Day 308 The word is that there is a much nicer beach on the west side of the island. Today since we still had the bike till 4pm we decided to go check it out. Sanur Beach is just on the far side of Denpasar. Looked up directions before we left and then hit the road. Traffic was busy again but we had no incident till...
As we were cruising down the highway we noticed a bike behind us, slowing down and speeding up with us. It was odd that he didn't pass when we slowed. Not soon after he made his move and a high viz vest pulled up beside us and gave us the hit the shoulder wave. The polici!! We stopped, he stopped. Problem. We do not have an international drivers license. Solution. He said he could write us a fine for Rp. 1M or we could pay Rp 500K on the spot. The shake down!! Luckily, because we were just going to the beach we only had Rp 300K on us. I pulled out the money and started counting. He quickly snatched the four $50K notes out of my hand. For some reason however he did not take the other hundred thousand in small bills. The cop seemed like a nice guy in the end. Sure he took my money, but I was at fault for not having the correct license and in the end it was much simpler for me to give him $20 bucks then do all the legal crap. And we helped his family. Rumour has it they make Rp 300K a month, but it costs them Rp 20M to become cops and they have to pay a percentage to the district manager where they want to work. So they hit up tourists to make ends meet. So we get back on the road and we stop at the next red light. While standing there I realize I have to turn right (they drive on opposite side here to, just like OZ), so I walk the bike over a row to the inside lane....and hear a whistle. The Polici! Crap! He motions us over across the intersection to where he is. We go. Problem. We were moving during a red light. I tell him I realize what we did wrong. He asks for my license. As I'm giving it to him I tell him we know it's invalid we just got pulled over 2 kms ago, and that we just gave the other guys all our money. He asks if we speak Indonesian. We say no. He takes out his cell phone turns around and has a brief conversation with someone. We're thinking the cop that just took our money. He gets off the phone, says he'll let us go this time and directs us back into traffic. We are still not sure why he didn't want any money.
We finally hit Sanur Beach. Terrific. The sand and water are much nicer than Kuta Beach. The coast is also lined with hotels and resorts one after the other separated from the beach by a boardwalk. The beauty of this scenario is that we could use their chairs and umbrellas. So we took a swim in the ocean and chilled out for a while. Then we had a crazy idea. We walked into one of the resorts and hopped into their pool. No one seemed to notice so we stayed. Then on the walk back to the bike when we were dry we took a swim in another hotels pool. Sweet. We also had our cheapest meal of the trip on the beach. We bought some spring rolls and some other deep fried goodness of a street vendor. Rp 8000 for the two, $.80!! It was so good. She cut up the spring rolls and mystery food, then soaked it in peanut sauce. We had no problems on the trip home just the usual traffic. Jenn made some videos from the back seat, posted below!! This is where we met an Oz mate who has been living here for 20 years (he told us about how the police work). We had a good chat while eating. Then we walked back to Legion St. and joined the party...again.