So now, from today, 21 January 2017, we enter a New Dark Age. This will be an age of national confrontation, of United States selfishness, vindictiveness, warlike threats, coercion, refusal to cooperate, outright theft of territory and property, you name it, it will happen.

I will be very surprised if there is not armed conflict between the US and China on one hand and Russia on the other. This President Dump knows nothing of diplomacy, tact, subtlety. He is a bully, a liar, absolutely untrustworthy. We will never be able to believe anything the USA says and trust will be a game of chance.

Any US citizens reading this who voted for Trump, or didn’t bother to vote – YOU DAMNED FOOLS! YOU will be to blame for any deaths that occur. It will be on your conscience. You USA idiots. That you voted for a known, proven liar, a businessman known for his dishonesty, a tax cheat, a misogynist, a mauler of women, a low intelligence idiot, a bully and any other failing you care to name speaks volumes for your stupidity.

The USA has some people who are magnificent – doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, nurses, researchers, musicians, actors, many military people, … but the majority of the USA are DUMB! STUPID! IDIOTS! Low intelligence racist pigs.

Unfortunately your stupid decision doesn’t affect just you, it affects all of us. Your absolutely crazy choice of president, this pig Dump, is going to affect ALL of us. I will be holding you responsible. Rue this day!

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I think about the US presidents in my lifetime:

• Kennedy                  Dem
• Johnson                   Dem
• Nixon                        Repub
• Ford                           Repub
• Carter                        Dem
• Reagan                      Repub
• George HW Bush   Repub
• Clinton                     Dem
• George W. Bush     Repub
• Obama                      Dem
• Trump                       Repub

Of those, almost every Democrat is regarded with kindness by history as having been a good man and who has done something great.

But on the Republican side, look at the record: Richard Nixon, a crook, impeached, forced to resign in disgrace; Gerald Ford, only became president by default after Nixon was ousted, did a bit but not regarded as much; Reagan, came up with crazy ideas eg Star Wars, massively built up the US military at huge cost; George Bush Senior, first Iraq war, failed to complete it, leading to massive problems; George Bush Junior, second Iraq war, responsible for deaths of 5,000 US servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, a war criminal of the first order.

This is it: Republicans – wars, scandals, financial disasters, massive civilian death tolls. Democrats – good things, fond memories.

Do you really think Trump/Dump is going to change the order? Do you really think he will be looked on kindly by history, as Barack Obama will be? Dream on.

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Oh my goodness. I have taken on a massive task. I am sick and tired of my Panasonic Digital Video Recorder. It’s about 8 years old now, ancient in other words, and it drives me mad in being too slow to do any actions. It takes seconds to respond to the remote, and since a couple of the remote control keys have become “sticky”, this drives me nuts.

I’ve been thinking it’s time to update. But the problem is that I’ve got around 30-40 programs on the hard drive that I don’t want to lose. In particular, I’ve got the Queen’s Golden jubilee River Pageant on the Thames in 2011, and the closing ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. The pageant is about six hours long, and the Olympic ceremony is four hours I think.

In addition, I’ve got about eight Shakespeare plays either in movie form from many years ago, or the recent SBS series of four dramas made for TV which are just magnificent. But each one is around two hours. Plus I have many other programs I don’t want to lose.

OK, just dub ’em off onto DVD, I hear you say. Especially as the recorder is capable of High Speed copying. But every program has to be converted to enable HS mode, and each conversion takes at least an hour. The advantage is that the conversion happens when the machine is switched off (after you’ve spent ten minutes making all the commands).

Then the Queen’s Pageant, at six hours, has to be divided up into six one hour chunks to fit on the DVDs, taking another half hour at least. Only then can the copying start. Each DVD, in High Speed mode, still takes 13 minutes.

You get the idea. To clear this Hard Drive is going to take me tens of hours work. I’m already deleting every program I can possibly do without, but the Queen’s Jubilee Pageant was a once in 500 years’ event and will never be shown or seen again. I can’t throw it away. It’s history.

Ho hum. It will be months of work.

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I don’t know what’s happened, but I haven’t heard a peep out of next door’s dogs yesterday or today. Could it be … ?

Just two people in Australia own more wealth than the bottom 20% of the country. Yes, Gina Rhinehart and Harry Triguboff between them have $16.1 billion dollars. That’s sixteen thousand million dollars! That’s more than 4.8 million Australians put together have.

