LIVING ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOURISM IN BALI, INDONESIA: It Was Don DeLillo, Black Coffee, Bintang, and The Grateful Dead
I came in and poured myself a beer. The world outside might have been scary to some—those obsessed with TVs and smartphones, mind you, were some of the dumbest people walking the Earth.
But that didn’t matter.
I flew back to Bali in the middle of July. From Bangkok. In the Don Mueang International Airport, the city’s north, I waited to leave Thailand for the second time in 2023.
First opened in 1914, DMK represents the lazy, lackadaisical side of Bangkok and Thai culture. Suvarnabhumi Airport, otherwise known as BKK, resides in the east. BKK opened in 2006, and who cares?
GOOGLE, HOW BUSY IS THE BKK AIRPORT?
Bryan, I’m so glad you asked! “Suvarnabhumi is the 17th busiest airport in the world, eleventh busiest airport in Asia, and the busiest in the country, having handled 60 million passengers in 2017, and is also a major air cargo hub, with a total of 95 airlines.”
Good.
My girlfriend, beautiful, bright, rosy-cheeked, long black hair wild and dangling in strands down to her enormous buttocks, sat across from me at the Starbucks in the DMK airport. I left her there, as we’d planned to meet again in Bali for our birthdays. (Mine is July 22, hers August 25.)
I threw down a 1,000-baht note. “Okay, babe. Catch ‘ya later.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Aw, honey…”
Landing in Bali might scare the shit out of newcomers. It was the fourth time I’d come to the tiny island floating in a sea of 14,000—I’d first visited Bali in 2019, in January and February. The sun showers surprised me with how fast they came and went and also the reflections of the sky, all blue, and misty water pouring down onto little statues praying in perpetuity. That was grand.
I flew to Bali again in September 2019 with an ex. She carried an offspring that never saw the light of day.
In October 2022, I returned for a third foray, flying first into Jakarta, Indonesia, from Bogota, Colombia, via a short layover off the coast of Japan and a night in a ritzy hotel in downtown Toronto, Canada.
“Sir, we’re going to need a $400 dollar deposit…”
“That’s probably a good idea because I’m going to break everything in that fucking room. No doubt about it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘This is my first time to Canada.’”
In Bali at the end of the year in 2022, a dismal year for the planet engrossed in economic downturns perpetuating worldwide, I welcomed a Vietnamese girl—we were just friends.
After that, I was alone. That was okay. I stayed in Sanur, on the southeast side of Bali—across the island from the touristy southwest coastline. For a few nights, at a small hotel in the back of an empty lot alongside a preschool, all felt quiet and serene. And then a horde of Russian neighbors hijacked my democratic processes. There was nothing to do except find higher ground.
With a pair of binoculars, I stared out of my downtown hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a soft and steady rain pelted lightly against the Twin Towers. “The World Cup,” I said to the window, “is a CIA front to distract the masses from the ongoing looting of their treasuries. Soon, they’ll be debasing currencies, and a kilo of cocaine will shoot up to a quarter of a million dollars. That’s when the real fun begins.”
In Bali, the streets aren’t really paved so much as they’re cradled into cracking under the weight of endlessly passing motorbikes. Hindus and Muslims chant daily into microphones while banging drums like a ten-minute solo behind the riffs of Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia.
I arrived in Bali this time in July.
The traffic felt the same as I sailed out past Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak. Cars throttled their horns. Police rained sounds with sirens flashing. Drunk tourists from Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, England, Russia, and Ukraine all kept drinking as the sun hid in the sky.
Back in Kuala Lumpur, I’d picked up a coterie of books from a massive bookstore in an enormous mall somewhere downtown. One of those books—Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo—plagued me.
This morning on the outskirts of Kedungu Beach, I picked at a few pages while sipping strong black coffee and waiting for an omelet filled with spinach, mushrooms, red tomatoes, and smeared with avocado and pesto.
Upon my arrival, it was dark—that was over 35 days ago. I’d found an outlier on Airbnb, a relatively new housing development off a main road. The bugs included mosquitos, flying spiders, beetles, ants, roaches, and 35 different species of moths. They came out after sundown, with bats swooping in violent arches at food plus infinity over greenish rice fields irrigated by miniature men who felt zero need to stay in touch with the rest of the world.
