And now, without further ado...
I.
Most of you probably know this by now, but last month I went to Bali. Bali, for those who are unsure, is a small island in the middle of Indonesia. Now to some, "Indonesia" may seem much less appealing, but I'll tell you, it essentially sealed the deal for me. You see, I had no interest in travelling to "Bali."
When my coworker Michael mentioned possibly travelling somewhere over our week-long February vacation, I jumped. I'd been pretty set on going home in September, and knew I should make the most of my time here to check out some of the nearby countries. To that extent, I didn't really care where we went, but Bali certainly would not have been a place I'd have suggested on my own.
When I think of Bali, I think of a resort paradise. Beaches, sun, idle relaxation. "Vacation." And quite frankly, I don't do "vacation." I'm sure it's a byproduct of not really ever going on vacations as a child, combined with my obsession to be productive/instinctive disgust with anything privileged and financially wasteful, but it just feels wrong on so many levels to spend a buttload of money to travel somewhere and just do nothing for no reason.
Indonesia, however - nobody wants to spend idle time in Indonesia. Indonesia is a wonderful exotic place to explore, with its own unique culture. I could get behind Indonesia. I have a 60s folk song from Indonesia on my computer that's absolutely amazing. To be truthful, that was about the extent of my knowledge about the country - but all the more to discover!
$1000 later, I was booked for a flight on Garuda International Airways.
II.
A couple weeks before we were set to leave, my friend Jacob gave me a warning.
"I hear you're going to Bali. Take my advice: don't go to Kuta."
At that point, I still didn't know where exactly we were going. I'd left it all to Michael, who was only more knowledgeable to the extent that he could understand the Japanese that the travel agent told us. But I soon discovered that I was, in fact, going to Kuta.
Kuta is a major city towards the southern tip of the island, and the country's main tourist spot. The news distressed me, but I did my best to shrug off Jake's ominous words. Jake is crazy, I told myself. It's not like he'd been to Kuta. What would he know. Besides - it was offseason (ie rainy season, which = less Australians). It couldn't be so bad. It's Bali, one of the world's most famous vacation spots. Tropical paradise...right?
Well, yes and no. After a rather uneventful seven hour plane ride, we were greeted by giant palms in the windows, oppressive humidity, and a couple guys who insisted they carry our bags for 30 seconds through customs and then demanded a generous $10 tip. We'd been warned, though, that people would try to swindle us and that haggling was the de facto mode of purchase, so we settled on $1 and pried our bags away to go meet the travel agency reps who would drive us to our hotel.
We found them, no problem, and soon were tucked inside a van, without seatbelts, rumbling along winding streets overflowing with motorbikes. Bikes to the left, bikes to the right. No lines on the road - no lanes. Just a strip of cruddy asphalt and a horde of vehicles fighting for space in stop-and-go traffic.
As Michael spoke with our travel agent in Japanese, I took in our surroundings with outstretched eyelids. What a country this was! It was abject poverty, juxtaposed with the familiar hallmarks of Western civilization: Levis, McDonalds, Billabong, 7-11, etc. There were strips of restaurants and bars and stores, but rather than taking their typical place among suburban strip malls or well-planned city streets, they seemed to have arisen hodge-podge out of the soil, with barely a road or a sidewalk to service them. I gave Michael a look.
"Man, this place is really...different."
"Yeah."
Michael's been to a lot of countries, and even he hadn't seen anything like this before. We were expecting some kind of upscale, tourist-friendly city, surrounded by untamed tropical country. What we got was a chaotic tangle of shady streetside vendors, peddlers, motorbikes, construction, and overweight foreigners looking dazed, clinging to the few spots of clean familiarity. But as we approached the hotel, we looked out to our left and could see the beach, relatively empty, surfers cresting towering waves against the leaden stormclouds of the late afternoon sky.
III.
Our hotel, thankfully, was beautiful.
Our room opened up and, two feet away, there was the pool. The weather was beautiful - not too hot, a little humid, and perfect for swimming. Needless to say, even with the beach just down the road, we made ample use of the convenience.
