Bali first impressions: Kuta
Kuta we had planned as only a stopover before moving on to less crazy, less frequented places. But we found there were several miscellaneous items we needed to buy, so today was for errands.
Our first purchase in Bali was a bottle of water. Right away we discovered the difficulty of breaking “large” bills. All we had from the moneychangers at the airport were 50,000 rupiah bills, worth about $5 each. But after we bought our water, worth about fifty cents, it turned out the vendor didn’t have enough change. So she told us we could come back later once we had it. We’ve since found that it’s often hard to break “large” bills here – people will always try to get small change if possible, and frequently don’t even have the bills to break a big one.
We wandered through the narrow alleyways of Kuta, made even narrower by the scooters zipping past every ten seconds. There is a main street, Jalan Legian, and a beach street, Jalan Pantal Kuta. But as best I can tell, most of the town is contained in the confusion of back streets. Here are the vendors hawking cheaply made Chinese sandals, one of my purchases for the day. Here also are manicures, pedicures, wooden penis keychains, cell phones, beef rendang, nasi goreng, obscene bumper stickers in English, and surf wear. The vendors of each were very insistent that we come into their stalls, and we found ourselves saying “no thank you” or “tidak, terima kasih” repeatedly. Soon we will kick this habit and simply ignore them, but years of habit in Western-style politeness are hard to suppress.
We had a nice breakfast of nasi goreng (fried rice) and had an opportunity to practice following some of the local norms mentioned in our guide book. In particular, using one’s left hand for anything, but especially eating or passing food, is considered rude. Like many cultures the left hand “is reserved for toilet purposes” and is considered unclean. We’ve also been trying to get in the habit of taking off our shoes at doorways, not putting our feet up on anything, and not pointing at things. Instead of pointing, locals will gesture with an open hand or a thumb.
In the evening we hired a driver to take us south to Uluwatu, a beautiful Hindu temple gripping the top of a sheer cliff face. It’s very popular at sunset, and as the time approached, we saw tourists lining up along a walkway with a good view.
Uluwatu also boasts a population of aggressive monkeys that like to snatch things from tourists. Signs at the entrance warn visitors to remove glasses, hair pins, etc. Unfortunately at minus five diopters, my vision is too poor to walk around without my glasses, so I simply resolved to keep a finger on my bridge at all times. But as we watched the monkeys from a safe distance and none seemed inclined to jump on my head to steal my glasses, I grew complacent and stopped. Later, distracted and watching the sunset near a wall, a monkey ran up behind me, skillfully snatched my glasses by the temple, and ran off to a safe distance. Luckily there are many monkey tamers who hang around the temple, and three of them rushed to trade the monkey food for spectacles. The monkey, obviously used to this transaction, dropped my glasses and scurried to grab the food. I was then obliged to pay the monkey tamer the equivalent of $5 for my glasses.