Back to Bali

Journey to the roof of the word

Day seven

I wake abruptly from a stress dream – me meeting my ex at a Pilates class and I’m running late…

I roll over and check the time. 3:20 am. Two hours until my alarm is due to go off. I’m hot and I get up to switch on the air-conditioning, deciding I can put up with its loud hum for a few hours. In any case, I immediately decide I’m going to stay in this tropical cottage for another day. I have a heap of university marking to get through, and here is comfortable and peaceful, I may as well make the most of it.

So, instead of heading off across Lombok at 6 am, I have another rest day, luxuriating in the simple cottage in its tropical garden with ginger plants in full flower, coconut palms and banana trees. After a walk through the village, along dusty tracks, picking my way through rubbish to the beach, I spend the morning working my way through my first batch of marking – the American students who have been in Christchurch for their semester abroad experience. Their personal essays make me laugh, but they also make me realise that when we travel we’re always trying to balance that simultaneous desire for the unknown with the fear of the unknown. How much control and safety do we need, against how much uncertainty can we tolerate?

While I’m making my tenth cup of tea of the morning in the tiny shared kitchen, which is really just a covered bar leaner with a kettle, a hob and a sink, I meet a young Brazilian couple, Camilla and Fernando, who are travelling around Asia for five months. Both are toned and tanned as though they’ve spent the last five years in the gym or on the beach, like some kind of surf gods. Both have long blonde hair, though Fernando’s is piled on top of his head in dreadlocks. Next to them, I feel old and frumpily British. I make another cup of tea.

‘I hated Bali,’ Camilla confides, as though she’s not allowed to admit it. ‘I don’t see what there is to like about it. It’s just noisy and busy. But here? Here is beautiful.’

‘There’s lots of traffic,’ I agree. But I was only there for a few days before coming to Lombok. Surely there are peaceful parts to Bali too. I hope so, I’m heading back there tomorrow.

‘When did you first arrive?’ Fernando asks, as he stirs two sugars into his black coffee, somehow managing to flex his arm muscle as he does it.

‘Nearly a week ago,’ I say, lifting my teabag out of my cup, and tidily putting it in the bin. It’s only been a week.

‘Ah,’ Camilla smiles. ‘The first week is hard. It’s always the hardest. I hated the first week too. I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was here. It gets easier.’

‘I hope so,’ I whisper under my breath, because I’m still unsure why I’m here. I leave the Brazilians making protein fruit smoothies, and planning today’s surfing adventure and return to my pile of marking, in the shade on my little wooden verandah.

Mid-afternoon, the internet falls over, putting an abrupt end to my work. I try switching the router off and back on again, but t makes no difference. I take this as a signal from the universe that it’s time to stop work for the day.

So, I pack my things away, and head down the road towards a smarter hotel closer to the beach. 

I leave the tidy confines of tropical gardens around my accommodation, and walk downhill into the village, with its open drains and plastic rubbish littering the side of the road. There’s another holiday villa, right next to the village cow pen. I pass the tiny shop, with a woman sitting brushing dust off the steps while three other women sit in the shade, watching. They all call out ‘hello,’ as I pass. A hen with a flock of chicks runs across the road. A dog, lying in the shade flicks flies away with its tail. The track is rutted and muddy and the air is full of the smell of smoke and wastewater.

Around the next corner, I duck off the dirt road, stepping over the ditch full of rubbish and stale wastewater, and in through the entrance to the hotel garden. Suddenly everything is clean and neat again. It’s a crazy juxtaposition. Village life meets tourist life. Each way of living so close but miles apart. In another ten years, I’m sure this place will be unrecognisable. If development gets its way, it will be full of sarong shops, juice bars and night-clubs, just like Kuta.

At the smart hotel I pay $10 NZ for an hour-long massage. Then I walk through the gardens with its carefully labelled trees to swim in the pool and lounge on the poolside loungers. I’m the only person there. Just me and six members of staff. And while I lounge by the pool, checking my email using their wifi, a poem by Chinese poet Tao Yuanming, arrives in my life, thanks to A poem a day from The Academy of American Poets. Here it is:

 [A long time ago]

A long time ago
I went on a journey,
Right to the corner
Of the Eastern Ocean.
The road there
Was long and winding,
And stormy waves
Barred my path.
What made me
Go this way?
Hunger drove me
Into the World.
I tried hard
To fill my belly:
And even a little
Seemed a lot.
But this was clearly
A bad bargain,
So I went home
And lived in idleness.

I don’t need to spell out why that poem spoke to me, it’s so clearly about journeys and being a different person on the other side. And, honestly, I quite like the idea of going home at some point and living in idleness for a while.

After an afternoon nap, back at my digs, and still without internet, I head out for an evening walk, to the neighbouring beach, hoping to find somewhere that isn’t littered with plastic rubbish.