traveling beans - part 1 - Bali

Durban, Johannesburg, Doha, Singapore, Bali. I was so nervous for my 19-hour flight, I started drinking at 9am. By 11am I had had five Hunters dry and a shot of Jager. I figured if I drank enough I would pass out on the flight to kill time. When I got on the plane, I promptly ordered two bottles of mini wines, drank those and then dozed off…

My sneaky beer in a coffee cup at the airport - it was before 12am so the waitress had to disguise the alcoholic beverage

My plan had failed. I woke up an hour later with one of the worst hangovers I have ever had. A headache from hell and a mouth as dry as a nun’s fanny. I had misplaced my headache tablets (oh the horror!) , so had to settle for drinking 8 bottles of water to rid me of my pain (thankfully I was on the aisle seat). As my headache subsided I began to do one of my most favourite activities to do on a plane - watch people...

The first passenger that I took notice of was a Monopoly man lookalike (except a fat one). A pain in the arse Deutschman that would just not stop complaining. He was badgering the air-hostess to no avail. I felt sorry for her. She was clearly frazzled by the man and ended up knocking his steaming hot cup of coffee all over him. He yelled out, took a few deep breaths until the burn subsided and then began unbuttoning his shirt. He had accrued a pretty harsh burn on his stomach. I suggested putting butter on it as I had heard somewhere that butter was good for fresh burns…I was wrong, so the Deutschman was now burnt and buttered. Other passengers I studied: a whiny kid with a mullet and a MILFY mom breastfeeding her kid…

You can't see her face but you can tell from her kids head that she is a fine looking MILF

 

The flight was long and painful and I was so happy to finally be back on the ground in Bali! 

I finally understood what people had told me about “sensory overload” in Asia.  Kuta was overwhelmingly busy. There is a constant sound of hooting, tooting and grumbling from the hundreds of scooters that buzz up and down the little streets. The market streets are coated with stores selling Bingtang singlets , dirty word stickers, wooden penises and of course "mushroom for sale" signs . 

 

We visited a village where the locals specialize in seaweed curing for export to make creams and stuff. I kind of felt bad for the locals who were forced to pose with the tourists as if they were some kind of animals, it was an inspiring tour nevertheless. 

Kuta beach was filthy - litter everywhere. Even so, it was a great place to get a pedicure, have a beer and watch the sunset...

Bintang box foot rest/beer holder

Dennis getting his pedicure on (pink varnish and flowers included)

The local surfers/beer sellers

We decided to head off to the Gili Islands for a few days (emphasis on the ‘s’ on the end of island) - there are three of them.  I can’t remember their names, but we got off the boat at the wrong one. We skipped the main tourist infested one and landed on the third. We were taken to what we thought was our final destination by a horse pulled cart - very rural. We were happy for it though. It was more rustic and much more peaceful than the other islands. We had a reed bungalow right on the beach overlooking the whitest sand and the bluest ocean...

The view from our daily meal spot and bungalow

Never a shortage of "shrooms for sale" signs

The beach was covered in bone dry coral, so a bit tricky to perfect that sexy beach run I'd been working so hard on

 We pretty much spent every evening with a Bintang in hand watching the sunset...

Sunset on Balangan beach

Bean 1 and Bean 2 in Beany sunset shot

Lucky me

There is an abundance of temples in Asia. At first you 'oooooh' and 'aaaah' at their majestic beauty, but you get used to them.  This one was in Uluwatu and had hundreds of monkeys residing there. It was kinda like that scene from 'The Jungle Book'. After mozie-ing around the temple, we had the chance to watch the Kecak Dance -  a traditional Balinese dance/play comprised of topless men sitting in a circle jolting, humming "cak, cak, cak" and making all sorts of other noises as if to evoke spirits or something.   

The drop from the temple

All visitors to the temple have to wear these little sarongs

The Kecak Dance

The nightlife in Kuta is great! They have play live music in chilled out surfer and reggae bars and plenty or 'ummtttss ummttss' night clubs too. The drinks were always really beautifully presented and people were always friendly...

My play it safe strawberry daiquiri

Uncle Norms Bar - Kuta

Bali was awesome. I didn't 'find myself' or anything like that. It's far too noisy for that but, the food was always good, beer was always flowing, boobs were always out, beaches were always amazing and sunsets - always beautiful... 

Beany saying number 102 - "next stop Thailand!"

em-barr-ASS-ment

em·bar·rassed - to cause to feel self-conscious or ill at ease

yeah, I don't get that..My brain doesn't have a strict filtering system. It's a blessing and a curse that I don't seem to suffer any type of embarrassment.  A blessing because I have the lady balls to do the most outrageous things for other peoples' entertainment and a curse because people often think I am genuinely crazy. Like the time I did karoke on a week night...sober...

gorgeous

even more gorgeous

There's plenty more where that comes from...like

Taking my pants off in a bar full of people

Gallivanting through the streets of Buenos Aires like this

Asking full grown men to get on my back while I do squats (largest man to date weighed 100kgs and I did 10 squats with him on my back)

Standing on any table, bar or uplifted flat surface to do anything that I feel like at that point

Doing the splits in public wherever I can

Pulling horrible faces in public whenever I can

Doing handstands in public wherever I can

look at the peoples faces behind me

 Playing killer air guitar on the dirtiest of nightclub floors

please note mouth shaped to release the life like high pitch electric guitar sound

When I Googled "people who don't get embarrassed" (in an attempt to find out if there is some kind of medical reason for my condition) ,the first thing that came up was 'many people believe that animals don't get embarrassed' - guess it's just animals and me then...

