Indonesia: Gilli Trawangan (Day 8 Cont'd, Monday, 080309)

The "BlueWater Express" slows to a halt at Lebongan, and I perch precariously, just the slightest bit o' ass keeping me aboard, over the edge of the boat to dip my toes in the green-blue.

Then we're off and away again, and I'm almost disappointed when I realize we're nearing Trawangan; there's something in me that craves the ineffable combination of speed and ocean water, and rarely the twain shall meet in my day-job as an urban, high school English teacher.

I'm neatly consoled by the sight of boats bobbing in the even clearer, even more vivid water surrounding Gilli Trawangan.



(We disembark directly into the water, sloshing ashore with our bags.)

And even more so after Eric deposits me, bags and all, at a restaurant--mere yards from the water--called the "Snapper Bungalow," where I order a guava juice and a basket of fries that turn out to be The World's Best Post-Speedboat-Ride Fries.



I polish off the fries and slouch insouciantly in the plastic chair, as befits a jet-setting world traveler, trying to disguise the fact that I'm about to break open with excitement. I can feel the sand sifting through my toes, and I keep scanning the road for Eric's return.

When he does, we haul our bags onto a cidomo, small, horse-drawn buggies--there are no motorized vehicles on the Gillis--and I experience a few pangs about the fact that the horse is lifted several inches off the ground by our collective weight, and the driver has to quiet the poor thing by clicking his tongue.



We're lucky Eric has found a room for something like 45 USD a night (split between the two of us). It's a one-room bungalow with a wee porch and an outdoor bathroom (a ticket to Bali? $1,400. Showering under the stars: priceless.). And the inn-keeper's name? Ding Dong. Ding, motherfuckin' Dong.



Jetting back to the beach (again, yards away), we lay out in the sun, dozing, catatonic, which, for me, is interrupted by a few twinges of "sand is whiter on the other side" because we can see the next island over, Gilli Meno, which looks largely empty and thus, fuck-my-life, more beguiling to my Blue Lagoon-y (minus the teen sex), Swiss Family Robinson (minus the family), Robinson Crusoe (minus the cannibals and breadfruit) sensibilities.

Whatevers. We return to the room and Eric naps while I putter, then we walk out, stopping for ice-cream (I have a swirled popsicle of indeterminate flavor/origin, wrapper characterized by the lion from Madagascar--is that copyright infringement?), so that Eric can join his diving group, and I can explore and search for the internets and water.

I'm traipsing in the dimming, crepuscular light. A local kicks a soccer ball to me, I return it (awkwardly), he kicks it back again, and I acquit myself more decently the second time 'round. Another local accosts me and holds onto my hand long after I've released his (I think they are more touchy here), trying to convince me to sit with him, to smoke weed with him, telling me that I look Indonesian. I decline for the moment and promise to return.

I don't.

Cuz I'm a cunt.

But I shoulda.

Questions of Tourist Photography, or I'm Another One of the Camera-Wielding Lampreys

At kecak, I'm taken aback by the cataract of camera flashes that goes off every few seconds.

It's very Kanye...

But what do I know?

The accumulation of each whirring flare make me a little Tourettesy, and I quickly fall prey to a paroxysm of navel-gazing, douchebaggery, preoccupied by the fact that I have to admit that I'm one of these camera-wielding lampreys, an amateur photographer, a professional soul-sucker...

I console myself with the fact that my camera is too antiquated to be as parasitic as the more high-powered, professionally-lensed among us, but it's no excuse. I'm just as consumed by the diabolical desire to document, document, document every meal and every "experience."

What compels so many of us to do this? The relative monotony of our "real" lives?

Quoting Bishop, "Is it lack of imagination that makes us come / to imagined places, not just stay at home?" And then, do we have to take a picture of it for it to be "real"?

Are we so determined by image-making that we have to exist in some media--any media--to have existed? What does it mean that I distrust memory so much that I refuse to let more than 24 hours slip by without jotting down my itinerary for each day?

It's all very tedious, and my neuroticism and morbidity immediately lead me to the point of no return, wherein I brood about who will even care to scroll through these hundreds of digital photos...once I'm dead.

I shake myself out of it. I'm getting better at that now.

Indonesia: Ubud to Gilli Trawangan (Day 8, Monday, 080309)

We're just sitting down to breakfast on our balcony when the manager comes up to inform us that our transport to Benoa's International Marina, where we need to catch a speedboat to the Gillis, has already arrived.

We were told that the shuttle would arrive at 8:30, but it's 8:05 and Eric hasn't finished packing. He shits a mini-brick and returns to packing while I scarf breakfast down, a panini sort of thing, but essentially just bread cookie-cuttered around an egg. It's dee-ricious, and I wrap Eric's in a napkin for the road. Later, I find out this Indonesian Hot Pocket sort of thang is called a "jaffle."