This is the situation, while the federal Liberal conservative government goes after the poorest people through Centrelink*, sending false, threatening letters saying they will set the debt collectors on them unless they pay up immediately. In many cases, Centrelink has got its facts wrong! In some cases of wrong addresses, the first thing the people know is the debt collector’s appearance on their doorstep.

At the same time, one third of Australia’s biggest companies, including BHP Billiton, “The Great Australian”, pay no tax at all. They manage to structure their affairs so that they pay zero tax in this country.

It is also well known that once you achieve a certain level of income, somewhere above $250,000 per year, paying income tax is optional. In other words, you can afford to pay clever accountants to arrange your affairs so as to avoid paying tax completely. Most wealthy people in Australia are paying zero tax. Many others avoid most of their tax obligations, thinking it’s clever to do so, while at the same time complaining when they don’t get the government support they think they deserve.

Sounds fair, doesn’t it? It is NOT!

It’s time to rise up and fight this. Fight it by bombarding your local federal member of parliament with emails and phone calls of anger and protest*. Fight it by joining GetUp. Fight it by joining a union. Fight it by joining in demonstrations when they’re being held. Fight it in any way you can. This situation is obscene.

Low income sick people are desperate. People are sleeping in the streets, homeless. Young people, denied unemployment benefits for up to six months, are turning to crime and selling drugs in order to make some money.

The answer is that the tax laws have to be tightened so much that it becomes impossible to avoid or evade tax. Jail has to become commonplace for tax avoiders. That includes accountants.

But while ever we have a multi-millionaire as prime minister, who himself arranges his affairs via tax havens to avoid paying his share, what hope is there?

I advocate violence, I’m afraid. We have no other options. Tax avoiders and evaders must be made to live in fear, either of jail or violence. There’s no other way.

The government has a huge debt and a huge budget deficit each year. Competent financial commentators have pointed out many times that if Australian companies were just made to pay the tax they rightly incur in this country, that debt and deficit would be wiped out at a stroke. Instead, the government attacks the poorest and lowest income people. This is the Liberal Party, folks, that corrupt organisation. Google Parakeelia.

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* See The Guardian’s article today “Centrelink staff told not to fix mistakes in debt notices – whistleblower”. It’s incredible, but it’s true, independently verified. Even if errors are found in Centrelink assessments, staff are being told they are not to be corrected – it’s up to the person who’s received the demand notices to find the errors and prove they are wrong. Meanwhile the debt collectors are told to go ahead.

This is hardly believable, except that it’s true. A government department, led by that wonderful Fuhrer Hank Jongen is deliberately trying to fraudulently extract money from low income and unemployed people, and aged pensioners. How low can this nasty Liberal government sink?

These are the five fraudulent things Centrelink is doing:

1. Doubling Income: A person’s entire income from the same employer is doubled up or certain parts of their income are duplicated, like leave and termination payments.
2. Non-Assessable Income: Items are included as income that should not be counted, like expense reimbursements and some paid parental leave payments.
3. Fictitious Payments: The system is generating debts based on payments that Centrelink never made. It’s even possible to have a debt claim larger than a person’s total Centrelink payment.
4. False Recovery Fees: Recovery fees are regularly being applied when they shouldn’t and can be much larger than the set fee of 10%.
5. Corrupted Review: Compliance officers are directed not to fix these errors, even when they have the evidence, and their work is rejected when they do. Even on appeal, errors will only be corrected if the person specifically identifies them, which can be nearly impossible.Email your MP using the link in the article, please! We must fight this.

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This is not so much a coincidence as a surprising revelation. While I was in Bali a couple of weeks ago I bought a nasal decongestant spray, Bayer brand but made in Indonesia, called Afrin. I’d never heard of it before.

Watching an episode of The Big Bang last night, the wine tasting episode, the cast are commenting on the bouquet of the wine, when Leonard says, “All I can smell is my Afrin.” (He’s got sinus problems.) I never knew what that meant.

So now I know, Afrin is a common brand, sold in the USA, not just Indonesia. I can hardly detect any smell from it.

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Another funny revelation: for the past year or more I’ve noticed a name of a modem near me in the list on my wi-fi connection. It’s “DicksOutForHarambe”. Isn’t that a strange name for a modem? Someone has imagination around here, but I wondered what it meant.

I learnt the other day that Harambe was the name of the gorilla in the US zoo which was shot and killed because it snatched a child who had climbed into its enclosure.

Why “DicksOut” I have no idea. It’s certainly a unique name, anyway.

