My latest appointment to meet a visitor to Bali was 1pm on Tuesday to meet Australian travellers Patricia and Michelle at Pub Bagus on Poppies Lane II.
I arrived just after 1pm and saw Michelle sitting by herself. She told me that her sister was not feeling the greatest and wanted to rest. Poppies Lane was busy with traffic and I suggested checking out Maccaroni around the corner on Jl.Legian. It sits on the main road but is deep enough that the noise from the street isn’t overpowering.
Maccaroni does a selection of wine and cocktails but we both elected to go for a small Bintang, it was a steamer of a day. At midday the place is empty and is quite relaxing especially if you have been dealing with the heat, fumes and noise outside.
Michelle is a native of Tasmania which for those of you not familiar with Australia is the island off of the SE coast. She lives in an awesome sounding place on the north coast of the island and told me about the lakes, streams and white sand beach that is close by. I must get down there sometime.
Michelle has made 5 trips to Bali starting in 1985 and the main reason for this trip is to celebrate her 40th birthday with Patricia. They both celebrated their 25th here and man haven’t the years flown by!
Of course Bali and particularly the Kuta area has changed a lot since her first visit but Michelle remains very positive about Bali and its people.
On this trip they took a day trip to Kintamani with another visitor from Tassie, stopping off at Tirtaganga. The friend loved it and had a great attitude, going with the flow and enjoying the differences.
We talked about how Bali is developing and I mentioned that in most parts of the island the developemnt is not tourists related. That’s hard to believe I know if you’ve only ever been to Kuta, Lovina or Ubud. Michelle said she takes the expansion of businesses in her stride and accepts that ‘progress’ is going to happen. I said that I think the Balinese government should implement a 3 stage zoning law…stage 1 - do what you want ( if you want to build another factory in Denpasar go ahead ), stage 2 - limited construction ( in local style with a 2 story limit only open to certain types of business ), stage 3 - no construction.
I used to live in Santa Barbara California and the zoning and building codes were really strict. This meant you couldn’t build a smoke stack in the middle of town and what you did build had to be in a Spanish style. I’d like to see that here. Lastly Bali is beautiful, but the ‘ribbon development’ that occurs along all major roads often block those beautiful views. In places like Tirtaganga and Dreamland putting up concrete boxes ruins the whole scene. Let’s not spoil Bali’s views with eyesoars.
Okay having said all that I realize it has 0% chance of happening.
Michelle and Patricia are leaving today and I hope to see them out here again soon.
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Did you give her one, tiger?