Days 174 – 176: Bali

Ian was to arrive at around 10 that evening, so I killed time by lounging in the pool and catching up on emails until 9:30, at which point I set off on my motorbike for the airport.

As I pulled into the airport parking lot, a police officer motioned for me to pull over. Confused, I obeyed, though I knew I hadn't been speeding or breaking any other traffic law. The man asked if this was my motorbike-- a silly question, considering just about every white guy on a motorbike in Kuta is renting. When I told him it was a rented bike, he asked for the bike's registration, probably figuring that I didn't have it and would be willing to pay a bribe to get out of the situation. But I quickly popped the seat and pulled out the registration, to the officer's seeming disappointment.

And then he asked me for my drivers license. Uh oh. My international drivers license, the only one that is any good in Indonesia, is huge-- at least twice the size of my passport. There was no way I could carry it around all the time; indeed, it was safely stuffed in a plastic bag in the bottom of my backpack, which was back at my guesthouse. I tried to explain to the officer, in a mix of English and Bahasa Indonesia, that I had a license, but that it was back at my hotel. He explained to me, in the same awkward mix of languages, that I would have to leave the motorbike with him until I could produce the license.

How convenient. Ian was due to arrive in 15 minutes, and I would now be picking him up on foot. I pondered catching a cab back to the hotel, grabbing my license, and coming back, but I knew I'd be late to pick up Ian, and I didn't want to leave him stranded at the airport wondering where I was.

So I left my bike with the officer and headed to the arrival gate. A few minutes later, Ian appeared, and I explained to him that we had a slight problem. We walked back to where I had left my bike to try to negotiate its release.

But the bike and the officer were nowhere to be found. Had the obviously-corrupt cop made off with my bike? Not likely: I was still holding the key (although he had requested that I leave it with him-- yeah right, dude). But I hadn't a clue where he might have taken it, so Ian and I wandered around the parking lot for a few minutes looking in vain. Finally, I asked someone to point me in the direction of the police station, and when I got there I found my bike locked outside. Inside was the police officer, watching TV with all his other hardworking police officer friends.

Ian and I did our best to suck up the to guy and get him to give me back my motorbike: I told the sob story of how Ian had just arrived and how we really wanted to get into Kuta as soon as possible; Ian opted to talk in a high-pitched, submissive voice and bob his head a lot. Neither strategy worked, but then I suggested that I leave my passport as collateral while I went to get my license, and this proposal seemed to get a little more traction. The man pulled out a small pad of paper and began writing on it-- we assumed he was writing us a receipt for my passport. Then, he said something about "bringing justice," and since justice is a good word, Ian and I both nodded our heads and encouraged him to finish the receipt and give us our justice.

But then I took a closer look at the "receipt," and realized that it was not so much a "receipt" as a "ticket." And that talk about "bringing justice" was not so much the policeman ensuring us that he would give us a just solution to our problems as a suggestion that we appear in court. Ian and I realized our error at the same time and pleaded with the officer to reconsider: we'd leave right away, go get the license, and leave the passport as collateral. Somehow, he agreed, and we quickly walked out of the office and over to the bike. As we waited for the bike to be unlocked by one of the other idle policemen, the original officer mumbled something like "You have some money, you no leave passport," clearly paving the way for a bribe. We asked him how much money he had in mind; he said it was for us to decide. Ordinarily, I would have been more than happy to pay the bribe and avoid driving back to the airport, but the police officer had annoyed me by making us sit around for nearly an hour, and I was determined to
get the license, retrieve the passport, and give the officer no satisfaction. If he wanted a bribe, he should have said that upfront, before he wasted an hour of our time sitting in his office.

I dropped Ian back at the guesthouse, grabbed my license, and sped back to the airport to retrieve my passport. Back at the police station, the officer seemed surprised that I had returned with my license; clearly, he thought I was lying about having one. Grumpily, he inspected the license (which expressly did not give me permission to drive motorcycles, but luckily he didn't read enough English to notice) and returned my passport. With a "terima kasih banyak," I was off.

Back in Kuta, Ian and I checked out the famous Bali nightlife, and I must say it was much more fun with a friend along. There's something about going to a club by yourself and trying to talk to people over ear-splitting music that's just depressing. With Ian along, we also tried to talk to people over ear-splitting music, but when no one wanted to talk to us at least we could go get a cheeseburger and bitch about how much we hated clubs.

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed and headed down to the beach to do some surfing. The usual surfboard bargaining commenced: "You want surfboard? Forty thousand rupiah for one hour." "I'll pay you 30,000 rupiah for four hours." "What? No, no, 60,000 for four hours." "Do you see how many surfboards there are on this beach?" "Ok, fine, 30,000 for four hours."

Over the course of the next four hours, Ian and I did some of the best surfing of our lives. Ian also got a killer sunburn on his back.

That afternoon we jumped on the motorbike and headed south to the beautiful cliffs of the Bukit Peninsula. I took Ian by my beloved Dreamlands, which was now destroyed by construction; afterward we stopped by Padang-Padang and did some bouldering on the limestone cliffs. We finished off the afternoon at Pura Luhur Ulu Watu, the monkey-filled temple situated high on a cliff on the southern coast of the peninsula, before buzzing back to Kuta in time for a concert on the beach. The good news about the concert was that the attendees were all locals, which gave the event an air of legitimacy; the bad news was that the music sounded something like the slow murder of a housecat.

I picked Jay up at the airport that evening around 9, and this time I had my drivers license along-- but of course there were no police officers in sight. We headed back to town, and within an hour we were Kuta club-hopping. Jumping from club to club in Kuta is amazingly painless, if you're a Westerner-- there's no cover anywhere. Locals, on the other hand, do pay a cover-- that policy is aimed at prostitutes, who monopolize most of the tables, don't buy drinks, and mostly sit there and stare. But despite the cover, all the clubs are still crawling in prostitutes; I guess the cover charge needs to be a little higher.

Jay, Ian, and I did our best to mold to the club scene, though all of us would have felt far more comfortable in a bar; we danced pathetically, tried to talk to girls (most of whom were 18 year old Australians), and, when rejected, headed straight for the restroom. Our main accomplishment of the evening was breaking up a fight; unfortunately, in dragging the instigator to the floor, I also managed to snap my sandal strap, and Jay stained his shorts. Clearly, no good deed goes unpunished.

The next day we woke up at noon and spent most the afternoon lazing about in the pool. We chatted a bit with an Indonesian girl who was staying at our guesthouse; she was from Jakarta, and she made her living as a go-go dancer. Not a stripper, mind you-- a go-go dancer. After she showed us some pictures from one of her shows, that distinction became even murkier.

Our Indonesian friend also, as Jay was quick to point out, looked something like a mummy. From then on she was affectionately known as "Hatshepsut." Behind her back, of course.

That afternoon Jay and I drove to the Merpati ticket office, located at the airport, to buy Jay a ticket from Maumere, Flores back to Bali; despite the fact that we arrived at the office nearly half an hour before it was supposed to close, no Merpati employees were anywhere to be found. As we later found out, you have to arrive at Merpati offices at least two hours before closing to have any hope of finding anyone. How foolish we were to think that "Hours of Operation" actually meant something.

We went out again that night, and once again we had limited success in talking to anyone other than ourselves. It's clear to me that clubs are just not my scene; so why do I continue to go? We did, however, succeed in getting rip-roaring drunk, which was especially convenient when our alarms rang at 6am to tell us that it was time to catch our bus to the ferry terminal. "I'm in a lot of pain!"