Greetings from Abu Dhabi

[Desertrat]

Hello Bali Expat Forum members!

Just got my membership approved and wanted to introduce myself to all of you. I'm an American living in Abu Dhabi but have been toying with the idea of moving to Bali. I say "toying" because my husband would actually have to work 18 days a month out of Seoul! I'd be the one actually "living" in Bali - he'd just be visiting once a month.

I lived in Jakarta from 1970 -1975 as a teenager and enjoyed the hell out of it. Visiting Bali (most recently at Christmas) feels like coming home. My Bahasa Indonesia flowed out me, I craved Bintangs and kreteks, and sat around for hours at the Apa Kabar in Sanur watching the expats carouse. I hated coming "home" to this godawful desert.

I'm much more at home with a blanket of frangipani flowers underfoot and the smell of incense in the air. The only BIG drawback I see is the lack of HSI. The other everyday troubles of living in Bali don't seem to be much different than what we have to put up with here. I've learned to grit my teeth, smile a dazzling smile, and say "insh'allah my ass".

So, let's hear from you Bali expats and expat wannabes. The good, the bad and the ugly. You sure seem like an interesting bunch from the posts I've been reading.

Cheers!

 

[Bert Vierstra]

Welcome Desertrat !

The good you seem to know, and the bad, I forgot...

HSI ? Whats that?

Hospitality Standards Institute ? ehhh hang seng index ? Horizontal Situation Indicator?

It must be High Speed Internet I suppose

 

[Desertrat]

Hello Bert,

Yes, High Speed Internet, though I kinda liked your Horizontal Situation Indicator... He He - Sounds like me after a night drinking with my Russian neighbors... "Just one more wodka" You know, the Russians really are trying to kill us.

If there's no hi-speed internet, you can't use VoiP (voice over the internet protocol), i.e., Vonage or Skype, to keep in touch with the family and friends in the States. Very sad.

 

[Guest]

Hi Desertrat.

Life in the desert doesn't sound all that bad. I know what you mean about feeling more at home in Bali though. The other day I botted a kretek off a friend who had just come back. For a moment I felt like I was there.

If there's no hi-speed internet, you can't use VoiP (voice over the internet protocol), i.e., Vonage or Skype, to keep in touch with the family and friends in the States. Very sad.

In Indonesia HSI starts at 64Kbps. You can get 384kbps ADSL, depends on where in Bali. Or you can pay an arm and a leg for satellite.

Skype will work at 56kbps so you should be ok. SG says he uses skype every day.

 

[Desertrat]

Aha, thanks for the info Allan. I thought you needed really HIGH speed hi-speed for it to work properly. VoiP technology is illegal here in the UAE as it cuts into the locally owned phone company's profits.

I actually DO like living here in Abu Dhabi - it's a friendly place with surprisingly few Americans but loads of Europeans, Aussies, Kiwis, and Asians. I'm learning to speak "English" from all my friends here. However, there are a lot of restrictions and some of the cultural differences are especially hard for women. We need letters of approval from out husbands to get a drivers license, as an example. I could laugh but some of the younger women get truly offended.

Anyway, know this forum's not meant to be used for chats so, Sorry Bert!

 

[Guest]

I could laugh but some of the younger women get truly offended.

When in Rome... and I bet the money's good too.

 

[Desertrat]

Allan,

Money IS good here but the cost of living has skyrocketed. Housing costs are going up at the rate of about 30% a year so you're looking at $40,000 per year for a nice apartment and $50,000 per year, minimum, for a decent villa (i.e., garden). That sort of takes the bloom off the rose. Most housing allowances don't come close to paying for rent and I've got 4 cats and a dog so we need a garden. We ended up in the desert (literally) off the island of Abu Dhabi because we simply couldn't afford to live in the city.

That's a question I have about Bali, by the way. How hard is it to bring in pets? I left my daughter in the States but I couldn't leave my animals...

 

[Guest]

$40,000 per year for a nice apartment

$40K!!! I would rather live under a rock.

I had a similar experience with a job I accepted in Brussels maybe seven years ago. $250K/yr but $175K in taxes, health care, rent and other living costs.

Like you I have cats and I agree they have to be looked after. As far as taking them to Bali that's possible but also expensive.

If you search the forum you will find the relevant info.

 

[Jimbo]

Desert Rat

If you think Abu Dhabi is desert you should come over to Saudi. I was in the rub al Khali near the Yemen border for 13 months now that was desert.

UAE is a paradise compared with KSA but welcome to this forum where we all want to live in the real paradise that is Bali

 

[DCC]

Desert Rat, welcome and me thinks you may swear like a sailor ..... OK to prove my ignorance, what's a kretek???

 

[Guest]

OK to prove my ignorance, what's a kretek???

A kretek is a clove cigarette.

