Day One: Friday May 21st 2010

Well today, I treated myself to a weeklong Bali adventure.Bali, Indonesia is pretty much the Australian holiday destination equivalent to Cuba and Mexico for Canadians.I left Perth today after my wonderful housemate Matt dropped me off at the airport and offered Bali tips and words of wisdom, as he's a Bali veteran!I proceeded to check in and headed to the currency exchange station where I would soon become a millionaire!Bali has rupiah as their currency, and $1 Canadian is about 9,000 rupiah!After running into some fellow Murdoch Villagers who were also Bali bound, I headed to the gate… and who do I see there?! Shannon Furry and her travel buddy Emilee!They came all the way from good old Stoney Creek, Canada for an Aussie vacation and were supposed to meet me in Bali, but here I am in Perth being greeted by Shannon!Unfortunately, we weren't on the same flight, but I would meet up with them at our hotel in a few hours.

My flight from Perth to Denpasar, Bali with Garuda airlines was a good one lasting just under 4 hours.I always get lucky on short flights when I fly alone... and yet again, I had an empty seat beside me.The other person was a man from Romania who was going to Bali so that he could get his permanent residency visa for Australia.Eugene was a so sweet, here we were a Canadian studying abroad in Australia and a Romanian medical worker on a flight to Bali using his new Ipad to practice our Indonesian and check out maps of Bali.He had been to Bali before so he helped me with my pronunciation, and yet again filled me in on Bali tips. Upon arrival, we lined up for immigration together, only to get halfway through the line and then he remembered that we had forgotten to pay our $25 American for our one-month visa to enter Bali.He waited in line while I went and got us two visas and scooted back in line.It was about 10pm by the time I cleared customs and picked up my bags.At the carousal I was greeted by lovely men willing to carry my pack, but I knew I better than to let them help me… they weren't being generous, they were trying to make some fast money by demanding a tip for their services as Shannon would later find out!

The Balinese really have the "taksi" (or taxi) service sorted out!As soon as you exit the airport, there is a taxi service stall where you pay your set price depending on your destination and are ushered away by an eager driver who most likely doesn't speak English (or maybe I just got lucky!)So here I am at 10:30pm by myself in a taxi with a driver who I hope understood where I would like to be taken.I wish I could do the craziness of the driving here justice, but it's truly something that must be experienced to really understand… but I will try!About one third of the traffic is made up of scooters with riders ranging from approximately 13-85 years old!These scooterists may be carrying passengers, dogs, furniture, groceries, food to sell and god only knows what else!Another third is made up of actual cars… vans to be exact; and the last third, taksis.The roads are much more narrow than what "Westerners" are used to, and even though they have a lane divider, this is 90% of the time disregarded!This sure was a full on culture shock, but after narrowly missing a scooterist and after a symphony of car/scooter horns, I safely arrived at the Jayakarta Hotel in Legian.Here I was kindly greeted by my doorman Eka, who carried my luggage for me and gave me a welcome drink while I filled out the hotel paperwork.I dropped my luggage in the room and proceeded to the pool to take a quick dip to wake myself up as I still had a couple hours to kill before Shannon and Emilee arrived at the hotel.I was essentially fighting a losing batter and as awakened by the hotel phone ringing to let me know that the rest of my party had arrived.The three of us spent about an hour catching up on life in the other hemisphere before calling it a night.