Bali has become somewhat of a household name for the nearby regions. If you haven’t been to Bali, you were considered one of the few “virgins” – hard to come by nowadays anyway you look at it. My Bali purity was defiled last month where the “Island of Gods” had me, used me, abused me and bruised me for 7 days. Two weeks later I’m still paying the price.

See, the thing is I’ve been to many beaches, mainly in Malaysia and Thailand and while the serenity and feel of “resort” is still preferred in those places, I found Bali to be the naughtier more intriguing sister. As a first timer, my travel companion and I decided we’d spend the first few days in Kuta. We stayed at the Tune Hotels because we read good things about it and to top it off it was affordable and very central. My thoughts on that: – meh, ‘ok la’ and yep.

The alleyway leading to the Tune Hotels

We arrived in the evening that first night and ran into some room problems. An hour and then some later they finally sorted things out and put us in another room. The thing about staying at a “no frills” hotel is – well it’s NO FRILLS which means you pay for luxuries like air conditioning (while having a fan is a necessity there so that was free). The power shower was pretty AWESOME though. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to wake up early just so I could have a power shower. Anyway, after settling down a bit and chewing our nails to a bloody pulp trying to figure out the ridiculous counts of money they use we ventured the streets of Kuta. Unfortunately we headed in the direction where all the clubs and bars were and all we wanted was a proper place to eat. Although it was only a 15 minute walk, it felt longer with the heat and the constant harassment from people trying to get you to buy, try or say hi. We finally settled at a quaint hotel restaurant with no fan and I had a chicken burger and carrot juice. I know, totally exciting but it was only the first night  and we had an early morning ahead.

One of the streets in Kuta. Take note of the the police van for future reference!

Kuta fashion..ho ho!

Carrot juice - for some reason I kept ordering juice everywhere I went and I think it was one of the contributing factors to my food poisoning

I was recommended by a friend to go on the Bali Bike Baik tour. It’s a full day tour and they pick you up from your hotel and take you to Mt. Batur where you have this underwhelming breakfast but overwhelming view of an ACTIVE volcano (side note – while at the volcano, I got a text message from a friend asking me if I was alright cause apparently there was an earthquake in Denpensar (nearby) during the the wee morning hours!).

Mt. Batur - an active volcano in Kintamani that thankfully didn't erupt while we were there.

Later they take you to this Balinese coffee plantation where they have “grow” this special kind of coffee called LUWAK. “Grow” meaning they feed coffee beans to Civet cats and have them shit the beans out and voila LUWAK..or shall I say, LU-YUCK. People do drink it and it cost a lot too.

Civet cat poo that is later dried and "roasted" to make coffee

Poor civet cats that are fed only coffee beans to make this famous LUWAK coffee

For the actual cycling part of the tour, we went to this little village/ town and got to past some temples and lots of rice paddy fields. Despite them advertising the tour as a “downhill bike tour” – it’s all white lies as there was a good chunk of it that required us to go uphill. It all works out cause after sweating and roasting out like some duck/lamb/pig – we were treated to a pretty awesome lunch at the tour owners home.

The evening later wrapped at the very hip, happening and expensive Ku De Ta. No photos here but interesting (if not long winded) conversations with a bunch of “JOANNES”. Also, they only serve two kinds of beers – San Miguel and Heineken – WTF?? (side note – Bali Hai is the beer to drink while in Bali)

[days 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 - to be continued....]

I’ve just comeback from a 6 night/ 7 day holiday in Bali, Indonesia. I’ve never been there before but needless to say it was everything I expected and a bit more. Unfortunately I fell victim of food poisoning my last day there and went through 2 air sickness bags on the flight back. I hate yacking and when I do it’s pretty loud – the stares I got on the plane re-affirmed this. After getting my bowels and such sorted, I’ve come down with the flu and staring at a computer screen when I don’t have to sickens me. I will get around to it…eventually.

In other news, I’ve joined the world of COUCH SURFING. My profile can be seen here.  I know right, another “social networking” site >.<

I have a travel predicament I have to make in 6 days. Qatar Airways has a special deal flying from KUL to a few destinations I’d really like to go to. My travel dates would be end of April into May but it might be too soon – unless this couch surfing stuff takes off.

This SUNDAY, JANUARY 31st 2010

Click for big version

That’s right folks! A few friends and I are having a flea market of sorts at my mum’s shop in Kelana Jaya.  We’ve been planning it for a couple weeks but ‘advertising’ for it for only a couple days. We hope for a decent turn out cause we have waaaay too much cool junk to just throw away. I’ve been sorting out what I want to “honourably pass the baton down to and at a cheap cost” and I have lots of old clothes which I sadly I can’t fit into now – most of them I’ve used only a handful of times at the most during my “corporate clothes” wearing days.  Also, I’ve collected a number of “new” freebie promo t-shirts during my ‘media’ days which I will probably be giving out for almost free! Some old magazines I’ve collected in the day..CD’s… accessories and wow i dunno just a whole load of random stuff I guess. Hopefully by attracting friends and friends of friends my mum’s shop will get some word on the street. She has lots of cool stuff she wants to sell. Most of it is stuff she’s picked up while living overseas. I fell in love with a Russian tea set she has – they are older than me! The stuff from Mexico is pretty cool too and she has porcelain China from the Mao Tse-tung era – apparently they were destroying all the China but my managed to save a few so they are considered valuable!

… your first comeback post is about the colour of your bedroom walls. It’s true, I’m really into ‘home improvement’ and adding a bit of “me” into the mix. In the beginning I didn’t mind having my apt. look like a poor man’s ikea show room but I think it’s really taking a toll on my “chi”.

A few months ago I painted a “theme” wall in my living room. I gave it some colour to compliment my framed FANTOMAS poster. My living room already attracts lots of light mainly due to the fact I don’t have any real curtains to block the sunlight from coming in. The yellow/orange sunset colour from the wall managed to brighten and warm the room up more. It still lacks personality though. Funny enough, a lot of my personality is stored up in boxes and disguised as “junk”.

Just recently I decided I’d paint a wall in my bedroom seeing how I spend most of my time there. I knew I wanted a dark warm colour – an earthy brownish / beige tone to give that ‘zen’ feel. I went with some friends to the paint shop and we narrowed it down to a few colours, in the end I had them choose the colour for me and it was a shade of olive – brownish/orangish/greenish.

Daylight view of wall

Night view of wall

Reflection off the closet mirrors when entering room

And for the lolz and oohz and aaahz and oucchez… one of the gnarly bruises I got on my thighs from my fall off the ladder while painting this wall…

oouchhz