Bali Wood

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The Taxi driver who drove me to Suvarnabhumi Airport is named Sukhumnipursriniram. I’m mot sure I spelled his name correctly. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to say it correctly either. It’s a long ass name, longer even than the Hawaiian Superman Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Actually Bruddah Iz is not the Hawaiian Superman. He just wrote and sang a song called Maui, Da Hawaiian Supaman. But at least I know how to say Kamakawiwo’ole correctly, with the proper accent and all. A dubya ain’t always pronounced like no dubya in Hawaiian. Sometimes it’s pronounced like vee, as in Ka-ma-ka-vee-vo-o-lei. Bruddah Iz was one huge sonovagun. He must have weighed four hundred and fifty pounds before he died. His wife is or was a tiny little creature about one quarter of his size. And he had a soft and gentle voice for a man of his size too. Just one look at him and you would think that he was one big brute of a Moke, but you’d be mistaken because Bruddah Iz was one of the most pure hearted and incredibly kind human being you will ever meet on the face of this here planet Earth. In the end he died of his own weight. There was just too much mass to support the bones in his body and too much stress put on his cardiopulmonary system. God Bless Bruddah Iz.

My Taxi driver told me to call him “Pat” because his actual Thai name was just too dadgum long and difficult for idiot tourists like me to pronounce. So I called him Pat. I contemplated on how he got the idea for the name but I didn’t actually ask him, fearing the answer would disappoint me. I just didn’t want to hear that he is a big fan of the movie The Karate Kid and that Pat Morita is his favorite actor in the whole wide universe, and that’s why he chose Pat as the western counterpart to his Thai name. That would’ve been incredibly silly and incredibly disappointing to my finicky senses.

Pat went “Ooooooooh.....” as we drove by a company of armed soldiers, army trucks, Humvees, and armored tanks. The Thai Army was marching down one side of Rama I Road armed with Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR), headgears, shields, batons, teargas, nets, grenade launchers, and other weapons of mass destruction. Pat knew what was coming. The military was gonna put a stop to all the Red Shirt nonsense that’s been going on for the past few weeks here in Bangkok. So far they’ve only managed to halt the commencement of an ASEAN gathering in Pattaya, but nothing so destructive that could put the whole country on the brink of disaster. “No good” was the only other thing he said as we slowly passed them by. I didn’t say anything, not because I didn’t care, which I don’t to be quite frank, but because I thought it was just all about nothing but posturing. They were just gonna corral the Red Shirted sonovaguns and prevent them from causing anymore annoyances. No one was gonna get seriously hurt, I thought. I was wrong. They did more than corral them. They beat the living crap out of them. They did all of this to protect the interests of their country. They wanted to reassure the Japanese investors that their country was stable with a strong authority and a well functioning government and they wanted to reassure the tourist industry that their country was not going to hell in a hand basket and ruin the enterprise and spoil all the fun for the bratpacking Vang Vieng tubing Luang Prabang trampling Khao San slumming peripathetics of the world. I misspelled peripatetic on purpose.

The road to Suvarnabhumi Airport is a fairly trivial and straight forward one but you have to snake your way out of the complicated winding streets, highways, and byways of inner city Bangkok. But once you get on the toll road everything is simple and easy although not free because it is after all a twenty mile toll road to the airport. I had thought that I would hate Bangkok before I arrived. Well, now that I’m leaving, I still hate it but not as much as I thought I would. I hate big cities in general and Bangkok is no exception. There’s just way too many people here, way too much traffic, way too much noise, way too much pollution and way too disagreeable for my fragile sensitivities. There are much better places in Thailand to go to. Personally I prefer the small fishing communities down the peninsula where the only fair-rangs you’ll see are the ones married to local Thai women.

