Bali - Misc

This is my last post about Bali, I promise. In this post I'll just throw in all the stuff that I forgot in the previous posts. These 10 blog entries have been good for me, because now I know that a single blog entry takes about an hour to organize, write and edit. That's after all the photos and videos are taken.

In both the Philippines and in Bali, I watched taxi cab drivers play Western Chess while waiting for rides. The few games I watched, were not very good. The opening were not standard and development was weak before they launched an attack.They played out the game until the bitter end waiting for their opponents to make a stupid mistake. Last year in Thailand, I also saw taxi cab drivers play international checkers(with "flying kings") and the Thailand version of chess called Makruk. Cheap fun. In Tainan, taxi cab drivers play a card game called "President" which is similar to "Thirteen" which I describe on my webpage.

http://sites.google.com/site/essmike



Here is the business card of the driver we had in Bali. We drove with him four days and he was great.

The tourist season in Bali starts in April and goes into the Summer, it a big business with it's ups and downs. It draws a lot of Indonesians who are not from Bali to Bali. When I asked Putu "How many people came from Java(the big Indonesian island)?" After thinking awhile, he answered, "Too many".


From the airport to Ubud we took a Taxi and although Balinese seem very calm and peaceful, once in the taxi they drive like "a bat out of Hell". By the time we found Putu we were use to the chaos of the roads and they drive on the "English" side of the road! I have one advice for those who want to drive themselves in Bali:
DON'T!.



Here is the guide book I used in Bali.

I bought it at a good English language bookstore in Ubud after I looked over a copy of a fellow travel in Ubud. I wish I had bought it before going to Bali to have some idea of what I was going to do before I got there. I have had good experience with the "Lonely Planet" series but I find the index to be too short. The current edition of the guide is the 12th and was published in 2009.

This past month the exchange rates have been:

                          $1 = 30 NT(New Taiwan) dollars
                          $1 = 43 Philippine pesos
                          $1 = 8700 Indonesian Rupiah
                          $1 = 11280 Indonesian Rupiah(2009 Lonely Planet Book)

After converting $200 to rupiahs, Florence and I were millionaires! The smallest coin was a 500 rupiah coin, everybody was carrying around stacks of old dirty bills. It's a mathematical challenges to work with such large numbers to just buy lunch.

When traveling in the Philippines, Taiwan and Bali, Florence makes a point of using both the Visa and American Express credit card at least once. Of course, the bill will appear in US dollars, but it will give you a chance to see who gives you the better exchange rate. In our case, it was always American Express. America Express should use this marketing phrase:

"VISA, for whenever they don't accept American Express."