Thinking of Bali, I’d always imagined some sort of tropical paradise — Indonesian shadow puppets, cool masks, gentle saronged locals smiling and offering whatever-the-hell-smiling-saronged-locals-offer-you-in-Bali. In the case of some of the lads in our group, it was a choice between a quick invitation to the bribery office and the next flight back to Singapore (according to Ricardo, the cash was stacked all over the table in there, payments for the “special permit” — remember, kids, it’s not about the money, it’s about following regulations, so welcome to the third world.)
The fun began when it turned out that our hotel, the very nice (caution, pops up a CPU-eating music-playing monstrosity of a page) was actually 45 minutes outside of downtown Kuta, and still a decent ride away from Seminyak where most of our friends were staying. Note: apparently belongs to some of the Suharto kids, so if you don’t feel like dumping money on corrupt nepotistic evil scum, avoid. Aside from that, it was beautiful — just the place to relax for a day. The distance from pretty much anything providedr some hilarious negotiating with cabbies, and made it a pretty far stretch to join the 2 a.m. trek up the active Mt. Batur volcano — especially considering that we arrived at the hotel around midnight. Fare thee well, brave voyagers. They actually ended up climbing the damn thing, some in flip flops…while we were knocking back beers in the jacuzzi, overlooking the pounding surf. I think we won.
The next day we hired an overpriced but highly convenient chauffeured car from the hotel. Arya, our driver, recommended against Besaki (big mother) temple, claiming it was overrun with tourists, local guides who would like nothing more than to rip off visitors (and who, incidentally, would want to kick his ass, as they supposedly see it as “their” territory.) We saw our share of temples, though, including the peaceful Mengwi royal temple, and a really nice one in a valley, with beautiful Hindu carvings and koi ponds (forget the name.) “Hey you!” from hawkers outside, and us standing around, looking like planks in our borrowed orange sarongs. Some people shouldn’t wear those things (us.)
We had a nice greasy buffet lunch near the top of a mountain overlooking the Mt. Batur volcano and caldera (which my unwitting classmates had so enthusiastically gone forth to conquer early that morning after sleeping..not. Me? I just set a new standard for drooling comas in the front seat.)
The parts of the island we drove through were an odd mix of traditional, authentic beauty, and screaming in-your-face commercial tourism — the “rip-off” kind, not the “Disneyland” sort. Standing at the edge of a magnificent, verdant gorge full of palms and rice paddies, trying to take in the peaceful scenery — and having it shattered by 30 urchins shouting POSTCARD POSTCARD while shoving cheap wood carvings in your face — just doesn’t do it for me. It occurs to me that these guys could make so much money by being a bit less intrusive, by selling nice things (although some of the Garuda carvings exhibited in the myriad woodworking shops were pretty spectacular, if slightly garish for most living rooms) and focusing on the kind of things people actually come here to see.
Almost every (Hindu) house has a small altar in front of it, most towns have a nifty traditional bell tower used to announce village meetings (or, I suppose, rampaging 6-armed goddesses, hat kind of thing), and amazingly beautiful small walled temples are a dime a dozen. Bamboo “penjors”, intricate street lamp-like homages to the island’s largest volcano create a really cool scenery when driving around — according to our driver, Balinese learn to make these from childhood in order to ward off another eruption like the one in 1966 that apparently flattened a lot of stuff. Then again, he did talk at length about how SBY, the current Indonesian president, is awful because (a) the tsunami occurred on his watch, and (b) part of his name spells “grave” or “evil” or something like that, and how Suharto wasn’t such a bad guy after all. That was my cue to not get into a political discussion, period.
We ate an amazing (if expensive, for the place) dinner at the Living Room near Kuta — I had grilled river crabs, spectacular Malay shredded chicken salad and some sort of baked pineapple slice with a sorbet and what was supposed to be “chocolate crumble” (it wasn’t, but it was excellent nonetheless), washed down with liberal amounts of local “arak” (rice liquor, not the Lebanese kind) that one of our guys managed to get for free from the restaurant and a few bottles of Viognier Good stuff.
All that, followed by a club crawl through several discotheques filled with an odd mixture of fat tourists, hookers (loads of them) and spoiled local children; at times, it felt like we were the only ones there. Very strange vibe, but loads of fun once the guys in red devil costumes started making sparks fly by applying metal sanders to steel plates strapped to their chests while two girls dressed as cheerleaders played with flaming hula hoops in rhythm to the beat. Out front of the club, go figure.
All in all, I’m a bit weirded out by the island, or at least by the parts that we saw. It is gorgeous, almost without exception (that “almost” being Kuta town), and has an undercurrent of unspoiled authenticity. But it does seem spoiled, despite the rice paddies, the temples and the amazing landscape. At every turn I got the impression that someone was trying to take advantage of me. Maybe the stereotype of smiling, friendly Balinese was the case and I just didn’t notice it, or perhaps we just stayed too much on the beaten track. I do wish, however, that I could take a walk through some of the things we saw early in the morning, before anyone’s awake. It’s really a very pretty place, you should go have a look.