They also contain sugar and other secret herbs and spices. The biggest producer in Indonesia is Sampoerna (PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna Tbk) now owned by Altria Group (previously called Philip Morris).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kretek

 

[Desertrat]

Hello all, and thanks for all your greetings and replies to various questions arising from my posts. Y'all seem like a friendly bunch and I sure wish I were in Bali. I'm really not a desert type of person.

Will keep viewing posts and see what I can learn from the forum though, learning aside, I know the posts are generally good for a hearty laugh.

Thanks!

 

[manc in oz]

Re: RE: Greetings from Abu Dhabi

OK to prove my ignorance, what's a kretek???

A kretek is a clove cigarette.

On my last couple of visits to Bali I noticed a distinct lack of clove cigarette smells and more of the standard cigarette smells.
Has anybody else noticed this?

 

[Desertrat]

You're right, I think. When I was there in December it seemed everyone was smoking but not too many clove cigarettes. Even I was guilty! Bought one pack of Djarums for a one week trip and stuck to Marlboros for the rest of the time.

 

[Sanurian]

Sampoerna make lousy kretek, in my opinion. All about "fashion" with no taste.
If you're going to smoke anything dangerous to your health, it should have some kind of taste, at least.

Kreteks used to be made by steeping various tobaccos in all kinds of "fruit juices", (believe it or not), and cloves were added.
They used to be hand-rolled as well...maybe still are.

Some of the current better brands would include Gudang Garam, (but not the yuppie varieties), and one of the all-time favourites, Dji Sam Soe, (which I think means 2-3-4 in Chinese). The trouble with the latter is that they are packed extremely tightly and it can be quite a process loosening them up and keeping them a-light. (I think they have new versions these days, including "filters".)

:cry:

 

[Ipanema]

I only smoke Samporena Menthol. We I run out in Aussie I just wait until I get to Bali to buy some more.

Tried to look up their website to see they are made but without success. I suppose they are much worse than they cigs from Aussie.

But I agree that they don't taste the same it seems there are less cloves in them.

 

[Desertrat]

Tina, there was a time when smoking clove cigarettes was very dangerous - to clothes, hair, furniture, etc. When I lived in Jakarta all those years ago we smoked Gudang Garums (the best, I think) and the huge chunks of cloves in the cigarettes would very often "pop" when they burned and send a large firey clove ember off in a mini explosion. They sure kept you on your toes, fire-wise.

We used to use the individual cigarettes as tips for becak drivers (therein lies another tale...) as back then a 15 minute becak ride might cost 35 rupiah! That was worth about $ 0.07 back then so what the hell else could you tip on seven cents? And also, lit clove cigarettes made good weapons against the men who'd try to cop a feel when we'd be walking through the pasar or riding in a becak (where you were literally a sitting duck!). If some guy came too close looking like he intended to try to grab a tit or a butt we'd brandish our lit Gudangs like mini Star Wars laser swords. They'd laugh and back off, we'd laugh and say "bye bye", and then take another big puff off the Gudang to keep the cherry real big and hot! Those were the good 'ol days, let me tell you. Of course, that was in Jakarta. Things were not so ...risky... in Bali, if you discount the Mushroom Omelet Special... which is, again, another story.

 

[Guest]

I would like to hear the story about the mushroom omelet.

 

[Desertrat]

Allan,

Have been away so did not check emails. The mushroom omelet story revolves around Kuta in the 70's when there was only a handful of hotels and hawkers on Kuta Beach and Sanur and Jimbaran were little villages.

We kids all attended the same international school in Jakarta and word was out that Bali was THE Place to drag the family over Christmas and Spring break. Now it's not as if we youngsters couldn't have a great deal of fun in Jakarta. The whole country was very loosey-goosey on alcohol back then so we were all drinking and smoking at 12 years old. Nobody ever got kicked out of any bars unless the adults complained...

Anyway, an advantage to Bali, other than the beach and the Balinese, was the availability of psilocybin mushrooms, sold in at least one restaurant (I'm thinking Poppies, though I might be libeling them) and easy to get if one asked the waiter for "the Mushroom Omelet Special".

At least one kid from the school ended up running down the beach naked and babbling incoherently whilst others got found out as well, only more... privately.

In the end our school send home a letter to the parents - the first time in the 4 year history of the school - advising parents to stop vacationing in Bali due to the prevalence and easy availabity of dangerous drugs. They sent the memo three weeks before the Christmas holidays and my parents promptly cancelled the family trip, left my sisters and me HOME for two weeks, and did a trip to Bali and New Zealand by themselves. My mother had been trying to get to New Zealand for years and this was the perfect excuse to go without us!

So, that's the story. We kids all loved Bali back then. It was so much quieter and even having a kid drown in a rip-tide every now and then was no deterrent. I had one friend who was riding a rented moped, hit a kid (slight injuries only), and was hauled off to jail. His parents finally found him four days later and payed some baksheesh and took him home. They never even let him make a phone call!