Dolly Bali

In a nutshell, Bali is an entire island dolled up, educated and groomed to suck tourists' money, whether it's through endless-peddling, overpriced boutiques or culturally-compulsory tipping. What an evil and successful plot of making money.

It's weird walking around the island not being able to finding some decent & "real" priced items. Or at least fixed price. Of course, i'm discounting the bigger & branded boutiques.

Almost everywhere you go, you're sure those suckers will quote you at least 300% to 800% more. @#$%^& The bargaining gets tiring after a while and you know that if they are just plain overcharging you, you just wouldn't be bored to participate in the "give me your price la, i give you good balinese price" crap.

Other than that, there're the plus points of Bali -

1) Grilled Seafood
- The grilled crab is orgasmically GOOD. The meat itself tastes better than ANY of the crabs i've tasted in sg. Not even No Signboard Restaurant's crab come as close - theirs is just big. It's either the crabs are naturally tastier, or the Balinese chefs are better (i almost typed "bigger". Man, what was i thinking. And no, i dunno about that. I wouldn't want to. The tourist shop men there are disgusting wolf-whistlers & lechers who loves touching female tourists whenever they pass by tight alleys.).

Anyway, as i was saying, the crabs were apparently marinated in their special spiced sauce before going into the wok, giving the meat a very yummy taste (rem, the meat is inside the thick hard shell) . The meat of crabs in sg are never tasty on its own. They're usually bland, unless you dip them into those go-together black pepper sauce/chilli crab sauce.

2) Spa
For a good 2hr 30mins (it stretched to almost 3hrs) setting you back at ard 67SGD (including abt 4SGD of tipping), you get to enjoy the entire steps of spa. Royalty treatment awaits you when you first stepped in. You'll be served with a sweet cool drink; i suspect it's some jasmine honey liquid. After which, they bring little cute tubs of scented oil to let you sniff & choose the one you prefer for your massage later (or scrub/flower bath? i'm still not sure about that) . It's a choice of Jasmine, Green Tea, Frangipani or Lavendar, and i chose Frangipani - a beautiful floral scent. After which, you'll be ushered into a private (or was it just becos we were the only customers then) room and we changed into a robe. Hot & cold jacuzzi, steam bath and sauna awaits us right beside the changing area. Then, proceed to a pretty decent massage and a good scrub that'll put you to lala land, ending off with a cool shower & flower bath (like what you see in an advertisement, except mine used purple, white & red frangipani petals - i think) that comes with an oh-so yummy ginger tea. A warm sweet drink that is a little spicy, immediately wakes me up from my slight slumber - uber goodness! Love it!

3) Art
Amazing painters, beautiful paintings. That's the scene that greeted us in Ubud, another province of Bali. Except the lecherous art house salesman who kept staring at me.

4) Lanus
Our 2nd-day tour guide. Thanks to my colleague, this is one very experienced and humorous tour guide who will joke abt being a "Trainee Driver" whenever he jams on his brakes/stalls his rented blue Suzuki Swift (Balinese driving is horrible btw. Small motorcyles pop out of tiny alley lanes and onto the main road without warning and cars move in 3 lines instead of the drawed 2 lines). He's a thin man around his fifties, i reckon. Feeding us with his deep knowledge of the Balinese culture & history (how Dutch dominance during e early days has influenced much of the Balinese art, etc.), his own marriage style - "Elopement" (his own words!) when i asked about the Balinese marriage culture (apparently eloping is legal! OOO!), and his good shopping & eating recommendations, he totally was awesome. I like him oredi. =)

5) Beautiful clear sea @ Tanjong Benoa
This is the place me, zhu & nom went on our first morning in Bali. Too bad nomy wasn't into diving, so only me & zhu tried it out - for the first time in our lives. (I think zhu did many of her firsts in Bali. :))

Initially i'd thought the Tanjong Benoa beach was not as clean & crystal clear as i'd hoped, cos it seemed like there were patches of dark stuff in the ocean when i stood by the shore. However, after stepping into the speedboat & some distance into the ocean, you'll realise that those dark patches are actually the coral reefs and the water is perfect-clear. Very beautiful. :) If only I had my camera with me.

Diving was abit scary for me as i struggled for a while, even ignoring my instructor & kicked my way up to the surface when i was 3 metres below the water. No matter what happens, divers are supposed to remain calm & still do hand signals to their accompanied partner to tell them what's wrong. I didn't cos I was so panicky at that split second. All i'd wanted is to get out of the water IMMEDIATELY.

I'd taken in too much water cos i breathed wrongly (was supposed to breathe through the mouth using the respirator, keeping the lips closed around the mouthpiece at all times) and this made me panic really badly. I almost drowned when i was around 7-8 years old, and that fear for water always put me off any underwater sports till now. (But I still love any on-the-surface watersports! *grins*)

Round 2 was fine, though still abit shaken & tense. Thank god i din screw up then, when i actually went 7 metres under. If not i wonder if i'll be able to survive even if i kicked my way up. But the overall experience was awesome, despite setting me back by 109SGD (inclusive of parasailing). I got to see marine life, feed fishes & get suckled by them (zhu got "bitten" by a greedy 30cm long one), touch reefs (trust me, this part is really not that fantastic cos it felt mouldy) and more importantly, experience being underwater almost 10 metres down.

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"What is the difference between Ubud & Kuta & Seminyak?" I asked Lanus.
"Nothing. They're all the same," Lanus answered in a very cool manner.
"HUH? But how can it be? I'm sure they're different."
"Yes there might be some differences, but they're generally the same. They all have the same things - hotel, spa, shops - they're all "built" (ok, i cant find a better word here) as tourist spots. "

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There you go. Bali is a made-up paradise. With towns built just for tourism, locals educated in only in tourism and activities tailored just for tourism, the entire island is groomed into tourism-perfection. Even the people there said so.