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I’m writing this at 6.15am and the damn dogs next door are barking their heads off already! They bark from dawn until late into the night. There’s hardly a 20 second period without barking. This is driving me nuts! The owners are out all day and often until late at night. Not once have I ever heard them trying to quieten their dogs.

A friend put me onto a City of Vincent idea, an anonymous card to put in their letterbox saying very politely that there’s a problem. It’s a downloadable pdf file to print out.

I can’t be the only one angered by this – I’m on the west side of their house while the dogs are on the east side. The neighbours on that side must get it worse than me. I think I should go and knock on their doors and perhaps get some group support.

Southern Western Australia, showing bushfires a couple of years ago.

Back home, after an easy flight on Wednesday. Straight out the exit at the airport, no searches these days, thank goodness. I must be an honest lookin’ guy, I s’pose.

The headline refers to the 37C temperature yesterday. I noticed the heat. I don’t worry too much about the temps in Perth. The house is well insulated, it has ducted air conditioning if needed, and being close to the ocean, we get sea breezes. So even though 37C is a lot higher than Bali at 30C, I find it much easier to tolerate here.

Not that Bali worries me much, though. A bit of sweat, but there’s nearly always a cool breeze.

I’m torn – I was thinking, I’m a bit tired of Bali when I was there, mainly the noise from the traffic, the motorbikes and constant horn beeps, and the strain of dealing with a foreign language, many times not being sure of understanding or making your wishes clear.

But now that I’m home, I’m torn. It’s good to be in my own home again, but hell, it’s so quiet and frankly, dull. And especially, being on my own is not so good. No matter how tricky it can be, it’s much better to be with someone. One thing I can say about the five trips I made last year (counting this last one straddling Xmas and New Year), there was hardly a dull moment. My new partner seems to live a busy life and knows a lot of people. And I won’t forget my drive from Singaraja to Legian on the Friday before New Year’s Eve in a hurry. That was a ripper. The traffic in Denpasar and Legian was bumper to bumper crawl, with Balinese drivers trying every trick to force their way in and through. It works, but it’s lucky it’s such low speed because we miss by centimetres. I was shaking when we finally parked.

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One thing I discovered on this trip is that my former favourite GPS device has been beaten into third place.

When I bought the Navman with the built in forward facing video recorder last year, I found its map display at least as good as the Tom Tom. Therefore it stayed in my car.

But the Tom Tom has Bali maps (SE Asia maps, a paid extra), so naturally I took it to Bali with me. But I found the maps are not up to date and lack a lot of detail. Sometimes they gave crazy directions.

My partner has an app called Wayze on her smart phone. I am impressed! I found it to be better than the Tom Tom and soon abandoned it in favour of her guidance. The voice directions seem more frequent and despite being in a strong American accent and making no attempt at doing correct pronunciation, are clear and precise.

In addition, I am sick to death with my cheap Sony phone. I bought it because I only wanted to make calls, I didn’t want “smartphone” Internet capability. But it’s too slow, it clearly lacks CPU power, and since a recent software update, it hangs and locks up. I’m sick of it.

So I think a new phone is in order, and this time I’ll choose a bigger, better one, capable of proper internet working, so that I can use apps like Wayze. I’m looking at reviews at the moment.

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Amazing coincidence number 127:  I’m reading a sci-fi novel at the moment (Light of Other Days, by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke, published in 2000, before Clarke’s death). It’s about the Casimir effect, an attraction between sub-atomic particles.

Casimir Effect. Not a word you come across every day, yes?

Watching an ABC TV program the other night: in the credits, Head of Drama for ABC, Jon Casimir. You could have knocked me over with a neutrino.

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Speaking of Arthur C. Clarke, have you noticed how many authors are still writing and publishing books after their demise, their passing, their death?

Wilbur Smith, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy to name a few. Quite a feat. Must have wi-fi in their coffins, I guess.

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I gained new neighbours before Christmas, and they own two dogs. These dogs bark! From dawn until dusk, there’s not a 20 second period when these dogs are not barking. As you know, I’m a dog person but this is driving me mad. The owners go out to work during the day so they don’t hear them. My neighbour on the other side, also a dog owner, is also upset, I believe.

I dread having to do it, but I’m going to have to complain, I think. There are ways to stop dogs barking, including a collar that emits an annoying high frequency tone that we can’t hear but the dog can. Or getting a dog trainer. But I’m getting upset.

