Field Report 6:
Bali - January 11, 1999

By Jeff Bell
 

So email has for now become my default journal. So many details to yak about, feels like a keyboard is the fastest way to record a day in the life of a traveler. Even if it is the last day.

The monsoons have truly arrived. It's an ominous sounding name, monsoon, but having lived through California El Nino of 1998, it's just rain.

Today was rainy and gray today, people ducking in and out from under store cover all day. In Kuta the tourist actually seemed to have virtually disappeared, and signs, flags and banners promoting the popular challenger to the Presidency, Megawati (has the unfortunate association of sounding like a heavy metal band to me), have appeared everywhere. Last night was a celebration of the anniversary of her party's creation, and there were young motorcyclists waving signs. Her banners are all red with the black symbol of a bull in the middle, reminding of the feel of the movie "Year of Living Dangerously". I can't tell much about her politics, but in spite of the obvious association that red gives off, I think she is a moderate and she is rumored to have 70% of the people in her favor. She is the daughter of the President before Suharto.

Got in my last day of surfing at Nusa Dua and stayed out for 2 hours, getting lots of fun and fast waves. One guy, a local, had the break wired. He consistently fought the rip to sit the deepest and farthest outside and was getting some monster waves which he would effortlessly drop into. While the break was almost all rights, he was the only guy would occasionally chance a left as well, landing him where he stood a good chance of getting hammered onto the reef. He was a nice guy, which isn't telling you a lot when you are in Bali, and would just paddle past with a smile and say something about how it is so fast today.

At one point I was sitting in the number 2 spot outside with an Aussie out in front of me and a Bali fellow behind and I spotted a foot and a half dorsal fin directly in line and about 40 yards in front of the Aussie. I watched, not believing my eyes, then it appeared again, and the Bali fellow said "what do you think" and I was saying "dolphin? dolphin? shark?", and the big Aussie said "shark" (say "shock") and proceeded to paddle right towards it since this was in line with the lineup. I watched the fish for awhile, it didn't seem too interested in getting closer, and caught a wave in. Another Bali guy was with me for the 1km paddle in and he was a large, strong fellow with tattoos on both arms and said to me "I'm scared of sharks." Nice to know that machismo isn't mandatory everywhere in the world.

Once there was a Honeymooner's episode where Ralph overhears his wife talking on the phone to an Italian guy, and he confides with Norton that he thinks his wife is having an affair and he knows the name of the guy—Harry Baderchi. Well there would be a similar bit here in Bali. Ralph takes a taxi ride, feels he was given the wrong change and complains to the local police. They ask if he got the taxi (spelled taksi here) number and says no, but I got his name—Wayan. Well here in Bali the men all have three names, just like in the U.S., but if he is born first, his first name is Wayan. Born second, Made, born third, Katout, etc. And they go by their first names, meaning that you immediately know where they are in their family structure. Bali is Hindu, and the caste system is real, although it is evidently looser than it has been before. But if you are a man, you can marry down, but not up, I believe for instance.

I had one fun moment walking down Poppies II, one of the small but well known roads that connect the beach road with the main road of shops in Kuta. A blond haired kid, evidently an American, perhaps 12 or 13 was walking along in his surfing shorts with his board in a board bag. He was a funny sight to me and must have been to the locals too and they all yelled stuff out at him as he went by. I asked him if he had been out that day and in a slightly puffed up way, trying to be a man (in spite of the lack of shoulders that all kids have at that age), told me, naw, the surf wasn't that good, but he went out at such and such spot. I kept a straight face and suddenly he caught me off guard when he leaned into a shop and chattered something to some guys in what sounded like perfect Indonesian. I took note that he was wearing the ubiquitous rubber flip-flops that so many locals have, so I figured he was doing a pretty good job of blending in. (One local told me proudly that he loved his flip-flop investment so much because they had lasted him a whole year.)

There are so many great moments to latch onto traveling, I'm flyin home tomorrow, last minute stress is the logistics of getting stuff I've bought boxed and shipped, which otherwise would cost me a fortune to send back as extra baggage on the airlines. One lesson I've learned is that there are nothing experiences in traveling which can be spotted a mile away—another that you've seen a million times before (example: corridors of large hotels). At Nusa Dua, there is a great old temple built at the end of point with a large carving facing out to sea and a sharply peaked stone building with a number of intricate points reaching to the sky. Behind the temple at the front of another point is a modern red tiled fancy building which is infinitely less interesting. One modern day truth is that in the rush to develop and create new buildings, a lot of dumb stuff gets built.

I was drawn to Kuta a lot, perhaps because of the energy and places like the Sari Club, which is fun little patio bar which is packed 7 nights a week. It's a young Aussie crowd, and in spite of being a bit too old to have success mixing it up, I liked just being in there, went there perhaps 4 times. The energy of being young in there was fun to watch if you're into that kinda thing. While some of the Aussie guys where clearly pushin the macho thing to ridiculous level, about a quarter of them had no shirts on (some probably to display their tattoos, you wonder what goes through their minds, or perhaps what doesn't), everybody was lookin good, and the girls were a partyin crowd and sometimes you watch as these couples made connections right in front of you and a while later were making out madly on the dance floor.

Bintang is the best and most visible beer and it looks and tastes uncannily like Hieneken. Then someone pointed out to me that Indonesia was a Dutch colony at one point and it all made sense.

Inevitable at bars everywhere I went the band (there was a VERY good band on Lombok) would strike up the Men at Work song about coming from a Land Down Under and it would somehow seem fresh and exciting in the context of this place, since Bali is about the closest neighbor to Australia, there is a strong connection between the two groups. And the crowd, Aussies, Balinese and everyone else would get pulled into the anthem nature of the song, singing along, in spite of the fact that it must be a 15 year old song. Rather than ask "how much" to a vendor, an Aussie will just let it all hang out and give em the full treatment, "how much for these bad boys?".

I've seen very few Europeans here, it's probably the wrong season, with the exception of the knotty faced Scot on Lombok and a smattering of others. That Naughty Scot kinda put ex-patriotism in perspective for me in a certain sense. He was a big boned, gawky lookin fellow who probably didn't stand out a lot in his country. But here, in a country where the men are slight and the foreign women fall for the prettiness of the men a lot, this Scot found that in the context of this place he had a sort of Marlboro Man appeal and as he said, he could be King.

The wonder and internationalism of this place though has it's foundation in the kindness and warmth of the people. Without that, even with all the artistry, it would all crumble. In Kuta, I had a scare yesterday when a guy offering me marijuna/hash (every other guy, Java guys the Balinese will tell you, tries to pull this ridiculous stunt. They probably get a one in 500 hit rate, but off that one fool, they can make enough to live on for a month. Selling oregano or dirt as product too, by the way, because drugs are totally against the law.) continued to follow me for some reason and started telling me I had "too much money". I duck into a place with some people but it shook me a little. He's using a truth—the fact that wealth isn't evenly distributed—to justify trying to steal from me. Worse than the greedy rich man he hates. But contrast this with the "real" Balinese. I was walking down a beach, it was raining, when I heard some voices calling out. It was too fully grown men in turquoise seawater up to the their necks with rain splashing all around them. They just wanted to see how much fun they were having!

Back to U.S. tomorrow, but I really hope to come back here.

Soon!
Jeff
 

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