I woke a very flustered Becca the following morning and fetched us our breakfast to be brought to our room. She had just finished her packing when she discovered once again that a significant chunk of money had gone missing from her wallet. We could only really explain this by the fact that we had given the staff our key while at dinner the previous night to fix the entirely non fucntioning bathroom. She was depressed and beside herself and I was a bit peeved. I told the staff we would NOT pay for the room as they had made up for it two fold on whomever had stolen the money. I would have been inclined to pay the room fee with a huff but all they would say was that they thought we were lying about the money having gone missing.... It seems to me at least sympathy and understanding would have resulted in us being willing to pay for the night.
Eventually it came down to 20 minutes of me arguing with a manager who I said could happily call the police and we'd love to speak to them but we were not going to pay for a room we had already paid three times its worth for in stolen rupiah. We agreed to pay for our 'breakfast' of sugar water tea and shaped factory bread and depart to Kuta.
Poor Becca had had quite enough of Bali and Indonesia and missing money wads and upon reaching Kuta she took off to tend to some serious retail therapy. I separated from her realizing I had no real plans to get myself OUT of/ OFF of that damn island so I poked around for a cheap room and handed off my laundry to a woman who ran a shabby but organized small courtyard of rooms off a tiny narrow alley tucked away. Once I found a place to rest my head I took to looking at flights for Sumatra... hoping to stop through YogaJakarta for the night of my birthday and then getting up towards Bukkitingi and the Northern lakes. I couldnt find a flight for under 90 dollars and was completely indecisive about the best course of action .. but it was time to meet Rebecca for a NO utensil meal of fried seafood and decided to leave it chance. Becca and both calmed by an afternoon of forward thinking used our hands and tore apart several poor creatures while the restaurant of orange skinned Brits/ Australians stared on in horror.
We strolled to my hotel room so Becca could repack and I could make a bag to send home the following day via Indonesia boat mail. It was sad watching her reevaluate the extraordinary amout of superflousness she carries around in her backpack that weighs 17 + KG for a final time. It was one of my favorite parts of our travelling together, watching Becca insist she needs to carry surgical equiment as well as TWO, TWO toilettry bags full of bric a brac.. Im not one for packing light but Becca is a pack horse... and has the muscle to sling it all along as she trudges from one country to another.
I walked her as slowly as I could, begrudingly even, to her taxi and slipped a large bag of chocolate candy into her purse..devestated at her leaving..both for the loss of the best travelling companion I could have wanted and for being left behind in god forsaken KUTA beach. I took myself to a mild dinner of water and yogurt, continued a search for a suitable flight..none of which were purchasable by credit card less than 48 hours in advance and decided to stroll the beach. I took a two hour walk in the dark down towards renegade displays of fireworks but was chased back by ominous coulds which began to follow me on the return journey to the hotel. I pulled off the beach and found myself lost somewhere between Kuta and Dispensar (a neighboring hell hole) and eventually, having taken to the roads, found myself a hummus spot to write Amanda a post card. I was immediately forced to chat with an Indonesian man, who was trying very hard to engage me. I ignored his requests to sit at a different table and answered him in the shortest words / sentences possible. Even when he had left well enough alone I felt eyes on me...scarfing down subpar hummus and trying not to spill it on an oversized postcard I kept noticing people staring at me.. thinking well JEEZ I dont look THAT weird do I? It wasn't until I noticed the rawkus chess game going on next to me that I saw what people were really staring at...and was happy to be knocked out of my defensive self absorption and laugh.
Eventually I tried to sneak away from the Indonesian who called after me for at least two blocks.
As a light drizzle began I turned off down an alley way. I pulled up next to a tall swarthy tan skinned man with an extremely large surfboard also looking for the street with all the hotels. I followed him as he asked people directions and eventually approached him to ask what he'd gleaned from some confusing Indonesian 'go this way and then that'. We strolled along together and got to talking, an Argentinain arhcitect here on his - 'cut loose' - trip after nine years of study and working. I was depressed immediately.
He invited me for a drink and I gladly obliged, dodging out of the drizzle that had turned aggressive. He was charting a really strange travel itinerary having been living in Europe for some months then going to South Africa for the games, travelling around the cities there for a bit, and then spot hoping all over Asia. He did Kuala Lumpur for 15 hours, Lombok in Indonesia for a week (to surf), Thailand for an equally strange and specific amount of time.... Its not a really imaginable way to travel ...and it does seem to rob one of the spontanaeity of discovery in foreign lands. However, he insisted as a modern architect there were only a few things he absolutely needed to see in these assigned places. We talked about him travelling America and I tried to advise a plan that would allow for the best 'modern architecture', but I left out St. Louis in lieu of New Orleans...because it just has to be seen to be believed...at least thats how I've always felt about The Big Easy (I also told him to gladly skip over Boston..whats a Boston!..Do Philly instead).
