In Reply to: The Bali of 20 years ago concept posted by sherbert on Sunday, 21. August 2011 at 20:13 Bali Time:
I spent a New Years Day in a clinic with an old boyfriend who had been punched by a Australian footballer (the whole team had tried to carry my out of the old Bounty on NYE, will not mention team name) and while we were there a guy came in who had passed out from one of those Illusion drinks and been left naked in a ditch in Poppies 2 with no wallet or clothes or shoes, he had cut his foot trying to walk back to his hotel on all the broken glass that used to be in the streets. In those days the locals dared you to drink more than one Illusion (they were made with homemade Arak) and then if you passed out you were a sucker and most likely missing any valuables when you woke up.
And the footballers weren't as bad as the locals, the locals boys would get drunk and grab girls crotches, really hard, actually the local Boys in Kuta were disgusting pigs now I think about it, everyone loves the Balinese but those boys were down-rite scoundrels.
You couldn't walk down the street without a guy wearing a stack of caps on his head over 1 metre high yelling, "hat boss, wanna buy a hat boss", this drove me insane, they just followed you everywhere. In the wet season every road flooded and you either walked in the s%^&t (literally sewerage) or stayed in the restaurant or shop you were in until the water lowered, you never went to the beach over summer, you think now is dirty, in the wet season back then you had the monsoon rubbish but the beach was black, even a walk up the beach you came back with black feet.
But that's Kuta, Kuta is quite unique to the rest of Bali (that's why you either love it or hate it). Ubud for example was sooo nice 20 years ago, actually it was lovely 3 years ago, now it's terrible in Ubud Central, it might as well be Kuta. I saw a girl walking up the main street of Ubud at 8.00am with a large Bintang in her hand last week and thought I was in Kuta.