Welcome to that promised land aka teh island of gods

"Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you."
(Genesis 12.1)

Who would've guess that god really meant Bali, Indonesia when talking to Abraham back in teh days?

Have to say wow, just wow. Travelled quite a bit now and never felt that happy, energetic and satisfied anywhere else i've been so far. Yes, you could probably compare it to Thailand but only to a certain degress because this here is just on a different level. Been here for a week now and haven't seen anything which really pisses me off or annoys teh shit out of me while i could've wrote a book on tis topic after my first 24hours in Crapstralia...

This post gonna be mainly about Bali and not about poker because I just haven't played any significant volume so far. There just were alot moar and better things to do here than spending my time in front of my laptop.

To start at the very beginning i landed last saturday afternoon and had to buy visa directly there at the airport. Had no clue about currency so i got way too few money out of teh ATM teh first time because 1.000.000 here is teh equivalent of 100USD. After that 2 friendly locals where helping me out wit my lugage and obv wanted and got a tip for that haha. Once out of teh airport my host from whom I'm renting teh villa was waiting for me and we decided to wait another our for Victor, my swedish mate from Malta, to arrive.
So we went for a coffee and i was able to get to know teh guy a little bit better while waiting. Dude is definitely quite a character, 49 years old but looks moar like in his late 30s and probably feels like end 20. He's slovenian guy who moved out of there and basically never returned...
An hour later Vic arrived and we were ready for our trip to teh villa in Seminyak which is like a moar upscale tourist area 15km from teh airport. Trip took us moar than an hour because traffic was just insane, bikes everywhere, streets jampacked, supersmall etc.
Finally we made it to the villa which has a nice pool, outside living area and 2 goodsized bedrooms. It's not supermodern but definitely nice and quite affordable compared to Australia as well...
Met up with a local girl of whom i got the contact from a mate via facebook that night so that we had somebody to guide us through the night. She showed us couple of interesting places and music was amazing pretty much everywhere. House, techno, electro - no commerical bullshit, exactly what i want to hear while i'm out and last time i heard that was in Melbourne...
So this girl basically developed to be our personal tour guide, driving us to places, recommending stuff, etc. Hard to find such a nice person with such a good character anywhere in europe but people here are just moar helpful and friendly in general i assume - thanks again, Yuki ;)

Was quite happy also to stay with a non-pokerplayer for a while for a change (even though teh guy was first starcraft pro in korea and played poker thereafter he has not been doing this for years now and this sounds moar like teh profile of a nerd which he actually isn't).
Anyways, he is leaving today and we decided to party it up every 2nd day. Also got a decent antihangover recipe from him which seems to work fairly well because after those nights out i was always waking up before at least 2 which i barely ever managed before.
Tried Sky Garden Roof Top on monday and went there wednesday and friday as well. I don't really like teh music there but besides that place is pretty cool. Lots of tourists, spacious, modern etc. Since we were bottling it up while being fairly social we know basically all teh staff by now and always had a blast there meeting alot of people. Vic for sure is going to miss this place. I'm prolly not going there too often because i want to check out alot of different places teh next 2 weeks.
On wednesday another non-pokerplaying mate arrived from Germany so that he moved in with me and Vic took teh villa next door. Basically we didn't do too much this week besides partying and chilling in some beachclubs/bars and having nice food.
Food ranges from good to absolutely fucking brilliant depending where you go. You can have meals for as cheap as 5$ but also can go up to 75$+ if you like to ball.
General cost of living is quite cheap even though you probably would expect it to be cheaper but i assume it increased over teh last couple of years prolly bc australian dollar got stronger and stronger as well.
Pack of Luckies for example you can get for under 1Euro while alcohol is quite expensive with 40$ for a bottle of Absolut in a supermarket. Already got a connection though where i get stuff which fell from a transporter for half teh price :) Country is highly corrupt which i actually like because once you have money this is a thing which definitely almost always works heavily in your favour. Also funny is that smoking is not banned here like anywhere else which means you can smoke everywhere, literally!!! But no matter what you do and how you live it will be extremely difficult to spend alot of money unless you go completely mental in a nightclub.
Weather is awesome as well, pretty hot and temperature doesn't change ever so that they average 27degrees all year around even though they have dry and rainy season.
Only thing which is really suboptimal is internet so far - our connection seems to be fairly stable but it's only 0.5Mbit which means if somebody is downloading something i cannot really play poker. Got a stick as a backup so it's possible to work without any timeouts whatsover but you cannot really download tv series and shit. From what i've seen you can get up to 8Mbit which will be extremely expensive with 400bucks a month though but probably necessary investment once i'm back.
Location of our place is quite good also so that you have over!!! 100 restaurants in 10mins reach by food + you have a big variety ofs delivery services which i haven't used so far. Also they seem to understand that there are people who have to be awake at night so you can find a couple of late and 24hour options which is just brilliant for me.
Found a decent gym 1km from my place as well so that i can try maintain teh body i built over the last weeks. Probably having one of my peaks regarding to shreddedness and power and feeling really good atm - besides teh stupid alcohol i'm eating and drinking fairly sound though. Definitely a good place to eat very healthy for not much money at all.

Island reminds me alot about Malta, it's alot bigger though, has almost 4 million and locals are way moar friendly for teh most part. Nightlife is crazy, weather is good, cost of living is cheap and it is insanely easy to get to know people and make new friends.
I have now 2 moar weeks with my mate from Germany and another 2 guys will join for a couple of days later as well. Plan is to keep a little bit lower party profile now and do a little bit moar daytime stuff like visiting some temples, maybe a smaller island, go on a boattrip, etc. Probably taking a flight to Dubai or Doha around 20th of april in order to catch up with a mate who lives there and maybe attend teh formula one grandprix in Bahrain. Thereafter it will be Malta again for summer.

As soon as summer in Malta is over i will book one way and stay here for at least til christmas, maybe full 6 months. Quite satisfied that i finally found a country/island besides Malta where i can imagine to spend a significant amount of time in my short/midterm future. I would say maybe all this is just superexciting for me but even my swedish friend who is defintely different in alot of aspects loved this place alot and wants to come back for moar soon and almost everybody i spoke to only said positive things about Bali. Another good thing with Bali is that even if i would go completely by myself that as being said you get to know people way faster than somewhere else (maybe a big advantage of islands) and if you know as many people as i do (hidden brag) there will be always coming people here for 1 or 2 weeks you already know because it's just a main tourist hub even for alot of euro people.

Furthermoar i learned an important lesson now from all teh travels which is that i will never ever commit to a place again if i haven't been there before like i did with Strya. Basically I realize extremly fast, i would almost say in teh first week, if i like it somewhere or if i don't. After Sydney i knew if things don't massively change for teh better this will not be a country i want to spend time and money in but still i had 3 months prebooked and couldn't back out. If I wouldn't have done that i could've visited a couple of cities and New Zealand and proceeded directly to Asia while so i was commited for 3 months. Of course it's way easier and moar convinient to have everything already arranged and lined up but in teh meanwhile you just waste time you could travel to places you might like moar and make new experiences. Anyways, this will not happen again.

Finally couple of pictures from here, they basically all on facebook but since not everybody is following me there i believe it should be good to share them here as well. Hope to increase pokervolume over teh next weeks a little bit as well but we'll see how that goes- definitely plan to grind alot in may before Malta really gets busy :)