When we finally climb into the van, we apologize to the driver for making him wait, telling him that we'd expected him at 8:30, and he responds by shrugging it off, explaining that in Bali, 8:30 could also mean 9, 10, or 11 o'clock. He ain't trippin'.

I make my grand reveal--showing Eric the jaffle I saved from certain death, and he's cranky and not very interested until I insist he take at least a bite. He's not quite as impressed by it as I am, so I polish off the rest.

When we arrive at the dock, the guards out front check the van for bombs with a mirror welded to a metal pole, passing the mirror slowly under the...er...undercarriage. The trip'll be two and a half hours, with a pit stop at Lebongan before we arrive on Gilli Trawangan (gilli simply means island, so what many tourists say--"Gilli Islands"--is a redundancy).

It is, apparently, lunch-ish time when we arrive in Benoa, so we hunker down in the marina restaurant, and since we're both a little mie gorenged out, Eric orders a tuna sandwich, and I have a BLT (which comes without mayo, and is thus a crime against humanity).

When we're told to board, Eric cautions me to sit in the rear of the boat so as to avoid seasickness, and though I'm usually ill-inclined to prudence, I defer to his greater experience. This trip, I've learned a number of things, that 1) drinking excessively disagrees with me, 2) I am capable of burning, especially under the equatorial sun, and 3) Eric knows a shit-ton about travel.

I don't get sea-sick. There's no way of telling whether it's because I simply don't, or because of the motion-sickness tablet that Eric made me take that morning, or because I'm sitting in the stern.

Shortly after we leave port, one of the crewmen crawls over the engines and performs a subdued ritual, dropping flowers off the stern and murmuring a prayer. I don't think it was for our benefit, but rather, a real custom. (INSOFAR AS RITUALS ARE REAL AS OPPOSED TO SIMPLY EXISTING WITHIN THE REALM OF A LACANIAN SYMBOLIC--AAHH!)



I am, as usual, seduced by the boat-ride, every moment before this, the two and a half day flight to get to Bali, the miserable night spent listening to elevator music while trying to sleep on the carpeted floor of Singapore's Changi Airport, the room-spinning hangover of my first evening here, all of it transubstantiated into a vacation Eucharist.

[grin]

Melodramatic, much?

Whatever; I lerve it.

Sitting astride the port, one leg curled around the railing, one hand gripping the pole, I trail my left foot in the spray, periodically getting walloped with a particular strong surge. The crew grins at me as they monkey up and down from the top deck, stepping over me each time, and comment on the fact that I'm enjoying the ride. I alternate between this exhilaration (a name of a brand at Target, btw), and falling back into the cushions, letting my hand drift in the wind, letting it float in the updraft, reveling in what feels like exquisite happiness.

Arriving at Lebongan:

Indonesia: Ubud (Day 7 Super-cont'd, Sunday, 080209)

Eric wants dessert, so we make a stop at ART "kafe/bar" for his tiramisu and my fudgy (fudgey?) brownie a la mode and a giant young coconut. The thing is actually quite monstrous, but not what I imagined.

I know young coconut is a clear liquid, but I'd imagined it to taste a little more...coconuty. Not the electrolyte-rich, WWII emergency...plasma...substitute (???), hot, hipster accoutrement spotlighted in yesterday's NYTimes. (I quite agree with the description of Young Coco, in the aforementioned article, as "slightly musty." Not in a bad way, though. As paradoxical as that may sound.)

(Wouldn't Young Coco be a great stage name? Almost as great as my burlesque name, the one that I shall not share for fear someone will take it. In case I ever want to be a burlesque dancer.)

Eric and I have misapprehended the distance to our evening show, so we power-walk through the streets, on an island where "Bali time" is fluid and subject to great individual interpretation. We must look a sight, bookin' it to get to our kecak show at Pura Batu Karu.

The program describes kecak like so:

...a special dance that's accompanied by human music voice, called the gamelan suara. In this dance, the story develops through a choir of more then [sic] one hundred men. These men shit in a concentric circle. (Italics obviously mine.)

Imagining this, E and I collapse into a gale of giggles, one appropriate to our senses of humor as 13 year old boys.

I've seen kecak in three other contexts: teasers for Baraka, in Tarsem Singh's lovely little film The Fall, and on the Travel Channel.

It is, as it's always described, haunting. The polyrhythmic, belted out yelping, the near darkness except for the fiery structure at the center of the (shitting) circle. [grin]

The men are all wearing black and white checked sarongs, and they sway back and forth, the sound of their hands slapping skin when they alternate arm positions making a collective thwack.

The dance, despite depicting part of the Ramayana, however, was only created during the 1930s, by a German by the name of Spies, in order to appeal to tourists.

[head desk]

Somehow, this makes the blessing at the beginning of the performance a little less legitimate-seeming, the tourists' hushed respectfulness now reeking of naivete, but...

Oh, well.

It was still nice.

