Bali 12th Dec 2010

Bali was a tender port into Benoa for the passengers of Diamond Princess. I was expecting rain on the day, as we were there during the start of the rainy season but the day was warm, not hot, and dry. I think it rained for those who toured the mountain area of Ubud but not for us checking out the shopping in Kuta. The marina where we landed from the ships' tenders had the local transport stitched up. We had been informed by another CC that taxis into Kuta would have charged around the equivalent of AUD10, but the bus on offer charged USD30 each into Kuta or private taxis charged USD80 for the trip in and return the passengers when they were ready to leave Kuta! So we headed out from the marina and ended up negotiating with a private driver to take us into Kuta for 100,000 rupiah.(AUD 12). Things were looking good until we went to pay the driver with our Rupiah we had kept from a previous trip to Bali 4 years ago......wrong! The driver wouldn't take the notes we had by declaring they were old money and no good. Bummer. Fortunately I had AUD100 on me for that emergency.....which was then. I cashed them into rupiah and asked the money changer about the 'old notes' only to be informed the banks would accept them when they open the next day! We did a little shopping but found their prices weren't as good as Vietnam and wanted to make sure we had enough money to get a taxi back to Benoa Marina. We caught to first taxi that came along to drive us back to Benoa Harbour and were fortunate to discover the driver spoke English well and charged us metered rates. It cost us 52,000 Rupiah to return.