Kuta: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050995&l=19cc7&id=1101094
Bukit Peninsula: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050998&l=a194f&id=1101094
I spent most of my time on the minibus to Kuta talking to an American woman who taught special education in Bali. Predictably, she was on her moral high horse. The conversation started with her asking me where I got the fish that was sitting at my feet (in a plastic bag that was leaking fish juice onto the floor). I told her about my fishing trip with Mardy, and how we had caught a boatload of fish after we invested in some new hooks. I mentioned how the example of the new hooks had gotten me thinking about microfinance: if a fisherman in Bali is given a small loan to buy new hooks, he can easily catch enough fish to pay back the loan and then continue to catch fish to feed his family and sell at the market. Then I said that I could see myself getting involved with an organization that made small loans in places like Bali, and that’s when she laid into me.
“I’m so sick of people coming here and saying they want to change things,” she said.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Look, I’m under no false impressions here—I’m not trying to save the world, but I think if I could help individual people make their lives better, that would help, right?”
“Sure, sure, go ahead and do it, but there’s so much poverty here, don’t think you’re going to solve any real problems.”
Well thank you for that defeatist attitude, Miss No-One-Can-Ever-Be-As Moral-As-Me-Because-I’m-A-Special-Ed-Teacher-In-Bali.
I decided to steer the conversation to politics, and I mentioned how I’d also become interested in the various separatist movements going on throughout Indonesia.
“Never going to happen. The media tries to make this big issue of separatism in Indonesia, but in the end people want to be Indonesian.”
“All of them?”
“Well, most of them.”
“How many?”
Silence.
“So you think there’s no shot of any of these movements resulting in new states?”
“No way.”
“What about
“That was different. That was an isolated incident. Look, people can’t just secede if they want to. What if
“What if the South wanted to become its own country?”
“That’s totally different. That was a long time ago.”
“But I think it’s still relevant.”
”Maybe so, but I don’t care! Look, I’m not going to have a conversation about something that happened 200 years ago.”
“Actually, it was 150.”
She glared at me. Needless to say, that was the end of the conversation.
I spent my first afternoon in Kuta looking for flights back to Bali from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. I was scheduled to fly from Bali to KL the following afternoon, but I wanted to make it back to Bali in time for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, which started three days later. I figured I could pick up a laptop in Singapore or KL and then catch a cheap flight back to Bali in time for the festival. Unfortunately, there were no such cheap flights, so I decided to skip my flight to KL, stay in Bali, and buy a laptop here in Kuta.
The next morning I talked to the guy who worked in my internet café about a place to buy a laptop. He said that because it was a Saturday, the computer stores probably wouldn’t be open. In the end, though, he got in touch with a friend at a computer wholesaler who said I could order one through him.
Aris, my new friend from the internet café, drove me down to the computer wholesaler on the back of his motorbike, and for the next hour I bargained hard for my new laptop. I listed all the specifications I needed, and they found a Toshiba laptop that fit the specs. Apparently, everyone found the situation hilarious, because a group of people gathered in the doorway to the store to watch the negotiation. After we had finally agreed upon a price (at a significant discount to the list price), I told the guy I had to go some research on the internet before I bought it. The guy laughed and said I was “very good businessman.”
Aris took me to an internet café close by, and I checked out the computer online. It looked ok to me, so we headed back to the store and finalized the deal. I left a Rp 1,000,000 ($100) deposit, and the man agreed to deliver the computer to me in Ubud when it was ready on the 26th.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in Aris’ internet café, catching up on all the emails I hadn’t responded to while in dial-up territory. While in the internet café, I was exposed to just the sort of people that give Bali a bad name: package tourists.
