The Backwards Blog - Bali Part One

Day One – Arrive Denpasar Airport, Bali.  Forgot to bring American money so I can't buy a visa on arrival.  All I have is Chinese renminbi.  They don't take that.  Whoops.  Anywhere else I'd be screwed.  But here I wander over to the information desk and ask where to find an ATM.  The guy there says it's outside of immigration and customs.  Double whoops.  But then, to my shock, he offers to take me there.  I leave my passport with immigration, have to scan my bags through customs, but then I get to go to the ATM.  He waits for me.  

I have no idea what the exchange rate is [turns out it's about 9000 rp to $1].  Obviously I have done NO research or preparation for this trip.  I pick the highest number (500,000 rupiah) - and I get it!  My balance is something like 20 million - holy crap, I am a multmillionaire!  I do a little jig in my head. No wonder they are giving me the special treatment. My special assistant brings me backward through customs and immigration (can you IMAGINE anyone in the US doing this for an Indonesian?) and then I wait in line with all the other millionaires.

It is a 30 minute taxi ride to Legian Beach.  I'd made a reservation at the All Seasons Hotel based on Tripadvisor.com – it is modern and minimalist but has attractive rooms.  I got “upgraded” to a family room (it only had one bed - I guess the couch also served as a bed) with a balcony overlooking the pool.  This was a narrow pool shaded by trees – very nice.  The pool bar service was almost nil, but I didn’t really want to have a bunch of sugary drinks leading into an optional detox.  I read and napped by the pool, did a tiny bit of work.  Remembered stuff I’d left in my apartment.  Wondered who I could ask to pick it up.

Had a decent massage in hotel spa.  They had a nice touch - when you lie face down on the massage table you are looking down into a bowl of flowers.  After practicing and preaching water conservation for a year, I got a little stressed out by the sound of water running – typical spa soundtrack.  Then got stressed out by actual water running.  Probably the last half hour of the massage, the therapist was filling what sounded like an enormous tub for my milk bath.  I resolved to enjoy it thoroughly – it was lovely – lots of bubbles and little pink flowers spread across the top.  Afterwards I had the lousy pasta buffet in the hotel restaurant – too relaxed/tired to venture out – and watched TV until I passed out at 9 pm.

Day Two – forced myself to sleep past 6:30 am despite the sunlight coming through the balcony window.  Decided to take a stroll to the beach – only about 10 minute walk.  Walked by tiny shops selling sunglasses, raunchy bumper stickers, made to order crafts (your name in wood while you wait - just like in Helen, GA), storefront sized restaurants, and bars with silly names like “Posers.”  Walked by a couple of nice looking hotel entrances.  Many people on the street beckoning me to buy their product or service.  One guy made it easy: “What can I do for you?”  "Well, I forgot a few things in my apartment in Beijing...." 

The taxi driver from the airport had mentioned that this is a big religious weekend.  It happens every six months.  I tried to get more details - harvest celebration? A god's birthday? Nope: just because.  They do that a lot here, which is kind of nice.  I noticed a few shrines – the statues’ lower halves wrapped in skirts that look like black & white picnic tablecloth (wonder what they are covering) – and baskets woven from straw filled with flowers, fruits, cakes.  There were many offerings along the beach – I wondered if they’d originally been sent out to sea. 

I’d never seen so many surfers before.  The waves didn’t look particularly bigger than other beaches, but I guess they might be longer?  Watched a guy giving lessons to a girl on the beach – he laid on the board on the sand, paddling furiously against imaginary waves, then popped up to his feet.  Easy.  Now you try.  She got the part about laying on the board right. 

Not too many touts on the beach.  I realized that since people keep asking where I’m from that I might not be immediately obvious as an American.  I imagined that I could pretend I’m Swedish, or Dutch, or German, and ignore them when they shout “hello, excuse me miss.”  Or maybe I am just perpetuating the rude American stereotype.  Not sure the best way to handle these things.  Saying “no thanks” usually invites further discussion/ sales pitches.  

Easily arranged for taxi transport via hotel shuttle (cost more than twice as much as getting there, but they let me put it on the room bill) back to the airport where I was being picked up by the drivers for Yoga Traveller retreat.  When I got there, they had already found Helen, a fellow yogi, who’d just arrived from London via Kuala Lumpur.  She was exhausted and had been sitting for 16 hours, only to get in a car for another 3-plus hour drive on windy roads to Amed.  It made me glad that I’d gotten in the day before.

