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....]