a bad thing, is it Keith!

Wow! Over WA 10 November 2010

• I’m editing all the Bali vision from the Nusa Dua Peninsula tour last Tuesday at the moment (crumbs, was it only a week ago?) and wooee! HD video, once tweaked and sharpened and the Mercalli Stabiliser software applied looks MINT!

  Mercalli is a German piece of software that takes your wobbly shaky bumpy vision shot in the car (taxi) and makes it look as if a $100,000 Steadicam had been used. It’s fantastic. The pictures are beautifully clear and sharp in HD and the audio from the little camcorder’s microphones in stereo is fantastic. Mind you, it’s mostly aircon and vehicle noise, but it’s actual, real ambient sound. Add music and wow!

Oh, it’s late. Time to check the video rendering and stabilisation process (it takes a long time) and go to bed.

On Saturday I finally made the move to a new wireless internet connection which I hope will give me much more speed. It’s the Vivid Wireless ViViFi portable wi-fi modem.

It’s like a portable mobile phone shaped like a very sleek, smooth, white cake of soap. It connects to up to five of your computers by wi-fi within a 20m radius or so and links them to Vivid’s 4G network.

The promise is speeds of up to 40Mbits/sec but I doubt I’ll see that kind of speed, but already this morning I saw 13Mbits/sec in one test. The best I’ve had in the past two years with other wireless networks is 1mbit/sec tops, usually half that.

What will it mean? Have a look at this:

I uploaded this same video last week from Bali but it was only a small window and heavily compressed. I’ve just recompressed it but at a bigger window size and ended up with a 10MB file. It’s uploading now and I don’t know how it’ll go, but it should look a lot better. Of course, it’ll be much slower for you to download and view too, so apologies if it takes a while. Let me know if you need ideas on a good download helper and way to view it.

The other advantage of the ViViFy modem is that it’s battery powered, so I can just unplug it from the charger, put it in my pocket, put the laptop in my bag and hit the road. Internet anywhere, not dependent on finding a hotspot. I can also sit out at my outdoor patio table and work out there under the umbrella. Oh, the decadence!

Aha! In the 5 mins it took to write the above, it’s finished uploading and I can check it. That would have taken at least 30mins in Bali, if it was possible at all.

OK, it looks good to me. The window doesn’t look bigger on this page, but if ou dowload and view the movie separately, it will be 852 x 480 pixels.

So for $199 plus $29 for 3GB of data, it looks hopeful so far.

I forgot to talk about the sightseeing drive on Tuesday 9th. Can’t leave that out.

I hired a hotel based driver for four hours, midday to 4pm, to drive me down to the southern peninsula of the island. Four hundred thousand Rupiahs, it cost, by the way, or A$44.

I wanted to see Benoa, Nusa Dua, Ulu Watu, all the places we used to ride our motorbikes in the 1980s. I also especially wanted to see Kuta and the Kuta Seaview Hotel where we had such good times in those days.

Another motive was to see what some of the real estate looked like. Didn’t see a lot of that, but that’s OK.

Well, what an eye opener. In 1983, the Benoa peninsula (on the middle right) was just a dusty collection of villages connected by a rutted road leading to a beach where they brought turtles ashore (trussed up and for eating, that is!).

Bringing the turtle catch ashore 1983

It’s traditional, but it’s still a tragedy. 1983

Now it’s jam packed with huge international luxury hotels, restaurants for the rich tourists, water sports and amusement parks, traffic, apartment blocks and clutter. That’s progress, and it’s also jobs, money and survival for the Balinese, so who am I to complain. That’s life.

Our first stop was at Benoa harbour. I can’t be sure, but this beach:

Benoa 2010

looked familiar. Could this be the same beach? I’m not sure.

Benoa 1983

From there the driver tried to show me the beautifully manicured gardens of the massive hotel where the international political conferences are held. Very nice, but I said no, this doesn’t interest me. Let’s go.

Time was slipping away, so we just drove up to the highest point where the TV transmitter towers are. There were a few nice views, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s a bit remote and agricultural.

Then it was down to Jimbaran beach near the airport where I told the driver I was busting for a pee. I asked the Indonesian word for this. It’s kinting. Fine with me.

Then it was a quick bowl of clear seafood soup – absolutely delicious – and while sitting at the restaurant table I had another feeling of familiarity. “Where was the terrorist bomb blast in 2007?”, I said.  Yes, that’s right, it was this same spot a few doors down. Ugh!

Time was running out by then, so it was off to Kuta to see “Bemo Corner”, which I remember well, and the Kuta Seaview. What a contrast! What a difference! Bemo Corner was open then, uncluttered, ringed by restaurants. Now it’s a walled jungle.