In fact, that first evening, we met a couple Japanese girls whilst swimming, who told us they were going to Ubud the next day, to see some of the temples. Ubud - that was where Jacob stayed. The lucky bastard. But what could we do...they suggested we join them, but they disappeared to take a shower and we didn't see them again. They told us they'd be spending the night at Sky Garden, though, which was apparently a big club somewhere out in the city. Maybe we'd meet them there...
We didn't, though. We wandered the streets, looking for interesting places to check out, but came up short. Everyone on the street was trying to sell us something - transport, passports, drugs, girls. By the end of the trip, Michael had taken to offering them sex massages whenever one came near us, which was quite amusing, but they'd just keep shouting at us without even listening to what we said in return. And the people who actually worked at the restaurants were no better, calling at us to come in, offering us the best food on the island. Granted, not every place was like this, but the shadier ones were - and there were a lot of shady ones.
Eventually, we settled on a burrito joint for some good old Mexican food. This may sound strange, but very few of the restaurants in the city offered Balinese food. In my time there, I had steak, red Thai curry, grilled fish...and one plate of what was probably authentic Indonesian food, but I don't even remember the name of it. (It was shrimp and vegetables in a watery sauce, with rice...)
After our burritos, we walked around. Had a couple beers at another restaurant. We found the ubiquitous Sky Garden, but were decidedly not impressed by the flashing four story megaclub - I imagine flashbacks of our experience at Club Pure in Osaka were going through Michael's mind as well. We returned to our hotel and watched a transvestite with an uncanny resemblance to Billy Corgan host some kind of gothic comedy talk show on the television.
IV.
Michael's one goal for the trip was to ride a motorbike. He had done it in Saipan - but Saipan was a small island in the Pacific, with practically no traffic on the streets. This was a horse of another color, another breed - no horse at all, really, but a hydra of endlessly buzzing engines. But Michael was determined. Despite not having an international license to ride, he was able to rent a bike the next day, no problem. Was I going to get one? I'm no good at faking confidence, and memories of the time I drove my cousin's go-kart into a bush, continually jamming on the accelerator instead of the brake in panic, were not too far from my consciousness.
After much deliberation, I decided the less deadly of the two evils was to ride on the back of Michael's bike. We had to get out of this city - and maybe once we did, I could give his bike a spin and see if I could handle it... In retrospect, it's kind of shocking that I'd trusted Michael to finagle his way through that kind of crazy traffic. But finagle he did - though we did not, in fact, make it out of the city. We made it across the city, and stopped at a restaurant for lunch, where I had my aforementioned plate of authentic Indonesian cuisine.
We chatted up the owner, who mentioned he was taking someone on a tour of the northern part of the island the following day. They were going to stop at a waterfall, and a famous temple, and a monkey forest, and a volcano...
"Oh, that sounds great!"
I couldn't believe our good fortune. Though it surely wouldn't have been difficult to set up a tour somewhere else in the city, this guy seemed much more trustworthy than the other seedy young guys trying to aggressively get you to choose their service. Perhaps he could set up a tour for us?
"Sure. You can make your own tour, or you can join the man's tour tomorrow, for cheaper."
We decided to go with cheaper. His tour sounded more than good enough to me. We would finally escape this relentless, pulsating cesspool of capitalist trash. But we still had the motorbike the rest of the day...perhaps we could even get out of the city a bit that afternoon?
Despite Michael's admitted nervousness, he decided to get back behind the handlebars and wheel me around. Right before lunch, I had tried manning it myself in an empty parking lot, and had almost crashed into a wall, accelerating rapidly in the same panic-stricken impulse as with the go-kart before I managed to stop pushing the pedals altogether and roll to a stop. Took me maybe thirty seconds to realize there was no way in hell I was going to drive one of those things.
