Most of the Indonesians won't consider a local girlfriend. The cowboys claim they aren't attracted to Balinese women because "they're too naive and just want a rich boyfriend."

"Besides, I like the blonde hair, the blue eyes," Made adds, before chasing after a Japanese woman in a tiger-print bikini. The cowboys are blind to every color but green and any tourist resembles an ATM machine.

Not every woman goes to Bali to shop for a souvenir boyfriend, but one usually winds up in her suitcase. Sally is a married 36-year-old nurse from Queensland who brought her teenage daughter to Bali as a graduation present. She and the daughter were at a local disco one night when the singer came over and sat with them after a set. She thought the 26-year-old musician was after her daughter until he invited her to his room that night.

"When I met Matt, it was the best sex I'd ever had," Sally says. "That part of my marriage had just died and I thought, maybe this is all I need - an overdose of sex! My husband and I had had problems and I guess at the time I didn't feel very good about myself. I wanted to feel better by doing something for someone else. And I guess there was the thrill of being with a younger guy, she continues. "If someone offers you a new car or a secondhand one, which would you choose? Especially if the secondhand one is falling apart?"

She really wants to know what I think, so I ask what kind of mileage the used one gets. I don't tell her this, but I'd probably take the secondhand car because I'm not into that shiny, prancing kind of new vehicle. Which is exactly what her boyfriend is, and it only takes one flick of his mane to see.

When Sally returned to Australia after meeting Matt, she assumed it was a resort romance with an expiration date attached. But when she called Matt from overseas, she was "charmed by his smooth talk." She sent him money for airfare to visit, not sure if the funds would be used for a ticket. As he stepped off the plane, Matt didn't recognize Sally because he was so strung out on heroin.

She had no idea Matt was a junkie. So Sally did what any nurse in love would; she straightened her Florence Nightingale cap and weaned him off the drug.