Category Archives: Kuta

Our last full day on Gili Trawagnan was Thursday the 14th. Over breakfast at Bale Sasak, we met The Wine Label Designer, who lives in Napa. After a bit of chit-chat, we agreed to have lunch together. He had just arrived on the island, so we gave him a bit of information on how to get around and fun things to do. We then parted ways: we watched an episode of Homeland in the height of the afternoon heat, while he went paddle boarding. After watching the sunset at Exile one last time, where we had an interesting conversation with a local who helped start one of the three major bars on the island. He talked about island politics and some of the recent legal issues as well as methanol poisoning. We met up with The Wine Label Designer again for a drink at Surf Bar, whose young proprietors were actually a bit obnoxious. But they let us play our own music so we all listened to The Black Keys for a bit before The Private Eye and I decided to turn in.

Denpasar airport is actually much closer to Kuta than Denpasar. Since we have a 6:05AM flight to Yogyakarta, we thought spending one night, a Friday night, in the famous/infamous Kuta was a good idea. Kuta is kilometers of beautiful beach that’s pretty good for surfing: it’s where Bali tourism and vacationing began. These days, it’s a long strip of clubs, minimarts, tourist-friendly restaurants, bars, and little stores hawking touristy wares. People traveling to Bali for its culture avoid it like the plague; people traveling to Bali to dance, lounge on the beach, and party love it.

After a 90 minute boat ride from Gili Trawagnan and a 2 hour van ride, we arrived in Kuta and booked a room. We had a nice conversation with a Londoner who was traveling with two of her girlfriends. She had a lot of interesting travel stories, but the conversation was also a little sad. She found out that there had been a bunch of layoffs (redundancies, in British parlance) at her work while she was away and didn’t know whether she was one of them. Based on a conversation she had with her boss before she left (“While you’re traveling, think about what you might want to do next…”) it seemed pretty clear she probably was, but she hadn’t connected the dots. We both stayed mum on our independently reached conclusions.

I had scraped my foot on a rock in the surf when snorkeling on Wednesday, and a torrential downpour had left large standing pools of water in many of the side roads on Gili Trawagnan on Thursday night. I ended up having to step in a few of them, and despite using iodine and alcohol before bed, I woke up Friday morning with the scrape a bit red and tender. So as soon as we arrived in Kuta and had a room, I headed to a clinic to have the scrape cleaned and dressed as well as receive some antibiotics. Once that was complete, we wandered the alleys a bit for dinner, followed by watching the sunset on Kuta beach. Walking back to our room, we came aross a restaurant with fire dancing to thumping techno and so stopped for dessert, then finally made a few sprints between covered alcoves when the downpour momentarily receded.

So where to go for some music? We surveyed the options and decided on first walking to Kuta’s main drag to hear if there was anything good. If not, then we’d try a place called Deejay Club that would be a very short cab ride away. If none of those panned out, we’d head to Seminyak (a much longer cab ride), the upscale version of Kuta, where The Wine Label Designer said he thought we might like.

Kuta’s strip (Jl. Legian) was a bit boring and crass – The Private Eye actually saw a guy grab a drunk girl and grope her (unwillingly); she broke it up. After that, we walked much more closely together, listened for a bit at the one place that sounded promising, and decided to move on to Deejay. After fending off an irate taxi (but not Taksi) driver who claimed nobody uses meters on Friday night (hint: if they become angry they are probably lying), we found a respectable taksi, arrived at Deejay around 12:30, and found out it didn’t open until 1. Later that night, taking with a woman with excellent English, we found out Deejay is where people go after the regular clubs, because it’s open until 11AM.

But our taksi to the airport was at 4:30AM, so we didn’t want to hang out for half an hour in a kinda dirty and quiet alley for the late club to open, given we wouldn’t be able to stay for when it would get going. So one more taksi, this time to Mint in Seminyak.

But oh, what San Francisco fools we are. You see, these are the upscale clubs. You know, the ones that successful people in their thirties go to. That means they have a dress code. Psylo shorts and a tank top don’t make the cut – sleeves at least, collars preferred, leather shoes appreciated. So we wandered around a bit, realizing the intersection of good music and would let me in was the null set. Especially frustrating given I could have worn appropriate clothes but didn’t know. After weighing our options – three more taksis to go home to change, come back, then head home, seemed like too much. And so, we San Francisco noobs, to whom dress codes are completely foreign, utterly failed to dance.

And so, 90 minutes of sleep later, now we are on the flight to Yogyakarta, which was momentarily in danger of being rerouted to Eastern Java due to fog but is now starting its descent. The guidebook says the greatest danger in Yogyakarta is slick batik salesmen who rip you off; if that’s the seamy underbelly of this town, it sounds adorable.

— The Professor