A weekend in ... Bali. yay!

I just spent the best weekend in Bali - nothing like escaping one beautiful, little under-developed tropical island for another beautiful, bigger, overdeveloped one.

My mate Rob, from Adelaide, told me a month or two ago that he was attending a wedding in Bali for his friend Greg, who was marrying an Indonesian girl. So I invited myself along as his hot date and was the official gatecrasher for the day.

I arrived Fri night and went to a gorgeous little resort in the rice paddies around Legian, where we had some nice food and drinks with the group of Aussie friends and family. Spent half of the night in the pool, which was wicked :)

Saturday morning Rob and I headed for a lovely spa resort and got ourselves a Balinese special spa and scrub treatment, to relax ourselves for the celebrations of the afternoon ... while the massage and scrub were relaxing, we arrived late back at the hotel and had a mad rush to get ready (in about 15 mins) to leave for the wedding. But made it in time, and from the hotel we caught a bus up the hill to the wedding venue.

The venue was somewhere north of Kuta, on a hill top overlooking the sea. You could see down to the beach over the top of beautiful pink and orange beauganvilleas. It was an amazing traditional West Javan wedding, and the wedding costumes were beautiful. Greg works in the oil industry in Kuala Lumpur, and his bride Vita is from an Indonesian oil industry family, so there were plenty of important people there, not to mention that the wedding was totally lavish]. At the entrance to the venue were about ten large, gaudy signs from a range of oil companies, wishing the couple a happy wedding. Crazy!

Being traditional, Greg had to convert to Islam and go through quite a lengthy preparation process. The ceremony went for quite some time - about 3 hours - and involved a number of important religious and family figures. There was even explicit statements of the wedding 'contract' that Greg had to agree to before signing along the dotted line. It was really interesting to witness.

The reception celebrations were great. What I liked about them were the traditions that symbolise different things in a marriage, that are missed out of a typical western wedding. There were also lots of fun things, like the couple and their parents throwing lollies and gifts over their heads to the crowd, which ensured a mad scramble!

The logistics of the wedding were perfect, with the arrival of the bride and groom (in a new costume, #349302) time perfectly with the beautiful sunset. Once they were seated on stage (it really felt like watching royalty, and the wedding seemed like it was mostly for show and status - but I think this is normal in Indonesian culture!), there was a traditional dancing and drumming show which was great as well.

...and the wedding was alcohol free... which for us Aussies was a bit difficult to handle given that the wedding was at 2pm and didn't finish til 6:30. So by the time the food came out we were starving and really in need of a beer... I was just happy with the food - so many things I can't get here in Simeulue: mushrooms (4 types), capsicum (all colours), lasagne, red meat, not to mention ICECREAM (4 flavours, fudge sauce and SPRINKLES!). The only alcohol we had was the rum in the rum 'n' raisin icecream!

Afterwards we headed out on the town in Legian, we were a group of about 10 people. Hit up a couple of bars before the remaining crew (which was only 6 of us by the time we left the bar at 1am) cruised to one of the biggest clubs in Bali - the Karma Sutra. Classic name. There was a quite dodgy cover band on stage, and drinks were expensive but it was good fun getting out on the dance floor and we were a bit of a novelty for the locals! After getting home around 3:30 we jumped in the pool and had a few more beers before turning in around 5.

Unfortunately the fun had to end Sunday afternoon, and the day disappeared due to sleep and a late breakfast!

Bali was ok, but just as I expected. If I ever go back there I'm getting right out of Kuta and Legian and all that crappy touristy stuff. The reason I haven't been to Bali is because there are so many Aussies there, and I can drink in a pub with Aussies back at home. The other side of it is that many of them are old (50+) and gross and picking up hot 20 year old Indonesian girls. Yuck! What surprised me though was how empty the place seemed - I guess it's still a hangover from the bombings, plus it's not quite peak season yet - that's in December. The club we went to was probably only about 1/4 full. Still, I was happy with that - the less drunk Australians the better.

So anyway Rob, if you're reading this, thanks a bunch for a great weekend and letting me gatecrash Greg's wedding. Next time you'll have to make it to Simeulue.