Legian, Indonesia

Despite a lack of quality sleep, I managed to wake up at a respectable time in the morning. I got ready and packed my bags before checking out and walking in to the daylight. I decided not to do as I did yesterday (taking one bemu to get to another) and so I walked toward the bus terminal until I reached the “number six” bemu route. I then got on to the minivan and shortly after met two Dutch women who also got on; they too were heading to Bali and informed me I should just take the ferry across to the island and get a bus there; so I did. We reached the ferry terminal, paid for our entrance, and immediately boarded the next departing ferry. Once on the top deck of the ferry, I soon met up with the French couple I had hiked the edge of Mount Bromo with three days prior; they told me that they had in fact stayed another day for a second chance at seeing Mount Bromo and its sibling volcanoes at sunrise; Lady Fortune smiled upon them and delivered their wishes – they told me the next morning, the day after I had left, presented them with a splendid sight free of clouds. Soon, the ferry departed Java and moved east to Bali. The sea breeze was forceful and cool, it made the journey rather pleasant and in about forty minutes we reached the port on the northwestern shore of Bali. From there I bid the French couple adieu and followed the girls from Holland on to an express bus to Denpasar. Surprisingly the bus had very few passengers and made almost no stops along the way, passing through rice paddies, farms, jungle, and by many Hindu temples. Also, incredibly surprisingly, it delivered us to the Denpasar bus terminal in three hours – just as we had been told. At the bus terminal, I first stopped for some refreshments before finding a metered-taxi to take me to the hostel I booked with last night. The taxi driver actually told me that because of traffic it would take a long time to reach my destination and that I would pay more off of the meter (he told me it would be 270,000 rupiahs) than if I paid his flat-rate of 100,000 rupiahs; I told him the meter goes off of distance (which it clearly did) and that I would pay whatever the meter says; he soon found another metered-taxi on the road and told me to switch taxis, which I gladly did. In the other, more legitimate taxi, I reached my destination with the total price being 80,000 rupiahs (a bit too close to the flat rate the other driver quoted me, making me think the meter probably ran faster than it shoud have since in my experience the flat-rate is usually at least twice as high as a normal metered-rate). Anyway, I once again had a miserable experience with taxis and I cannot help but fully lend my support to useful apps like Uber that give the consumer more power and that will hopefully one day put all the wretched, scummy, cheating taxi drivers out of business. After checking in to the hostel, I dropped off my dirty laundry at a nearby laundromat and found a place to eat dinner on Legian Street, where I had 1.33 liters of Bintang, a pesto-sauce pizza, and chocolate pancakes with vanilla ice cream. I then went back to the hostel and worked on updating the website while eating cappuccino-flavored Tim Tams (delicious Australian-made junk food) before going to sleep.