I had taken allergy pills and so was desperately sleepy.  I tried to nap but we were winding through many mountains at top speed.  I got a good butt workout from trying to hold on to the seat.

Amed is on the east tip of the island, and our resort was even farther easter. Golden Rock is a tiny but beautiful resort with only four villas, an open-air yoga platform and dining hall, and a "treatment center" (for the optional detox part).  We were right on the rocky beach, and the waves were quite loud.  [Way better than the construction noises I endured at night in Beijing.]  There were many tiny one- or two-person fishing boats along the beach.  They go out about 5:30am and come back in by 8 or 9am.  The women help pull the boats up on the shore.  The main catch is impossibly shiny and plump silver mackerel.   The women carry these away in baskets on their heads. I wonder how they only catch one kind of fish.  Especially after we go snorkeling and diving and see the incredible variety underwater. 

The yoga life

Amed, Bali - So a typical day on the yoga retreat is yoga from 8 – 9:30 am, breakfast and chatting til about 10:30 am, resting/ reading/ sitting by the pool til lunch and chatting from 1:00 – 2:00 pm.  Then more resting / reading / sitting by the pool til yoga at 5:00 – 6:30 pm.  Then dinner and chatting til about 8:00 pm.

Dave the yoga guy eats breakfast and dinner with us but does lunch on his own (what does he do during the days in quiet little downtown Amed?)  Most nights we take a steam after dinner, then hop in the pool to look at the billions and billions of stars (you can really see the Milky Way here).  Then we each retreat to our own villas to watch one of the many DVDs they have in the library here, and to sleep (at least for me) by 11 pm.  Although on Tuesday and Friday we check out the Tuesday and Friday night bands (one each) and get to have beer! 

Lunch & dinner are all variations of tofu & tempeh (curried, sautéed, satay, in a banana leaf) with a mound of steamed brown rice, accompanied usually by a small salad and a big bowl of vegetable soup. Breakfast is sliced fresh fruit (hooray!) – watermelon, guava (or papaya, I can never remember the difference), pineapple, and local apples that taste a bit like pears. There is fresh plain yogurt and muesli every day.  All good for the digestive system.  No cheese, no meat, no alcohol.  Ali says this is the longest she's gone without cheese in her adult life.

Some mornings we get a Balinese pancake – more like a crepe with bananas in it – very tasty when topped with honey. Other days it is toast with strawberry or pineapple jam.  One morning we got banana fritters, and today we asked for lassis (kind of like a shake but made with yogurt and fruit) – they made them with not very sweet bananas.  With honey they were quite tasty.   All meals are accompanied by your choice of purified water, juice, milk, soy milk, or tea.  

I like it all very much and find it filling - this is how I would aspire to eat. The Brits are having a hard time with no pudding (aka desserts), and have made a few runs already to the tiny shop down the road to buy slightly melted chocolate biscuits (aka cookies).  Helen keeps asking for ice cream, which doesn’t seem to exist here.    Gary doesn’t like salad (aka fresh vegetables), so sometimes I get his.  Dave doesn’t like pineapple so sometimes I get his.  I eat everything.  

We all get the same portions despite our different sizes (Helen is only 40 kg, Gary must be close to twice that) – and there are no seconds. It is a great way to diet. Last night we got a small dish of mee goreng (Indonesian style noodles).  We have asked for fish (we stare at people fishing all day, so I imagine there must be some fresh fish to be found), but this has so far proved too difficult or expensive. Only Helen and I want fish anyway, as Ali is a vegetarian and Gary is a meat & potatoes guy.   [The next night we got it - Remis caught them with his bare hands (?) snorkeling.]  Gary must be so hungry since he doesn’t like much of what is served.  I just made myself hungry writing this.

Do you like chocolate?

Believe it or not I did more on my vacation than avoid clumsy come-ons. But this is the most entertaining stuff, I imagine, to read. 

