Ethan Davis 2

SHORT STORY – ETHAN DAVIS

BALI:

I was really excited to go to Bali, I had heard from a few people that it was a really good place to go on holiday for and that the culture and that the way people live their daily lives really makes you realize who you are and how lucky you are. I’d also heard from pretty much everyone who goes there is that you all most always score good waves, and that was probably the thing that got me most excited. On the plane I was filled with nervous excitement so the whole way there on the plane I couldn’t sit still. There was also another reason for my excitement, I was going to meet some of my best mates who we hadn’t seen for around a year and a half. We got there in the morning at around 7 o’clock Balinese time, luckily Bali and Australia are almost in line with each other so the time difference wasn’t too bad. We were going to stay in Bali for two weeks. We stayed in a really cool little villa with a pool and there was about 3 bedrooms surrounding it, I got my own so I was stoked about that.

During the two weeks that we stayed there for we ate out pretty much every night and no-one luckily got a case of “Bali Belly”, the two words tourists use to describe food poisoning in Bali, it happens a lot. The food was so good and the people were really helpful and I was surprised to hear that many people spoke English.

The roads in Bali are ridiculous there are about 100 cars and 1,000,000 motorbikes it’s scary. In Bali there are often major traffic jams and so having a motorbike to weasel through cars is pretty helpful. That’s why I guess most of the population have motorbikes, they literally cram 5 people on a bike meant for two and there were newborn babies just sitting on the handlebars, it looked like they were trying to kill them. Bali is also a lot poorer than Australia and there are so many homeless people, living in construction sites or just anywhere under shelter, especially as in Bali you can get some pretty horrendous thunderstorms.

The animals there are pretty wild too, when we went to the Uluwatu monkey temple they would steal everything that hung off you sunglasses, thongs, hats and as a result I had my brand new thongs chewed up. In the process they bit me and about 3 hours after I started to vomit (all over the rental car) and I felt really bad, I got taken to hospital because they thought that I might get rabies, so I had a vaccination and then went back to the villa later that night.

While we were in Bali, we also surfed, we had a local guy called Yudi who knew the waves really well and everyday he took us to different waves: Nusa Dua, Balingan, Cangguu, Uluwatu, Rainbow Bay etc. This was the highlight of the holiday for me as the waves were super fun and we had one perfect day at Nusa Dua. Bali is the best!