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Updated: 23 Nov 2001 |
At the height of the Asian financial crisis, in early 1998, a fully-paid and perquisite-studded conference, a not-to-be-ignored Qantas package deal, and a once in a lifetime exchange rate for the sad New Zealand dollar – which has steadily declined against the greenback ever since I’ve been old enough to notice – happily coincided, pointing us towards Bali. ‘Us’ came in two halves: my wife, Jo, and me.
Well, we did the conference, and then, as soon as the free accommodation at the Ritz ran out, moved out to Kuta and the somewhat less auspicious surroundings which came free with our air fares. Kuta is most justly famed for it’s whale watching; the whales in question being of the beer swilling Australian variety. It’s fun for about 15 seconds, but once you’ve observed the variegated pasty and sun-burned array of lumps on the beach and been hustled for the umpteenth time by some local trying to flog you a genuine Rolex for fifteen bucks, you come to realise that this is not the Riviera – or even Ocean City, Maryland, which is an indictment if ever there was one. It is time to return to the hotel, eat the most expensive meal on the menu (the seafood banquet, at AUS $4.65, although I preferred the 64 cent bami goreng myself) and consider … a tour or three.
Well, we did the tour thing, too. We went to the highlands, we went shopping in Denpasar, we went some other place I can’t remember. We stopped off at this craft place and that dance exhibition – Balinese dancing is eerie, the movements are almost reptilian; spooky stuff, I commend it to anyone – and the other traditional local whatever. It killed three days and took us up to the weekend, but authentic it was not.
We had been accompanied by the same tour guide throughout the week, Coman by name, and I had struck up a pretty good relationship with him by now. The boredom engendered in men sitting together outside a shop into which the women disappeared some hours ago transcends all sorts of boundaries, including language and culture. Perhaps the UN could make something of that. Anyway, I quietly suggested to Coman that he might like to freelance for the weekend: could he hire a car and take us out into the island, away from the tourist routes, to encounter the real Bali? Yes, he could.
There were many memorable events in those two days: Coman’s driving for a start. On the tours, there had been a separate driver so until then we’d not previously experienced the fine vistas of flashing chrome as we narrowly avoided various on-coming juggernauts on single lane blind corners. We soon understood the need for frequent stops to sprinkle a little holy water and rice on the hood of the car; they were all that stood between the four of us (three humans and the car) and eternity. Then there was the … modest … hotel we stayed overnight where the bathroom featured both hot and cold taps, but only one kind of water. And there were gardens and temples, of course, and bats in the trees and snakes and local food.
But the experience which will probably stay with us the longest was also the simplest: Coman took us home.
Or, more precisely, since he lived in a flat in Denpasar, to his mother’s home. Rather than all the rooms being together in one building, the traditional Balinese arrangement seems to comprise a number of individual rooms arranged around a courtyard, in the centre of which is a raised, roofed platform where one can sit. And here we did sit, with Coman’s mum, a lovely lady who didn’t speak a word of English. But that was just fine; we didn’t speak a word of Indonesian. So intrigued was she, by her unexpected and, no doubt, bizarre guests, that she called her friend across from next door to share the spectacle. The pair of them sat either side of Joanne, pinching her and comparing their Indonesian-thin, Indonesian-dark arms to her pale, western ones.
And, before we left, a huge bag of hairi – a strange spiky stone fruit, and something of an acquired taste – thrust into our hands before we left. With only a day left in the country in which to eat them.
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