JBR1...Bounty, Bintang, and Bali belly..


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Posted by C_Shell on Monday, 29. August 2005 at 08:58 Bali Time:

JBR1...Bounty, Bintang, and Bali belly.....
The next morning, I woke up at 5am, as is pretty usual when I'm in Bali, and left Wendy getting her beauty sleep while I traversed the back lanes and gangs trying to find somewhere to get a coffee as apparently they didn't have any milk at the GVC bar! I end up at Mamas in Jalan Legian and have the first of many Bali Kopis. God, I love that stuff - the muddier, the better! The coffee having done it's trick, I make my way down Melasti Street to the beach and plonk my ass in the sand and just breathe it all in. This is my favourite time of the day in Bali - chatting to the locals and watching people prepare themselves for the days trade.

I make my way back up the beach to Padma Street, thinking what a beautiful day it's going to be, and take my first steps down Garlic Lane, reminiscing about good times had in this neck of the woods! Back to GVC now and straight to reception where I happen upon the delightful Desi and decide that if I'm going to tackle the room dilemma with anyone, I want it to be her. I think of my angle, then decide it's best to just enquire of her the actual cost of our mezzanine room compared with the cost of one of the new superior rooms (just in case in the event that we were able to change rooms, we wouldn't be extorted out of any more of our precious spending money than was necessary!) This turned out to be the right way to approach it and Desi informed me that the Mezzanine and the Superior were actually a similar nightly rate......Good stuff! Then I lay it on the line with her. "Desi, You know I'm not one to complain (lol..what was I doing then?!) but we cannot stay in our room another night." She asks me exactly what the problem is with the room and I relay the extensive list to her and ask her if it would be at all possible for us to change to a Superior room for all or part of the rest of our stay. She explains to me that the superior rooms only have 2 single beds as opposed to the 2 singles, plus queen upstairs that the mezzanine has. Then she asks me why we have a mezzanine room anyway, when we are only two girls, and I have to explain it to her (with a wink) that we needed the extra room and privacy in case we had any visitors! Then she laughs and says, "Well what will you do in a superior room, the beds are only an arms length away from each other?!!" Lol....I tell her we will work out a roster system, or have a bra hanging on the door handle or something, to which she reaches down and throws a Do Not Disturb sign at me, LOL! She tells me to leave it with her and that she will definately do her best for us. I give her a bouncy little hug and tell her that she is the best, then make the long trek back to our room. As soon as I open the door, the phone is ringing and to my suprise it is Desi, who informs me that we can move to a Superior room after lunch that day, for the duration of our stay, at no extra cost!!! God, I love that girl~!

Wendy finally wakes up and I tell her the good news and we make our way up to breakfast. The breaky is the standard fare of eggs however you want them, bacon or ham, fruit, toast and coffee...you know, the kind that you get sick of after 2 days?!!? Wendy takes one bite of her bacon, turns white and gets up and goes running to the ladies. I'm thinking that's not a really good way to start the day.....and wondering how long it actually takes for the Belly to have an effect?
She returns after 20 mins or so and says that she has the most painful stomach cramps and diarrhoea and heads back to the room to her stash of medications that she brought along just in case. I'm thinking to myself that she is being overly dramatic as usual, and she couldn't possibly have Bali Belly after only 12 hours, but I leave her to her little dilemma and go and lay by the pool for my first Bali sunbake!

Lunchtime comes and goes and I decide to pass on lunch in sympathy with Wendy. Desi tells us that the room is ready and we move all of our stuff to the new room. Now let me tell you about the superior rooms. They crap all over the old ones! The furnishing and decor is stylish and modern. There are 3 nice pieces of art adorning the walls. The bathroom is heaven compared with the one we just left behind! And the piece de resistance that I wasn't expecting........a T.V. and DVD player! Woohoo....we were happy and set! We sit out on the balcony and strike up a conversation with the people staying opposite us. They are wanting to know if we were going to be noisy and misbehave and offer their services to be our surrogate parents while they are there! This becomes a running joke and we begin to call them Mum and Dad. Every time we leave our room they call out "Don't be late home, kids!" What nice people they were, and they certainly added something a little different to our holiday. It was an absolute pleasure spending time and jokes with them. I always seem to have the pleasure of meeting the most good hearted and kind people when I am in Bali :-)

Wendy decides that she feels well enough again to try out the pool (bar) and we spend the rest of the afternoon lazing around and talking to the other holiday goers while I induct Wendy into the age old Bali ritual of Bintang over bottled water! To Bintang's credit, she is all for it! and that's saying alot for someone who never touches anything other than the Johnny! We lay in the sun and begin to get pleasantly toasted (in more ways than one!) and start to slip right into holiday mode. As the afternoon drifts away, we decide to eat in house and then spend some time at the GVC bar before heading off to the Bounty. We go back to our room and the heavenly shower and begin tarting ourselves up for the night ahead. We grab a bite to eat at the restaurant, then hit the bar and spend a few hours there enjoying Komings band and downing God knows how many Bintangs, before we make our way to the Bounty.

