The dormitory cottage that I booked and reserved is in the Kuta area of Bali is a ‘tourist hot spot’, the thing with this is that usually prices are expensive for the developing country that one is in, be it Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand and so on. This is because the ‘tourists’ that visit these popular destinations are there for a short visit as being on holidays and a vacation and spend money to have a good time and as far astray are concerned the prices are cheap compared to North America or Europe, but with ‘backpacker travellers’ they know these prices in the tourist hot spot places are inflated and I suppose when travellers end up in these places where many tourists are that it becomes difficult looking for the cheap meals, accommodations and so on. For instance in Yogyakarta, seeing the popular ancient Temples (Borobudur and Prambanan Temples the entrance fees were minimum 325,000 rp for each site as where the locals only pay 40,000rp. Same with Bali Zoo, entrance fee for the foreigners is like 450,000 rp and locals apparently pay the same I have been told, it continues with restaurants having higher food prices, accommodations, souvenirs, transportation costs, tourist pay these prices while backpack travellers seek out cheaper everything, as to stretch out the dollar for travellers usually are in it for the long haul being on the road for months or even years.

Bali is nice, there is one very busy main drag that runs along the sandy beach with the big wave ocean, at times this one way street is number to bumper not moving at all.The food prices are very expensive, I did find cheap accommodations and I was told by a local where to go for the cheap food prices which I appreciated. It seems many tourists were learning to surf and/or simply catching a wave for a short ride as the waves were about 2 metres high I suppose. Many people were on the beaches all day long, many. I did much walking around and before I left Bali, I rented a motor bike for 70,000 rp and went to Ubud about 90 minutes away and saw the monkeys at the Monkey Forest, entrance fee was reasonable being 50,000 rp.

The cheap accommodations I got at Bali in the Kuta area was a plcalled Komala Indah ii Cottages where I had a single room for 100,000 rp a night, but no bath towel and nothing to clean the ass with, no water spray hose or toilet paper, I understand no toilet paper but no spray hose. The outside area is beautifully landscaped and walking to the beach was about a 10 minute walk. There are many one way streets, so if on a motor bike know the area, because you may have to take a long way to get where you want because of so many one way streets.

Bali can be affordable if one does research to find the cheap accommodations and cheap places to eat.At the BoardWalk Mall if one decides to eat or drink here with many restaurants to choose from, in small print it states that a service tax and sales tax will be adding to food and drink prices, I did not see the small print and I was surprised when I got the bill. I decided after a 3 day visit in Bali I would get away from this hot spot and go elsewhere not so busy, so I decided to go to one out of the three Gili’s Island the first one being the largest island called Gili Trawangan and then to Lombok, as I believed this would be a cheaper place to stay and visit. I purchased a fast ferry package that included picking me up in the morning at the Cottage and having an open ticket for return back to Bali which cost me 600,000