There’s an earthquake happening, right now! It’s gentle, but has been going for three minutes from 2.16pm. Whoo hoo. It’s not enough to make me run, but ….

Update at 5pm: it just petered out. I can’t find anyone else who noticed it. It was a gentle ripple at about 2Hz, making the walls and window frames creak a bit. I asked people by the pool if they’d noticed the water, but they said there were people in the pool splashing around so it wouldn’t have shown. V didn’t feel it at Lovina.

Oh well, I know what I felt and it sure was real to me.

Sanur     (C) PJ Croft 2017

It’s my last full day here today; I leave tomorrow, early afternoon flight. Cattle Class on Air Asia, I’m afraid, but I’ve chosen one of the front row seats so there’s nothing in front of me except the partition. The only drawback is that it’s hard to use the tray table that lifts out of the arm rest. Hard for me, that is, with my “front cushion”.

I have two suitcases this time, having left one up here last trip. Now I’m retrieving it, along with my OSMO camera, the gimbal mount one. I must admit that’s been a complete failure for me. I can’t be bothered using it. I think I’ll sell it asap.

I just did a count: this trip works out to exactly 30 days – I didn’t count when I booked, just picked a day. It worked out well. I notice Air Asia are offering flights from Perth to Bali for $105 from the beginning of May until Feb 2018. It’s the evening flight, but that’s OK, good price! I’d rather go Garuda, but this is hard to beat.

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Another sleepless night last night and I felt rotten when I finally got up at 7am. I’ve just had 90 mins of reasonable sleep, so it’s better now at 1.15pm. Time for a swim, maybe, my first at this hotel all week.

I sought to buy some nasal decongestant yesterday at a pharmacy. Yes, they had one, but the price – $30 ! I said no thanks, I’m not paying that. It only costs me $11.99 at home, different brand, of course. Didn’t they have any other one? No, sorry.

But then another assistant overheard us and showed me another one. Price? $7. Yeaaaah, it helps to dig your heels in sometimes (in the nicest, most polite way, of course). It’s made by Bayer in Indonesia, but it works fine. The label lists an active ingredient, but also says “Contains homeopathic medicine.” Har har har.

I use this every night because if you need CPAP, you need your nasal passages to be completely clear. The pharmacies at home warn against prolonged use, but I’ve been using it for 16 years with no ill effects. Sniff.

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This was the Kecak Dance I saw in about 1983. I thought it was better than the one this trip.

Since I’ve been here I’ve been trying to find a multi-tool, i.e. the small foldable pliers/knife/screwdriver/bottle opener device. I had a really nice one but had it confiscated last year when I forgot it was in my carry-on bag. I bought another really good one at Masters in Butler a month or two later for $4 (!), but I cannot find the danged thing. It’s at home somewhere.

Yesterday I finally found one here at Mitra 10 on the Bypass road. Price – $2.50. It’s fairly poor quality, but has the vital bottle opener. That’s really all I need, but it has scissors and a small sharp blade.

Quite a good selection of hardware there, including files, ie the raspy type, which V needs. But the quality and size weren’t right, so I’ll buy a small set at home and post them up, rather than waste $14 on one that isn’t suitable.

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Oh yeah, nearly forgot. You may remember that in the 17 October post I wrote of buying a.  pair of Bosch Aero-Twin windscreen wiper blades in Butler, price $36.50 each, $73 for the pair! I thought that was way excessive, but had to pay it.

Well, in Mitra 10 here yesterday, the same blades were on sale, price Rp79,800 each. Slightly different name, AeroFit vs AeroTwin, but they look the same. That’s A$7.98 !! I am fuming. I took photos of the shelf with prices and I think I’ll write to Bosch in Oz asking them to justify this price difference. If they can’t, I’ll refer them to CHOICE and a Labor MHR who seems to be a champion of these types of things. It seems to me it’s price gouging for us Aussies. Watch this space.

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I’ve done a count: 48 DVDs, after binning four as being too poor quality and unwatchable. Good value. Unfortunately, you get the occasional one that mutes the audio part way in as piracy protection. I had one last night like that. Too bad, can’t be bothered.

One benefit is that I have a couple of multi-disc sets of Netflix series (e.g. The Crown) that I normally can’t see, being on pay TV. Bagus.

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I haven’t walked down to the beach to swim this time, but even if I had, there would have been a problem swimming: how would I protect my bag with my valuables in if I were swimming alone? It would be a worry at home, but doubly so here. Nope, hotel pool only.