We make a number of detours into photo shops to find me another memory card, as mine only holds a gig, while Eric's holds 12. My antediluvian, and apparently obsolete, camera won't hold a 12, 8, or even 4 gig memory card, and I have to settle for a piddling 2 gigs.

Indonesia: Ubud (Day 7 Cont'd, Sunday, 080209)

More shopping (unsuccessful on my part), and then a two hour spa treatment--massage, body rub, flower bath (sounds more exotic than it actually was)--for less than 30 bucks at the Wibawa Spa.

The whole shebang is named the "Royal Lulur" and described as a 17th century Javanese royal treatment. Right.

What it is though is a massage with essential oils, then an exfoliating rub of turmeric and jasmine, finished with a coating of--brrr--yogurt. It is just straight up dairy product, and for the first time in several hours, the sharp smell of yogurt whets my appetite. This is significant because I am never a) not hungry or b) not ready to eat, hungry or no, and my lack of appetite has been bothering me inordinately.

It's okay. Nothing to write home about--in a blog, yes--but not home. Much of the essential pleasure of a massage having been dimmed by the single gamelan song played ad nauseum. Every time the closing bars would sound, my body'd clench in trepidation of the song beginning again.

Finally, I'm told to wash off in an outdoor tub filled with multi-colored petals of bougainvillea--fuschia and coral and white. I soak for a few nervous minutes, as I'm unsure as to whether I was supposed to take off the paper-cloth panties I'd been told to don earlier, and I'd gotten in the tub with 'em on. And it's funny sitting in a bath with wet paper cupping your ass-cheeks. And 'cause it's quickly getting chilly. And I need to pee.

I feel considerably less guilty about my patronage of this particular hospitality industry outstation, probably because I'm cranky from my newfound distaste for food, and the endless trudging nature that is our stay in Ubud. Or maybe I'm just succumbing to my role as an inevitable financial lord and master...my measly American salary having risen in worth far above its original state in its country of provenance.

Alas, the yogurt-lust is but a red herring. My next meal is an attempt at a gastronomic security blanket: I order a margherita pizza and a soda water. But the pizza turns out to be an insane concoction of garlic, onion, and shallot on a tortilla crust, and despite my reputation as Garbage Disposal of no small renown, I'm only able to choke down a slice or two before pushing the plate over to Eric. FAIL.



This concludes tonight's installment of the third, but no less consequential, element of this blog's eponymous triumvirate: bitching.

Indonesia: Ubud (Day 7, Sunday, 080209)

I wake up at 10:30, for once getting a decent night's sleep. Breakfast of crepes with palm sugar syrup and a fruit salad of the usual papaya, banana, etc.



Today's Eric's big shopping day, and he's hustling in and out of this curio shop and that while I make only the feeblest attempts to buy a sarong, and identify something for Andy, a co-worker who's insisted that I bring him back something from Indonesia. (I am unsuccessful.)

The problem is twofold: 1) something reasonably priced and 2) something that is "authentically" Balinese.

But how does an ignorant Westerner recognize authenticity? And then I'm bothered by what I recognize as my drive to purchase something to, in however small a sense, encapsulate, reify a culture.

I'm overwhelmed, and the Indonesian spices perfuming the air are making my stomach lurch. We stop by a cafe, and I have a glass of iced tea. By the time we're done, Eric's starving again, so we head towards Ibu Oka.

Despite all my assertions that I'm to subsist on suckling pig while in Ubud, my body's not having it. Was it the Balinese chunchullo? I've no idea. I can only jealously watch Eric savor his lunch. In a reversal of R. Kelly's "Bump n Grind," my mind is telling me "yes," but my body, my body is telling me "no."

The only thing I relish right now are the mangosteens, an aubergine-colored, rindy fruit that you have to gouge open with your fingernails to expose the white, fibrous edible inside. It's a persimmony in texture, pulpy with that snappy kernel. It tastes of...tangerine, but better. A tang. (Interestingly enough, the tangerine's name doesn't come from "tang," but rather "Tangier.")



(There's an apocryphal story of how Queen Victoria promised riches to whomever could bring her an edible mangosteen. (Whoever?))

I suggest going to the market located kitty-corner to Ibu Oka, and we pause at the entrance where a woman is selling fruit. She offers us a taste of salak, a fruit recognizable by it's snake-skin exterior.



It's dry, with a texture like an old potato, and, at least for the piece we try, tasteless. We take a pass on it, and opt to buy a bag of mangosteens that I promptly toss in my bag.

Eric and I lose each other in the market. I spend a few moments caressing a sarong or two, but am unable to make a decision, and soon, I'm just trying to navigate the maze of tourists, vendors, and tchotchkes without knocking anything over or melting into a hysterical heap from confronting, head-on, the paradox of choice. I endeavor to amuse myself, to give Eric, wherever he is, a reasonable amount of time to shop, while simultaneously not offering merchants false hope about my intentions.

When I come to the end of my rope, I make for the entrance and encamp next to a lovely pile of litter. I watch tourists come and go.