How NOT to leave Sanur

Fresh off of my waterlogged experience of hunting for lunch, I resolve to actually pay for transportation to get me to the shuttle bus stand to head to Ubud. Especially with all of my stuff, I think this is going to be a good deal. And I'm excited to try out the bemo, an Indonesian quasi-public form of transportation. The vehicle is a uncomfortable and small minivan that has had its rear seats ripped out and replaced with benches along the side. And the door is very small and always open. These cruise up and down the main streets in town, with rides for ~3,000 rupiah. Occasionally, they head on intra-city routes. I flag one down.

"Warung Pojok?" "Yes." "How much?" "10,000 rupiah." "No, 3,000 rupiah" "Ok, 5,000 rupiah." "Ok." (It was pouring!)

I get in and we drive north. Some more tourists flag him down, and he stops and they get in. then, inexplicably, he turns around and starts driving south, away from my destination. Hmmmm. After a while, they pay and get out, and he continues to drive south. We head all the way to the southern end of town (I'm headed to the northern end). We finally hit a roundabout and he turns around and we head back to where we started, hopefully on the way to my destination. Passing a hotel with a handful of tourists exiting, he pulls over and stops. He yells to each of them, individually, "Transport?" No takers. We wait some more, and another batch come, still no takers. At last, he hits the gas and we continue.

Now he wants to sell me a ride to Ubud. "What's the price?" "100,000 rupiah." Yikes, that is not worth it, and he's certainly not my best friend at this point. I demur, time and again, and he goes as low as 80,000 rupiah. Nope, no deal, buddy. We reach the McDonald's in the north of town. "Warung Pojok, over there," he points into a mess of rain and traffic. "Where, I can't see it," I reply. He drives forward another two blocks, there, across the street. It does say Warung Pojok, but it does not look like a shuttle bus stop. Resigned, I get out and pay the man. He drives off, and I consult my map. Sure enough, we're a good five long blocks shy of the Warung Pojok to which I'm headed, which he must have known. Ugh. I strap on my pack, raise my umbrella, and hike through the rain for 20 minutes. Finally.

"Is this the Perama shuttle stop?"

"Yes."

"When's the next shuttle bus to Ubud?"

"1:45pm."

"What time is it now?"

"2pm."

Thank god for island time. To Ubud!

A hilarious and wet slog to some pretty good and pretty spicy chicken

I wake up on Wednesday determined to build on my good food experience from the night market. And I have a destination! A hot anonymous tip about some stunning, and stunningly cheap, nasi campur in the interior of Sanur. I am excited!

Just one problem: the skies have re-opened and the town is nearly literally flooding. Never fear: I have an umbrella! And a strong desire not to take advantage of the guys every 10 feet asking if I need transport. These legs will work just fine, thank you.

I veer off of the main drag into a set of alleys. Wow, this gets dicey fast, there are places where the road has become a lake. It's really coming down and no one else is out walking. I continue on. I make a wrong turn on one of the alleys, and have to double back. I find my way, and come to the bypass - this is like the Interstate of south Bali. With a median, two lanes each direction, and a lot of traffic, this does not look like it'd be fun to cross on a bright sunny day, let alone one that seems from the set of Little Mermaid, like this one. Nevertheless, I tarry forward.

At last, I can go no further. The sidewalk has become various ponds surrounded by gaping holes, and the bypass remains the bypass. Luckily, there is a warung (local restaurant) right here! And it's got a great name: Warung By-Pass Sanur. It's like the Highway 66 Cafe! I duck in a grab and empty table (not hard to do: they're all empty).

When the waiter comes over, I try to ask him, "What's your favorite?" With that not working, I switch to "What would you eat?" Finally, I resort to hand signals. He points out a couple of things on the menu, though I think he might be doing it just to get rid of me at this point. I settle on some chicken and some rice.

And it's pretty good! The chicken was weirdly cut, so there was a fair amount of trying to find the odd-shaped bones in each piece. But the marinade was delicious, and spicy. If you look close, you can see lots of red chilies just sort of dancing across the chicken. Yum!

So I didn't make it to the place with the hot tip. Perchance I'll get there on my way out of town, we'll see. But this backup did nicely, plenty of spice and it came with a roof!

First real meal, and in a night market, no less!

