Bali Car Rental & Transport

Kuta was just a sleepy fishing village on tha way in from the airport when it was discovered by saasoned travelers in the late 1960s. Since then, tens of thousands of travelers, surfies, and package tourists have turned Kuta into a gigantic First World yuppie resort. If Sanur is Indonesia’s Riviera, then Kuta is its Tijuana.

Kuta is essentially five kilometers of close- packed pubs, chic boutiques, tacky restaurants, juice bars, bookstores, supermarkets, surf shops, tie-dye T-shirt outlets, travel agencies, money- changers, beauty parlors, and blaring cassette shops. You can’t walk 10 meters without encountering someone demanding you buy something. At night when the sun sets, Kuta Beach Road (JI. Pantai Kuta) is an evil-smelling maze of bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, honking bemo, and cars plying their way through a smoggy layer of dust with thousands of milling people.

At least five of 10 visitors here are free-spending Australians—they’re particularly in evidence during the Australian school vacation period of December and January. When you have restaurants serving Vegemite sandwiches and Toad in a Hole (hotdog in a bun), and a pub called Koala Blu, you know Australia isn’t far away. Most never leave the Kuta area the whole time they’re on Bali.

Another hectic period is the July to August holiday season, when flights disgorge hordes of French, German, and Spanish tourists, There are also vast numbers of Japanese tourists of all ages. The streets can get so crowded during July and August you’re forced to walk in the street.

In the 30s, Kuta was a thriving slave market, attracting a wide variety of international lowlife, lepers, and black market practitioners. Some would say nothing has changed. Today Kuta’s streets are full of Javanese foot peddlers, Madurese prostitutes, Surabaya transvestitas, and ragged Bali Aga beggar women attended by their children. Garish signs and souvenir shops lend a tawdry air to the main roads, reaching tar back into the village’s narrow dirt lanes. Tenacious peddlers selling anything and everything pester sunbathers on the beach, and boys in dark glasses on motorcycles hustle tourists to buy “hashish” (a lie) or girls.

Fortunately, the cancer of Kuta is confined to this relatively small enclave. And it you accept it for what it is, Kuta can be a fun place to visit. Although rubbishy, cluttered, and increasingly crowded, the resort has undergone a rehabilitation of sorts since 1994 and 1995. Flower beds have been planted all along the beach now, trash cans are placed every 100 meters, the nettlesome admission charge to the beach has been discarded, and the beachfront food- stalls are now required to sell at fixed prices. Kuta’s streets are regularly patroled, and the Kuta banjar consistently receives commendations.

For a slice of Old Bali, visit the local food/small goods market on the intersection of JI. Pantai Kuta and Jl. Raya Tuban, Kuta offers cut-rate hedonism, nonstop night- life, fancy restaurants, sophisticated hotels, some of Bali’s best shopping, and surprisingly low prices for food. Still one of the world’s best-value hangouts and the island’s liveliest and naughtiest spot.