Likewise, this was the Kuta Seaview beachfront in 1983:

Kuta Seaview Hotel 1983

This is the same area (from a different angle) now:

Kuta Seaview Hotel 2010

Phew! How glad I am that we did our trips in the 1980s.

I also made a quick call in to the Mata Hari department store to look for an item (didn’t find it), but had a good chuckle at what was happening on the steps in the entrance. There were two quite large tanks of water with people sitting on the rim with their legs in the water. A closer look showed that there were hundreds of little fish about 25-30mm long in the water and they were nibbling at the skin on the people’s legs! They were eating the loose skin. People were paying Rp.10,000 (A$11) for 20 minutes of this.

Well, why not? I asked a European looking girls what it felt like. It tickles, and is not unpleasant, she said. I laughed and said, make sure you’ve still got both legs when you get out.

Cheers.

Home again after a good trip. Bunkus means package, complete, finished and that’s how it feels.

Balinese hand luggage test frame.

All went smoothly for the trip home yesterday. My transport to the airport arrived early and so I had plenty of time to have a bit of lunch and buy a final gift. That was good because I’d had a hell of a job trying to find a suitable item (a purse for my sister). I had one, but wasn’t at all sure she’d like it. Finally, at the last duty free shop, there was a genuine item (not a copy) that grabbed me straight off. No need to hesitate – it felt right, so bunkus. Thank goodness for that.

Bali airport is very nice, the departures section, that is. The arrivals section was a bit old, just as I remember iot from 20 years ago. The departure terminal is way better than Perth! But then every airport is better than Perth.

I’d done a web check-in and when I arrived at the check-in counters there were long lines and my heart sank. But a security guy saw my web-printed boarding pass and ushered me straight past the queues to a line with only two people in front of me! Wacko. I’ll bet the surfie bogans in the long queues were thinking, “Who is that guy? Why can he go to the top of the line?” Hah! Seniority and smarts, mate.

After all my careful packing, having ditched a towel, a T-shirt and a pair of shorts to save weight, my bag came to 19.7Kg. Nice. (There’s a CPAP machine, a tripod, a monopod, a fair sized camera, a laptop charger, three camera chargers and a million cables and power adapters in there apart from clothes and toiletries, after all.)

I’d put the T-shirt, actually a collared polo shirt, and the pair of shorts in the bin in the room. They were of no value, just cheapies. The room cleaner guy saw them and asked if he could have them. Sure, I said, but they’re size 4XL, that’s XXXXL! No problem, he said. He wanted them for his son, I think e said. So I signed a scap of paper with his name on so that could show he had permission to have them. He was very pleased.

The AirAsia departure lounge ain’t very comfortable – steel seats, bad air-con, but that’s what you get when you fly on the cheap. You also have to walk across the tarmac and climb the stairs to the aircraft – no aerobridge for us. It’s getting a bit hard for me to go up those steps, but I made it. Same seat as the flight up, and the same people next to me, the ones with the kids who want to swap seats all the time. Ugh. But we swapped so that I had the window seat for photography, so it was alright in the end.

We’d heard that another airline had diverted a plane around a cloud of volcanic ash from Merapi, so I was slightly apprehensive, but our flight was completely uneventful, without even any bumpiness. They do these Perth-Bali-Perth flights twice a day, every day of the week, so I think they know the way and the conditions pretty well by now.

Who’s driving the bus?

The plane is a pretty new Airbus and from row 6 you can see into the cockpit (you couldn’t call it a flight deck) when the pilot and cabin crew open the door. On bigger aircraft the flight crew have their own toilet so that the heavily locked door doesn’t have to be opened in flight, but not here – the captain or first officer pop in and out to use the front loo and have a chat to the cabin staff. Security? No worries, mate.

STOP PRESS: ABC News is carrying the story that Jetstar has restricted flights to daytime only into Bali due to the requirement to see any ash cloud danger. There’s no suggestion that there’s any problem, but better to be safe. Since I’m writing this at home, we made it! Hah hah.

The flight provided a late afternoon sunset light show over the rugged Kimberleys of Western Australia and was one of the best photo flights I’ve had. I was on the east side so I didn’t have the sun shining right into the lens.

An ancient landing strip?

Closer to Perth

Self portrait, 2010

We touched down at 1923, seven minutes early, and I was one of the first off the plane. walking toward the duty free shop I noticed a lonely glowing machine called an eSmartPassport machine. “Hello, machine,” I said, “what can you do for me?” So I stuck my recent electronic chip-equipped passport in, told it I hadn’t been in South America recently, honest, and it gave me a red striped ticket about half the size of a boarding pass. Hmmm.

