Misc Travel Notes

One of the better perks of academic life is the occasional opportunity to travel to various conferences, which gave me an excuse to go to Bali to attend CACS 2011 in November. The downside of pulling this trick is of course that your opportunity to sight-see is rather limited by this annoying "conference" thing.

Still, I managed to see a bit of the country, and generally had an enjoyable trip.

Various notes:

• Sex tourism is clearly big in Bali, as evidenced by being offered Viagra by a very insistent street merchant and a "very nice girl" by the hotel's security guard on my first day there.
• Walking around with a couple of million rupiah (about R2000) was rather fun
• Having to scrounge up internet access at internet cafes felt very archaic
• I seriously underestimated the carrying capacity of the average scooter
• The rules of the road for scooters in Bali are from a very different book to anything else
  
• The Balinese clearly have lots of practice at fleecing tourists
• Dealing with the above while slightly jetlagged is not recommended
• Not unrelated to this, the infamous Civet coffee is actually really good, but far too expensive
• The runway right on the beach is very impressive
  
• As is Mt Agung
  
• As are the sunsets
  

The conference itself was pretty good, although it dropped down to minimal attendance fairly quickly, which was probably due to the competition with the local attractions.

More photos can be see at my gallery.