In which we undergo conversion

After surviving the unintelligible Czech alphabet and tram system; getting around quite well on a bit of spoken Thai in Pattaya and Hua Hin; and mastering the Czech koruna and the Thai baht in a matter of hours, what could be so hard about acclimating to one more new country?

Ngurah Rai International Bali Airport, to begin with.

After retrieving our luggage there, we were plunged into a throng of Japanese families and European backpackers, all  busily filling out immigration cards at two small stand-up tables in a vast entry hall. But where had they obtained these cards? No one seemed to know. We turned to a uniformed official, who, we thought, would surely help us. Instead, he informed us that we needed to pay $35 apiece for a Balinese entry visa. We hadn't yet gotten any local currency, but he was content to have all our Singapore dollars, from a layover there. Now we had no money.

Meanwhile, three immigration cards had appeared on one of the tables.  I seized two of them at once, before anyone else could, and began filling them out--a detailed process that took about as long as penning a college application essay.

After we had successfully navigated immigration and customs, an ATM became an obvious priority.

Now, a word about Indonesian currency. One Indonesian rupiah is equal to the wholly unfathomable amount of 0.000018 U.S. dollar. Grasping this is like trying to comprehend how many atoms are in an elephant. Why even have a piece of currency so worthless? Sometimes, in fact, Balinese convenience store clerks will hand you little hard candies as small change.

Confronted with an inscrutable ATM that dispenses such pieces of paper, but shows oddly truncated amounts on the screen, we had no idea how many we ought to withdraw in order to pay for, say, a taxi.  By now, Bill was tired and a bit testy with me for not having figured all this out ahead of time.

I hazarded a guess at, oh, 500,000 rupiah, which sounded like quite a lot of money. The ATM replied, "CANNOT PROCESS REQUEST. CONTACT YOUR BANK." Well, I must have asked for too much then. A few other amounts yielded the same result. Okay, the thingy must be out of money. On to another ATM. "CANNOT PROCESS REQUEST. CONTACT YOUR BANK," it repeated.

Sweat begins to trickle from one's armpits when this sort of thing happens in a foreign airport. But then, blessedly, a young man who was trying to pay the fee required to leave this damn country received the same grim message and was moving, drenched in sweat, to a third ATM. This machine was in a better mood.

We took out the princely sum of 200,000 rupiah, which turned out to be about $20 and not nearly enough to pay for our cab ride.

To obtain some kind of benchmark, I ran into a Circle-K while our cabbie waited. I grabbed a pack of M&Ms and blurted, "How much for these?"

"10,000 rupiah, about $1," answered the clerk, who stood there dumbstruck as I dashed off without buying them.

Henceforth, our default withdrawal would be the mind-boggling amount of 1 million rupiah, or $100, dispensed in thick wads of bills that bloat one's wallet, blow about when paying for something, and end up being flashed much too obviously.

It takes about three days to master counting one's change after any transaction in Bali.