I knew nothing of Kedungu Beach as I settled into a small house on an even tinier street filled with dogs who barked at their own shadows and puppies who licked and ate shit.
I’d deliberately chosen a place north of Canggu—which is the trendiest, most Instagram-loving spot anywhere. Canggu is filled with rice fields, too, and lots of traffic. A Balinese girl told me they called it “Little Moscow.” She claimed the tourist infestation of Canggu was “sickening.”
It was barricaded with hotels, coffee shops, tattoo parlors, and anything else catering to “digital nomads” and mostly Australians—which, in my estimation, seem to have taken over Bali more than anybody else. But not in a negative sense because now that I’ve visited here four times, I see Australians on Bali as people who know how to relax, let loose, forget the rat race, and ignore the bad in the world by focusing on the polite erudition of some of the friendliest, sweetest, kindest, most beautiful people on Earth. The Balinese and their souls shine through everything, even their big cheekbones and bright red lips. And so what if they don’t use some fragrant Western-style deodorant? They are kind to the core.
And that’s what makes Bali so special. That’s what endears any place to the traveling aardvark, usually from some ill-begotten dominion like Australia, England, or my birthplace—the U.S.A.
People flocking to Bali signify a breaking down of society elsewhere. Last year, G20 nations held their pointless “meetings” (photo-ops) here, and with one of the best chances for peace in my lifetime, they squandered it with mass marketing themselves on the internet.
Channel News Asia (an Asian news channel!) did a story earlier this year about Bali welcoming Russians and Ukrainians. It was meant to be a heartwarming story about the unique aspect of Indonesia in the middle of what used to be a never-ending battle between Democracy (Capitalism) vs. Communism.
As time wore on, more stories appeared of tourists causing trouble, like a German running amok in Ubud (hello, Julia Roberts) by stripping naked and interfering in a night-time public ceremony. (Apparently, the girl, in her mid-20s, kept staying at hotels and couldn’t pay the bill, and when she was refused entry into the ceremony, she simply walked in without any clothes.)
After many instances like that—which Hindus and Muslims frown upon—the local and national governments revoked Visa on Arrival privileges for Russians and Ukrainians. A VOA means a tourist can enter the country, pay a fee ($35), stay in the country for up to 30 days (29 here), and extend their stay for a fee (another $35).
It was good to avoid the crowds.
I’d landed in a tiny village on the outskirts of tourism. Exploring a remote beach called Yeh Gangga, north of Kedungu, on my birthday, everything felt empty. It was hot. I removed my shirt and wrapped it around my neck. Then I rode around some more and got lost on the side streets away from the beach, and I saw Bali in a new light. Not only is Bali remote but it’s extremely impoverished—away from the touristy areas.
In fact, Balinese and Indonesian people flock to the beaches in touristy areas just to sell endless things like sunglasses, beads, bracelets, necklaces, shirts, or anything at all. Hindus flock as well, beating their drums, young kids with their hands out, hoping for some Rupiah.
I worked, wrote, read, drank, and talked to my lovely girlfriend. “Baby,” I told her, “you make life worth living.”
“Aw, honey…”
The moments away from social media float best in my mind’s eye. Like riding a motorbike up and down the hills, hitting 60 or 70 kilometers per hour, stopping at the laundromat, eating at local restaurants, and trading in my endless bottles of Bintang for more beer, nobody judges me. And if they do, it’s in a language I don’t understand.
Driving back to this little village of maybe 10,000, where on Sundays, dogs lie lazily in the sun, panting, as the moon hangs like a white frisbee stuck in space and time—the bright blue sky burns my skin, turning it orange and tan.
The stars at night freckle the canopy of this burning planet filled with endless wonder and spectacle, and the bugs buzz in your ear—just waiting to drink your blood.
8/19/2023
A coconut village in Bali
20 minutes north of touristy Canggu
Currently obsessed with The Grateful Dead
