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.