Suvarnabhumi International Airport is a nice and splashy new facility which opened sometime in 2006, I think, although I’m not sure because I didn’t care enough to look it up, I just guessed it. It’s a state of the art design commissioned by some architectural firm from the west I’m sure because it doesn’t bear any indigenous eastern imprint in its details and features, at least not in my humble and layman’s opinion anyway although I could be wrong. The airport was relatively efficient. I checked in and got my boarding pass quickly and in less than ten minutes I was sipping orange juice and some type of designer Latte at the VIP lounge.

The Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Denpasar’s Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali was about three hours long. I spent most of those three hours doing what I usually do when I’m bored; I jotted down a bunch of notes and nonsense that you now currently see right in front of you. Yes, all of this creative genius you’re witnessing was borne out of boredom while flying from Bangkok to Bali, transferred from the depths of my imagination to my cerebellum then down to my spinal cord, shoulder, arm, hand, fingers and finally onto a little notebook with a blue ink pen while sitting in the comforts of a wide cushiony First Class seat and drinking champagne at ten o’clock in the morning. A Thai in a business suit shook his head in amusement upon seeing me imbibe this early in the morning.

“Are you a writer?” He asked as he watched me writing furiously in my little notebook.
“No, not really” was my reply. I could’ve lied to him and said “yes” but I didn’t. Lying was not necessary to this guy. There was nothing to gain by lying to him. He wasn’t trying to sell me something I didn’t want. He hesitated for a moment, maybe debating within himself whether he should or shouldn’t, but then asked another question anyway.
“What are you writing about?”
“I’m writing about you.”
He laughed, but the laugh was an uncomfortable one, somewhat more out of embarrassment than amusement. After another moments hesitation he asked another question.
“Ahhh... excuse me, ahhh, pardon me... why are you writing about me?”
I looked at him straight in the eyes and said “Because I got nothing better to write about.”
“But you said you are not a writer!... Are you writing ahhh... what do you call it... a daily journal, ummm... a diary?”
“I don’t do diaries. I don’t write about me. I only write about other people.”
“ahhh... I see.”

I don’t think he did. I kept writing furiously. I wanted to capture every nuance of this boring conversation: his timidity; my obnoxiousness; our dull and meaningless chit chat. This fella, the Thai in a business suit, had a tinge of diffidence in his voice. He always preceded his questions with a slight laugh, as if embarrassed to be so solicitous of other people’s business. He would say something like “Ha ha ha… Ooohhh… Aaahhh… You always write about other people sitting next to you?”
“Yes, all the time, and today is your time.” The tone of my voice was that of a no nonsense hardliner whose authority doesn’t like to be questioned. I did that on purpose to make him uneasy and uncomfortable, which from what I can gather by his body language, intimidated him. “Ha ha ha… Ooooohh… Aaaaahhh… okay.” My senses told me that it was definitely not in the least bit okay with him. My stern demeanor made him hesitate to even get up to go to the bathroom for fear of inconveniencing me. I continued writing. I asked for more champagne. Thai in business suit queerily giggled at my wanton imbibition. He had that high pitched queery giggle too, as if he was pinched in the ass. I was beginning to wonder about him. He may have sensed my wondering because suddenly, out of nowhere, he said
“I’m not gay.”
“I don’t care.”
I said it sternly and strongly without the least bit of irony in my voice. I never even looked at him or glanced in his direction. I did not wanna hear anymore about his sexual preference. But somehow I just knew that he was gonna bare his soul to me.
“My friends think I’m gay.” Oh my god, here we go, I thought.
“My family thinks I’m gay. Everyone thinks I’m gay because I like girl things.”
“I don’t care!” I kept saying. Thai in business suit kept baring his soul. For a guy who says he’s not gay he sure is putting a lot of doubt in other people’s minds about his gayness. His need to tell me that “I like Angelina Jolie” is unnecessary and unwarranted. It doesn’t prove if you’re gay or not. It just means you like big ass lips.
“You must like Mick Jagger as well.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s the lead singer for the Rolling Stones.”
“Ha ha ha… Ooooohhh… Aaaaahhh… I do not like Rolling Stones. I like Celine Dion.”
“Figures.”
“You do not like Celine Dion? Celine Dion is very beautiful. Do you not think Celine Dion is beautiful?”
“She sure is one great looker.”
“But I do not like Britney Spears. She is a slut.”
This was the kind of soul baring he was engaging in. He gave me his opinions of American movie stars, recording artists, celebrities and the like. It bored me beyond belief.
“What do you do?” he asked me.
“I ride planes and write about people sitting next to me in planes.”
“Ha ha ha… Oooooooohhh… Heeee he he he… You get paid a lot of money to do that?”
The “Heeee he he he” laugh was a new one I hadn’t heard before. It sounded even more silly and gayish than his other giggles. I looked at him askance with one eyebrow raised.
“I get paid enough.” I lied. I don’t get paid a dime for writing anything. My profession has got nothing to do with writing, at least not in the sense of the vocation. Thai in business suit told me his name and how to spell it. He thought his profile was gonna appear in some splashy travel magazine like Travel & Leisure or some other ass wipe travel journal like that. Well he’s getting published alright, but not where he thinks he’s getting published, and only as a two dimensional caricature of him. I wasn’t going to write anything specific about him other than his effeminate tendencies and his silly gayish laughter. If he ever saw this he would not be able to prove that this is him I am writing about. Just litigate, baby!