Amed, Bali (Day Three) - After lunch I thought I’d do a few laps in the tiny pool. After lap one, Remis (one of the young local men - 23 - who works at the resort) comes over to chat. He asks if I want to snorkel. "Maybe." Then he says his English is bad. He asks if I have a boyfriend. My standard answer to this when traveling alone, whether true or not, is yes. Remis asks "Why isn’t he here?" "He doesn’t have enough vacation," I say. Then Remis asks if I like chocolate. Huh?
He points to his skin. Wonder who has been teaching him English. More on this later (or earlier, if you read my first Bali blog).

Remis is eager for us (by us I mean only two of us - the single gals) to join him snorkeling. He asks every time he sees us. I am nervous to go alone so I urge Helen to go. We go on one of the very narrow fishing boats (200,000 rp plus 40,000 rp to rent snorkel gear). Remis brings along a little boy to keep the boat going. 

Remis tries to hold my hand while we are snorkeling. I think. It could have been an accident. 

When it's time to get back in the boat, I realize that it is impossible. Should have thought of that before. Remis says he will help. He leans over and expertly manipulates me into a baby carry, then lifts me into the boat. Wow. Even if it was just an excuse to touch my butt, it's pretty impressive, since I bet I weigh at least 20 pounds more than him.  He does the same with Helen, but she's tiny. 

He does have nice abs. Too bad he's 23 [okay, those of you who know me know that's not really an impediment] and has a bit of orange on his hair. I'll stick with real chocolate thank you.

Just a gigolo

Bali - Dave the yoga guy tells me that all the young Balinese guys in Amed (we haven’t seen any older than mid-20s) think that he has a new girlfriend (or two) every week (when a fresh crop of yogi wannabes comes in).  We are riding his scooter the 15 minutes from the Golden Rock resort to “downtown” Amed so I can check my email at an internet café (15000 rp for about 30 minutes).   It is not as scary as I thought to ride the scooter along this intensely curvy and sometimes gravelly road.  We come near enough trucks coming the other way (on the wrong side of the road – I guess the Brits had some influence here, too, dammit) for my knees to almost touch.  But I’m pretty relaxed with all this yoga. I lightly hold on to Dave’s muscled ribs, his gray dreadlocks barely tickle my face.  Nobody believes him that girls would just want to ride into town on the back of his scooter to use the internet. 

Dave tells the story of when he was getting the dreadlocks (just last week it turns out, though he looks like he’s had them for a while).  Four foreign girls came in to watch, considering acquiring the “rasta” do.  Later he saw them at the Wawawewe Café – which has a band (the same band) on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and they sat with him.  The Balinese guys would call him over to their tables and say “give us one” (yes all you independent ladies, they meant give us one of the girls). They were too shy (or too immature) to come talk to the girls themselves.  According to Dave, for the young guys he is forced to hang out with here (this is a small town), it is the pinnacle to land a foreign woman – not so much for their (our) looks but for their money (and I always did want to be appreciated for more than my looks :) .  The hope is that the young Balinese guy might be taken care of – maybe even taken to another country. I guess you can’t blame them; there might not be many career options in this little fishing village. 

On Tuesday our little group visited the infamous Wawawewe Café to see the band.  We had a table with a good view of the dance floor, and as the evening progressed we noticed several youngish local guys (late teens or early 20s) dancing with the “older” (40s, 50s) foreign ladies.  Dave says all the guys talk about is sex, and they are all married, usually to more than one woman.  Remis is equally working on us two single girls.  He has, in fairness, touched both of our bums, since he took me and Helen snorkeling earlier in the week, and had to literally pick us up out of the water to get in the narrow fishing boat.  (Ally is safe with Gary.) 


Because I appear to enjoy the music, he urges me to dance every time a new song starts (the music is always recognizable but the lyrics are garbled – who’d have thought I’d hear the Hooked on Phonics version of “Sweet Home Alabama” in Amed?).  He offers us Arak cocktails:  bamboo liquor, Coke, and lemon juice.  Since I’m still on the mild detox, I decline and continue to drink my nice cold Bintang beer.  Of course I love to dance but I’m wondering if dancing with a guy in Amed means the same thing guys in the US want it to mean..  You know.  In the car on the way back to the resort, Helen says he asked her to come home with him. She thinks he meant ride his scooter back to the resort, but it still sounds like a line.  I have to admit I'm a teeny bit jealous.