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Published: June 28th 2009
Ahoy Friends!
As many of you know, I am in Indonesia. Most of you who receive this blog update email signed up for it (maybe a long time ago) and others I craftily inserted into the list as I suspected you might be interested. If for whatever reason you would not like to receive this update, please direct your attention to the bottom of the email. There you should be able to discreetly Unsubscribe from the list and I will not be the wiser. BUT, you should read it and leave your delicious comments as it brings me such great joy to know that someone is actually reading my travel-ramblings. So I will get on with it!
Since we last spoke I finished another Nintendo Wii game called Boom Blox: Bash Party. It was great fun to work on and now we are between projects again. That means I have to choose my next place of wandering. Yes I realize that I am a lucky bastard and I better be loving every moment I am out here. I think about this constantly and I am very grateful to everyone who supports this lifestyle from co-workers, family, friends and beyond.
I encourage everyone to find a way to travel and explore your greatest thoughts and desires. The planet is large and diverse. We cannot understand its vastness from our little blip at home. There are many obstacles unique to your life but it is worth the struggle to solve them. Do it!
So why Indonesia? Last year I almost came here because of the crazy videos I saw on the DVD series Planet Earth. I have also had Scuba Diving friends show me amazing photos. The topper was that they have great Kite-Surfing conditions at precisely the time I am able to come here. Plus I love hot weather, beaches and jungles. I have also never been to Asia and thought this area was off the grid enough for me to satisfy my I-dont-wanna-be-a-tourist craving while still having affordable activity infrastructure.
So the first 2 questions people ask me when I mention this travel plan are: 1) How long are you going? 2 months. 2) Who are you going with? No one! Just 3 years ago I would have been pretty sketched out at the prospect of flying to the other side of the planet to a location
that doesn't exactly have a rosey safety record and going all by my lonesome. I also decided against making a day by day plan. I did lots of research about culture, safety, visa, shots, language, stuff to do, transportation, rough transit times among many other things. I then loosely collected my ideas into a possible itinerary knowing that there is a high probability of change. The only thing I know for sure is that I fly into Bali and 2 months later I fly out of Bali. This felt right while planning it and I can confirm that it was the right choice (so far) now a week into my trip. The sense of exploration and freedom is very real and empowering. While it is stupendous fun to travel with friends with a plan, this style brings a whole different set of feelings and rewards.
Blah blah blah. So what has happened so far? I gather all of my precisely chosen travel gear that I will need for 2 months into 1 glorious backpack and jumped on a 1am flight to Denpasar Bali, Indonesia. It was a 14hour flight to Taipei and then 5 more to get into Bali.
The flight was not so bad as I had a quirky retired Filipino couple sitting next to me. We chatted about food, travel, America and being young/old. I love how effortlessly many cultures glide into conversations with total strangers. I suspect these interactions are a large part of why I am addicted to travel. I finally land in Bali and know that I have not yet booked my 1st hotel. I tried but multiple email confusions foiled this plan. My plan to arrive during the day did work though so I had plenty of sunlight to find some place to stay. I have to admit I was a bit nervous to tackle this first challenge. I hailed a cab to take me to the center of the busy Kuta Beach. This is the most popular and bustling part of Bali (Bali is an island by the way, with multiple population centers that are very different from each other). He takes me there and plops me in the middle of absolute chaos. I have never seen so many motorbikes swarming every part of the drivable road (including sidewalks). There is barely any semblance of order at all. They drive against traffic,
pass on the left or right, they pass other people that are passing that are too slow for them, they squeeze into cracks bertween buses and people that do not seem safe. Twelve year old boys are driving their 10 year old sister who is holding a baby all on 1 bike. Other bikes are stacked with 6 feet of food bags and boxes on the verge of lettering over. These "gangs" (a word for tiny road in Bali) are not built for cars. At best 2 pedestrians or 1 motorbike should be moving along but instead there are 20 bikes, 5 cars and 100 pedestrians trying to squeeze past at each corner. The handle bars of these bikes are literally scraping across the walls, people and cars as the zoom along. Despite all of this massive chaos, no one seems to be bothered at all. They are barefoot and smiling the whole way through.
So off white boy Brad goes into this mess. I try to walk like I know where I am going but there are no signs or maps. A few friendly shop owners later and I am directed to where I think I might want
to go. The 1st few decent lodingings are full (it is high season so there are a fair bunch Australian tourists), but I eventually find one. PHew! After 30 hours of travel, I finally have a new room to call home. This was a tremendous relief. Now I can do anything! A short walk and I am on the famous Kuta beach of Bali. It is utterly massive. As far as the eye can see the sand is covered in baking bodies. The pounding surf is cluttered with 100's of surfers. Every other step offers me a chance to rent a surfboard, learn to surf or overhear how wicked the x-beach is. I had heard Indonesia was a surf heaven, and this 1st beach moment seems to prove it.