Wendy is in awe of the crowds out in Jl. Legian and says she is feeling much better and up for a big night! We grab a jam jar and a seat at the downstairs bar and watch the on stage entertainment. My dad arrives with a friend and we all proceed to get perfectly pissed! The compare starts calling men up for the beer drinking competition and I let my disappointment be known when they say No Women! Then they tell me to settle as the women's competition will follow the mens......"No Fair!" I say...."I wanted to kick the mens butts!" We watch the (pathetic!) display by the men, then it's the girls turn. I bide my time in my seat until everyone else is up on stage, as I'm such a shy little butterfly (LOL!) and didn't want people ogling me for any longer than necessary! We are handed our BIG pots of beer and I toast every other contestants pot and wish them luck before settling myself right into the middle of the line. Now, I have a little secret.... I can drink a beer......I can SERIOUSLY drink a beer! It's a phenomenon that I discovered when I was an 18 year old pitted up against the men in a beer drinking competition in Fiji. I kicked some serious seasoned beer drinkers butts in that competition and it was then that I realised that I don't have any such thing as a gag reflex! (minds out of gutters, plz! but yeah, it is a great skill for a girl to have! hehee)
So anyway, back to the stage...they countdown 3, 2, 1....Go.....I tip my head back and pour the liquid amber down my throat and literally count 3, 2, 1,.......GONE! Somehow, I have manouvered myself to centre stage and am standing right out in front of anyone else. I put my empty pot on my head and turn around and see this line of girls just staring at me in awe, with hardly a sip taken from their pots. I turn back around to the crowd and see a row of jaws on the ground and a mass of incredulous eyes staring at me....I start to feel uneasy and embarrassed and begin to inch my way to the edge of the stage and all of a sudden people are on their feet giving me a standing ovation and cheering and demanding an encore. It was kind of an embarrassing moment, but for my troubles, I scored a voucher for a Bungy Jump valued at $59 U.S. bucks and a beautifully giftwrapped pile of other goodies and delicacies and a Bounty T-Shirt. Way Cool! For the next 2 hours I had to fend off questions about how I do it. It's kind of hard trying to explain the non gag reflex thing to people without the conversation turning smutty and people wanting to take you home to verify this fact! But it was seriously in good fun, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I was return the following Saturday night to defend my title!

That bout of fun over, Wendy and I head up (swaying) to the ship for a dance and to check out the action. Wendy gets waylayed before we reach the stairs by a young prospective suitor, and I continue on my own into the DOOF DOOF den, where I am immediately accosted into dancing with a group of people I wouldn't know from Jack! Fun times, fun times! These people were really letting their hair down and I joined in wholeheartedly! Wendy finally extricated herself from the young man after promising to marry him, lol...and we made our way over to Paddies to check out the crowd there. The security on the door was waving metal detectors over everyone as they entered, and my piercings got me into a little spot of bother, making the guard have to repeatedly rub this contraption over my chest area! A little embarrassing, but I was way too inebriated to really give a damn! We decided that people were actually having more fun out on the street than in Paddies, so we headed back out where we were accosted by a drunken group of French men who made promises of endless acohol supplies and a wild night of anonymous fun back at their hotel! Tempting as it was (ha! not!) we decided to head back to GVC on a motorbike as it was 4am and we were both pretty drunk. We get the long cross country ride back to GVC, which was awesome fun, and we discover a group of people still sitting at the bar drinking and order a nightcap. For some strange reason, I have a strong urge to jump in the pool fully clothed, which is a habit of mine when I am really drunk, and I think what the hell??? And go for a sprint to the pool. Somehow I lost my clothes(and almost my footing!) on the way and end up diving in in my bra and undies! I emerge from the water and see Wendy standing by the pool in her nickers and she quickly dives in too! Before we know it, there are a whole band of people following suit (less) and we proceed to have a handstand competition, lol...among other clean and sensible games! In too short a time, the sun is coming up and we make our way back to our room drunk, wet and happy singing "Goodnight Sweetheart". We fall into our beds grinning and Wendy starts up again "I EFFING LOVE IT SHELL!!!!!!!" over and over and over, until she falls asleep!

Next installment coming to a BTF near you soon!
JBR2 Compulsive Shopper on the Loose in Bali!


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