Kuta Beach

The waves were choppy and blown out by the on shore breeze as our plane landed on the airstrip of Ngurah Rai International Airport. Ngurah Rai is closer to Kuta than to Denpasar, the major city and perhaps the only city on the island of Bali, although the International Air Transport Association (IATA) code for it is DPS in deference to the city because Kuta is nothing but a strip of tourist shops, guesthouses, losmen, and other enterprises that cater to the tourists, and thus it does not merit or is deemed worthy of an IATA airport code. On the other hand the international airport located in Burlingame, CA is designated by an IATA airport code of SFO in deference to Frisco not because Burlingame is just an insignificant little strip of malls and coffee shops along El Camino Real but because no one outside of the Bay Area has ever heard of Burlingame. The powers that be at the Frisco Port Authority or whoever the hell it is who decided to put the international airport in Burlingame also decided that is should be called San Francisco International Airport instead of Burlingame International Airport because it would rob Frisco of its prestige as a city of international renown and a major tourist destination.

I have been to Bali before. This is my third time here as a matter of fact. The last time I was here was ten years ago. The first time I was here was in 1997, about twelve years ago. I come to Bali not because I think it’s just about the most gorgeous place on the face of this here planet Earth. No! The only reason I come here is because of the waves. Bali doesn’t necessarily have the best waves in the world as many people would like you to believe but it does have some incredible and an inordinate about of lefts, which is fantastic for a goofy footer like me. You can see the waves roll in and spread out in a v-form when they hit the reefs and break from Seminyak to Ulu Watu as your plane approaches the airstrip of Ngurah Rai.

A lot of things have changed since I was here last. But it’s Bali, with the nice perfect lefts pumping in just like the way I saw them the first time I was here. Bali is not paradise. It never was to begin with. There’s still an element of the ancient Balinese culture amidst the throng of tourist traps everywhere in Kuta, Ubud, Sanur, and the like. I have never been to the remote western parts of Bali but I’m sure that the industry is encroaching on their tranquility as well. And I don’t remember the exchange rate being so ridiculously high. I don’t believe one US dollar bought you 11,000 rupiah back then as it does now although it could’ve been thus because the last time I was here was ten years ago and all the little details from way back then has totally escaped me now. The taxi fare from the airport to my lodge in Kuta cost 55,000 rupiah. That’s five dollars to you and me. In the United States of America five dollars will buy you a foot long Subway Sandwich. Here in Bali it gets you a taxi ride from the airport to Kuta. And just like all the other cities and major tourist stops in Southeast Asia that I’ve been too, Bali is full of touts, hawkers, and scam artists. You can’t escape from them if you’re a tourist. They will find you. They know how to spot you. They’re all lined up in Jalan Legian in Kuta and the narrow alleys of Poppies Gang I & II, waiting to pounce on anyone who looks even remotely touristy. “Hello Sir, massage Sir, Bemo Sir, motorcycle ride Sir…” etc, etc. Young women too in skimpy outfits are all standing out in front of massage parlors trying to entice the worn out travelers for a little massage and maybe more.

