Surf's up dudes! This! Is! Kutaaaaa!!!! I've always wanted to do that. Kuta has many similarities to the movie 300. The biggest similarity is that almost all the guys here surf all the time and have six packs and tans. This week we stayed at The Stones. It's a beautiful 5 star hotel on the main strip. After I got over my inadequacy issues we decided to walk around for a bit. Kuta is the main tourist attraction here in Bali, especially for surfers. This is where the surfers come and surf. The main road in Kuta runs along the beach and is a few kilometers long. Most of the major hotels and shopping malls are all along this main strip. Naturally, it's very crowded most of the time. Good news is it has all the comforts of western living. In some cases those comforts might even be a little less expensive than at home. In many cases, it will cost more. Lucky for us, places like Dominos and Burger King (which Australians know as Hungry Jack's) were actually much cheaper than Canada. Lots of young energy here. Enough to make any 25 year old feel like hitting up a retirement home. Also seems to be a lot of money here. Some seriously high end shops here, as well as high end hotels. The Stones where we're staying has a display case for cars with a Ferrari F430 convertible, Porche Panamera,  Masarati Quattroporte, and 2 Rolls Royces! They're not for sale, just there to show off a bit.

We did some relaxing in the phenomenal pool that this place has. We couldn't help but to take full advantage of it. It's large, and cool, and with most of the rooms empty, it was ours! We tanned and swam for a few more days. We also ate the biggest breakfasts. The best breakfast buffet I've ever had. We could eat western breakfast, or even Asian breakfast, which looks like Asian lunch and dinner, but with an egg on top, sometimes. At the bar there's a noodle station, which I'm not used to for…..breakfast.

We walked the strip a little bit and found ourselves loving this one mall about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. The beach we didn't love as much as it was dirty and only surfers with six packs were using it. Literally no one was even trying to swim, just surf. As a result we did other stuff. We went to the cool mall down the street. It's very interesting how climate affects architecture. Most of the mall is open air so you can view the stars from most of it. We ended up watching a movie here in some of the comfiest seats we've seen in a movie theater. The shopping is very good and there's about 100 food places in here to get food from. Further down the strip there's the Hard Rock Hotel. We may still go back there.

We explored the more off beat streets as well. Lots of little places, tattoo shops, wooden penises for sale, tours, clothing that neither Anna or I could ever dream of fitting in, and lots of DVD's of movies that are already in the theaters. Imagine somebody coughing behind their cell phone camera in a theater for 2 hours and you can pick that DVD up if you like. There's lots of food places as well, but in Kuta it's all expensive, no matter how it looks.

We did take a couple of tours while we were here. One was to see some temples. We visited the temples of Taman Ayun, Tanah Lot, and Uluwatu. 2 of those temples were on cliffs about 100' above the ocean. Beautiful. The Tanah Lot was in the city with lots cool architecture and loads of Dragonflies. It was a very nice temple with 2 resident cats living there. Uluwatu is a popular one with some little furry residence there as well. Monkeys! I love those little guys! They are very cute and look very wise due to their little beards and moustaches. So cute! All of these temples are over 1000 years old.

We also did some snorkeling. They took us out to a spot and we snorkeled. Given there were around 10 other boats doing the same thing we never got to see much from all the sand in the water and the boats scaring them away. That day we visited the beach from Eat Pray Love, and visited a Turtle Farm. Those turtles are very cute and beautiful. They're also very large. I had a particularly nice connection with the local snake and bats! The day ended with a lovely seafood dinner on the beach on Jimbaran Bay overlooking the sunset.

Kuta is a nice place with lots of hustle and bustle. Now it's time we settle down and head to Bali's cultural capital, Ubud. See you than!