But this was good, because now I could focus my energy on Michael's #1 pet peeve: my camera. For some reason, Michael hates taking pictures on vacation. And it's true, I make him stop every twenty seconds to take another shot of some other inconsequential thing. But it's so fun! And then you all get to enjoy them back in America or wherever you're reading this from. Anyway, I decided to shoot some video while I was on the back of the motorbike. You can hear Michael get pissed at me when he discovers I'm doing it - it's pretty hilarious.
--You can watch that video here--
Sorry for the motion-sickness-inducing instability of my filming. Anyway, we were not able to escape the city and get to the famed tropical jungles and unsettled wilderness of our dreams, but we were able to get into a more normal, less touristy part of the island, where we marauded through people's neighborhoods (and sometimes unexpectedly into their yards). I'll post some of the more interesting photos, though most of you have probably seen them all on facebook already.
Around sunset, we decided to head back. We'd parked our motorbike in front of a closed shop, so we returned and tried going out in the street. However, we did so in an improper fashion, apparently, as the police decided to come over and stop us. I was more than a little nervous to have to deal with foreign police, but thankfully they only wanted to speak to Michael (as he was the driver). I waited as they stepped off to the side to talk things over, and after about ten minutes we were free to go.
"What happened? Did he just give you a warning?"
"No. I paid him off."
I guess this shouldn't have been too surprising, but it was pretty exciting, like being in a movie or something. And certainly beat the alternative - having to deal with (obviously corrupt) police officers. Sucks for Michael, but apparently he didn't have a whole lot of money on him, so it wasn't the worst thing in the world.
We quickly made our way back toward our hotel. Getting back into the road our hotel was on, however, was no easy feat. The first time, we missed the turn and had to keep going around the island. In stop-and-go traffic, this was more than a little stressful, and I definitely had to pull up my leg a few times to avoid scraping cars, other bikes, walls, and the like. Then, we tried going down one street to get back toward our hotel - again - but apparently it was closed off to traffic in this direction, and the police officer decided to use the opportunity to not just inform us of this, but check Michael's international license. Oh what's that? No international license?! Well, that was gonna be a ticket, unless...
"Look, we're going to return the bike. Right now," I protested to the police officer. "How about...you just let us go?"
"And look - I don't have any money." Michael showed him his empty wallet, freshly cleaned out by the last cop.
After a little bit of hesitation, he let us ride off. And after a few more slow crawls down crowded streets, we were able to get back to the hotel and ditch the bike once and for all.
V.
The next day, our newfound restaurant owner/tour guide picked us up at our hotel early in the morning, and we set out for Ubud. Ubud is the northern part of the island, where all the jungles and interesting culture apparently lie. Kuta was reknowned for its beach - which we'd spent a paltry hour at, thus far - but the city was just so annoying, we were itching to get out and see the exotic Bali of lore.
Our touring compatriot was a British man whose name I no longer remember (which just goes to show why you shouldn't wait a month before writing a blog post), but he was an older guy, nice fella, kind of quiet but affable and with the same thoughts re: Kuta and seeing the rest of the country as we had. He didn't seem to mind us tagging along on his tour, which was nice of him, and we benefited from the questions he posed to the guide - he seemed to possess a bit more knowledge of the country than we had.
All in all, the ride was quite pleasant, if terribly long. First stop was the waterfall. We rode about an hour north, and for most of it it seemed pretty similar to the city - a little more spread out, a little nicer looking, but still pretty developed. Then we took a turn and suddenly there was just trees and fields and temple complexes. We drove aways into a dead end, the road stopping in a little lot surrounded by fields with cows and a little boy who took some money before letting us park. We got out and walked a little ways, and there was a big house with a little store operating out of it, with an adjacent patio overlooking this:
Now this - this was what I'd been looking for! And we could follow steps down and go out into the river - by hopping along the boulders you could get practically right up underneath the falls.
The next stop on our tour was a temple of holy water (perhaps called The Temple of Holy Water - again, forgive my memory lapses). But the water here was revered for its purity, and people would come from all over and bathe in its spouts.