My lodge is hidden away from the main drag of Jalan Legian about one hundred yards away. There’s a narrow driveway which leads you to the small complex. It’s an old worn out hotel which has seen better days. I’m sure it was once an elegant place just from the look of its layout and design. The layout is a classic square U-shape. The pink colored stucco building contains three stories of fifty rooms max, I think, although I’m not sure being I didn’t count every one of them. The rooms are all laid out so that each room has a patio overlooking a courtyard although there is no yard down below but a small swimming pool twenty five feet long and fifteen feet wide. Down on the first floor at the center of the building is an open air dining area which faces the small pool out front. There are plants and potteries surrounding the pool area and there are lounge chairs on the small narrow deck by the pool. The receptionist’s desk was also out in the open on the left side of the building. All the corridors and hallways are out in the open to take advantage of the natural flow of air from the sea. It kinda reminded me of The Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu although this place is much smaller. The deluxe rooms are tiny. Some rooms have bathtubs in the bathroom. Others only have showers. It’s nothing extravagant or fancy but it’s a nice, charming, and comfortable place with a very reasonable price at that. It is definitely a place I would stay again the next time I come here.

After I got settled in I went out and bought myself a pack of Bintang Beer at the local convenience store called 24 Hour Minimart. It sure looks a lot like a 7-Eleven with their green, red, and brown stripe logo. There are no 7-Elevens in Bali, only a bunch of Circle Ks. They are in every street corner in Kuta. I don’t find Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, and all the places around the southeastern coast of Bali to be charming. Nor do I find the splashy and gaudy hotels in Sanur to be all that attractive either. They’re of the Sofitel, Le Meridien, and Shangri-La variety, which I find totally obnoxious. I’ve never found Kuta to be charming in the first place, even at first sight, especially at first sight. The only things I found attractive about this place are the waves. I found the Balinese culture to be exotic but I was never charmed by any of the dancing and the rituals. I’m not a ritual guy. I’m a simple guy who likes to drink beer and imbibe in a little nerve relaxing after meal hard liquor. So I drank the local brew and watched CNN, CNBC, BBC, and all the other alphabet soup cable channels broadcast the latest news in the world, including the mayhem in Bangkok.

Later on in the evening I walked around the narrow streets in Kuta to look for something to eat. The touts and scam artists are even more aggressive than I remembered them to be. They’ll walk with you for miles trying to get you to buy something you don’t need. Even if you ignore them they’ll follow you to the edge of the Earth to try to get you to handover some of that rupiah that you’re holding on so tightly for a little knick knack. I stopped by a sidewalk food stall and had me some Nasi Lemak. The food stall didn’t have any beer so the tout who had been following me for three blocks made himself useful by rushing to the nearest convenience store and got me a Bintang Beer. I paid him handsomely for it too. I guess it pays to be persistent. If you follow them long enough the tourists are bound to need something that these touts can easily produce and thus their modus operandi is to shadow and follow and wait for that opportunity when they can screw you and profit grandly from it.

Outer Reefs

The following day I went on a quest for waves. I wasn’t looking for anything gnarly or fast. My shredding days are long gone. I was never a shredder in the first place. I am merely a casual longboarder and I was seeking the pleasures of riding a three to four foot wave on the nose. I had a spot in mind. It’s a shallow reef about a mile from the beach facing directly from the Discovery Shopping Mall in Kuta. I don’t know the name of the spot. I’m sure it has one because every break on the face of this here planet Earth has got to have a name if for no other reason than to establish territorial rights for its locals. “Hey, this is locals only, no Haoles brah.”