Sanur.   (C) PJ Croft 2017

My new bag, front side.

New bag, backside.

It was another long tiring day yesterday, but successful.  First, though, I’m writing this at 5.45am due to another sleepless night. I slept about two hours until 1am, then woke and despite lying there for hours, have not got back to sleep. So now I’m listening to ABC Radio National via the internet and having some coffee and a small snack. I guess I’ll crash later, but since it’s Sunday and I have no schedule, it hardly matters.

It was successful because I took my laptop with me to check size and found the bag above fits it OK (not perfectly, but good enough), so I bought it. Fossil brand. Real leather and grey cotton canvas. Not too many pockets, so you don’t lose stuff. Another handbag for me.

I was sorely tempted by a US made Tumi brand above, but the prices were astronomical, over $500. Beautifully made, but that’s too much.

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While waiting for the Kura Kura bus today, I had a long talk with Gus, the duty manager of this Taksu Hotel. Very nice guy, probably younger than thirty and already a proud father of one boy, with another boy in the oven. He knows the sex before it’s born. Two sons will help him with his old age support, as is necessary here, where there’s no pension or any form of social security, but he’d like a daughter next time. He lives in his parents’ house with his own family and a sister, and his mother who is in her 50s. His father is older and infirm in some way and is in separate accommodation. I didn’t understand that bit.

He’s very keen to get my business and when I said I’d definitely stay here next time, he said he’ll give me a better price than any of the on-line booking sites. Bagus. He gave me his phone number and email and said just call or write.

[Holy smoke! I’d just written a long paragraph, when I saw it literally disappear before my eyes. Something erased it, and it wasn’t me. Damn! Infuriating. The bugs in this Word Press software are numerous and annoying and are never fixed. Grrrrrr! I suppose I can’t complain about free software, but I will. Word Press, lift your game!]

So now I start this paragraph again, if I can remember what I wrote. I said whenever we/I have chosen another hotel, invariably it’s disappointed us, sometimes in big ways. The Taksu is almost the perfect hotel as far as I’m concerned, and I’ll keep coming back. I’ll resist any attempt to persuade me to use another hotel. Sorry, my dear.

The rooms seem especially spacious. I’m in the cheapest room at the moment, but at 35m2 it’s still exceptionally large. It has a big armchair and footstool which I love. The bathroom is excellent, everything is in good condition, the bed is kingsized and has soft white sheets and pillows. The room safe works and is bolted down (the Artotel safe firstly didn’t work because there were no batteries in the door, and it was just sitting on the shelf, not fixed. I could just pick it up and walk off with it. Huh!) The restaurant is run by a separate company (Bali Bakery) and is a little pricey, but the food is nice. I can’t seem to get out of there for less than $12, which is a bit dear for Bali, but not by much.

The only complaints I have are trivial: the toilet roll holder is too far back, so I have to remove the toilet roll and put it closer; they insist on putting the ripple-folded bath mat right in the doorway of the bathroom – I trip over it and it’s hard on my feet – I have to move it; and there’s no ice cube tray. That’s about it. Nothing, in other words.

Oh yes, one more thing: I wish they’d move the hotel about 600m closer to the beaches.

By the way, there was a red Mercedes E63 in the car park yesterday. That’s a 6.3 litre fuel injected V8. Does 0-100km/h in about 4.5secs. It belongs to the owner of the hotel, apparently. Hmmm.

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I had a very nice little snack for lunch yesterday, a Tiger Roll, shown above. The text says: “A delicious mix of soft bread, spicy chicken floss, smoked beef, scallions and zucchini. Rp14,000” or $1.40. I’ve never seen anything like this, and it was very tasty. Pick it up in fingers to eat. Notice the price and text in Japanese. They cater to them.

I also saw these for sale in the SOGO Japanese department store. Can you believe these are brand new, for sale. I didn’t see a price, but I bet they’re not cheap, yet they look as if they should be thrown out in the old rags bin. Crazy. What next, pre-soiled? Showing my age, I guess.

Next, how about black ice cream? Very delicious, actually. It’s not aniseed flavour as you’d expect, just normal vanilla or something. Looks like something to be eaten on the black sand beaches here.

At last, here’s my recording, edited, of the Kecak Dance last Tuesday evening, 6-7pm at the Ulu Watu Temple site. Apologies for the length at 17 minutes but I shot 27 minutes and this is as much as I could cut. All of it is interesting!