The temple complex itself was beautiful, and women would come and go, bearing gifts (often carried, without hands, upon their heads) which they would set down in front of altars, and then proceed to pray. Tens, perhaps hundreds of sticks of incense were lit around the place - a staple of Balinese prayer offerings. And from a large walled-off pool of water, we could see the geysers where the water came bubbling up from the earth, this holy water which channeled directly from the ground to the worshippers.
After this, we stopped at a coffee farm, where we saw vanilla plants, pineapples, mangoes, cinnamon, durian, and a host of other fruits and spices. And after that was lunch up top a mountain overlooking the volcano, where we could see charred streaks where the lava had hardened down the hillside - trucks petered along, tiny white ants working to carry it away, day in and day out, putting it to good use in construction or making goods or who knows what.
And here, for good measure, is a picture of our dessert - the salak (or snakeskin fruits - the little brown ones) in particular were quite tasty.
Unfortunately, at this point my camera died, so I did not get any nice pictures of the beautiful multi-tiered rice paddy we visited afterward, or the monkey forest where we watched monkeys jump on people and do inappropriate things to each other in public. But I guess that's ok, because a) obviously I wouldn't want to take pictures of these latter events, and b) I was so thoroughly exhausted by this point in the day that I probably wouldn't have bothered to take photographs anyway.
VI.
Sadly, however, my dead camera would remain dead for the rest of our trip - I'd brought my charger, but I forgot that Bali uses British plugs (with round prongs), and I couldn't find a converter anywhere, so the photographic representation of the rest of my trip is sadly lacking. I will, consequently, only gloss over our remaining days.
The next day, we decided to visit the beach proper. Our elderly travelling companion had told us he'd walked from Kuta to Tanah Lot, a famous temple built up on an island, in about three hours, simply by following the beach, so I decided, if he could do it, we could do it too.
First, however, Michael wanted to try something - and by "something," I mean magic mushrooms. There were a couple shops selling them; apparently it's not illegal there. I declined to join him on that adventure...not my scene. Don't need drugs to enjoy a good swim.
After Michael bought his mushroom smoothie, we set off. The trek started out well enough, and though he didn't feel it at first, within in an hour he had a goofy smile on his face and was completely entranced by the sparkles in the sand, and the tiny crabs that kept scurrying into holes whenever we walked past. It was fun just being around him - made me really take note of the intricate details of our environment, without having to lose my head in the process.
In this way we wandered, slowly walking east. We took plenty of swimming breaks, and after a couple hours the beach was totally deserted. The sun was wonderful, and the water like a giant bath. In fact, it's a pity I don't have any pictures, because it was bar none the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. I guess that much should be a given - this is Bali, after all - but I just can't adequately describe the towering waves, the deluge of white sudsy foam that washed over the sparkling blue blanket of ocean with each crash. With the late afternoon sun glowing brightly overhead, it was just...I could have stayed there all day...
...And we actually did. After all our swim breaks, it was nearly sunset, and we were only about halfway there. We'd started at noon, and now it was about 5:30, 6:00. We decided to get a taxi, so we made our way up towards the city. But there was no city in this part, at least not by the beach. Just some empty roads and a really nice cafe that apparently surfers often frequented. We ate some late lunch/dinner and mulled over how we should continue our trip.
"We're halfway there," Michael pointed, the map spread out before us.
"And we spent a lot of time swimming. I bet we could make it if we keep walking."
"Yeah, let's go for it."
So we asked our waitress how to get to the main road, and decided to take it from there. Why we abandoned the beach, I have no idea, but we did.
At first, it was nice. We passed a community group playing the gamelan - a group of traditional Indonesian instruments that produce long, hypnotic chiming rhythms, xylophones and drums and other weird things whose names I couldn't tell you (and in this case, never could have). It was great though - so utterly foreign from Western tones and scales. Full disclosure: I bought not one, not two, but three CDs of traditional Balinese/Indonesian and Thai music at an old record shop in Kuta, and they were totally worth it. If you want any mp3s, shoot me a message and I'd gladly help you out.