There are lots of Haole surfers here in Bali. Most of them are from Australia. I found them in the lineup as I paddled up to the Mall, the name I coined for this particular spot. It’s a lame name for a surf spot but it’s the best I could come up with at the moment. I heard a couple of California accents as well in the lineup. I got to this spot on a long and complicated journey trying to find a board. Once you got the board you want you just can’t paddle up from the beach. You’ll wear yourself out by the time you get to the lineup. By the time you paddled back to the beach you’ll be dead from exhaustion. Instead you have to find a boatman to take you to the lineup. That’s the way it is around here in the outer reefs. It ain’t like Ulu Watu where you just jump off a cliff and paddle to the waves. So I walked along the narrow alley of Poppies Gang I and asked every surf shop where I can find a board to rent and a boatman to take me to the outer reefs. They all said go to the beach. There are plenty of vendors there renting gears and boatmen taxing surfers to the reefs. So I went to the beach and looked for just the right board. The best I could find was an old dinged up longboard covered from tail to nose with old melted wax and grains of sand embedded in it. The original green color has been washed away from overuse. The nose is chipped. The stringer in the middle seems to have a hairline fracture. The logo of the shaper is faded and barely recognizable. The only thing I liked about it was its length of 9’6” and its width of 22.5”. The nose has a little bit of a scoop but not too much so that you can’t ride the nose. The tail is squared off with three fins underneath just like a thruster. It isn’t exactly a classic longboard but it suited me fine.

Next I found a boatman to taxi me to the outer reefs. If you want to surf in Bali forget about the beach breaks. They’re pretty lame. You’ll never get a good ride out of them because they’re closed out most of the time, at least they are from my experiences here. So you have to pay a boatman fifty to sixty thousand rupiah for a ride. It was only eight o’clock in the morning by the time I got to the lineup. Some of the dawn patrollers have been here as early as five in the morning. There were plenty of waves to go around. I was told the night before by one of the Australian guys staying in the same lodge as me that a southwest swell has been pumping up the place for the last three days. I was catching the tail end of the swell but there were still five to six waves on each set. The guys in the short boards usually got the first three waves of the set.

I paddled on the very last wave. The thing about longboards is that they’re easy to paddle. A couple of strokes can get you running at high speed. The wave caught up to me after six or seven strokes. It was just about to pitch up. I pushed off on the board and instinctively brought my feet up on the deck with my right foot leading forward and my left foot back. The wave was moving fast and pitching up, the slope becoming steeper and steeper. Me and my board were speeding faster and faster down the face of the wave. I was crouched low on the board on the drop and made a high speed bottom turn at just the right moment when the wave finally broke. The rails of my board cut the water deep as I made the bottom turn, which fanned out a spray of water to the backside. White foam of matter splashed like waterfalls from behind me while I speeded up to the face of the wave after my bottom turn. I was no longer on a low crouch. I was posing a casual stance on my board and surfing, floating on the wave, and I couldn’t care about anything else at all in the world whatsoever because my mind, my focus, and all my concentration and energy were spent on this one wave. As I came up to the ledge I made a slight adjustment with my goofy foot to steer the board slightly at a narrow angle against the face of the wave. I slid down the face of the wave again and made a small turn to come back up on the wave with the whitewash chasing me from behind. I stayed on the ledge for the remainder of the ride, floating like a bird on the wave, toe tapping back and forth on my board until the wave finally died down at the edge of the reef. I pulled out by making a U-turn to paddled back to the lineup and do the same dadgum thing all over again.

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Photos

The waves of Bali
These are not like the hot waves of Padang Padang or Ulu Watu.

Good Swell
There were six to seven waves in each set

Kuta Beach Break
Don't surf here

Ulu Watu
One Side of Ulu Watu

The Cliff
The other side of the point where surf spot is

Excess
Leads to the palace of enlightment

Stylin' in Ulu Watu
You have to wear the wrap around traditional Balinese clothe to come inside the sacred temple