Penestanan

Landing in Denpasar in the evening, I immediately ran into a problem... the driver Rae sent to pick me up was not there. This is why I avoid arriving in unfamiliar places at night if I can help it - it is so much easier to solve problems such as these during daylight hours.

Fortunately, there was an internet cafe next to the meet-and-greet area. I paid 8,000 rupiah for 20 minutes of access, emailed Rae, got the address of his guesthouse and went to the car service counter.

I had previously been to Bali in 1993 on an extended island hopping trip. At that time, Bali was already touristy (at least in the beach areas) but still relatively sleepy. Upon leaving the airport en route to Ubud, I immediately saw numerous Korean and Chinese restaurants - many with tour buses parked in front, signboards advertising nightclubs and a large duty free emporium. Yup, mass package tourism had arrived in full force. Although I wasn't surprised, I was still disheartened.

The driver who took me to Ubud was a chatty guy and thank goodness I got him. Not surprisingly, the address provided by Rae was imprecise - just a street name and no house number - and so when we got to the general vicinity of the guesthouse, the driver stopped several times to ask for directions. This guy was persistent and he genuinely wanted to make sure I got to my destination safe and sound, despite my telling him that I was perfectly okay plonking myself at an internet cafe, emailing my location to Rae and waiting there for him to come get me. Anyway, he stuck with me for well over 20 minutes while we located the guesthouse, and he deposited me safe and sound at Santra Putra Guesthouse where a visibly relieved Rae welcomed me. I was touched by this driver's sincerity. We also arranged for him to come to Ubud to bring me back to the airport two days later. For the record, he made the offer - I wasn't comfortable asking him to come all the way from Denpasar to Ubud just for a one-way fare.

As I was hungry, Rae and I immediately went out to dinner. Not many places were open at that time, and so we headed to the upmarket Bridges restaurant next to the Campuhan bridge where I had my second incident of Bali sticker shock (the first was the 250,000 rupiah fixed price taxi service) when the bill came. Bali has gotten expensive! A large part of this was, of course, due to the fall in the Indonesian rupiah relative to the US dollar, but the price inflation was still a surprise.

Waking up early the next morning, we went on a little jaunt around the rice fields of Penestanan village before heading back to Santra Putra for a hearty breakfast. There, I met Karja, the owner, his wife Made, and Ketut who prepares breakfast for guests.Les mer