Kuta is the package tourist capital of Bali. People from Australia, Japan, and Europe come to Kuta, stay in all-inclusive resorts, get drunk in local bars, and generally trample all over Balinese culture. In case you’re not aware, Kuta was bombed twice recently—first in 2002, and again in 2005. Both times, the targets were fancy resorts and nightclubs, and the victims were mostly foreign tourists. After spending some time in the internet café with some of these folks, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine why the Bali bombers picked Kuta to victimize. Every other word out of these folks’ mouths was “fuck” or “faggot.” They were rude, obnoxious, and totally oblivious to everyone sitting around them. It’s really not surprising at all that Westerners have such a bad reputation in Bali.
That evening I watched some rugby in a bar and talked to a British guy who was on an around-the-world backpacking trip. He had just returned from taking a motorbike south of Kuta to the Bukit Peninsula, and according to him the place was beautiful. I decided to rent a motorbike the next morning and spend my birthday on a remote beach south of Kuta.
Later that night I sampled some of Kuta’s nightlife, and I found it somewhat disappointing after my low-key guitar bar in Lovina. Bars in Kuta are large and loud—there’s no such thing as low-key. I went and listened to a local rock band for a while, but after a while I got bored of it and decided to take a walk on the beach. As I walked from the bar to the beach I was approached by a prostitute. I said “No, thanks” over and over, but she said she just wanted to walk with me, so I said ok. We walked down the beach talking about life in Bali, and then I walked her back to her house. The whole situation was rather strange, but she seemed to enjoy herself, and I was always happy to get to talk to a local.
The following morning I packed a day pack, rented a motorbike, and buzzed down to the Bukit Peninsula. My guidebook, which covered all of Southeast Asia, was worthless at this point, so I asked for directions the whole way down, and everyone I met was overwhelmingly friendly and willing to help me. All it took was a smile and a few words of Bahasa and I was everyone’s best friend.
I stopped off at a surfers’ beach called Padang Padang and talked to some British surfers for a while, and they suggested that, seeing as I wasn’t surfing, I continue down the beach to a place called Dreamland that had what was supposedly the best beach on the island.
To get to Dreamland, I had to drive down a steep hill—much steeper than anything I had dealt with yet on my motorbike. As I came around a corner, the road steepened out further, and my front tire slid on some loose sand. I hit the brakes, but it was too late—the motorbike slid out from under me, and I hit the ground, my motorbike landing on top of me.
I lay there dazed for a few seconds, and then as luck would have it two locals rode up on their motorbikes and helped me up. Fortunately my bike wasn’t badly damaged (the sandy road was at least good for something), and I had a few cuts and bruises on my arms and legs but nothing worse. Seeing that I was still shaken up, the guys drove my bike the rest of the way down the hill for me.
Dreamland was everything the Brits had promised. Set between the cliffs, the white sand beach looked gorgeous bathed in the afternoon sunlight. A series of bungalows and warungs (food stalls) were built into the hillside, and the beach was peppered with young couples who had come to watch the sunset.
I went for a swim (the water in Bali is the perfect temperature—cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough such that you can keep swimming for hours), and then I drank a beer on the beach and watched a beautiful sunset over the Indian Ocean.
Happily, after the sun went down most people headed back to Kuta, leaving the beach to the few of us who planned to spend the night. I spent most of the evening talking to the local bungalow and restaurant owners, all of whom asked me where my girlfriend was. Apparently, only couples come to this beach. Given its romantic appeal, I can see why.
It was a full moon that night, so I was able to walk down the beach without much trouble. As I walked farther, the beach narrowed and the waves began to reach the cliffs. Realizing the tide was coming in, I scampered back to the wide part of the beach and spent the night intermittently sleeping on the sand and gazing up at the stars. I can sincerely say that night on the beach was the most beautiful, meaningful birthday of my life.
The following morning I did some bodysurfing, and the waves pounded me into the sand time and again. Finally I decided I had taken enough of a beating and I headed back to the beach to eat breakfast.
I road my motorbike back to Kuta, spent the early afternoon on Kuta Beach, and then caught a bus to Ubud. The Writers Festival started the following morning.
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