The next few days I spend wandering the beach and getting used to being in Indonesia. I take a surf lesson and actually catch a few waves. The waves are nice but it sorta feels like LA traffic in the ocean. It is quite hard to position and ride without the constant concern of smashing into somebody. I eat a few nice dinners (steak and wine for $10) including 1
Crazy guy doing capoeira on the beach
I totally want to do this when I get backwith a surprise visit by fire dancers. I wandered into 1 of Bali's more elite resorts to experience this part of Bali. Everyone is dressed quite fabulous munching on colorful appetizers around the decorative fountains. This was in stark contrast to the beggers and trinket sellers gazing on sadly just outside of the resort property. I suppose I looked no different than all of these rich western white people but I definitely felt uncomfortable. I heard once that humans feel good when they know they are better off than someone else. As awful as this sounds, I think that is the sorta the idea of these resorts. Being rich and beautiful in front of poor people. I hope to truly differentiate myself from this group of tourists by trying to understand the culture and people of Indonesia. I am sure I will comment alot more about this later.
I pretty quickly grew tired of Kuta. The constant badgering of souvenir hawkers and guys with mopeds offering "transport" is draining. One slightly interesting thing happened with 1 "tout" (short for person looking to sell you something) when he asked me "Where are you going?" I said I don't know (cause
I didn't). Then he asked "What do you want?" and I said Nothing (which was true). I thought about these essential questions and how they apply to every moment in our lives and I was happy with my answers right now. By the way, I know I can get pretty heady in these blog posts and traveling alone is only amplifying this phenomenon. I am mostly left to my own thoughts for days at a time and what a social version of me might toss aside, I can now dissect and transom into the penultimate question of existence...or something like that.
Eventually I skoot over to the east part of the island into a city called Sanur. It is here they offer some great diving and Kite-Surfing! I did a nice dive on a sunken boat called Liberty Wreck. It was a boat the Navy had parked on the beach 50 years ago when an unexpected earthquake shimmied it below the water. Much to the delight of divers, it is now slathered in lush sealife and coral in shallow high visibility warm water. Sure enough there were massive bulges of color in every direction. One of the highlights was
a huge mass of schooling Jacks. This is when 100's of silver colored fish swim in a circle to feed. It is quite an impressive sight. This time around I brought a underwater still camera with an external light instead of a video camera. It is a much smaller rig and now I can practice the very different art of underwater flash photography.
The last few days I have been taking Kite-Surfing lessons. I always knew it was going to be hard and I was right. It is freakin hard. It is a combination of Para-sailing, surfing, wake-boarding and snowboarding. There are always like 10 essential things to keep track of or something will go wrong. The lines get all tangled. The kite crashes. The wind direction changes. The wind gusts or stops altogether. Turn to hard and the air-inflated kite might pop when it crashed into the water. Don't turn the board in time and I am sent catapaulting 5 meters into the air still being dragged by the swirling kite. Not to mention waves, current, boats, curious tourists and jet skis. FREAKIN HARD! But I have had a few moments of glory that lures me on. The
kite-surfing school and local riders are all very nice and supportive. It seems everyone is from a different country and has devoted their entire life to "Kiting". It is all they can think about...finding the perfect wind on a deserted beach. I will continue to "play" as they say for at least a few more days. They assure me that I am close to getting the 1st real rush of success.
Ok. That was a lot of typing. By the way, the reason for the lack of blog updates is 2fold. 1) I just have not felt compelled to sit in front of a computer. 2) The computers here suck and are PAINFULLLY slow. I had to do some pretty serious jiggering to get these pictures on the computer. I have lots of other cool pictures but it just takes soooooo long to upload. Love you all!
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gregor haupilopogus
non-member comment
hay
Hi Brad! I love your description of Kuta Beach (the bustling part)! I picture a cross between an Indiana Jones movie, and a Jason Bourne movie. Did you happen to see James Bond being chased on a motorbike? Do the 'friendly shop owners' speak english? Does the beach resemble a California beach at all? Or no? I love it when fire dancers show up while I'm eating dinner. WOW.. kite-surfing sounds tremendously hard. I picture how nervous I am going down a steep mountain with a snowboard... not wanting to catch an edge... HOLY CRAP! Those Garden Eels are awesome looking! Nice pictures! How is that Olympus working out? You're not actually using the flash, are you?