Oh silent ogre

My bad.  I found the beach.  There is one.  And a town.  With stuff to do.  And a club.  With house music.  I didn’t go dancing last night, but I might tomorrow. 

The beach is still kind of icky – there is trash everywhere and the water is murky.  People just kind of chuck their trash into these brilliantly distributed waterways and they all make their way to the ocean.  It is too bad, these little canals run in front of every house so people have a place to bathe and do laundry.  But then they also use them as mobile trash units, wash their motorbikes in them, etc.  Anyway, I wouldn’t walk on the beach barefoot and probably won’t swim because I have a few cuts on my feet.   Plus the shore break is choppy and there are “danger!” signs everywhere.  Danger!  You could be attacked by millions of plastic water bottles! 

I walked a few miles down the beach toward civilization and found all the usual Balinese beach sights – people getting beach massage, hawkers trying to sell me everything from hats to kites to little beach restaurants.  I was digging the beach restaurant shacks quite a bit.  I stopped in one to have a drink and watch the people.  As I was sitting there, I saw a couple in their late 70s, skin tanned to purse leather, overweight, wearing thongs walking up the beach.  Now, I would never even subject the general public to myself in a bikini, much less a thong.  Should I ever be lucky enough to make it to 75 without the benefit of extreme plastic surgery, I promise to only wear mu’u mu’us.  Of course the couple is walking to the same beach shack I am in.  Of course they get the table right in front of me.  Of course they gratiutiously bend over repeatedly to arrange their towels.  Ick.  Then they order French fries.   With mayo. 

As much as I love to talk smack about my hometown (because it is my hometown and therefore worthy of the occasional smack talk), we do things right in Hawaii.   The beaches are still clean and beautiful, we keep our tourist torture confined to Waikiki so people can easily escape, we educate all tourists about the environment and our customs.  I am proud we have used smartish development and not just let things run amok.  Many Native Hawaiians would likely disagree and they would be correct, but compared to what has happened to Bali, Hawaii has done a hell of a good job.   Probably all of those brilliant Kaiser High School graduates…….

Last night was ogre-ogre – the night before New Years Day or the Hindu Day of Silence.  All over the island, villages have been building these incredibly beautiful statues of demons to take on parade and then burn.  Most of the work is done by the village children (teens mostly) and the artistry is amazing.  Demons with light up eyes, a huge pack of angry demon dogs, mythical figures and political parodies.  Last night was kind of like the Fremont Solstice Parade in the dark and led by children.   There are tons of parades going everywhere and anywhere – you couldn’t walk down the street without running into one.  My only regret was that every one of them didn’t have a gamelon band behind them.  I am really starting to love this music.  The parades usually started by a small group of little kids carrying an effigy, then a band of adults with torches, then dancers and finally the demons – carried by groups of boys on bamboo pallets doing dances lifting the statues up and down.  It was pretty impressive. 

There were tons of tourists out and for some reason, every Russian teenager I saw was dressed as a pirate with a striped shirt and fake stitches on her face.  “Why are the Russians dressed as pirates?” I wondered over and over again.  Many of the demons had these gigantic scary tits as well.  I am not sure if it means something or if it was just teenaged boys that designed them and thought, “let’s put some tits on this one, and make them really big!”  That is probably more likely.  I also saw a huge number of people with Iron Maiden shirts on – I high fived them all.  Even in the villages, I saw old Maiden posters.  OK, so Indonesians are REALLY into Maiden in the way that Chileans are REALLY into Morrissey.  Right on.

It started to get late and I needed to head back.  I was on foot but decided to take a cab to where the main action was, but I couldn’t get stuck outside after midnight or could get arrested, so I started trying to find a cab.  I found one and the guy totally jacked me – claimed not to have a meter, over quoted me, pretended not to have change and left me 3 miles from my destination in the pitch black.  Thanks, fucker.  Today is karma day – good luck on that. 

I tried to find my way back in the dark by myself – there aren’t a lot of street signs in Bali or street lights, so it was a pretty stressful little walk.  Luckily there were security folks all over who helped my piece my way back.  When I arrived on our lane, the landlord had turned off all the lights.  It was only 10:30 and things didn’t have to be off until midnight.  It kind of pissed me off – she had a motorbike with a giant light on it, I was fumbling in the dark trying to use the light of my cell to see if I was at the right gate and cramming my key into the lock hoping not to stab one of my gecko friends in the eye. 

I heard a rumor that their might be wifi access in the big house in the compound if one kind of hangs onto the side of the roof with one hand – I may try that.  I have been pretty contemplative already and the landlord has invited some of her friends over for the day, so we are kind of having a giant pool party anyway.  But a quiet one.  They are going to teach me Indonesian.