Stigmata and Anne Murray

Two miraculous things happened today.  Two things that in combination are so rare, it about as likely as me spontaneously developing stigmata.

The ocean turned beautiful. I don’t know if the currents shifted or some plastic-eating aliens landed on Bali really, really hungry, but the brown tinge in the water is gone and most of the crap is off the beach.  Oddly, they are replaced by the leftovers of offerings (banana leaves woven into baskets with flowers and rice and sometimes a Ritz cracker) that are biodegradable and really quite beautiful. 

The second thing was even more outrageous – Korean Airlines answered the phone.  And changed my flight to a week later.  For free.  I don’t know which deity is responsible for this, but I am a very grateful traveler.  I’ll just thank all 354,004 to be safe.

Walking along the almost pristine beach this morning, I stumbled on some pretty decent waves.  In full disclosure, although I grew up in Hawaii, I have never stood up on a surf board.  I have paddled on them, kneeled on them, made out on them, but never stood on them.  So I am not a surfer.  I am what they used to call a “Surf Betty” which means guys used to ask me on dates with the line, “want to watch me surf?”.  Yeah.  About as much as I want to watch you play Nintendo.  What a fucking blast.  Did I go?  You bet.  Because in public school in Hawaii, we are taught a few very important lessons.  Lesson 1 – learn how to make a bed.  You will likely work at a hotel one day.  If you are in the AP classes, you might even make Assistant Manager at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.  Lesson 2- learn Japanese.  You will need to sell them things – clothing, drinks, food – in order to survive.  Hai!  Lesson 3 – worship surfers.  It doesn’t matter if they are dumb or hideous or cruel, I have been genetically modified to be insanely attracted to surfers.   And guys in bands.  It is a recipe for disaster.  Please don’t ever let there be a two in one combo or I am screwed. 

I sat on the beach watching the surf (oh, OK, the surfERS) and noticed how different they were.  The Indonesians don’t duck like our guys under waves.  They don’t do the knee on the board, push the front down thing.  They turn their back to the waves instead of sitting on their boards looking straight out for the next set.  I only saw one guy bless his board, and he was wearing a fedora. No shit.  He ran into the water, board under his arm, wearing a fedora.  I didn’t know whether to applaud his giant balls or slap the hat off his head and take it for myself since he was going to lose it in about 20 seconds. 

I looked down at the sand and found the beach littered with press on plastic fingernails – like the kind you buy in high school before you can afford a fancy set of acrylics.  I imagined an entire container of Lee Press on Nails in Tropical Delight falling off a cargo ship near Singapore and the packages slowly breaking apart, their little pink plastic fingernails floating around the world until they landed on some beach, hopefully found by an undiscovered tribe.  Oops, my bad.  Those were shells.  Actual shells.  On the beach.  If you could have seen this place yesterday, you would have thought it was a miracle too. 

The other awesome thing about the sand is the sand crabs.  I love chasing sand crabs.  I love to pick them up and have them run around in my cupped hands like they are in a gerbil ball.  These guys are different though – when they dig their holes, they make little round sand balls like bunny poops.  If you were just to look down, you would think there were millions of very small bunnies pooping and then jumping down the Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole to have some mis-adventures.  The smallest ones leave patterns that are quite beautiful though.  They look like Spirographs (stuff we used for art before Photoshop), or constellations or little impressionistic drawings. 

Unfortunately, today was a return of the elderly in thongs.  I saw an entirely different couple than the one I saw a few days ago, but really people – I don’t even want to see attractive people in thongs.  I don’t really want to see anyone’s ass unless I am sleeping with them.  Even then, I think I want it covered most of the time.  They make underwear like that for devout Catholics, right? 

After the beach, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some food.  If I am staying longer, I need to stop eating out although the average meal with a drink is around $8.  I found the Western grocery store and bought bread and cheese and fruit so I could make Velveeta sandwiches for breakfast and dinner and eat fruit for lunch.  Yum!  Cheese is rare in Asia.  One of my friends from Korea told me she thought cheese and milk products made white people smell funny.  Could be true.  All that I know is that Velveeta is practically as expensive as burrata here and about as rare as Tur and it is what I am having for dinner along with some papaya. 

As I was walking back, I checked out some of the stores.  Mostly it is the same stuff – sarongs, Bintang t shirts, fake Hawaiian wear (weird, weird, weird) – you know, tourist stuff.  One shop was selling bumper stickers.  They all had a similar message, “So and so is gay”.  Like it was an insult.  When I was growing up, we had keychains that translated Haole names into Hawaiian, so if you were John, you were now Kimo, etc., but proudly homophobic bumper stickers?  It wasn’t gay in the sense of “It is awesome, Pam came out as gay!” but more the school yard “you are a gaywad” kind of gay.  I am not sure this is the right time to fight for gay rights in Indonesia, but if I see a Westerner buying one of those things, I am going to punch them in the face.  The store did have one interesting bumper sticker though.   It said, “I fuck retardeds”.  I may need to put that on my car.

One of the weirder things about Indonesia is the music and store names.  I had two of the best meals of my life at Nomad in Ubud, but they were playing muzak Christmas carols over and over.  Really.  I had to stop eating there.  Right now, I am sitting down to dinner with Anne Murray.   Oh wait, “operator, can you help me make this call” just came on.  Shit!  Now it is Melissa Manchester!  The Australians at the next table are getting sentimental and if American Pie comes on, there is going to be a blinding.  I am locked in Montana or 1979.   So my choices are crappy diva trance or late 70’s Canadian ballads.  Kill me now. 

A lot of the store names are pretty pretentious too.  My favorite is Funky Princess.  It congers and image of a spoiled rich kid who is also insanely hip.  I picture a baby Paris Hilton with a designer dog in her purse, Manolo Blahniks and a tiara, dripping with shopping bags and saying, “but wait, I am also funky!”

“Hey guys!  I am a spoiled, vapid chick that is going to be hell to live with.  I will define high maintenance for you.  You will be ruined for all future girlfriends, but hey!  I am funky, so it is all good!”   Someday, the guy is going to freak out on his new girlfriend because she didn’t like the vacuum cleaner he got her for her birthday and it will all be because of Ms. Funky Princess.

Tonight I may brave the youngsters and go out dancing.  All the cool places have dress codes.  They have all the typical nightclub names – Rumors, Cocoon, Vamp, Posh, Pink.  One of the clubs has a giant sign outside advertising their dress code.  For women it says, “elegant, chick and stylish to impress”.  I am pretty sure I don’t qualify.  I wish there was a dive bar here with pool and darts and PBR. 

I dropped into the local warung for a cold drink and saw two of the cutest little puppies on earth (no offense to Ulysses or Evie).  They were playing and being puppies and I played with them and one started to eat  my shoe and I was like, “what are you, a monkey?”.  So me and the table of Koreans next to me sat around and had puppy time during the heat of the day.  Hilarity ensued and they tried to escape, tumbling over the wall, rolly polly, pokey little puppy style.  Aww.  One of the Korean ladies had her friend take pictures of her with them.  Hey, I am not judgin’.    I have a memorial to my dead cat tattooed on my arm.