Then I bought my 2.25 litres of duty free grog (wow – an increase in the allowance? Unbelievable) and headed downstairs. The queues for passport control were full already and stream of people were coming out of the eSmartPassport channel. I knew I had my little ticket, so I entered the clear channel and was the only candidate. A Customs guy said, “No sir, you have to use the machines over there.” I said, “No, I’ve got a ticket.” OK, just stand here on the marked point, pop your ticket into the slot, look directly at the lens of the camera about 1m in front and look as bored as your passport photo. Ten seconds later, two little barrier gates open and the Customs guy says “Hurry, hurry, before they close again.” I grab my heavy camera bag and duty free bag and scurry through, if you can imagine an elephant scurrying!

Bag pickup took ten minutes and when I reached the Quarantine entry, the lady saw my card said all noes to the questions and said, “First time to Bali, sir?” No, many times. “Any wooden or straw items, sir?” No, I said, I know the ropes. OK, onto the X-ray machine, no problems, no need to open bags and that was it. I was out into the wide blue yonder at 8:03pm – amazing. But it’s about time it was made easier for models of seniority and rectitude like me, harrrumph.

So a good end to a good trip. It was better than I expected – Sanur was quiet and relatively uncrowded and the hotel, although a little frustrating at times, was good. My bed in the room was more comfortable than my bed at home, I think, so I slept well each night. No sickness, no accidents or mishaps and the Aussie dollar exchange rate just keeps getting better. It was up to near Rp.9000 to the dollar at times, even higher than the US dollar, so prices were pleasantly cheap. It rained nearly every day but who cares? I’ve complained long and loud about the food, but eventually I realised that if I emphasised that I wanted it spicy and traditional, I got there in the end. My final meal at the hotel was Ikan Bumbu Bali, fish with Balinese spices, and I said to the waiter, “I like it spicy.” It was just right. Fantastic.

Oh, yeah. After my comment a few days ago that a March 2011 completion date for that villa complex next to The Village restaurant looked pretty pie-in-the-sky, I noticed that the foundations are being laid even now! Amazing. It could happen after all. I’m impressed. MUCH more research to be done, though.

And I can’t do anything until my health improves. I am so dreadfully fatigued that I can hardly do anything, even getting up out of the chair is difficult. Back pain, foot pain. I’m having serious mobility problems. Such is life.

Lots of things to do now that I’m back home. Funny how a change of scene perks you up, gets the brain working again. I have lots of ideas now to make small improvements at minimum cost to make life more pleasant. The trick is to keep the fire burning. Selemat malam.

Mouse glue, anyone? Surely it isn’t what it says? Poor mice. Mosquito essence? Freshly squeezed?  Another sign on a motor repair shop says “Cat Oven”. I know about hot dogs, but surely not …?

At last, an enjoyable meal. No, not the PETS FOOD – Made’s Restaurant, Jalan Tamblingan, Sanur. It has quite a large Asian section on the menu and apart from a Chinese bias, there’s a reasonable choice of Indonesian dishes, including Rijstaffel if you don’t mind waiting and paying a bit more.

I had a Coco Surprise, prawns served in a half coconut. The coconut was genuine, but not the kind you can eat, just a container. The prawns were tiny shrimps with sliced champignon style mushrooms, plus chopped tomato and onion (I think) on lettuce. It was covered in a seafood sauce straight out of a bottle, I reckon, but it was passable.

By the way, in Indonesian, kelapa is coconut and kepala is head, so it’s easy to mix them up and get a smile when you do.

Then finally, for the first time here, I had beef rendang. It wasn’t as fiery hot as I expected, but it was delicious even so, rich and full of coconut milk flavour. The beef was beautifully tender and broke apart with a fork, no steak knife needed, even though one was provided. Nasi putih on another plate with a mix of tiny chopped beans and bean sprouts and bawang goreng on top. Excellent. I’d go back there for sure.

The highlight of the evening, though, was our waitress Widi (pronounced Wee-dee). She was full of humour and bouncy personality and very pretty to go with it. I made sure to tell her I was sendirian* and she called me boss man after that. She wore no ring – I wouldn’t mind being swami* to her. She’s only early twenties, though. Sob.

Boss man

I’m also very chuffed in the barang* department. I brought my camera bag, but it’s too big, heavy and bulky so I’ve been carrying everything around in a plastic shopping bag. Not very secure and not much protection for cameras.