Ahem. Anyway, we followed the main road for about an hour, and then, uncertain of whether we were on the right path, we asked a random man at his storefront. He looked at us incredulously.
"Tanah Lot? Walking?? It will take hours! It will be late at night by the time you arrive!"
We looked at each other for a moment, then decided that we knew better than this island native. In short, we were fools.
We walked the road another hour. There was no sidewalk. Cars and motorbikes roared past us, kicking up dirt and smoke. It was most unpleasant. And the sun began to descend.
In the pink-gray haze of dusk, light fading fast and Tanah Lot nowhere in sight, we decided to get a taxi. Except now there was absolutely no place to do so. We stopped at the few storefronts we saw that were still open for the day, asked if they might help us out, but they seemed at a loss as to how to get a taxi. We couldn't just call one, apparently. We didn't even know where we were, what the address was. Finally, we stopped at a major intersection and decided to wait.
A taxi came not too much time later...but, completely ignoring my frantic waving arms, the driver sped past us without so much as a test of the brake. Perhaps he had a passenger inside already. The next taxi did the same. Michael went into another store, to ask if someone could help us find a ride. While he was inside, I was finally able to flag one down though. I quickly shouted for him to come out and get in. It didn't matter how much it cost. Like a mirage, I was afraid it would dissipate if I looked away for too long.
"Where are you going?" he asked as we piled in the backseat.
"Tanah Lot...oh, and can you bring us back to Kuta afterwards?"
This was no small proposition. We finally worked out an agreement that he would take us to Tanah Lot, show us the temple, and then take us back for about $30. For the distance covered, by U.S. standards, this was a steal, but for Balinese standards, where you can get a gourmet meal for $5 and haggling is the norm, this was a bit pricy. But I was too tired to counter his offer. I would have paid him any amount he'd asked for. It was that, or sleep right there on the street, as far as I was concerned.
Tanah Lot was still nearly an hour away. By car. Down winding roads and side streets, only occasionally indicated by signs. We never would have made it on our own. As it was, the sun had completely descended by the time we finished our Quixotic quest. Not only could we not enter the temple, but we couldn't even see the damn thing. We just stood on the shore, retreating repeatedly from the waves that struck the rocks beneath our feet with angry, protective force. The only light shone from the full moon overhead - just enough to make out the clouded silhouette of the temple and the trees on the cliffside overhead. They all blurred together in the darkness into one indistinguishable shape. I was shivering, and the taxi driver repeatedly asked if I was ok.
I wasn't. I was exhausted and disappointed and ready to collapse. But at least we'd made it.
VII.
Turns out, my shivering sickness was a product of the terrible, terrible sunburn I'd developed during the day. I hadn't noticed at the time, but when I got home, my skin was hot to the touch. I was hot and cold at the same time, and everything hurt. I'm not sure it was the worst sunburn of my life, but it was up there - my entire back, chest, arms, neck and face would peel off in the following weeks, leaving me a raw new ruddy pink upper body in its place.
The next day was our last. Michael wanted to go to a park where we could ride some elephants, but it turned out to be incredibly expensive - about $100. Honestly, I was pretty relieved - I'd ridden an elephant at the circus, once, when I was about five years old, and even then I don't think I found it terribly exciting.
When that fell through, we decided to go to Ubud again, and just explore, but we'd apparently missed all the buses for the day, and we weren't keen on getting a taxi up there and back. So we settled on a streetside tour vendor and, after about ten minutes of perusing, decided to spend the day parasailing and snorkeling.
These activities were alright, in and of themselves. We were crammed into a van, driven about thirty minutes away, and rushed through the necessary paperwork, then all but shoved onto a boat with a bunch of young dudes who hardly noticed we were there, rushing through their work like it was, well, work, but having fun and goofing off along the way, cussing in English and generally acting like the teenagers they were. They got us strapped into the parachute with hardly a word of precaution - just "Pull the right strap when you see the blue flag, and the left one when you see the red, ok? Right is blue! Left is red! Ok!" - and then we were up, up, up into the sky.
