We spent two glorious weeks in Bali in November. There were four of us travelling together and our first pleasant surprise was being given a great upgrade at the Kartika Plaza. We had booked adjoining rooms but when we got there we were told that they could not offer adjoining rooms, but had an alternative they would like us to look at. Grumpily we travelled up to the third floor with the apologetic room manager who showed us not two rooms but the wonderful ocean-facing suite! Did we think we could manage to stay here rather than two rooms he asked? Oh well, we said, peering out at the magnificent view, we thought we might be able to endure it!
The suite consisted of two good sized bedrooms, one with the biggest king size bed you are ever likely to see, a second bedroom with single beds and a large sitting room with bar. Each bedroom had its own en suite bathroom and for good measure there was a third bathroom in case we had visitors. The main bedroom looked out over the pool on one side and the ocean on the other. The only down side was the decor. The designer obviously couldn't make up his mind about the style so it turned out like a cross between Italian and Chinese. Lots of tacky garish colours with imitation gold inlay design. But we lived with it.
The exchange rate hovered between 7,000 and 7,200 over the fortnight, good enough to do some serious shopping. And did the girls shop. Each day they came back with the "treasures" of their outing, spread them all around the living room and bragged how well they had bargained. The point is they didn't have to bargain that hard because people were desperate to sell. I found you could start at less than 50% of the asking price and settle on 50% most of the time. Several times I simply accepted the ridiculous prices on offer because people are so desperate for a sale, many of them not selling anything for days on end.
Overseas tourist numbers are well down which the locals attribute to the second bombing. There was a lot of anger directed at the bombers and a couple of the taxi drivers we spoke to said there would be a lot of anger if Amrozi and gang weren't executed on Bali. Security is everywhere. The Kartika has a total of 60 security staff rostered to patrol street and beach side 24/7. Quite a few of the guards are non-Balinese non-Javanese but come from other parts of Indonesia like Flores and Timor. Many are also non-muslim and non-hindu. Maybe this is a deliberate strategy to keep them detached from local favouritism.
In other ways security is just as slack as ever. You are supposed to hand over your passport to get a sim card, but we found that you could get sim cards without a passport. For my simcard the stallholder simply used his brother's passport number. My partner got a simcard with a number that the stallholder made up on the spot.
A lot of the old shops along Jalan Kartika Plaza are gone. The Kuta Art Market is still there, but we found that the stock was looking pretty tired and the shopkeepers not too interested in sales. There are only a few beach sellers, some of them Javanese (one didn't impress us by "joking" that she had come to Bali to do another bombing!).
We ate at local restaurants and didn't ever feel unsafe. Prices seem to be a little higher and gone are the days when you could get a really cheap meal. There are a couple of good Balinese-type restaurants on the main drag but I can't remember their names at the moment.
Lots more to say but I'll leave it at that. Hope it's of interest to some.