Walking back to the hotel after lunch yesterday I stopped in at  a smart looking clothes and accessories shop (just for a browse, you know) and although it’s mainly female oriented, I saw a brown Dolce & Gabbana bag with a laptop compartment that just grabbed me. It’s all zips and straps, but very male and a beautiful soft leather, chocolate brown and real leather (here, sniff).

Not wanting to appear too eager and needing to check whether the laptop fits (I didn’t have it with me), I feigned lack of interest and turned to the other shelves. Wallets, got wallets, ho hum, wait, what’s this? Bally men’s wallet, perfection in chocolate brown leather and fine patterned tough synthetic. Instant “gotta have it”.

Again I tried to look bored, noted the prices and went back to the hotel to have a snooze and work out the exchange rates.

An hour later, very refreshed after a solid sleep, I needed waver no more. I took the laptop with me in my elegant plastic shopping bag and headed for the ATM to get some cash, because I wanted to avoid using credit cards if I could.

How crazy is it? I needed about Rp. 1,500,000 – yes, a million and a half. The ATM won’t go that much – Rp.500,000 is the limit. I tried typing in the full million and a half and it said “Computer says no,” and rejected me. Did I say “sniff”?

Anyway, I made two consecutive withdrawals of Rp.500,000 each and that would have to do. Even so, that’s a thick wad of 20 Rp.50,000 notes. I’m rich, I’m rich!

To the shop (50m away), the laptop fitted perfectly, the wallet was still there, so I decided to risk the kredit kad anyway. “Oooooh, can you pay cash, sir?” No, I can’t get enough, I say.

Oh, did I forget to mention the prices? A miilion rupiahs?? “Aaayy, terlalu mahal!” Well, I didn’t feel the need to haggle too hard: the magnificent D&G bag was Rp.810,000 = $90 and the wallet was Rp.388,000 = $43. I reckon a bag like that would cost $250-$350 at home and the wallet would be in the $70-$100 range.

So I jokingly started haggling and got it down to Rp.800,000 for the bag and Rp.375,000 for the wallet, $88.88 and $41.66 respectively (wow, what a haggle expert!). These are machine printed price labels with bar codes in a franchise shop, not something the shop keeper makes up on the spot. So doing the bag on kredit kad and wallet for cash, honour was satisfied.

And here they are. Not your bag? Too bag!.

Pleased as punch! Makes the trip worthwhile on its own. Not too expensive, not too heavy or bulky, and something to last me for years and years.

There are other wallets there by Burberry, Dunhill, Prada and so on, in excellent styles that I just don’t see at home. I may buy a couple more.

 I’ve just discovered that there’s a rock pond in the grounds with a pair of resident tortoises which see you arrive and come looking for food. I have hi-def vision! And a dark red chukta, a dragonfly.

Now to check email, send this and get moving!

* look it up in Wikipedia Translate

Cosy Corner, Kuta, 1980 – those were the days – real Bali food

My search goes on. Surely I can’t be the only person, in this area of Bali anyway, who wants good spicy traditional Indonesian cooking? It must be just the way Sanur has developed – geriatric city for the older group of Aussie tourists who don’t want hot food.

We went to a different restaurant for dinner last night. I won’t name it here for fear of retribution in the future (just joking), but it’s owned by an Australian couple. Very Balinese decor – AFL footy shirts on the walls. An owner who asks what footy team you barrack for, and if it’s not Carlton, he’s out to convert you. Other pictures of elephants and tigers, those traditional Balinese animals.

The menu was mostly steaks, burgers, sandwiches, Italian and so on, but there was an Asian food section and my eyes latched onto murtabak as part of an Asian Basket. Murtabak is one of my favourites, a griddle-cooked thin flat-bread pancake folded over with spicy minced lamb, spinach, onion, pepper and so on. It’s not far different from the Turkish pide at Warwick food hall, but much spicier. I needed a wet towel when I had it in KL.

Oh my goodness. What I got was a basket of two mini dim-sims, two standard Chinese army issue spring rolls, two chicken nuggets (!!) and one fried, folded, flattened seafood (I think) parcel.That was the murtabak. Chips were piled on top.

I tried, but it was like eating packet stuff from the Woolies frozen food cabinet.

Then for main, I chose Kweytiau, which from the description I took to be Kuay Teow. I love this in Singapore – flat noodles (present, sir), onion, garlic, prawns, squid, chopped chicken, and lots of pepper, chili, crispy onion etc etc.

What I got was a sort of pale whitish soup with the noodles and maybe a bit of chicken and onion, but it was as if they’d soaked all the flavour out with blotting paper. It was one of the most taste-free Asian dishes I’ve ever eaten.