He advised me to skip Chile when doing South America and to head through Brazil Bolivia Argentina and Colombia ...with an option on Ecuador. (Mind you I was later to learn that the Chileans share the same feelings about passing over Argentina...) We had turned into a bar called 'Havana Central' which was covered in photos of Che Guevara, black and whites with huge puffy clouds of cigar smoke clouding a young Fidel. It was inevitable that our conversation turned political and we dove in head first. Ofcourse it doesnt take much knowledge of South American politics to woo me into a state of euphoria, just a little chainsmoking and some flippant remarks as to America's postdated notions about socialism and Im yours. The rain had become a driving force but I didn't notice launching into Diatribes about Miami Cubans and Arizona xenophobes, Texas Death mongers, and bible belt homophobia (although ... as it turns out Argentina aint far behind us on that one).
Some two hours later the spot was closing and my Argentinian was but half way done with his 90th beer. He chugged it, discarded his empty pack of cigarettes, and hollered as we exited out the back door (the front was already gated and locked) "Goodbye MY Frieyends!" He invited me to find a place that was open a bit later so that he could continue through his 95 and 96th beers and I obliged separating from him briefly to drop some parcels off at my room.
When we met back up the rain was still coming although lighter, we committed to a little dampness while we looked (in completely the wrong direction) for bars that had a longer life..The best we could do on the edge of town we had naively trudged down was a Macdonalds filled with drunk teenagers whooping and hollering, upsetting the special security guard assigned to the national treasure that is Mickey D's (would NOT be shocked at all if he was deployed by the US embassy).
Suddenly the tall pirate of a man turned to me with a glint in his eyes and says "I LOVE THE RAIN! DONT YOU LOVE THE RAIN?!" I looked at him with childlike wonder and my creeping adult skepticism "Well yes...but do you really KNOW what rain here in the rainy season is like?" No use, his hand was in mine with the words "Lets go to the beach! I LOVE the rain, dont you LOVE the rain?!" There we were sitting on a tree branch next to the BIGGEST open water source possible in the middle of a typhoon.. and within twenty seconds he was kissing me. And within 4 seconds after that it was a deluge. Whatever hesitation that the rain had suffered in the ten minutes that we'd been bar hunting was over.
It was over, we were soaked ..and it was NOT fun.
Eventually nauseated on the smell of cigarettes and 90+ beers I was compelled to remind him that he had his passport in his non waterproof money belt and we ran for shelter. We found ourselves in a cab stand wondering if it would let up, soaked fully through and through. We began awkward conversation as he felt rejection and I felt bitterness for my sorry state as my clothes clung to me and all my most intimate curves... not so ladylike indeed, eventually deciding to take a cab back to our respective hotels. The Argentinian was on some monologue of self-affirmation by saying that he probably would jsut take this cab straight to the airport for his early morning flight so it was a GOOD thing I had refused his offer to stay the night... and I was plotting ways to make this the most painful cab ride for him I could.
With a glint in MY eye this time... I switched on. The poor Argentinian kept pleading loudly with the cabbie to "My FRieeeyend please to turn down the AC! Please my Friyend" Meanwhile I was making a long list of all the things I wanted him to design for me in my future mansion: "I'll take a human chess set room, can you arrange it so that the floor lights up in winning play configurations? Its my imaginary mansion so I dont fancy it cheating. What about a giant piano that you can dance on to play? I'd really like to combine my interprative dance skills with my musical ear! OH and I need a giant bed jumping room, not a trampoline mind you, a BED jumping room with beds that have Subwolfer speakers in them... this is key..are you writing this down? I think you should be writing this down!"
While the Argentinian, digging for a reason for his rejection, was asking me if I had any roommates ...or housemates.. back in NY ...were they MALE?! I was making baby footprints in the window condensation of our future spawn..asking him what their NAMEs would be.. he uncomfortably muttered 'Alejandro?' and I happily mispelled the words 'Well Come Alehandro'.
Kuta was a lake, we passed drunked hoards of Australian teens kicking water at each other as they waded ankle deep in a drunk teenage wonderland. Traffic lights were mute points and the water was so high that it took our cabbie 40 minutes to pull around one block, hearing the words "My friiyend, the air, can you turn down the air please my friyend" some ten times before dropping us in front of his hotel.
I insisted on wading my way back to my room telling him to please take the cab to the airport, save yourself some time (pride). We hugged goodnight and he made some halfhearted promise to email me on my birthday some two days later... I was extremely grateful that he was lying.