I found a 'Wiki how to' with tips on how to avoid embarrassment. It says things like improve awareness, think carefully and try not to yell. These are silly...I say...

1. Endure and embrace the embarrassment! It's something that makes us human.

2. No one likes boring, so release the crazy and do something embarrassing. It's liberating and you'll have more friends for it.

3. Just don't give a fuck - there are 7 billion people in the world and if you embarrass yourself in front of a few of them, who cares.

have you seen this stripper?

When I arrived in Australia after a month of travel around South East Asia, my bank balance looked crimp and with beers at R80 a pop I knew I had to find some kind of work. So off I went to post an ad on good ol' Gumtree. They say you get more responses if you post a photograph of yourself and being the relatively attractive person that I am, despite the odd zit, I happily uploaded my photo. The photo by no means said "I'm a stripper" and in no way read "I'm looking for strip work" but nevertheless the offers to work at some of Adelaide's finest strip clubs came pouring in...

Some women may have found it offensive being asked to do such work, I however, was completely flattered, as was my boyfriend who glowed with pride when I told him about offers. What was even more appealing was the pay. Up to $100 an hour - cash in hand job. Get it? I have many years experience in drunken tit flashing and skinny dipping so I thought it would be nice to get paid for it for a change.

You gotta hand it to these okes. They call perfect strangers to ask if you would take off their clothes for perfect strangers. So, I listened and chatted to them about what my potential duties would be. Of course they can't jump right into "will you take your clothes off for money?", they have to beef it up a little before they get to that. Would you like to waitress turns into would you mind waitressing at an adult nightclub which turns into will you waitress in lingerie, which then turns into do you dance, followed by will you dance in lingerie which finally ends in actually we don't have any waitress jobs but would you be interested in being a stripper.

One offer came from a private adult club which apparently hosted many celebrities and diplomats. My duties would have been serving drinks, sitting on the customers laps, allowing them to fondle me and finally a private show with a happy ending. I could feel my hands getting sticky already, but this was just because I get sweaty palms when I'm put on the spot. Up to $1000 in a nights work for tugging a strangers willy.

On one occasion, I received a phone call from a Middle Eastern sounding man in the early hours of the morning. I asked him what type of work he had for me and he responded by saying that he didn't actually have work for me, but was new to the area and was looking for a friend. I sensed it wasn't the 'lets go for coffee and a movie kind of friend' so I told him I didn't do that kind of work. He called another four times or so.

On another occasion a promising offer came from a man and his partner who owned a bakery and needed someone to handle shop in the front. Everything sounded good until he (who up until this point I actually thought was a she) asked me to come in wearing tight pants or a skirt because he wanted to get more male customers in. He then proceeded to ask for my address so he could drive to where I was staying and meet me. This was at 10pm on a Monday night.

I had a couple calls from 'Dads' asking about 'babysitting', yet they never mentioned their kids. All they ever asked really was if I did any 'extras'...

I envisioned what it would be like to be a stripper. I even came up with a name for the book about it: "piece by piece". In the end though I just couldn't go through with it. I wish I had the balls to be a stripper or work slut. I do have the bottom, just not the balls. I turned down all the offers to show my arse, tits or legs for money and got a job as a nanny.

artsy-fartsy

I can't draw. I tried to draw Buddah in a game of Pictionary once and it looked like a blob of poo, but maybe that's okay...

I recently visited a contemporary art gallery in Sydney and it looks like if the only thing you can do, is draw a blob of poo - that's good enough to be exhibited in a gallery.

Here are some of the pieces I saw...

I was thrilled to meet Spiderman, except,  I was quite surprised to see he has a J-Lo ass. Thought this piece could have been better if Spiderman was on the wall upside down kissing the horrible bald but bearded man.

 Amazing! Five pieces of 1x1 meter chiffon material hanging from the ceiling!

I like this. It's weird. But I like it. Wouldn't put it up in my house because it would scare this shit out of me, but I like it.

 The one hour laugh. Four girls dressed up as gnomes laughing for a whole hour.

This intricate piece looks like the Startrek mother-ship got raided and all they took was the pillow cases which they then hung on a wall and called it art.

Mixed feelings about this one. I like green, but don't like dogs. It's on a pedestal though and I like pedestals.

Weird. A digital video of I really don't know what and I don't think the artist did either because the description of the piece made no sense at all. It just looked like a booby giving birth to four livers.

Black, Blue, Brown and White Stripes - brilliant! Five words  - five year old finger painting.

Sweet Cheeses! Imagine my surprise when I turned the corner into a dark room to see this! Oh the horror! A video of a woman trying to make herself cry. Looks more like she is trying to pinch off a loaf, but anyway.

I had to imagine the artist responsible for this, reading out a checklist for the display...

"okay! 

bones - check!

old carpet - check!

pottery lamp - check!

I feel like I'm forgetting something...... ah yes! Thorns! - check!"

These were quite sweet but again, 300 teeny tiny shell shoes? What are you supposed to do with them after the exhibition? Donate them to a midget colony?

Artist: "A whole wall just for me!.... hmmmm... I'm just gonna put a pointless little red face in the corner of my space though."

My favourite! This was exhibited at the exit and I walked straight past it thinking it was a bit of a construction site, but this, is in fact, a work of art. There is a mark in the bottom left hand corner saying "Please do no touch". I thought to myself "TOUCH WHAT?! The big blank piece of nothing or the wet tissue on it?"


It seems to me that you can call anything you want 'art'. So here are some pieces of mine which I think are quite spectacular...

Rubber Duck on Gerkin Jar

Rubber Duck in Cupcake Holder

Rubber Duck on Head

 Rubber Duck on Toilet