curry and sterling pounds.

well...i'm not in a different country, but i wished i could have been approximately one or two hours ago...
we arrived back at Kuta today, after spending a week at Lovina which was heavenly, and a couple of days in Ubud as well.
Lovina was great!
i swam with dolphins which has been on my to-do list for about 22 years now and we spent day after day frying by the pool at our beautiful resort.
once we were ready for a change of pace we moved on to Ubud...a little artsy, touristy village.
and a few days later and here we are...back at Kuta.
we took what we thought would be a quick van ride here...it was a sweaty PACKED minibus full to the tits with fellow backpackers...all of whom were expecting something different as well.
I was surrounded by backpacks and couldn't move an inch, or breath for that matter.
we arrived back in a familiar place in kuta, and then walked and walked and walked for what felt like miles...days even.
derek and i were both in foul moods and it took a turn for the worse when we went back to the hotel where we had stuff stolen from, tried to book a night, thinking maybe they would be nice and give us a free night or something.
not so.
in fact, they did the opposite.
they tried to double the price from the last time we were there, we got them down to a somewhat decent rate, and then i brought up the whole stolen stuff thing and asked if anything had been returned or found...no dice. and out of nowhere they had no rooms left. SORRY.
not a happy camper...i went and had a lemon shake while sweet sweet derek continued to look for a place for us to stay...it seems like all prices went up in the last week.
funny how that works.
we have a place now.
i had vegetarian curry for lunch and it was delicious, and now i am calm.
i'm sick of being treated like a stupid tourist. there's nothing you can really do though.
last night at dinner in Ubud, a lady came up to us with a man and started speaking in a language neither of us understood.
finally we discovered that she was accusing us of having her money and she wanted it back...
her story was that we changed 90 sterling pounds into rupiah at her store and she gave us WAY too much money back.
that's odd...neither derek or i have ever set foot in europe...never even held a pound in my hand.
she was sure it was us. she remembered our piercings...of course.
after getting upset and showing them our passports..."LOOK! NO STAMPS IN EUROPE..." and trying to be nice about it, explaining that her accusations were absurd, we finally stormed out of the restaurant...she was still upset and gave us the evil eye on the way out. haha. oh bali.
so that's how it's been the last couple of days.
i'm still having fun, and it really is beautiful here...i just wish i didn't always feel like i was getting extremely ripped off or hassled. oh well. c'est la vie.
ta ta lovers.
e.