Saturday was the day I flew from Bangkok to Bali. I'd felt a little ill the night before, all right when I woke up, although I had diarrhea and had to hit the john pretty quickly in the airport. But there was a huge hang-up at the check-in counter, the flight was delayed 2 hours and there was a very long line. I stood there for nearly 40 minutes, and then started feeling very sick. Left my bags sitting in the line and went over to sit down on a luggage platform. I just got on feeling worse and worse, sweating, pulse racing and my vision blacking out, and I really felt like I was about to die, and my luggage was standing alone out in the middle of the floor. I decided I had to get out of the terminal building, at least for some fresh air and maybe for a taxi back to town, so I mustered my strength and hustled myself and my bags out to a bench outside the building. I sat there for a half hour and finally started to feel better, waited until I thought the line at the checkout counter would be down, dragged myself back in via the toilet, and managed to get checked in for the flight. Got some light breakfast and a bit of a nap in the waiting room, and felt half OK by the time I got on the plane.
It was a fairly long flight, stopping at Singapore and Jakarta before it got to Bali at sunset, and I was glad to have a reservation already at the Bali Beach Hotel. Very deluxe. Had dinner and got to bed early.
Ah Bali - woke up to a hot sun and clear blue sky and stepped out onto my balcony and saw the surf on the reef out in the distance, and six or seven catamrans sailing back and forth in the lagoon below the hotel. Had a big breakfast, pork sausages, eggs, fruit, coffee and a roll or two, and then checked out and got a taxi across to Kuta Beach to find a cheap hotel for the balance of my stay.
I was driven over in a big Australian car, a Holden, apparently just about a direct copy of a Chevy Malibu sedan, and found a pretty pleasant and clean hotel for $4 per night, about 5 minutes walk up the road from the beach.
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Unpacked a bit and changed and got right down to the beach. Good clean sand, no tar, and the surf quieter by a fair bit than it was at Goa. Body surfers much in evidence, and the waves come in at that angle to the beach that you need for surfing, so you can stay ahead of the break.
Sunday night I had 2 or 3 beers at the Bamboo Hut, where I first met an American guy I saw again next day at the beach, and have been hanging around with a bit ever since; Bob McGregor, who manages a packing company agency in Kuala Lumpur, and is in Bali for a week on vacation.
Monday morning I took a bemo, a little native bus, into Denpasar to look around a bit and cash a check. Wretched little town, full of garbage, crowded, traffic, ugly and noisy.
Tuesday I spent all day in Kuta, playing in the surf and laying in the sun. Ran into Bob as I was leaving a restaurant after dinner, and we met at the Ramayana performance and had a couple beers afterwards. The Ramayana was very good, held at the same place as the Kechak dance, complete with a gamelan orchestra and lots of good music. A very interesting plot line, which seems to be originally Indian, and is used in a lot of Asian countries.
As of Tuesday I started running again, which I'd been hoping for some while to be able to do on Bali, and as of Wednesday, started running twice a day, up and down the beach.
Tuesday I was on a tour up to the volcano, Mt. Batur, and the lake. Stopped at a lot of shops and "factories" on the way up and down, and I did some price checking. There are very nice things to buy here, textiles and paintings, but I'm getting low on traveller's checks and really have to watch it now. I've bought some shirts, a batik cloth and two nice paintings from men and boys who come by the hotel from some of the shops at Kuta. As far as I can see, I've gotten good prices for what I've bought.
Wednesday morning I took the bemo to Denpasar and then another out to Suna at the Bali Beach Hotel, where they have a Thai Airways office, to make my reservation to fly home. The woman at Amexco in Bangkok had said that best day to fly would be Wednesday, and that seems to be just about how far my money will last and still leave me a few dollars for a hotel in Bangkok and to fool around in Seattle or San Francisco with, so that's what I asked for. The woman seemed pretty un-encouraging, and said that the Wednesday flight to Bangkok was "booked up", but she'd trry. I figured she might be angling for a bribe, which I've heard is a common thing with airlines bookings down here in Indonesia, but when I called back Thursday morning, she said all of my connections except the Manila-San Francisco leg were confirmed.
Wednesday evening Bob and I arranged to meet for dinner after I ran into him at the Pub. We met there later, and he was talking with a Canadian guy who'd been a dealer at an American hotel casino in Botswana and left that to go traveling, which he'd been doing for over a year now. One drink led to another and we never made it to dinner. Bob faded about a half hour before me.
Thursday I had lunch at the Nagasain Hotel,one of the places on the road to the beach, and they offered me one of their rooms for $5 a night, with an American breakfast thrown in. It's a better room, and I figured that somehow, the breakfast would end up being worth more to me than $1, so I decided to change hotels. One of my ideas was that perhaps the kid at the Melasti Inn would lower his price to keep me, but no.
By Friday I'd established a nice little pattern, which I thought could carry me through 'til flight time on Wednesday: hit the beach very early for some exercise and a dip into the ocean, lay in the sun for an hour or two, go back for breakfast at the hotel and then relax and take care of paperwork, check the accounts, write postcards and read, then back out to the beach around 11 o'clock or noon for a real good shot of sun, two or three hours, back to the hotel to re-hydrate, relax for an hour or two, go back to the beach for an afternoon run, back to the hotel for tea and relax until dinner time, dinner and bed.
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Friday morning I took a surfboard out, and got an idea of how difficult that sport is. It's hard enough right off the bat to stay on the board. Then there's getting out through the surf to a spot where you can wait for a wave. I tried at one spot that looked good and had to move farther down the beach to where there were some kiddie-size waves. I did, by accident, get a little bit of a ride from one wave, but what with falling off the board all of the time, I was in no shape to try to stand.
By Saturday I was beginning to notice that my stamina did not seems to be up to 2 meals per day, running twice a day and drinking. I met Bob for dinner, and we went to the legong dance, and I was very nrearly falling asleep. Crawled off to bed pretty early.
Sunday I ran in the morning and had 2 beers in the afternoon to pass the time away, and seemed about to spend the rest of the day in bed. No go.
So, I will have to lighten up a little bit.
Note from 2008There the journal ends. I flew home through Manila, Honolulu, and San Francisco. I remember a layover of several hours in Manila for mechanical problems. Playing poker with American and Anglo oilfield workers in the passenger terminal with gawking Filipinos crowded around the gaggle of loud card-slapping money-exchanging white guys.
I had a fantasy of checking into the Edgewater Inn when I got back to Seattle, which I did, arriving shortly after midnight in the cold and wet. Chatted with the taxi driver on the ride into the city ("hey, I've been out of town for a while, what's new?"), and called my long-missed Seattle buddies Bruce and Doss at a rude early morning hour. I'm home! I'm home! They met me at mid-day at Goldies on 45th. I went up to the bar to order, and was paralyzed with the moment. That first cheeseburger and pitcher of beer, safe at home again in my beloved Seattle. Bruce was kind enough to interpret for me.
Next day I took the commuter plane from Boeing Field out to Hoquiam, and one more taxi out to my parents' house on the beach about 20 miles away. I remember pulling my bags out of the taxi's trunk in the parking lot. It was very bright and cold and empty with breezy salt air and no sounds except the wind. Through the screen door on the office and I found my father and mother both at work with a patient, not expecting me, the first time we'd seen each other in over a year.
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