It was also very difficult to edit, being shot on only one camera. There are no cutaways in this mode. It was all handheld, and there has been no image stabilisation apart from the camera’s during shooting.

I hope you enjoy.

Christmas night at Surya’s party. Portrait by the artist.

… my aching feet and hips! And back. I’ve been on my feet, standing and walking around, for six hours. I’m back at my hotel at 7.30pm and I can hardly summon the energy to get some dinner. I may not bother, actually.

I arrived to find that my door card key doesn’t work. Luckily a hotel guy was nearby and let me in. When I got in, I found a very nice bowl of fruit and a card welcoming me to the hotel. Thanks, but make up your mind, folks.

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I bought a Kura Kura bus three day pass for Rp150,000 today and I’ve only had the chance to use it once. I went from Galeria to Lippo Mall OK, but, after waiting half an hour for the next bus, when I said I wanted to go to Galeria again, the guy said no, no, it will be a three hour trip and waved me away. Huh?

So I walked about 500m in the 3pm heat to Discovery Mall, to find that the only camera shop of any worth that I know of outside Denpasar itself has converted to watches and simple stuff.

I had a BaskinBRobbins (trade mark?) ice cream and only thought after I’d ordered it, kerrumbs, Rp60,000 = A$6, for a single cone of ice cream? That would be expensive even at home.

So I took a taxi back to Galeria, giving the guy Rp50,000 when the fare was Rp27,000, and he was very, very grateful. However, it was only to find that the last Sanur bus had gone by 6.30pm, no more tonight. Grrrrrr! That meant another taxi, and the fare was Rp87,000. I gave him Rp100,000 and again got a big thanks. This is the second time I’ve bought a KK bus 3 day pass and found it’s not necessarily good value. Last time I didn’t actually use up the value that I’d paid. Ho hum. I must try harder. However, it doesn’t take many Rp100,000 taxi rides to use the value.

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I bought a swag more DVDs today, making about 30 overall. Plus some PC software CDs. This is mostly old stuff, as nearly all software is sold by on-line download now, making piracy impossible.

Unfortunately, I seem to have doubled up on several DVDs, forgetting which ones I’ve picked in a previous selection. At $1 each, it hardly matters. I’ve also got a few discs I would never have chosen. Have I got some of yours, my dear?

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As usual, I’m being seduced by a bag, a Fossil, but even by Australian standards, it’s expensive. I’ve walked away, thinking it over. Hmmm. Do I need it? No!

What I do need is a potong rambut, a hair cut. I’ll go to the Peni Weni salon next door tomorrow. It costs A$6 compared with $22 at home. I should come to Bali every time I need a haircut, I think. 🙂

Christmas night.

Well, I’m back at my favourite hotel, the Taksu in Sanur, and I’m alone for the first time in three weeks. The silence is deafening! I’m torn between wanting some solitude, but not wanting to be alone. I’ll see my partner again on the 10th, albeit briefly.

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Some notes from the past few days:

Crumbs, four days into the year already. It’ll be Christmas soon.

Monday 2 January: Sitting in the Si Doi Café at 0845 having the Special Breakfast – OJ, fruit platter, two eggs on toast, sausage, mushies, tomato and Bali Kopi for $5. And free wi-fi. I may be here for some time. I slept badly last night, just couldn’t get to sleep until after 2am, hence I’m a couple of hours in deficit. I’ll go back for a bit more sleep after this. It has just rained a downpour but now the sun’s out and it’s sparkling in Jalan Legian. V’s gone off for a massage.

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We part on Wednesday (today), she going off on a few days’ tour with her German friends and ending up in her villa in Lovina, while I’m staying here in Sanur for my final week. I don’t particularly want to go over the mountains to Lovina again, then up and over again to come back down south for my flight home next week. The first few trips over the mountains were good, but the novelty has very definitely worn off, especially if I’m driving.

I went to the Daihatsu dealer in Sanur on Monday to enquire about a new door to replace the damaged one. Success, I have a part number and the price, Rp2,450,000 or about $250. That’s bare, of course, and in grey undercoat. It has to be painted (black) and all the glass and fittings have to be swapped over, then the door fitted to the car. The painting will cost about $80, and the labour?

The problem is, the door has to be ordered, from Jakarta I’d guess, and will take two weeks. Vero goes to Vienna soon and is not sure about timing, and whether the work can be done in Singaraja or if the car has to come down south. Unfortunately the owner of the car has the insurance papers (if it is insured?) and doesn’t know about the damage yet. He’s not likely to be happy, apparently. The relatives of the owner want to see if it can be panel beaten and repaired. They dread telling the owner of the car. Worry, worry, worry.

