Having spent a year in one of the world's most remote cities, Western Australian capital Perth (well, one of the city's northern suburbs), I promptly ran out of visa.
I was on a year-long 'Working Holiday' visa, which for me, expired at the beginning of December. At this point, I had thankfully secured some work in China - however, this didn't start until January, leaving me with a month of limbo. I couldn't stay in Australia, and I wouldn't be able to get into China while my working visa was still being processed. Therefore, I did what any rational person would do at this point, and I went on holiday to Bali for a month.
Securing a free 30-day tourist visa upon entry to Ngurah Rai airport in Bali's capital Denpasar was absolutely perfect. It gave me that bridging month while my Chinese visa paperwork was sorted to just chill out a bit. I was working under the, ahem, 'totally legitimate' excuse that I had earned some time off after spending several months working the night shift at Hungry Jack's (for those of you not from Australia, HJ's is the Aussie brand-name for Burger King), and what an absolute gem of a place this has been to unwind.
Bali Isn't a Country!
I have encountered some confusion as to what Bali is, geopolitically speaking. It's an island province of Indonesia, rather than a separate country, and has its own capital city (Denpasar). The language spoken here predominantly is Bahasa Indonesia (literally 'language of Indonesia'), although the language Balinese does technically exist, albeit in dwindling numbers of speakers. Interestingly, among other Asian languages, modern Bahasa is written using the Latin alphabet, due in no small part to the strong Dutch influence during the country's time as a Dutch colony. I'll cover the language and some basics in a different post.
Balinese as a denomination of population does exist, as the people of Bali count as an ethnic group within Indonesia. In my experience, they are also a delightful people - friendly, and with often remarkably high levels of English, even in areas not considered tourist-centric, who are willing to just talk to you and interact. There is obviously a stereotype that exists of the people of Southeast Asia only interacting with white Westerners to ask for money - this is not reflected in the interactions I've had with locals here.
