Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

I'm only here because I fly to New Zealand in a few days. It also means I have completed the three "krazy K's" (Kathmandu, KhaoSan, Kuta).

Kuta's like an extremely tanned, toned, beautiful, young, noisy, flowering tree - wearing flip-flops and an alcohol-branded t-shirt, and sporting many tattoos. I feel like a little white stick-insect clinging to the edge of this foliage, unable to enter! It's a Bintang beer army and they're planning something. Most people are Australian - the touts and sellers know this and when you approach they shout "G'day mate, how's it ghan?" At first It was funny, and I would say "ah man, I'm from England!" (which some then reply with "lovely jubbly!") but after a few days, and hundreds of people (per hour) saying this I now plug myself into the mp3 player when walking around. Who can blame them though? There's lots of money here and the sellers have t-shirts, massages, Viagra, cigarettes, stubby-holders, air-guns, marijuana, motorbikes, tazers, stickers saying "I fuck retarded midgets", sunglasses, crossboes, surfboards, island excursions, hats, wooden penis bottle openers, money changing, food and beer to sell.

My day goes like this;

6am - wake up and take the 15 minute walk to the beach when it's quiet. Run, read and relax in the nice morning air. 8am - the surfboard sellers arrive on the beach - hire a board for two hours and surf (badly). 10am - back to the guest house and have some breakfast by the pool. 11am until 4pm - stay in the guest house reading, writing and cooling off in the pool. 5pm - Sunset walk with the camera, then find somewhere for dinner before the Bintang evening army gets out (I guiltily had a KFC one day). 7pm - Back to the guest house past the already busy bars pumping out EXTREMELY loud English and American chart hits. 8pm - In bed sleeping!

The beach itself is is long, sandy and a little dirty. The high-tide line leaves a colourful line of washed up plastic and dead wood. This morning it was nice to see the "Bali beach clean-up team" sponsored by Coca-Cola and Quicksilver) - but curiously they only cleaned away the big pieces of wood and seaweed. I can only assume as this causes more of a hazard for the hundreds of surfers and swimmers than a little plastic bottle.

Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka

VERY quiet here. Pretty much nothing going on apart from the locals and some dogs. Arrived with nothing booked and walked up and down the high street speaking to locals. The room rates here seem to vary wildly. This town has (apparently) one of the top 10 surfing breaks in the world, and regularly holds competitions. The best surf is in May, but some guest houses hold their high prices all season.  Have they never heard of supply and demand?

The high street

I bargained hard and got a 700 rupee room on the beach. I later ask about the tsunami and how it affected him. He tells me that it flattened his house and business and 5m of water gushing over the beach nearly killed his family - they managed to get inland quickly. The tsunami only reached 100m inland. Nothing near the scale of Thailand but equally terrifying. I felt bad about bargaining hard and in the end I paid a little extra.

The beach is wild. You can see the hyped offshore break and there's a few surfers pootling about on it but it was small. I walk miles down the coast accompanied by a pair of rowdy dogs! There's lots of tsunami damage: house foundations, broken trees and even black palm trees, though i'm not sure how they got to be this colour. Found what I thought was a football washed up on the beach, but was a fully inflated puffa fish.

 

In the evening had a real German beer in a Thai bar owned by a real German and his Thai (I can only assume) wife! Delicious. Grabbed some incredibly spicy (and cheap) rice and curry from a local hotel over the road and went back to the room. Not much else to do!

I think my little toe was up against the mosquito net in the night as it got painfully munched.

Next day, had another trust episode with Sri Lankan men while waiting for a bus. I was 99% sure the bus came this way, but got told by tuk-tuk drivers, and locals who had tuk-tuk driver friends, that there was no bus, or the bus wasn't until the evening. I shrugged them off then later a lady hotel owner came over and told me that there IS a bus and it'll be there at 11:30. Sure enough 11:30 came and so did the bus. I'm now only speaking with women!

You can see all of the photo's here