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A taxi driver spontaneously told me yesterday that there are too few tourists here. Is it berms or terrierists? He thinks it’s just the world uncertainty and people avoiding spending on holidays. It’s bad for the Balinese, but great for us of course. I’ve just booked at my favourite hotel in Sanur for this last week and for a huge room (35 m²) it’s A$61 a night.

I do like the Taksu. The rooms feel so spacious, the sheets are white, the bathroom is well designed, things are in good repair and there’s a two seater couch to lounge on, with a coffee table. I’ve stayed there three times now and I’ll keep going back. The pool is above ground, and it’s a fair walk to the beach if you want to swim in the greasy, littered Sanur water, but the Kura Kura bus stops at the front door every three hours for cheap transport.

What am I going to do with my week? Water-walk in the neck deep pool for exercise (I was doing 20 laps of the 25m length each day last time, about 1km). Use the internet, sleep, read a book, which I never get a chance to do these days. Go shopping. Yes, I love buying small things, DVDs included, and I’m always on the lookout for a good bag, especially a camera bag. I’m a sucker for that. I can’t help myself, it’s like women and handbags or shoes.

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Wednesday 3 January: Wow, we went to a performance of the Kecak Dance last night at Ulu Watu, on the peninsula, at 6pm, around sunset. Spec-tac-u-lar.

The amphitheatre filling up. They let too many people in, in our opinion.

Unfortunately it was very crowded, too crowded really, with an estimate of over 1,000 people viewing. The dance area was reduced and there were not as many performers as I expected. Even so, it was good. The photos show some of it, but I have nearly 30 mins of Ultra Hi-Def video, excellent quality, no camera shake or silly zooms. I’ll try to post some here, but it takes so long to upload that it’s very difficult.

An impromptu performer.

A central oil burner.

The dancers make their entrance.

The evil spirit.

The monkey clown.

The monkey clown, above, moved around among the crowd and at one stage was sliding down a wooden railing beside me. I wasn’t aware he was there and I had my walking stick handle hooked over the banister. He had to stop as I hurriedly removed it so he could continue. Ooops. It was all good fun.

Strangely, at the beginning I noticed something on my shirt front and looked down to see what I thought was a spider. But I realised it was a small crab! It was about 2cm across the carapace and about 3.5cm overall, just a pale beige. I went to try to pick him up but he was too fast and scuttled down to the steps below. How he got onto me, I have no idea as we were a long way above the ocean.

Sitting on wet concrete steps of the amphitheatre was not much fun, and my bum quickly went numb. It was a bit claustrophobic, being packed in so tightly in such a huge crowd. I’d hate to think what a panic would have produced as the aisles were not kept clear.

Towards the end, people started leaving before the performance had finished and I was getting pretty annoyed by people walking across in front of me. They all seemed to be Indians or Pakistanis, including several guys in turbans. I was also pretty browned off by people sticking their “selfie sticks” with their camera phones up in my view. I hate these things.

The traffic! It took us more than an hour to get there from Legian, in a tour bus (just four of us plus guide and driver), then I had to guard four seats in the arena until the others arrived after seeing the temple. The performance was from 6-7pm, then another 20 mins or so of walking and waiting to get to our mini-bus, then about an hour fifteen of crawling to get back to the hotel. Exhausting. Crowds! I hate it.

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OK, now for some beer and an early night, sleeping alone. I’ve made my bed, now I have to lie in it. uh huh.

That’s a shot from home, but it seems appropriate for New Year. All the best for 2017, my 70th year. I’m getting a strange delight in telling people I’m 70, even though I’m not quite there yet. I reckon I’m in not bad condition for a 70 year old. I’m wrestling with myself over the decision – do I have the drastic and risky gastric bypass operation or not? The surgeon might make my mind for me, he seemed a bit reluctant last time we spoke. Give it three or four months after the band removal (22 November), he said, then we’ll talk again. OK with me.

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I’m writing this in a Gloria Jeans coffee shop in Jalan Legian. I wanted to eat local type food but this seemed to be the only place active. The “maitre d’ ” seems to be camp as a row of tents, oozing over all the customers, but it’s fun.