I have to tell you, I am not immediately high on this Sanur place. Picked because it is less crazy tourists everywhere compared to other places in south Bali (I'm talking to you, Kuta), it feels like there are, well, crazy tourists everywhere. Exhibit A, food wise, is the bizarre, not too tasty, and oh-so-American pizza concoction I have for lunch (unable, as of yet, to find the real stuff). It is called the Volcano Vesuvio, supposedly because it has lots of chillies in addition to the salami and other ingredients. Here is a pic of the pie:

Weird, right? And it turns out not to be (a) spicy at all nor (b) delicious at all. And this, this food, this town, this is not the scene I'm aiming for at this particular time. So I'm pretty excited for my plan to head to Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali, tomorrow.

All that said, I have a great night. I meet up with my sister's friends Aimee and Sascha, and we head to the night market. I had developed a steady addiction to night markets, born from my time in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand in the mid 00s. This night market is on the money. Lots of vendors selling lots of cheap plastic things. A bit of wandering and we find the food section. The awnings are all; about 5 ft 6 tall, giving me a nice hunch as we look for dinner. Good looking fried chicken there, rice with coconut milk over here. We settle on a padang vendor, with a cart that has ~15 or so different dishes on it, all already cooked. You order a dish, they give you some rice, and your choice of small amounts of 4 or 5 of the dishes. It was all cooked this morning. (I don't have a photo yet of the padang stand, but watch this space!)

Following Aimee and Sascha's lead, I just start pointing to the ones that look interesting. Some water spinach, some little green veggies that sort of taste like eggplant, some chicken slathered in sauce. It's all pretty tasty - I think the water spinach took home my prize for the night. Oh, and it's HOT. Like spicy hot. And that's before I used any of the extra sambal (diced red chilies) that came on the side. This was lip-tingling hot, persistently hot, how-am-I-gonna-cool-down-my-mouth hot. And the heat was invigorating - yet another abrupt change from Japan. The heat awakens my palate and cools me down in the tropical climate. I can, oddly enough, feel my blood pressure go down. It's lovely to be eating simple, tasty, hot food in a night market again.

An abrupt transition

Wow, Indonesia is not Japan. I knew that was true, but did I ever feel it upon my entry.

An eight hour flight culminates at Bali's Ngurah Rai Denpasar International Airport. Immediately, I know I have traveled a long ways south. This is one of those airports without air conditioning, where everything has the rough edge of humidity to it. Indeed, from Tokyo to Denpasar is about the same as San Francisco to a bit past Guayaquil, Ecuador, latitudinally speaking.

I emerge from immigration, after the requisite stamp-stamp-stamp and pay for a tourist visa, to an arrival area just full of people. 11:30 pm and this looks like rush hour. The skies have opened up and it is pouring, pouring the kind of pour that only happens in places that get monsoons.

With flat-rate taxi secured, I wait for my ride. A handful of gents ask where I am going, I say Sanur. Oh, where are you staying there, they ask. I reply "Hotel Bali Rita". Blank stares. "Hotel Bali Rita?" I start to wonder if this hotel even exists. I had had an impossible to hear and even harder to communicate conversation with someone at the hotel via Skype about 12 hours earlier. Finally, one of these guys says the "R-r-r-r-r-r-rita?" Oh, do they roll their "r"s here.

About a half-hour later, my taxi driver and I are cruising the main street in Sanur, looking for the hotel. We go up and down, until I whip out my Rough Guide and we realize it's another half a mile south. We find it, drive down the driveway, and I mosey up to the front desk. It's empty. My driver helpfully looks around and finds the desk clerk slumbering away. He rouses, and we begin to talk. It's clear there is no record of my reservation, ugh. He says they have a room, that is 400,000 rupiah (about 10,000 to 1 USD). I deter, as I had been quoted a rate of 300,000, confirmed, when I phoned earlier. As we're talking about two nights, he says "800". I say no, "600" as I'd been promised. He says ok "750". I say no, "600, we're not negotiating". He leaves. He comes back 10 minutes later. "700?" No, "600". Finally, finally, he relents. He brings me my towel and I stagger and fall on to the bed. I will have to switch to negotiations style travelling!

At the end of that first two hours on Bali soil, Japan, with my rail pass, San Francisco weather, and fixed prices, could not be farther away.