Bali Beginnings - Seminyak

I landed and took a shuttle to the Puri Cendana Resort. I picked it on the internet and recommend it highly to anyone who wants to stay in this area, especially for $20 bucks per day. My duplex had a massive bed upstairs and the pool area was as nice as anything landscaped to look like Bali in orlando. Bathtub big enough to drown a Samoan.

The problem is that Seminyak is annoying and not at all what I pictured Bali to be. The hawking is relentless and it's difficult to walk five feet without somebody trying to sell you something. The taxis ("taksi") are motorbikes and every step finds one of them beeping at you twice, trying to get you to hop on. They warn oncoming traffic with one beep. Thousands of beeps per day. Thousands.

I decided to have a big gay night out, since this area hosts the island's gay bars. The three bars are next to each other and people shift to the next at predisposed times. The crawl starts at Q Bar. I am happy to report that Beyonce is was well-represented by the drag queens here.

I quickly find out that I am The Money Shot. I am one of five white guys in a sea of Balinese dudes. Everyone wants my Johnson. I am even more appealing given that two of the others greatly resemble Santa Claus. I cannot flinch without a tiny man coming on to me. It's immediately apparrent that they all want money, or to marry me and wear Armani forever. I loathe this kind of attention and can't land a conversation that does not feel like I am being worked. I drink eight rum + cokes and leave. They are yelling after me when I exit. Meeeeeester. It's like five hundred cats in heat, all with their tails in the air and begging from their puckered backside.

The next day I poked around town. I had my laundry done. $2.50 wash and fold. Score. Dogs roam everywhere, every bitch with her tits to the ground from eleven litters of kids. There is not one dog that even approaches cute - even the puppies have scabs and patchy fur.

I have found that most countries in this part of the world are trapped in 1999. Rock music is supplied by Bizkit, pop music is by manufactured groups whose name was fogotten at the turn of the century. Westlife seems exceptionally popular and I am quite sure that Hooked On Phonics was consulted before the songs were written. Every word is of a fourth grade reading level and rhymes. I whoohoo every time I get hear the sad/mad/glad trifecta. When you say goodbye I want to die - I don't even try to guess why. Eh.

The other time-warp issue is clothing. Quicksilver is by far the biggest thing going, followed by brands that were dumped along with the Gameboy. Sadly, I am out of clothes and purchase the least offensive Quicksilver shirt I can find, knowing that it will wow like Versace.

Seminyak sucks. I meet nobody. I eat shitty, touristed-down food. I am overcharged and hassled at every step. This is fucking Bali?

I am headed for the mountains with hope that there is more to it than this.