I watched Michael do it first. It looked pretty fun, even if it only lasted a few minutes. And I learned from his mistakes, as I watched them shout "PULL HARDER! PULL HARDER!" when they raised the flags. When he landed, they practically ripped him out of the harness, and shoved me into it. Then I was up - and my God, did it hurt. The poorly-adjusted harness chafed all over, all the weight of the boat scraping against me as the parachute jetted me further away from the earth. The tension was almost unbearably unpleasant - especially down where the legs meet the torso, if you know what I'm saying - but the view was nice. And then after a couple minutes, it was all over.
Next up was snorkeling. We were given a pair of fins, a mask with a snorkel, and a plastic bag with two pieces of white bread inside, and then an old man whisked us away on another small boat, to an area of the water where a bunch of other old men were fishing. Guess that was a good sign - where there's fishermen, there must be fish - but I was a little uneasy about the prospect of getting a hook in my back. I've seen it happen, back when I was a lifeguard, some dude went to cast out his line and accidentally hooked his friend in the back. Had to go to the hospital. That little barb is nasty.
Thankfully, however, I did not get hooked. I did, however, get lost. Shortly after stopping the boat and abruptly telling us to get out and go swim, I put my head to the water and powered myself away, away from the fishing boats and the waves that would presumably scare all the fish off. I wanted to see some tropical fish, and I'm a good swimmer. I could swim pretty far out, no problem (as everyone in Chicago can certainly attest to...)
So after swimming out for about five or ten minutes, I looked back at the boat and realized I couldn't tell it apart from all the fishing boats and what not. I scanned the water for Michael, but he had disappeared as well. Now, I wasn't exactly worried - I could always swim back out towards the boats - but I was a little concerned about which boats exactly I should be swimming towards.
One boat, however, was awfully close by, and it was not a fishing boat at all, but a big tourist boat. And the tour guide seemed to get quite a kick out of my confusion.
"Hey! Are you lost!"
I looked over at him, smiling and laughing. The bastard.
"We're leaving now! We can't help you! Goodbye!"
The boat slowly cruised past, the guide and the tourists laughing among themselves. This bit of uncalled for foolery left me unnerved though, and I powered back as fast I could towards what I believed to be my boat. As I got closer, Michael became visible once more, and I began to situate myself in the water. There's a learning curve to snorkeling - go slow, don't travel too far, and just keep your eyes peeled for big rocks and bare patches of undersea sand, where schools of fish like to hover. I saw a few small groups of dark fish, what I later learned was a sea cucumber, and some giant starfish - bigger than my hands, pink and bright red with spiny mounds protruding from their backs. As far as I'm concerned, that discovery alone made the whole thing worth it. But even if I hadn't seen anything, and just let the waves rustle me back and forth among the seaweed, scanning the ocean floor, I probably would have been content.
VIII.
There's not much else to the rest of our trip. We returned in the late afternoon, and Michael decided we should get massages. There were tons of places offering them, and it certainly didn't cost very much. Despite the intense pain of my sunburn, I decided to join him. I'd never gotten a massage before.
Unfortunately, our massages were pretty lousy. They were weak, but even so, the kneading of my lobster flesh was unbearable. Needless to say, it was not the best idea.
After that, we just killed time until our midnight flight. Not exactly the most thrilling end to our adventure, I know, but I guess that's appropriate - it was neither as thrilling a trip as the exotic concept of "Bali" would portend, nor as leisurely or relaxing as a beachside getaway should entail. We spent a lot of time walking around aimlessly, surrounded by urban blight that was extraordinary only in its ramshackle incoherence. But when not trying to escape our unfortunate lodging locale, we caught glimpses of everything Bali is imagined to be. If I sound tempered in my praise, let us not forget the sheer length of this post. Surely that must count for something.
And on that note, I will leave you to wait for my next adventure.
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