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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.
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