Bali

A holiday in Bali is crowding round a full and lazy breakfast every morning, comfy in jammies, asking each other what day of the week it is. So's to check the tide times, see.

The days melt into each other out on Seminyak beach, where the sunshine winks on the foamy turquoise beauty of the breaking waves. Rows of cushioned deckchairs and generous beach brollies look out to sea, invitingly bright and purple and pink and red and yellow. But there is nothing better, under that blue blue sky, than to rush out into the pounding surf and ride the waves with longboards and shortboards and boogieboards, whooping above the crash and roar of the curl. Addiction to exhilaration.

Later, brown ladies barefoot in the warm soft sand smile toothily as they massage bruised and battered bodies, apply temporary tattoos to the temporarily rebellious and proffer manicures and pedicures to the blonde and tanned and topless.

Come evening, there are icy cocktails for sipping everywhere but the stretch outside Ku De Ta is a mighty fine place to watch the sun setting to loungey tunes. Inland - mean French amongst fairy lights at Kafe Warisan and thumping feverish moves at Double Six Club.

But nights in Bali for bruised battered scraped sunburnt bodies (and also bodies that are stupid enough to be almost knocked unconscious by their own boards) are for hot and salty fish and chips and vegging about the villa with burgers and fries and fried chicken from McDs and green bottles of Bintang beer and frosty A&W rootbeer floats and boxes of Lindt and Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kremes and being gobsmacked by a fascinating* procession of S$1 DVDs and cable sport and B-grade movies and flinging powdered sugar everywhere from laughing and gesticulating wildly, eventually ending each night in slothful junkfood-induced coma.

One night, we go to sleep still cackling at the 80s drum machine and pelvic thrust cheese of Music and Lyric's PoP! Goes My Heart and when we wake, that song is the only thing any one can hum for the next few days. Waiting to board the plane back to Singapore, powered by the creamy goodness of Baskin-Robbins, someone continues to thrust away with great enthusiasm, to the undisguised alarm of fellow passengers.

(For the record:

In Ubud, the roast pig at Ibu Oka is over-raved but the ribs at Naughty Nuris are plenty tasty. The restaurants are pretty bales amidst flowers and greenery. In padi fields, ducks gather around white flags at dusk, waiting to be taken home. Arrack, some sort of palm liquor, is a terrible thing to have neat. The art museums are dank and dusty and in Agung Rai Museum of Art, the Walter Spies gallery consists of 9 regrettable reproductions of his oils, some not even in colour. Inner Liberaces love the crazy frames at Antonio Blanco's place.

Kecak and Fire Dances at night are Ramayana-and-tourist dollar-driven spectacles of chanting, hot coals and sweaty bodies. For tourists willing to part with many more dollars, there are moss-covered slopes and quiet bamboo groves for white linen togs, lush luxury, yoga and meditation at Como Shambhala and Four Seasons by the "sacred" Ayung River, until whitewater rafters rush past yelling,"Taksi! Taksi!".

In Jimbaran, the finishing touches are being put on the finishing line for the inaugural Bali International Triathlon.

Later, ten thousand Chinese tourists and a lone chainsmoking purveyor of roast corn cobs silhouette themselves against the setting sun. Clouds of smoke billowing towards the shimmering sea means lobster and crab and fish and prawns and squid are coming off fresh and fat and hot from the enormous barbies out back. Padded to the gills, speeding along at 50km/h into the starry Balinese night, the cab-driver boasts of Sunset Strip as Bali's highway.

No where do we see a church building.)

*fascinating, at least, for the telly-and-blockbuster deprived