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We arrived here on Friday evening at about 6pm after driving from Lovina. I took over the driving from Singaraja as V was feeling a bit unwell. This was my first experience driving a car in Bali (I rode motorbikes 30 years ago), and it’s a manual transmission, so it ain’t easy. Up over the mountains, feeling the lack of power from what seems to be a 1300cc engine, finding the need to keep the revs up near 3000rpm to get any power on the steep winding road. Phew! Getting stuck behind slow trucks grinding their way up, looking for a way to pass, seeing a possible break then finding another car or groups of motorbikes already on my right passing me and the truck, forcing me to wait.

Then getting to the outskirts of Denpasar at twilight, heavy traffic, winding, narrow roads, glaring headlights, suicidal motorbike riders coming at me from all directions, even on the wrong side of the road, riding alongside me on both sides, including passing me on the nearly blind left side.

At one point we were looking for an ATM. I saw one in a service station, made a snap decision to turn sharp left into the driveway – bang, crunch, yell. There had been a motorbike rider and his girlfriend pillion passenger riding beside me on my left and they got a small bang. And, I hope, a lesson not to ride there! No injuries or damage, luckily, just apologies all round, but the car has a new set of scratches on the left side. No dent, so they can just be sprayed and polished.

But more serious was the first night we had the car, last Thursday evening. A misjudged attempt to reverse into a narrow lane way so as to turn around on the main road, an engine stall, a roll back and a forced meeting with a steel pole on the driver’s side door. Crunch! It pushed the door in, with a lot of paint damage, and an electric window that couldn’t be raised. Inability to lock the car. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Worry about a possible day’s delay in our trip south.

But next morning, in the cool air, before she was awake and with the help of the house security/dogsbody guy, I managed to get the door lining off and pushed the dent out from the inside, enough to get the window up, anyway. We can lock the car now. V’s going to try to get a new door from the Daihatsu dealer in Denpasar. It may be cheap enough to simply replace it. That’ll be tomorrow, Monday.

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Today, Sunday 1 January is a day of sleep-in after our Happy New Year last night. We were at a club right on Legian beach, part of the Bali Mandira hotel. Wow, pretty good. All built from bamboo poles (have a look – http://azulbali.com/ ). It’s spectacular. There were fireworks going off all around the Kuta/Legian/Seminyak area all evening, from around sunset, continuous. The noise was deafening at times. Thousands of rockets and bangs, for hours, to a crescendo at midnight. Tight security, of course, with a bag search for me, no problem, happy to comply. There have been warnings.

The fireworks were nearly continuous for five hours!

At the Azul Beach Club, German friends on the left. I like this shot. Look how animated I am!

We four were seated next to a big table of about eight young ladies, and they were all from Perth, social workers, friends seemingly from my area, Butler. We were invited to join our table to theirs for a while, and join in a “roll o’ the dice” drinking game, but we couldn’t figure out the rules so that got stale. The music from a DJ and a live band was deafening, along with the cacophony of bangs from the fireworks, so I spent most of the evening nursing my drinks. No problem, it was all good fun.

The crazy thing is that there was supposed to be a complete ban on road vehicles of all kinds from 4pm on the night. We were in a bind – the club was nearly 1.5km away, a bit of an ordeal for me to walk. V spent a lot of time trying to organise some kind of transport but without success. I said it’s OK, I’ll walk.

But when we walked out of our hotel to the street at about 8pm, the first thing we saw in Jalan Legian was a taxi. There were guys all around saying, “Transport? Transport madame?” So we got a very nice people mover to the club after all. A bit pricey at Rp100,000 (A$11 approx.) but there’s no choice on a night like that.

However, getting home was harder. Get a taxi at 1am on New Year’s Eve? You must be joking. We waited about 20 mins in a crowd but the taxis were all taken by the time they got near to the club. In the end we had to walk it, and after a night of strong drinks, it was hard going. But we got “home” at about 1.30am and fell into bed exhausted. It was a good night, though. Beautifully cool and not too humid and we were seated right under a good fan. I enjoyed it, my best New Year’s Eve for many, many years.

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V has met two friends out from Germany, one on her first visit to Bali. Unfortunately, one has minimal English, so all the conversation has to be in German. That’s as it has to be, but it’s a bit boring for me. We’re in Legian until Wednesday, and not sure what’s on the agenda after that. White water rafting at Ubud for one, apparently. Not for me!

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I return home in 10 days’ time and it’ll be good to get back. There always seems to be something happening in V’s life and some of it is a bit stressful for me. And for her too, I think. I need a holiday! I look forward to home and my own bed.