Gili Trawangan

Sharon’s 50^th birthday continued for another three days on Gili Trawangan. Next morning, fourteen of us, mostly Sharon and Tony’s family drove to Denpasar, then boarded a small plane bound for Lombok, drove another hour on very poorly maintained, winding mountain roads just to make the misery (read: hang over) worse by entering a small boat that took us over to our resort, The Beach House.

But soon all misery was forgotten! The larger villa had a swimming pool and four rooms, big enough to accommodate Tony, Sharon with kids plus Penny and Lee. Bernice, Robert, Lizet, Mark and I got individual bungalows at the back. The open restaurant was right on the beach, sand on the floor, serving tropical drinks and playing good old music, perfect for our age group. It is quite funny that tropical islands play the same kind of music as when I was backpacking in Asia 1982. Reggae for the most part of it. Newer names suitable for beach bars is Jack Johnson.

The Gili’s are three tiny islands just off the west coast of Lombok. One can easily walk around Gili Trawangan in less than two hours. There are no cars and only a few restaurants have internet access. It has a reputation of being a party island. All the way along the north-east beach front, restaurants and bars were lined up as pearls on a string. In spite of the group being slightly ‘worn’ from partying the previous night, the spirits soon rose to higher levels when we got a Gin Tonic. Tony and Sharon treated us all with drinks and food that night. For days we have been talking about how wonderful of a time everybody had and some suggested that it was because of the nice group of people attending and no doubt we all contributed to that (we really were nice) but Tony and Sharon Dawson deserves full credit for putting it all together.  

Sharon had planned, arranged and cooked for weeks. Hospitality at the highest level!

I feel very lucky that I came to Bali at this very moment. Thanks to Face Book I got contact with Tony. Hadn't talked to the dude for 20 years. Then I met his beautiful wife Sharon, who put me up in their guest house and she invited me to her birthday party including the trip to Gili Trawangan. After traveling on my own for 5 months it has been wonderful to be part of a family and be with like minded people. Traveling on your own is great fun, too, but after a while I started missing being with people I know. It takes a few days to get to know people and I got more than that. I got friends for life.

Several times I have referred to myself as a flashpacker, i.e. a backpacker who uses a suitcase or travel bag instead of a rucksack and who has a little bit more money on their account than the average (younger) backpacker. When I was picking out a suitable size lobster for my dinner I felt flashier than ever, remembering the daily plates of fried rice which made up my diet in 1982.

Besides having a good time enjoying delicious food and wine in the evenings we relaxed to the max during the day, whether it was in the pool,  on the beach or by walking around the island. One morning Sharon, Lee, Penny, Bernice, Robert and I went horse riding. It was rather hot but still fun, especially along the beach. That’s always a treat whether on a horse or not.

 

We even squeezed in a snorkeling trip on the last morning. We saw two large turtles, the average tropical fish and some corals; nothing spectacular compared to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but non-the-less a treat for the eye and always fun to be on a boat on warm waters.

Today, 20^th of March is the date I was supposed fly back to Amsterdam via Hong Kong. At least that was the original plan when I booked my ticket in September. It would be the end my 6 months sabbatical. Six months go way too fast!!

But I haven’t seen enough yet and I am not ready to settle. Traveling is fantastic so I have postponed my ticket in order to be able to attend the Annual Functional Neurology Conference in Florida in May. I am looking forward to see my colleagues and get 'into it again' after an eight months long break from chiropractic and neurology. I still haven’t decided where I want to live next and I am not at all worried about not knowing as long as I have money on my account – it is actually a wonderful thing to be able to ‘go with the flow’ and let things unfold along the way. Life in Europe can be rather rigid.

This trip was the right thing to do, something I will never regret. When will I ever again get a chance to do what I do now? I don’t remember who said it but it could be Anthony Robbins: 'It is better to regret the things you did than to regret what you didn’t do'.

Bali

After two months in beautiful, serene, ‘empty’ New Zealand, Bali seems the complete opposite. Noisy, lively, congested, full! Not so much full of people though there are 3 million Balinese on this fairly small island but the land appears to be used to the max with rice fields and terraces, houses, temples, statues, narrow roads packed with scooters, bemo’s, cars and homeless, skinny Bali dogs. And then of course all the vegetation which is extremely dense in the rainy season. Everything is green, not a single piece of bare land is spotted. It is hot and humid, crickets, frogs and gecko’s make up a choir of their own at night, roosters wake me up at four in the morning while barking dogs chime in at sunrise.

