Baby Monkeys tm are bad, bad animals. They take your stuff, they try to crawl into your bag and they try to eat your shoes. While they are still on your feet. Fuck baby monkeys.
I managed to survive Nyepi Day (the day of silence) without an arrest record or even a fine. This is thanks to my villa mates. I am staying in a compound with three little houses – one belongs to the landlord’s daughter, the villa is named for her; one is rented by an Australian couple who are awesome and make fun of their prime minster’s accent. (Don’t worry, Aussies, I make fun of our guys all the time). The landlord’s daughter’s friend tried to teach me Indonesian (terimah-kasih!) while I tried to undo my farmer’s tan. Now, not only can I not speak a word of Indonesian, my thighs look like KFC’s original recipe.
Plus, we all forgot to get any actual food, so we shared a massive bowl of ramen with canned sardines and lilikoi. This is surprisingly delicious when everything is closed, you can’t turn your lights on, and if you leave your yard, you will have rocks thrown at you by the morals police. I briefly looked into staying at a luxury hotel that night, but decided TV and room service wasn’t really worth an extra $600.
The chicken comment is actually important, because today I drove by a KFC that was also a coffee house and internet café. “Umm, I’ll have a small bucket of extra crispy, no white meat, two coleslaws, a double tall non fat vanilla latte and 90 minutes of wifi”. This is how we roll in Denpasar.
I have seen some fantastic signs over the past two days. My favorites are:
The “Happy Meal” sign over the cow barn in Nusa Dua,
The “Free bear with meal” sign on the sailing brochure (do I have to carry that on or can I check it?)
“Loundry done here” I think it is more expensive if you make it sound British,
and the best:
“Happy endings” as the notification for desert on several restaurant menus. Now I don’t normally eat sweets, but the crème Brule is taking on a whole new meaning.
Indonesia is pretty rad except they constantly blast the kind of techno from bars and restaurants that makes people hate techno - diva trance. Awesome if you are a 16 year old girl from Tacoma, barfy after age 18 in any circumstance unless you are at a circuit party in Orlando and then only OK after ingesting massive quantities of E.
I know I have been knocking on Australians a bit, but only because they are everywhere. In all honestly, they are like skinny Americans with better accents, so I am probably just jealous. Americans traveling are even worse – they can tell we are Americans by the uniform – white tennis shoes, jeans, white t-shirts, gold cross around neck and baseball cap. It is that obvious – I am going deep undercover in a black and white striped t-shirt and beret – everyone totally thinks I am French. If it was 1965. Or from Montreal.
Australians have saved my life so many times this week; I am going to Perth to pay them homage. Actually I am going to Perth because it is only $149 round trip from Denpasar, but I promise to be grateful when I am there. Really, the Aussies have taken me under their collective wings and shown me how to travel, find things, not get ripped off, etc. They rock.
Australians are rad because they are shameless – I saw a giant heart in the beach carved out by a foot. Aww! Simon and Adrianna, in love forever! Nope. It was a huge “I love Manchester United” symbol big enough to be seen from outer space. I am going to Perth. Everyone told me to go to Perth. I keep thinking it sounds like “perch” with a lisp. “Mummy, I can’t wait to catch some delicious perth!” “Jonathan! Pronounce your words! PERCH.”
Today I hired a kid to take me to unusual beaches on his motorbike. The tour guys kept asking, “don’t you want a car?” Gross. No. I do not want to sit an air conditioned car and look at a place from behind safety glass. I want to be perched on the back of a 16 year old's bike whose waist is smaller than my thigh zipping through traffic with a non-working helmet. Yeah, that is blending. I'm stealth. Incognito. Practically invisible. Like Wonder Woman in her jet.
Our first stop was Uluwatu – a temple built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. With monkeys. As I was walking around (this place is gorgeous – the temple is perched on a cliff a thousand feet from the ocean where waves have carved little caves into the rock – you can see some islands off the coast and it is simply breathtaking). The thing that stuck me, other than the beauty of the place, was the trash. There were tons of chip bags all over the ground. Nothing else is around, so it must be from visitors to the temple. It seemed like sacrilege to me – kind of like going to Notre Dame and opening a can of Pringles and popping open a PBR, but what do I know?
On my way up the temple steps, I saw a number of monkeys playing. “Awwww, cute!” you are thinking, as was I, until……monkeys attack! One of the big guys ran over to me. I had put my camera away, taken off my jewelry, put my sunglasses away – everything. He was big guy and made a bee line (monkey line?) for my flip flops. He started to paw at my toes so I screamed, “check! Check!” which allegedly means, “go away” in Indonesian, as the monkeys are not bilingual. He kept going, tearing at my shoes, finally putting his mouth around my zoris and tried to bite them off. I kept a firm grip with my toes and he finally ran off. All the other tourists were laughing and pointing. Yeah, that was hilarious! I am on a moped and just got a pedicure that is now covered with monkey spit and there are bite-sized holes missing from the tips of my shoes. It looks like baby jaws was eating my surfboard. If my surfboard was a pair of flip flops.
Then we headed down to Uluwatu Beach. I grew up in Hawaii and one of our favorite skate spots was called Uluwatus – now I know it was named after the surf spot in Indonesia. This place was amazing – you had to crawl down a cliff, behind a rock formation, cross a wooden ladder, climb up more stairs to get to a place that looks like a double sided version of the toilet bowl (by Hanauma Bay for the uninitiated).
It was dangerous as hell to get there, the water even scarier because all of the rocks and great places you could easily get sucked out to sea, but the best part was the vendors. Surfboard, sarong, t-shirt and cold drink vendors had carved out shops on the side of the cliff. Capitalism stops for no man. After about 45 minutes deciding whether or not I trusted myself to get to the end of the beach on the slimy horizontal ladder with Precious (my Nikon D60) I wussed out and took pictures from above.
I am staying on an out of the way spot, but I didn’t realize that I was in party town central. I think my hardcore party days are pretty much behind me – I wake up at 5, go for a walk, check my email, eat some fruit, walk some more, go to the beach, read under a tree, grab a drink, go for a swim, take a shower, find some dinner and hit the bed by 9 to finish the crack that is “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Simple, right?
Last night, someone convinced me to hit THE hot spot for the young and wealthy, which is just a 15 minute walk from my villa and I should at least go look at them. So, I put one some clean underwear (one never knows!) and headed to Ku-De-Ta. Since the Bali bombings, security is tight – you get checked going into hotels, cars get searched, sometimes they run a wand over you. It is like the TSA for a cocktail bar.
I walked into the bar around 7:30 and grabbed a menu. Holy fucking shit! The drinks were $25 each! I have been sucking on cheap beer I got at the grocery store since it is only like $1 per can and I just can’t drink more than two beers without feeling mookie (I am going for the cheap holiday since I am unemployed). There was no way I was going to pay $25 for a Smirnoff martini, no way in hell. BTW, a bottle of Smirnoff is $60 USD here – for real – makes canned beer look real nice.
The bar was beautiful and I met an older couple from Ontario, but the place was packed with 20 something Russians and Australians. The kind of people that ruined the dance scene. I felt like Margaret Meade walking around in there - observing the young and wealthy in their natural habitat. It was kind of gross – I don’t like ostentatious displays of wealth. Must everything be shiny? Aye. I bet they are the kind of people that iron their underwear. I left after about 10 minutes feeling incredibly poor, paunchy and ugly.
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