The Kuta Kon - Bali

We had only been in Bali 13hrs when we got caught up with the "Kuta Kon". It might sound all mysterious and possibley dangerous but its nothing that exciting. Basically what happened was: We were trying to walk down the street to get to the Discovery Mall, I say trying because we were getting shouted at all the time (harrassed is too strong a word, because the Balinese people are really nice). They were saying taxi? transport? come look in my shop? you want sarong? etc

Anyway, this guy suddenly comes over and gives us these tickets for a free (nothing is ever free in Bali) prize draw. We could win $5000, a luxury holiday, a camcorder or $1000. Ok we thought, its free, whats the harm? We had to open the tickets straight away, I got 3rd prize which was a t-shirt, Alan strangely enough won first prize which was any of those prizes above. the guy was really excited because as long as we went with him to his hotel immediately, he got $50. We said we wouldn't get into a taxi with him, even thought he said it was free, we aren't stupid and I wasn't getting robbed 13hrs into our holiday. So we walked the 5 mins to the hotel.

At the hotel Alan had won a luxury holiday, Ok we thought thats great. However, before they gave him the prize, would we mind taking a tour of this 5 star hotel so we could recommend it to our friends and family. By the way the ticket man doesn't get his $50 unless we take the tour, so we felt obliged as $50 is alot of money to the Balinese.

As we sat waiting for someone to show us around the hotel, Alan uttered the words "at least its not a time-share presentation".

Well it turned out thats exactly what it was and they were very disappointed when they discovered that we were unemployed and not Australian. Time-share companies are exploiting the 2 Bali bombs to sell these holiday clubs under the pretence of trying to attract the aussies back to Bali.

We left the hotel after an hour with a couple of t-shirts and a "free" holiday.