The way back to my room was an obstacle course of skidding through knee deep river trenches that were the streets while passing drunk 20 somethings on MOTORBIKES saying to me "whhhatttaafuuuckissdiss eh?" I called back at them "Your funeral park the bike, drunky and walk for cryin outloud." And with that I felt myself again, prepared for the next leg alone, steady soaked and exhausted I stripped down to nothing wrung out my clothes and fell asleep clad in a towel awaiting my exodus out of the seventh ring of Dante's Inferno.
Next up, The road to Sumatra is paved with inconvenience....
Eventually it came down to 20 minutes of me arguing with a manager who I said could happily call the police and we'd love to speak to them but we were not going to pay for a room we had already paid three times its worth for in stolen rupiah. We agreed to pay for our 'breakfast' of sugar water tea and shaped factory bread and depart to Kuta.
Poor Becca had had quite enough of Bali and Indonesia and missing money wads and upon reaching Kuta she took off to tend to some serious retail therapy. I separated from her realizing I had no real plans to get myself OUT of/ OFF of that damn island so I poked around for a cheap room and handed off my laundry to a woman who ran a shabby but organized small courtyard of rooms off a tiny narrow alley tucked away. Once I found a place to rest my head I took to looking at flights for Sumatra... hoping to stop through YogaJakarta for the night of my birthday and then getting up towards Bukkitingi and the Northern lakes. I couldnt find a flight for under 90 dollars and was completely indecisive about the best course of action .. but it was time to meet Rebecca for a NO utensil meal of fried seafood and decided to leave it chance. Becca and both calmed by an afternoon of forward thinking used our hands and tore apart several poor creatures while the restaurant of orange skinned Brits/ Australians stared on in horror.
We strolled to my hotel room so Becca could repack and I could make a bag to send home the following day via Indonesia boat mail. It was sad watching her reevaluate the extraordinary amout of superflousness she carries around in her backpack that weighs 17 + KG for a final time. It was one of my favorite parts of our travelling together, watching Becca insist she needs to carry surgical equiment as well as TWO, TWO toilettry bags full of bric a brac.. Im not one for packing light but Becca is a pack horse... and has the muscle to sling it all along as she trudges from one country to another.
I walked her as slowly as I could, begrudingly even, to her taxi and slipped a large bag of chocolate candy into her purse..devestated at her leaving..both for the loss of the best travelling companion I could have wanted and for being left behind in god forsaken KUTA beach. I took myself to a mild dinner of water and yogurt, continued a search for a suitable flight..none of which were purchasable by credit card less than 48 hours in advance and decided to stroll the beach. I took a two hour walk in the dark down towards renegade displays of fireworks but was chased back by ominous coulds which began to follow me on the return journey to the hotel. I pulled off the beach and found myself lost somewhere between Kuta and Dispensar (a neighboring hell hole) and eventually, having taken to the roads, found myself a hummus spot to write Amanda a post card. I was immediately forced to chat with an Indonesian man, who was trying very hard to engage me. I ignored his requests to sit at a different table and answered him in the shortest words / sentences possible. Even when he had left well enough alone I felt eyes on me...scarfing down subpar hummus and trying not to spill it on an oversized postcard I kept noticing people staring at me.. thinking well JEEZ I dont look THAT weird do I? It wasn't until I noticed the rawkus chess game going on next to me that I saw what people were really staring at...and was happy to be knocked out of my defensive self absorption and laugh.
Eventually I tried to sneak away from the Indonesian who called after me for at least two blocks.
As a light drizzle began I turned off down an alley way. I pulled up next to a tall swarthy tan skinned man with an extremely large surfboard also looking for the street with all the hotels. I followed him as he asked people directions and eventually approached him to ask what he'd gleaned from some confusing Indonesian 'go this way and then that'. We strolled along together and got to talking, an Argentinain arhcitect here on his - 'cut loose' - trip after nine years of study and working. I was depressed immediately.
He invited me for a drink and I gladly obliged, dodging out of the drizzle that had turned aggressive. He was charting a really strange travel itinerary having been living in Europe for some months then going to South Africa for the games, travelling around the cities there for a bit, and then spot hoping all over Asia. He did Kuala Lumpur for 15 hours, Lombok in Indonesia for a week (to surf), Thailand for an equally strange and specific amount of time.... Its not a really imaginable way to travel ...and it does seem to rob one of the spontanaeity of discovery in foreign lands. However, he insisted as a modern architect there were only a few things he absolutely needed to see in these assigned places. We talked about him travelling America and I tried to advise a plan that would allow for the best 'modern architecture', but I left out St. Louis in lieu of New Orleans...because it just has to be seen to be believed...at least thats how I've always felt about The Big Easy (I also told him to gladly skip over Boston..whats a Boston!..Do Philly instead).
