PLEASE NOTE - this is the first trip back to Bali for me for more than 17+ years, so please understand my experiences are naturally coloured with tints of nostalgia and 'how it was back then'. No apologies - that's my frame.
Arrived solo on Garuda with an uneventful trip - their in-flight entertainment systems is pretty poor however if you speak only English. No TV shows worth watching (none I could find in English?), movies OK, music passable. But that's a small part of a short pleasant flight for most though.
Checked in to Villa MUM for 10 nights in Seminyak, not far from the Oberoi corner. She's been fussing about my arrival, picks me up from the airport, tells me the gay landscaper is in Cambodia for a few days with his boyfriend, so my quest to see Bali nightlife with a good bent wingman will be delayed somewhat. Drop in to Carrefour super on the way where I learn that French wine is comparable to Aus prices (Guigal et al) but my god, $80 for a bottle of Wynns Riesling!!?!? I immediately get online and join FebFast.
To the villa, and time to chill a little. Mum tells me I'll need to put on my 'dress' clothes, the ones she told me to bring by way of email conversations, 'cause we're off to Mentis tonight for dinner. No problem I say - I bought my best slides (my dress up word for black leather thongs with a polished upper and a slight heel) I proudly announce. Mum says she's never heard of slides and didn't I have long pants, a collared shirt and some boat shoes instead? No I say Mum, only gay lanscapers or sailors would be game enough or stupid enough to wear all that in a 30 degree climate like Bali and what happened to the old, 'no thongs, no service' rule that was, I'm pretty sure, a staple last time I was here? Mum quickly informs me that last time I was here, Mentis (and Seminyak for that matter) were swimming with mosquitos in a vast inland sea of green rice paddies. Bali, I'm reminded, has changed.
Over-heating in thin woollen pants, a short sleeved check shirt and the 'slides' no-one will believe are 'formal dress', we are eventually off in a taxi Mum has to call 3 times to make appear. Zooming past a mile of restaurants I've only ever read about in The Yak magazine (Double 6 actually opened, and closed, between the last times I visited it seems!), we arrive at Mentis. Honestly, it could have been Vue de Monde for all I knew. Stark lighting bathed a gallery up front, followed by clipped lines and fake aesthetic dripping from almost every artifice, perfect little uniformed staff scurrying about everywhere - I drop into the spotless Mens toliet before dinner starts and expect any moment to run into Lachie Murdoch. He's nowhere to be seen however... I wonder if he would have worn woollen pants tonight?
Dinner begins and I'm up for my third of many shocks this evening - the prices. The menu reads like ANY restaurant I've ever frequented in Melbourne, with exactly the same charges. Lamb, Duck, Rib eye, Salmon, tick, tick, tick - $25 or more. The wines I'm sure you know about already - AUS$80 for anything Australian I buy at home for $20, more for the French, strangely (see Carrefours above). Scattered about the tables are more over-dressed white guys like me, burying their noses in the reading and not appearing to be phased one jot by the fact that they are essentially about to enjoy an experience entirely MADE of where they have just presumably tried to escape from....
The food arrives - the portions are suitably tiny (as goes with 'fine dining') and finished in 2 minutes flat. The Balinese sommelier (in Bali!!!) saunters by and asks if our style of drinking would suit 'darker fruits' - as he's offering us a French Merlot at AUS$90, I can only agree its appropriate and it's consumed. The table staff are performing tricks like pouring our sparkling water one handed, while resting the bottle neck on the tip of our glasses and balancing them forward as they do, threatening to douse my nether regions in French aqua. This would be a most pleasant diversion from the heat that continues to gather there underneath the wool, alas, they are immaculately skilled and complete the task without incident.
frankly, my jaw is on the frickin' floor by this stage....
I once tried to get good seats for an important Melbourne Heart game and out of desperation, I jumped on the team's online forum for help. Describing my predicament to, what turned out to be, the Heart Cheerleading fraternity, they kindly informed me that what I was asking of them was all a little bit 'too prawn cocktail' for their tastes.
Yess.... too prawn cocktail, that's exactly where I was with this. I couldn't reconcile the Bali I had known with this new, over worked, extremely self-conscious and, I would have thought, totally foreign concept of re-creating the ex-pat experience ala Singapore, to the last detail. But they've done it in Seminyak and by god, they are giving it a bloody good shake aren't they?
Bali really HAS changed...