The first week I stayed at Sharon and Tony Dawson’s home White Lotus Villas in Sayan just outside Ubud. Tony is in Jakarta during the week so Sharon and I had plenty of time together and she has helped me look for a bungalow in Penestanan, walking distance to both Sayan and Ubud. ‘Santra Putra’ is owned and run by a Balinese painting artist, Wayan Karja. The rooms are big and have a huge patio, the ones on first floor with a view to the rice fields.

I couldn’t get a room before March 7^th so I took the bus down to Candidasa on the south-east coast for some days where I rented a nice bungalow right on the ocean.

I was the only guest at Pondok Pisang Bungalows which I totally enjoyed. Four days of solitude. Sleep in. A good book. I was reading about Law of Attraction while a Balinese lady walk by and ask if I want a massage? Oh yes, one per day, please, right there on my patio with the only sound being the waves breaking and the wind in the palm trees with a warm breeze cooling me off. An hour massage for 7 dollars, who would say no?

I had been looking forward to staying in bungalows all by myself. After five months of sleeping in dorms I had enough of people snoring, squeaking bunk beds, slamming doors, Asian girls keeping the light on at night or packing and unpacking their backpacks at times when everybody else sleep. Just me alone in a big bed, quiet and peaceful.   

However I had forgotten that it is never quiet in the tropics and that one seldom sleeps alone. Mosquito’s, spiders, frogs, lizards and ants are the most common encounters but in Candidasa a gecko peeked out from behind the mirror every night, stared at me for a looong time before it GEC-KO’ed really loud like it said “What the hell is she doing in my room”. I did get the bed for myself, though.

Back in Ubud I stayed for Nyepi with Sharon and the kids. Nyepi is a day of complete silence. Nobody is allowed on the street, no electricity is to be used, no TV or radio, no nothing. The whole island is quiet for 24 hours, except for the roosters and barking dogs that just don’t get the idea. Sharon, her friend Pamela and I enjoyed dinner by candle light and succeeded in opening a bottle of Champaign without the familiar popping sound.

                           

The day before Nyepi, the Balinese have parades with huge, paper maché dolls called ‘Ogoh-Ogoh’ which with their mean looking fangs and long nails have a good chance of scaring away the evil spirits. Fireworks and -crackers help the spirits on their way. The silence then, as far I understand, is to not draw the attention of evil spirits.

The other day I had a weird experience. Two actually. I went to buy a present for Sharon’s birthday.
In the store was a Japanese woman who lives in California so we got to chat and it happened that she knew my colleague Sergio in San Francisco. What is the chance of a Dane and a Japanese running in to each other on the other side of the world and have friends in common in the States?

Two hours later I have dinner at a small ‘warung’ (eat house) next door to Santra Putra Guest House. Two guys are sitting on the floor at one of the low tables. They look pretty nice so I sit down next to them, I’m always ready for a chat. From the accent I guess one of them is Scottish so I say, that I know a girl in Glasgow. And sure enough, he had seen my colleague, Mette in Bearsden for a chiropractic treatment. Coincidences? Law of Attraction? Or is it the mystical concept called ‘Bali Telephone’?



Friday early morning March 12th I woke up because my bed was moving forth and back. Half asleep and with no reference to prior experience of earth quakes I first thought that the people upstairs were coming home, walking on the stairs with wooden shoes. Then the large glass doors started to rattle with much noise while my bed still moved forth and back. Still half asleep it was like being on drugs - I had no fear at all - and now I thought, “that’s some mighty strong wind gusts that can shake a house build of stone”.  It lasted maybe a minute and by the time it had stopped I was fully awake, realizing it must have been an earth quake! Eventually I had felt an earth quake! It was really cool and I was very much exited.     

Not so cool, however, to hear the news later that day that an 8,9 magnitude earth quake had hit Japan followed by an unbelievably devastating tsunami. It literally shakes you to see such destruction caused by nature.

It was Sharon’s 50^th birthday and people started to show up for her big party. We danced in the garden under the sheltering sky celebrating life and feeling utterly thankful for being safe and sound.  The next morning a small group of friends and family traveled to Gili Trawangan, a tiny island between Bali and Lombok.

More about Gili Trawangan in the next blog.