Before we begin I was remiss in my first post of Day 1 Exploits by not thanking everyone who posts on this forum, I have learned much and been greatly entertained by prevous JBRs and tales of Bali. So thank you all!
So onto to day 2...........
We arose bright and early at the ungodly hour of 8.30am (come on we're on holiday!) so we could be ready and dressed to greet our lovely maids who came in and made us a beautiful breakfast! They did everything for us even the washing up, my Missus was champing at the bit to get up and help, not used to the easy life you see.
After fuelling up on poached eggs and as much fresh pineapple as you could eat (not a good idea when you're a diabetic like me, but the girls had gone to so much trouble!) we headed off to arrange my Tattoo.
Now it's not been the best of seasons to admit it, but I'm an avid Liverpool supporter (I know that's probably automatically reduced the number of readers of this by about half, but I can't help it). I promised myself some years ago that I would get a Liverpool themed tattoo the next time they won the premiership..........needless to say I got fed-up waiting and decided now was as good a time as any! Anyhoo.....after much research.....actually I typed the word 'tattoo' on the search engine on this excellent forum.........then picked a random name out of the many that came up.....no sorry, after careful consideration and after many recommendations I decided to go with Buddi Marley.
A taxi ride later we found ourselves deposited outside the Posers bar on the corner of Padma Street as I had for some inexplicable reason forgotten his address or even a vague idea of where he was situated near. Using my navigational skills honed over my many years as a boy scout, through determination and blind luck we happened upon his establishment at the end of JL. Padma Utara, next to the All Seasons Hotel. Endeavouring to look suitably manly (as I always feel you kind of have to in a tattoo shop), I had a chat with his main man, asked him teary eyed if it would hurt and sorted out a price, then arranged an appointment for the day before we return. So that's that to look forward to then!
We decided to stop off at Posers for a drink and something to eat, we cheerfully strode through the throngs of smiling salesmen, with their friendly calls of 'Hallo Boss', 'Hey Young Feller' and 'Hi Darling' (although I'm not absolutely sure but I think the last comment may have been directed at any one of my Lady companions!).
We had a really nice meal at Posers, I couldn't persuade two of our party to try something more adventurous from the menu other than a Steak Sandwich but one took a step in the right direction and tried Fried Calamari, while I had an excellent Beef Rendang, which, whilst not being Indonesian was closer than Blue Cheese Pizza by virtue of being of Malaysian extract. (I'll get some of that Indonesian food yet!) The costs were around the IDR50-60,000 mark. Large Bintang was about IDR27,000 and the Lady drink cocktails were IDR45,000.
Whilst we were enjoying our meal we were entertained by the many and varied ways with which we were encouraged to buy DVDs or CDs by the passing salespersons. Apparently they were a bit reluctant to accept that a polite 'Tidak, Terima Kasih' wasn't sufficient to let them know that we weren't interested in their wares at this particular time, and tried the ploy of holding them in front of your face whilst you tried to insert a particularly tasty morsel into your mouth! A determined bit of ignoring would finally do the trick!
One of the guys was trying to sell, amongst other things a particularly shoddy looking hand puppet, diligently fashioned in the form of a lime green duck, and the best thing about this duck was that when you closed its mouth an amusing rasping noise emitted along with its tongue made from one of those party blower type things. Unfortunately whilst demonstrating this the blower flew out of the Puppets mouth and landed square upon my plate, which I handed back to him, much to his embarrassment and the hilarity of one of his passing co-salesmen who laughingly said 'Don't buy that Boss....Its Rubbish!'
After lunch we headed off to do some shopping! As we we're shopping Virgins we were really only looking and getting an idea of prices, not actually buying anything............needless to say we ended up buying Billabong/Quicksilver/ Roxy items from a fixed price shop, which we probably could have got cheaper but we were pretty happy with our purchases.
On the walk round the stalls I'd got used to be addressed as Boss etc, when for some reason I started hearing the greeting, 'Hello Pork Pie' from two or three different people ........now as I said earlier I'm not the most trim of people and I'm built more for comfort.....so I naturally (paranoidally..if that's a word?) assumed they were having a bit of a sly dig at my less than svelte figure. I was getting quite upset when I suddenly realised that upon spotting the T-shirt I was wearing, upon which was printed a picture of a Spinach Guzzling Cartoon character they were actually saying 'Hello POPEYE!' not 'PORKPIE'.......oh how we laughed!
We stopped off on the way back to the Villa for more essentials at Bintang Supermarket.
That night we decided to have a stroll along Eat Street and stop where the mood took us, as it turned out the weather took a turn for the worse and the rain dictated we stop at Rumours Restaurant. Upon perusing the menu it was obvious I still wasn't to get my Indonesian food fix so settled for a very tasty Seafood Pasta dish. Large Bintangs were again about IDR27000.
After the meal we had walked about three paces up the street when the heavens opened. Up until then we had used Bluebird taxis for all our trips out and about, we have found them to be scrupulously honest and they always turned on the meter. Unfortunately, this time, because of the rain we inadvertently got into a different companies taxi and forgot to check the meter! To cut a long story short (Thank God ! I hear you cry!). When we got back to our Villa..... a journey of about ½K he tried to charge me IDR25000! Now Flag Fall on the Bluebird Taxis is IDR5000 and for that you can get half way down Legian Street! So I gave him IDR10000 and told him he was lucky to get that.....wasn't the money......just the principle............ok so I'm a bit of a tight-@rse too! Lesson learned! Make sure It's a Bluebird and make sure the meter is on!
After a few more obligatoiry Bintangs and a 'small' Glayvar off to bed again!
Day 3 to Follow........ Bali Baik with Wayans gang.........and an unfortunate bit of Karma in a Paddy Field!