Bali - Boulevard 66

Dogs generally bark, yelp, or whine, but our canine friends are not expected to "scream."  I woke up early on our second day in Bali, and after I applied the first bug-spray layer of the morning and began coffee prep, I noticed all the dogs in the neighborhood were screaming.  They were joined by the local rooster’s union to produce a banshee chorus that raised the hair on the back of my neck.  Just when I began to seriously wonder about the source of their extreme agitation, I heard a loud rumbling like the approach of a heavy diesel truck—and the world began to shake.  The walls were contorting, the ceiling fixtures were swaying, the water in the pool was choppy, and the floor was unsteady under my feet.  This was the first earthquake that I had ever felt, and it came on so quickly that I just froze in place not knowing how to react.  It ended after about thirty long seconds, and Deena emerged wide-eyed from the bedroom to join me in my astonishment.  Deveny said sleepily that she felt it and then rolled back over, and Joseph never awoke at all during the shaking. I guess it takes more than a 6.5 earthquake to impress our professional snoozers, but it sure got my attention.

We arrived at the airport in Denpasar, Bali, around 7:00 PM night before last, and as our transfer driver, Yayo took us through a labyrinth of dark streets to our house, I felt helplessly lost, a feeling that was amplified by the fact we had no food and hadn’t eaten in six hours.  Yayo kindly stopped at a market on the way, and we grabbed a few necessities like Pringles, eggs, and Coke, and I then knew we would survive through the night.  We finally arrived at Boulevard 66, our home on Bali for the next seven days, and Yayo twisted a key into the padlock which secured the chain on the front, and we walked into one of the most interesting houses in which we’ve dwelt in quite some time.  The main area resembles a large pool cabana with the rear completely open leading to a slate patio with an ornately carved gazebo bed in the center of the floor.  The two main bedrooms are enclosed with strong air conditioners mounted on the walls, and the four wide louvred doors at the front of the house open to a small pool tiled with sandstone and bordered by thick tropical plants against white stucco walls.  

I would like to say that the feelings shared by my crew that first night were joyful based on our cool new digs, but we were tired, the girls were concerned about bugs, I was worried about security, and Joseph was in his usual state of starvation.  We settled in a bit and walked down the road to a row of food vendors and ate a late supper of fried chicken and rice at a wooden table in a small shack with a dirt floor and a persistent pooch begging at my elbow.  The meal was accompanied by a strange soft drink with a flavor that brought horses to mind, but the food was decent and filling, and we all survived the diarrhea test through the night.

Bali Fried Chicken

The light of a new day always brings hope and a brand new perspective, and Deena and I explored the kitchen until we found all the cooking elements needed to prepare our favorite breakfast, eggs-in-a-basket, which we haven’t enjoyed in almost eight weeks.  We opened the louvred doors and enjoyed our meal in the cool morning breeze as the neighborhood came to life with the sounds of puttering motor scooters, roosters, and the locals greeting each other on the corner outside our stucco walls.  The kids settled in to start final testing on some of their subjects, and Deena and I walked around the block to meet our neighbors and check out the surroundings.  The houses and businesses nearby are right on top of each other, and they all have the aged pastel facade common to southeast Asia with once-red-barrel-tile roofs now blackened with mildew.  The streets were paved with concrete at some point in the last century, but they’re about halfway back to a dirt road with no highway crews in sight.  All of this well-seasoned civilization is set into an intense green tropical landscape that makes the whole scene charming to behold.

About midday, after we heard a loud knocking on our gate, two guys from the local motor scooter rental place rolled into our courtyard with two Honda machines .  The beaches and services on Bali are spread out and having a cheap mode of transportation is a necessity, so we chose the motor scooter method.  We got all the business stuff out of the way with the guys, and they showed us how to turn the machines on and work the kickstands, and they were off leaving us to figure out how to ride them.  For three months, we’ve watched little kids, old ladies, and everyone in between ride these scooters, many times carrying ladders, dogs, and even whole families—how hard could it be, right?  Deena started out by gunning her machine into the stucco wall across the street, where it fell over in the weeds on her leg which was burned by the exhaust pipe—the wheels were still spinning because her hand was still in place on the throttle.  We spent an hour practicing in the street much to the neighbors’ delight, and some little kids made themselves comfortable in the shade on the corner and watched our shenanigans with big grins on their faces.

