On Bali and Rising from the Ashes

I haven’t written about Bali yet, not because it was an uneventful trip, but because we had a series of misfortunes right around that trip that overshadowed it a little. More about those later. 

I had read all over the Internet that Bali was THE place to go in Indonesia; I’d also read everywhere that it has been ruined by tourists. I’m so glad we went and found out for ourselves. There are some places I’ve traveled to that I’m happy to never go back (I’m looking at you Hawaii, as hostile as you are beautiful), but I’d make the effort to go to Bali again. Well, part of it. 

OMIGAWD SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! JAVA TRENCH! LIFELONG MAP NERD FLAILING!

We spent the first two nights inland in a town called Ubud, famous for being artsy and starring in the “Love” segment of “Eat, Pray, Love.” We rented a tiny villa with our own private pool for like $60 a night. 

I expected Bali to look like Thailand. The climate was the same, but the trash that permeates all of Thailand’s nooks and crannies is nowhere to be found, at least in Ubud. Ubud is gorgeous. 

 

Everything is so lush and close. There is beautiful carved wood and stone everywhere. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, up there with the Alps and the central coast of California. The pictures do it so little justice. I took this video just for myself to remember the narrow road from town up to the villa, with all its tiny storefronts and stone-carved temples. Don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing.

Ubud was full of Trustafarians, and countless western women doing the Eat Pray Love thing. Here is why I pass that judgment: As I was out running one morning, I grinned my big stupid Labrador grin at everyone I passed, like “Wheee! Can you believe we’re here?” 90% of the white women I passed gave me a slightly offended look, which I sensed to mean, “Uhh, excuse me, but **I** AM HAVING A MOMENT HERE, and your big American teeth and purple Asics are knocking my chakras out of balance. This is MY expensive soul-searching quest; please move along.” Even the locals gave me an “I’m tolerating you” look. It reminded me that Thailand is the Land of Smiles… Indonesia is not. But snotty artsy rich women couldn’t touch my good mood. Not while running in that scenery.

My favorite moments from this segment of the trip: We rented motorbikes because cabs are impractical for those tiny streets. The first night we got in late enough that we just ordered pizza and hung out by the pool, but the next day we ventured into town for lunch. On our way home, we got caught in a heavy tropical downpour. We just had to get wet. And laugh. 

While running, I passed by four roosters in cages (these can be seen in the video-- four bell-shaped wicker cages on the left side of the road). As I ran past, a big dog lumbered over to them, lifted a leg, and lazily peed on the roosters. They squawked something fierce, and I laughed hard enough that I had to stop and walk. Out loud, alone, with my big American teeth.

That looks exactly like my handwriting on the blue... What a coincidence...

The second night we went out to this beautiful restaurant. The food was wonderful, delicious and well-priced. But the best thing about it was how accommodating they were to kids. It was a full-fledged Fancy Restaurant, with no crayons or dancing animal costumes or anything, but they had a respectable kids’ menu and they were really nice to the girls. I’ve never seen anything like it; they were treated like adults. After we got home, Sophie and I celebrated the best (only?) way one can if you have a private pool all to yourself: with a moonlit skinny-dip!

After Ubud, we went to Kuta, which is a touristy beach town (even though the beach was brownish and dotted with plastic). 

 

To be fair, 99% of the flotsam in this picture is coral, not trash.

I still had to get in. I had to be in the Indian Ocean.

Kuta has all the charm and beauty of Tijuana, although I remember Tijuana having far more redeeming qualities. Kuta is awful. People hawking stuff everywhere. I passed a guy on the street there who embodied the whole place for me: young white guy, tribal tattoos on his sunburned shoulders, walking down the street with an open beer at 10 am yelling “wooooooo!” Shudder. 

Also, sweet Jesus was it ever hot there.

We went there for our hotel, which had outstanding kid activities, and we rarely left the grounds. 

Nick and I snuck out for a nice lunch date one day while the kids were in a craft class. We went to the fancy hotel next door. At the table next to us, all in bathing suits, was a long lithe woman and three beefy guys with tattoos of guns on their arms. All spoke Russian. Yiiiiikes. 

Most of the other hotel guests were Australian. This is probably an unfair blanket statement to make, but it was something that Nick and I noticed right away about the vast majority of them, and there were several hundred in this hotel: Australians are large people. Not just overweight, but TALL! And BIG! That is some hearty stock there!

YES that is what you think it is.

One last thing I want to remember about Kuta: there were tiny frogs everywhere. We had to be careful not to step on them. I forgot to get pictures, so I borrowed someone else’s from the web. They were the cutest wee things. 

Now, the dark clouds: we were (and are) still dealing with this horrible landlord situation, which is currently at a standstill. We would wake up every morning in Bali and start talking about it, all the possible awful scenarios and what our options are. It gave a small undercurrent of distracted stress to the trip. 

We came back to a drought, a heat wave (it reached 108F) and horrible smoke. I got some kind of 24-hour stomach bug that had me so violently ill that my core muscles (and all the muscles behind those) were sore for days. When we returned to work, the bank called our school to let us know that someone had tried to use our ATM card in another country. We said yeah, yeah, that was us, but they wanted us to come in anyway to clear it up. When we did, we found out that someone in lovely Kuta had indeed emptied our account two days after we left. The bank is still “investigating.” I will be surprised if we get our money back. 

These things have been bad enough to give us pause about staying here another year. Without getting into too much detail, we’ve had some long, tense, come-to-Jesus conversations about how many beatings we are willing to take. Now that a little time has passed, we’ve had some rain, and the air is clearing and cooling off slightly, I think things are looking up. (We’ve gone 15 whole days without getting robbed! And I cringe writing that because I don’t want to tempt fate.) 

My girl riding Bangkok public transit like a boss.

I rode my bike around town for a few hours yesterday, for the first time in months. I went for a massage, and was greeted by my usual lady with several bear hugs and a reminder that she hadn’t seen me since Christmas. I went to the Saturday night market with a visiting friend, another thing I haven’t done in months, and remembered that this is a pretty cool town. Over the last two months, we have spent so much energy stressing out over the landlord that we have completely forgotten to enjoy… well, anything. I'm reacquainting myself with Thailand, and I want to think we’re crawling out of the hole. Certainly we can’t just cower in there waiting for the next screw. At least now the end of the school year is in sight.