He advised me to skip Chile when doing South America and to head through Brazil Bolivia Argentina and Colombia ...with an option on Ecuador. (Mind you I was later to learn that the Chileans share the same feelings about passing over Argentina...) We had turned into a bar called 'Havana Central' which was covered in photos of Che Guevara, black and whites with huge puffy clouds of cigar smoke clouding a young Fidel. It was inevitable that our conversation turned political and we dove in head first. Ofcourse it doesnt take much knowledge of South American politics to woo me into a state of euphoria, just a little chainsmoking and some flippant remarks as to America's postdated notions about socialism and Im yours. The rain had become a driving force but I didn't notice launching into Diatribes about Miami Cubans and Arizona xenophobes, Texas Death mongers, and bible belt homophobia (although ... as it turns out Argentina aint far behind us on that one).
Some two hours later the spot was closing and my Argentinian was but half way done with his 90th beer. He chugged it, discarded his empty pack of cigarettes, and hollered as we exited out the back door (the front was already gated and locked) "Goodbye MY Frieyends!" He invited me to find a place that was open a bit later so that he could continue through his 95 and 96th beers and I obliged separating from him briefly to drop some parcels off at my room.
When we met back up the rain was still coming although lighter, we committed to a little dampness while we looked (in completely the wrong direction) for bars that had a longer life..The best we could do on the edge of town we had naively trudged down was a Macdonalds filled with drunk teenagers whooping and hollering, upsetting the special security guard assigned to the national treasure that is Mickey D's (would NOT be shocked at all if he was deployed by the US embassy).
Suddenly the tall pirate of a man turned to me with a glint in his eyes and says "I LOVE THE RAIN! DONT YOU LOVE THE RAIN?!" I looked at him with childlike wonder and my creeping adult skepticism "Well yes...but do you really KNOW what rain here in the rainy season is like?" No use, his hand was in mine with the words "Lets go to the beach! I LOVE the rain, dont you LOVE the rain?!" There we were sitting on a tree branch next to the BIGGEST open water source possible in the middle of a typhoon.. and within twenty seconds he was kissing me. And within 4 seconds after that it was a deluge. Whatever hesitation that the rain had suffered in the ten minutes that we'd been bar hunting was over.
It was over, we were soaked ..and it was NOT fun.
Eventually nauseated on the smell of cigarettes and 90+ beers I was compelled to remind him that he had his passport in his non waterproof money belt and we ran for shelter. We found ourselves in a cab stand wondering if it would let up, soaked fully through and through. We began awkward conversation as he felt rejection and I felt bitterness for my sorry state as my clothes clung to me and all my most intimate curves... not so ladylike indeed, eventually deciding to take a cab back to our respective hotels. The Argentinian was on some monologue of self-affirmation by saying that he probably would jsut take this cab straight to the airport for his early morning flight so it was a GOOD thing I had refused his offer to stay the night... and I was plotting ways to make this the most painful cab ride for him I could.
With a glint in MY eye this time... I switched on. The poor Argentinian kept pleading loudly with the cabbie to "My FRieeeyend please to turn down the AC! Please my Friyend" Meanwhile I was making a long list of all the things I wanted him to design for me in my future mansion: "I'll take a human chess set room, can you arrange it so that the floor lights up in winning play configurations? Its my imaginary mansion so I dont fancy it cheating. What about a giant piano that you can dance on to play? I'd really like to combine my interprative dance skills with my musical ear! OH and I need a giant bed jumping room, not a trampoline mind you, a BED jumping room with beds that have Subwolfer speakers in them... this is key..are you writing this down? I think you should be writing this down!"
While the Argentinian, digging for a reason for his rejection, was asking me if I had any roommates ...or housemates.. back in NY ...were they MALE?! I was making baby footprints in the window condensation of our future spawn..asking him what their NAMEs would be.. he uncomfortably muttered 'Alejandro?' and I happily mispelled the words 'Well Come Alehandro'.
Kuta was a lake, we passed drunked hoards of Australian teens kicking water at each other as they waded ankle deep in a drunk teenage wonderland. Traffic lights were mute points and the water was so high that it took our cabbie 40 minutes to pull around one block, hearing the words "My friiyend, the air, can you turn down the air please my friyend" some ten times before dropping us in front of his hotel.
I insisted on wading my way back to my room telling him to please take the cab to the airport, save yourself some time (pride). We hugged goodnight and he made some halfhearted promise to email me on my birthday some two days later... I was extremely grateful that he was lying.
The way back to my room was an obstacle course of skidding through knee deep river trenches that were the streets while passing drunk 20 somethings on MOTORBIKES saying to me "whhhatttaafuuuckissdiss eh?" I called back at them "Your funeral park the bike, drunky and walk for cryin outloud." And with that I felt myself again, prepared for the next leg alone, steady soaked and exhausted I stripped down to nothing wrung out my clothes and fell asleep clad in a towel awaiting my exodus out of the seventh ring of Dante's Inferno.
Next up, The road to Sumatra is paved with inconvenience....
