Indonesia: Bali (Day 4 Super-cont'd, Thursday, 073009)

The 45 minute drive home from Nusa Dua is a clusterfuck. I think an accurate description would be to say that, what is in America a two-lane road, is in Bali ample room for three to four cars, plus a school of scooters careening precariously around whatever remaining space is available. There's no concept of staying in a lane because there frequently aren't any, and when there are...well, there's no concept of staying in them, really.

At one point, a group of scooters streams onto the sidewalk in an attempt to evade traffic, and though I try to deter Eric from doing the same, he follows. It's all well and good until we have to merge back onto the street, at which point, Eric, actually an experienced motorcyclist, thrown off-balance with me on the back, drives us into a tree. I participate in a bit of shrieking, and the Balinese zoom past, laughing raucously at us.

It's here that the mantra of "If I never have to get on another scooter again, it'll be too soon" becomes my custom. The rest of the drive back to our neighborhood is done mostly in silence and prayer. Also, awe and disbelief at the folks on scooters steering with one hand, and holding a surfboard with another.

We dine at Ryoshi's, a restaurant Eric's gone to before, with locals, and we order fantastical amounts of food. Really, I'm the one who pushes us to the extreme, as I tend towards culinary bacchanal. We have:

Greens with roasted, crushed sesame seeds
Egg custard with seafood
3 types of yakitori: mushroom stuffed with shrimp, leeks, chicken skin with salt and pepper
fried silken tofu
daikon (least favorite dish, since it tasted of detergent)
an 18-piece sushi plate

That's nothing, right? Eric has some compunctions, but the evidence of empty plates and bowls at the end of dinner suggest that I was correct in my estimation. And, I'm never not right when it comes to food.

The bill at the end of the night comes to a total of 20 bucks. Bliss.

We head over to "Ku De Ta," pronounced coup d'etat, for sunset. To get in, they search our bags (for bombs), and we pause to rinse our feet before we enter the property proper. It's a beachfront restaurant/club/bar/lounge, very chi-chi, all white lounge chairs and red umbrellas, very L.A., except we're in Bali, and this is not my scene. Especially when mojitos here cost $15 a pop. The funny thing is that in addition to the see and be seen crowd, there are also families here, with children in tow. The contrast between folks insouciantly smoking cigarettes and tow-headed bags of juice and crackers running amuck is a little disconcerting.

While Eric chain-smokes, I nervously nurse a beer and fret about the walk on the beach back to the scooter. We'd had to tiptoe across sewage being released by some other property (and watch in horror as other tourists traipsed obliviously through it in bare feet), a fact to which I would have been oblivious had Eric not proffered it, and which is making my feet itch in psychosomatic response.

We catch the sunset:



And I say hello to Orion, vow to Eric that I want nothing to do with Amsterdam and him simultaneously, and reflect on the principle that I should no longer be putting leaded gas into a marijuana tank.

The return walk has me inadvertently walking into the fishing lines of two night-fisherman, in my attempt to cleanse myself of the sewage. Then, home to Inada Losmen and bed.

Day's tally of mistaken (ethnic-)identity:

Thai: 1
Japanese: 1