I use the word tripper freely here. When I was in my late teens, I visited Kuta beach in Bali and stayed in a lossman.

We had travelled across Java by train, took the boat across, and arrived in Bali hot, tired, and filthy from the journey. It was the late seventies then, and my friends and I fitted in well with the beach crowd; boys and girls both had long hair, we wandered around the beach not actually doing anything much except hanging out and talking to other people, going for a swim (though it wasn't exactly a swim with all those dangerous currents, more a sort of romp) and listening to the Stranglers "Peaches" or Pete Gabriel's first album, from the pirated tapes they sold from stalls. In those days, in spite of the prostitutes pimps and drug-dealers, Kuta beach was safe. One night we tried some very dodgy Buddha sticks, and privately decided we preferred Sumatran grass.
Of course, we visited other parts of Bali, that battered jewel of Indonesia, but that is too much of a diversion to mention here. At nights we held our stomachs and had some Mushroom Special Omelette or Mushroom Special soup at a restaurant there, felt ill for an hour or so afterwards, and then whamp! We were in the world of Alice in Kutaland. As we walked along the beach, the moon was up, and we saw the clouds; standing in them, three goats sang in harmony , like a mad moment from a forgotten musical. The waves slurping at the beach turned into alphabetti spaghetti; the trees were suddenly infested with grinning cheshire cats; women lying on the beach became seals; when people ran, the world began to pixilate; you were watching a speeded-up Charlie Chaplin comedy.
One year later, I was with the same group of friends. We were in Brighton, England, a place whose beach and psychadelic colours of its promenade and mad Victorian fantasy of its Pavilion, had attracted scores of day trippers of all kinds. In those days Brighton was still a seedy place, with its reputation of dirty weekends and real vagabonds, and had many lurid areas with dingy streets and sooty alleyways; you could see where Graham Greene got his inspiration for Brighton Rock, how he could make the Brighton of the racecourse and criminal underworld into such a dark and difficult book. It remains one of my favourite novels, though I would not recommend it to anyone wanting to start out on Graham Greene's wonderful writing; a better introduction to his works would be a novel like The Heart of the Matter, or The Power and the Glory. Back in the 'real ' Brighton, we dropped acid. At first we had unbearable munchies and so we pigged ourselves on Atom Smashers - they no longer exist, but they were crisps with a robust vinegar zing, so your tastebuds fizzed. They were trippy crisps.
Then in the afternoon we walked along the promenade. Beards suddenly sprang up on people's faces, and then disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared. Like an old whore with too much make up on, the psychadelic colours of Brighton's promenade wiggled around us. At one end of the promenade, towards the Sunday pier, the steps that lead down to the beach are shaped like pyramids. I stood at the top of these steps, and for a moment the beach was transformed by magic into a huge crowd of people. Loaded with megalomania, I was the pharoah of Egypt. Luckily for me, I didn't remain so.
Incidentally, the final time I tried hallucinogens was about a year after this, and I bummed out and thought I was going to die. I swore never to take them again. I never have.
And so to Batsi. Though Brighton in recent years has become more and more like Batsi, Batsi is so different from these two other resorts. A French friend of mine, a bit of a snooty fellow like me, once described this picturesque, charming village with its fine beach as 'du pur chichitage'. For non-French speakers, chi-chi is a derogotary term for picturesque, not quite translatable, but I suppose the closest equivelant in English would be 'twee'. (I don't have a French-English dictionary to hand).
I think he was being unfair on Batsi, but maybe that's the point. It has always been a package holiday resort of second rank, with its quite good discos, good tavernas, and nudist beach out towards the Anerousa hotel; but as well as its picturesque quality and long, sandy beach, it has the advantage of being close to some of the best beaches on the island, and some of the most gorgeous villages inland. Arni, a village which makes you sigh with pleasure as you approach it, has a spring with a little pool. If you want to eat yourself silly on really good Greek food, there are Katakilos and Ano Katakilos, with their rolling views, or Aprovatou, with a spectacular drop down to the sea. And if you're against 'foreign muck' - what are you doing there in the first place? - they do serve 'English breakfasts' in some of the tavernas.
Recently, Batsi has become more and more of an Athenian resort, and fewer and fewer foreigners go there every year. All the more reason to visit it.
And, in the Spring of 1989, I was visiting it, too, to play the piano.