I had some experience on motorcycles many years ago; so I more or less got the hang of riding the scooter after a while, and I set off with my biker babe on the seat behind me to explore our part of the island.  We rode all the way down to Balangan Beach, home of the best surfing on the island, and checked out lounge chair rentals for the next day.  On the way back, we found a promising grocery store and stocked up on supplies to get us through the next couple of days—and then we headed home to feast on peanut butter and jelly sammiches.  We still felt adventurous after lunch and left the kids to their studies while we took off up the mountain behind our village in search of an ATM, which we found in a convenience store that also had chocolate almond ice cream bars.  Flush with cash, groceries, and a modicum of experience on the scooter, we called it an afternoon. Feeling satisfied with our exploration, we spent some time resting on the fluffy pillows in the giant papasan chair at home.  Until Deena feels more comfortable riding a scooter, we’ve decided that I’ll be in charge of delivering everyone to our destinations and back, and we tested our system by motoring to an Italian restaurant where we had our fill of delicious pizza.

Born to be mild

After dark, we spent the majority of the evening in the pool talking and laughing, and we realized that we loved our home at Boulevard 66 with all of its quirks as well as its beautiful setting, and at twenty dollars a night, we felt like we were stealing again.  Deena and I plopped down in the papasan chair for a while and enjoyed the evening breeze and did a little research on New Zealand, which is fast approaching.  After our first big day on Bali, we went to bed and slept soundly and heeded no nightly noises coming from the village and the tropical province beyond.

Bali is one of thousands of volcanic islands that make up the Republic of Indonesia which was established after World War II after centuries of colonial rule by the Dutch, British, Portuguese, and French, all drawn to the region by natural resources and trade routes.  The nation has a population of 260 million, four million of whom were shaking along with us on our second morning during the earthquake.  Living on volcanic islands means that one must put up with earthquakes and tsunamis every now and then, and I wonder how long it takes to get used to it—after our experience yesterday, I don’t think I ever would.  

Maybe the constant threat of natural disasters is one of the reasons there are over twenty-thousand shrines and temples spread out over Bali. The natives practice a form of Hinduism which includes the worship of major and minor gods, Buddhist figures, and ancestors, with a little mysticism and magic sprinkled in as well.  Late in the afternoon of our first day, a local wearing a tie-dye sarong and sporting long hair and a curly gray beard opened our gate and waved hello as he walked to the back of the pool with a wooden box, and I assumed he was the pool man stopping by to check the chemical level in the water.  

The cleaning lady pulled up a few minutes later with her shy and smiling little boy whom she plopped down on the gazebo bed to sit while she set about mopping the floors.  Soon, the smell of incense got stronger, and the pool guy emerged from the bushes, waved goodbye, and placed a small basket made from palm leaves full of marigold and orchid blossoms and smoldering incense on the street in front of our gate.  When the cleaning lady finished, she took her little boy into the bushes behind the pool and emerged with a similar basket, which she also placed in front of our driveway.  Turns out the “pool man”  is a local shaman who I guess the owner keeps on the payroll to bless the house, and the cleaning lady offers a blessing of her own every time she visits. My discovery of a large shrine in the bushes behind the pool gives evidence for these rituals—so we’ve got that going for us.

After the earthquake, it was business as usual, and we had leftover pizza for breakfast, and while the crew made themselves ready for a day at the beach, I took one of the scooters into the village to fill it up with gas.  All through southeast Asia, I’ve noticed small markets with shelves by the street that stocked repurposed, liter-sized Coke bottles full of liquid the color of urine, which I assumed to be some sort of homebrewed tea for sale.  On our way to Angkor in Cambodia, I observed our tuk tuk driver pull over beside one of these markets where the proprietor poured the contents of one of these bottles into the gas tank, and I realized this was the southeast Asian version of the service station where one can fill up the tank and also purchase a live chicken instead of a Snickers bar and a 44 ounce Polar Pop.  I motored up to the local filling station and topped off the tank with a couple liters, which only set me back a dollar or so, and spent the next half hour taking my family to Balangan Beach a few kilometers to the west of our village.

Deena negotiated with a local hustler and scored an umbrella and chairs where we set up camp for the next few hours.  The beach was beautiful with golden sand and ice blue surf, and the high cliff borders on each side created a secluded cove where surfers flocked to catch waves.  The day was cloudy, but we enjoyed our time on the seashore with coconuts washing up in the surf along with an old dugout canoe.  We stayed past lunch, and I shuttled everyone back home where we spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool.  We walked to a restaurant in the village for a delicious dinner and then returned home—where the highlight of the evening was when a dark gray mouse crawled out from the cushion on the floor sofa right beside Deveny’s leg—needless to say, mayhem ensued.  Life in the tropics will still take some assimilation, but we have several more days to figure it out, and we’re looking forward to exploring more of the island.