The owner’s wife came over and said, “Everything OK, guys? Speak up if it isn’t, and I’ll go and tell the chef to get his act together.”  I didn’t dare say anything. I couldn’t have politely expressed my disappointment. I just put my head down and ploughed on.

It wasn’t cheap, either. It was about Rp. 55,000 or $6 for that dish. OK, no great loss, but I give up.
The other guys enjoyed their prawn cocktail, steak and salad, American club sandwich and fried chicken (just like the Colonel’s) with chips, and banana splits for dessert.

They wanted one more beer at the end, and I’d seen wine on the counter, so I thought I’d see what was available and give it a go. Only two choices by the glass – both the same local brand, Hatton’s, I think. One was in a bottle and described as a sweet, fruity white (Ugh! “Tidak manis, yah?”, I said). The other choice was a cask white, described as dry, elegant. OK, I had a glass for Rp. 35,000 or $4.

Well, the memory lingers on, just like the aftertaste. I couldn’t finish the glass. Astringent, metallic, with a lingering sensation on the palate would be a good description. Shall we say the food didn’t overpower the wine. Oh well, at least I know now.

The guys were going to go later, at 2am, to a bar to watch the Brazillian Grand Prix by satellite feed, but the beds were too soft and seductive, I think.

In the Ulu Watu area, 1985. Wonder what it’s like now…

I’m going to try to hire a taxi for a few hours today and go out to the Nusa Dua/Benoa/Ulu Watu areas to see where some of these villas for sale are located. I guess it’s changed in the 25 years since I rode my motorbike out there last time…

Lots more rain yesterday. Good stuff. now to look for real estate on the web.

What a beautiful morning. Sunny bright but dewey and misty, warm but not too hot.

Kuta 1985

 I went for a swim in the pool yesterday and felt better for it. To be honest, I haven’t been swimming for the last few years and I really noticed how bouyant I felt in the water. It’s all the fat, you know. It floats to the top!

Fat City 2010

I have to be so careful not to slip! Wet concrete, steps and changes of level everywhere, slippery tiles, cracks and grooves waiting to catch the errant sandal – it’s an accident waiting to happen. OK so far…

The good old days. 1985

I was also a bit diffident at first about exposing my flab, but this is Fat City! And Geriatric Rest Home No. 1. This is definitely not your young crowd, not in Sanur, so that’s OK then. There’s even an old lady being wheeled around in a wheelchair.

Anyway, it rained buckets yesterday, with thunder and lightning. There were some nice fine spells, but it was a good, wet day. That’s fine with me, I love it. After dessicated Perth, it’s like days of old.

Speaking of which, sitting at breakfast this morning looking out over the beach and bay, I was taken back to the 80s by the smells and sounds. But I realised that it’s not the same. Back then I was slim and had energy and I was ready to take my rented motorbike and hit the road. I thought nothing of riding by myself up to Kintamani and down into the crater via the twisty rutted road, then riding back to Sanur via other small villages, a full day of it. I have the photos to prove it.

Lake Batur from Kedisan 1985 – Gunung Batur in the clouds

Down at the lake. I rode my motorbike down there!

But you can’t go back. Thank goodness I did it then, because it’s impossible for me now. I haven’t made it to Kuta yet, maybe this afternoon, but even that in an airconditioned taxi is going to be a big effort for me. Too late to recapture that Bali past, I’m afraid.

The food saga continues – my quest to get good Indonesian food is not yet satisfied. For lunch yesterday I had Tom Yum Goong, the Thai soup, and that was moderately hot, but nothing like the Thai heat. Very little meat and very tough, chewey mushroom slices, but it was OK.

Then last night we went back to the best place we’ve found so far, and this time I asked for “more spicy”, with sambal on the side. I even asked about ikan bilis, peanuts and crispy garlic/onion, but I didn’t get any though.
At least I got sliced chili in the food and I got through a full dish of sambal, and it was pleasant, but still no prizes. I reckon I could cook Indo food better than this. Maybe I need to go upmarket and pay more? To search out recommended authentic restaurants? I only paid $10  total for an entree, main course and a Bloody Mary, for goodness sake. And the owner threw in a scoop of beautiful ice cream at the end because we are such regular customers at this place.

I’ve been shooting a little bit of video and putting it into a slide show, and I marvel at how well it all works. It’s incredible. I’m shooting high definition video, editing it, then making a high def slide show mixing the video with still images and it just works! No format troubles, no crashes, no waiting, no weirdnesses, all on a laptop in my room. It’s fantastic. Let me try another upload.

Despite the above, the audio seems to have gone missing on this. I can make it happen, but the file size gets enormous, so…

OK, ’till next post, cheers.