Can you please play some ABBA?

Growing up in a completely different part of the world I try to see as much of South East Asia as I can while I’m here.  Bali is of course one of the must visit destinations when you live in Singapore. My first trip there was in 2009 with my parents. My mom and step dad arrived in Singapore and we flew out together. This was my first encounter with Indonesia. The visa granted on arrival had two options; one week or 30 days, we were offered the 30 day option despite having tickets that showed we were leaving 7 days later. We started an impossible argument based on what we thought were well presented reasons and after a while the officer scanned the larger in comparison Swede standing at his desk, sighed and relented, granting us the one week visa. I claimed victory which you will shortly see was not long lived. In parallel my parents had been pulled into a separate room since my dad’s passport did not have one completely free page to stick the visa onto. The following accounts are now from my dad… So while they were in the backroom that looked like a 70’s gangster film, fan in the celling, smoking officers, plastic brown leather furniture etc. The Officer wearing all the trappings of being in charge: overweight with a protruding beer belly, lots of brightly coloured medals and a broad brimmed hat informed my dad he could not enter Bali. Instead he had to return to Singapore and get a new passport from the American embassy. My mom who is a tad impatient kicked him on the leg and whispered in a not precisely low voice ‘Just pay him!’ My dad being a bit more subtle went through the necessary albeit painful motions of finding a ‘junior officer’ who could do what the senior officer could not, i.e. accept donations. My parents, being of course very happy and grateful for this service, made a voluntary contribution to the custom officers pension fund.*

Bali Rides

 

Just as we starting sighing with relief that this is finally over we are now told that our newly purchased visas will not cover us and we will be fined some large sum upon exiting and once we have purchased this short term pass an entirely new pass must be bought (Read: New negotiations in the same room my parents are sitting in). Yes, we made another similar contribution to the pension fund in gratitude to the junior officer who sorted out this unfortunate mistake*

Bali is both marvellous and a bit overcrowded, completely jammed with cars, full of t-shirt shops and bursting with tattoo parlours. Trying to escape the crowd is doable if you exit Kuta and make your way up the hills. Here it is rather soothing. We rented some bikes and trekked down from the Batur Krater which is a live volcano and went through a number of native villages. Outside the small villages we saw collections of coconuts hanging from trees tied up with strings. A little puzzled we asked what they were and our guide told us that it was a fertility ritual where the placenta of the newly delivered baby is hung up to dry. Being a true epidemiologist I was happy to estimate a very promising birth rate- far more placentas (coconuts) than adults in the village.

 

Bali has a thriving restaurant and bar culture. We took recommendations from the Luxe guide, (quite a funny well, researched guide book). It even teaches you Bahasa: “Villa saya lebih besar dari punya anda": my villa is bigger than yours! Or offers practical advice (from the Hanoi book): If you don’t want the world to fall out of your bottom stay away from the vegetables. Anyway, we were off to Ku De Ta based on their recommendation, located in Seminyak on the beach, very cool, with all the right people, dimmed lights, hip music etc. My mom a practical 70 year old lady who grew up by the arctic circle, walks over to the DJ if she can please play some ABBA and by the way, ‘Please turn up the light so I can read the menu’. The DJ looked at her a bit bewildered but kindly replied we are not ‘that kind’ of place. The food was fantastic, although I am not completely sure what we ate- probably Lamb, it was a bit dark.

The second trip to Bali was about 6 months ago when my step brother Mark who lives in California came to visit. He took off before me from Singapore to spend a few days in Ubud and arranged for both of us to stay at the Four Seasons in a quaint little villa (at a huge discount).  Mark was already checked in when I arrived and ready for lunch. We had the best vegetarian lunch ever. 

Mark and our vegetarian lunch

He did mention that the villa was great but the sleeping arrangements may need some adjustments. After lunch I understood what exactly he meant. The villa had a double bed with a single blanket. I do like Mark but spooning was certainly not on either of our agendas. We went to the reception and asked if this could be fixed. We did mention that we are brothers. Understandably their confusion results from the fact that Mark is Italian, darker, shorter, heavy beard while I am Swedish, taller, blondish, not able to grow a beard even if the Mullahs insisted. They looked at us with smirks and said ahaa, yes brothers.. I am sure they were thinking Eat, Pray and Love. A few minutes later they reported: -Yes, Mr Mark everything is fixed. Back at the room we now had 1 bed, 2 blankets and a small wall of pillows dividing the bed in half.  Brilliant stuff! The staff presumably still considered us a gay couple but they did politely build us a Berlin wall. Four days in Bali went by quickly, Hobie cat sailing, a great night at the Apache Reggae and meeting  a Russian pianist (you tube) who tried to convince both of us that love in relationships only last 3 years so better to live with a friend and find love on the side. Admittedly she had consumed a fair bit of Saketini’s at this point. I went back to Singapore and Mark continued to Phi Phi Island. 

My most recent experience was a trip to Sanur on the lower east coast of Bali just north of Denpasar to discuss Screening for Cancer in Asia. We were planning to meet Japanese collaborators to set up a joint program to increase breast cancer screening participation in both Japan and Singapore. This time I didn’t argue with the visa officer and avoided meeting the junior immigration officer with the voluntary (read: compulsory) donation to the pension fund. Due to some mix up the planned hotel transport did not show up and since I never actually read any instructions I really did not know the name or address of my hotel. A bit of a problem at 10 pm… nonetheless I jump into a cab a told him to go to Sanur. Which hotel he asked? ‘Sanur’ I said feeling a little less than confident. The following 2 hours the driver took me for a door to door excursion among the largest hotels in the city. I turned out I was staying at the 4^th largest one. It is honestly very difficult to use sign language to describe ‘public health conference’ and get directions to the right hotel. Must work on that. When we finally arrived I gave the cabbie a nice tip! This is the kind of pension fund one should donate monies to. Conference went by quickly, research plans were drawn up leaving time for what I truly enjoy- mountain biking. 

I had through my Singapore biking friends gotten a hold of Ramang who runs Bali-Rides (http://www.bali-rides.com/index.php). Ramang organized an absolutely stunning 40+km ride from the edge of Mt Agung at the Besakih Temple down to the coastline. My rear brakes went out one third into the ride making the downhill bits quite exciting. 

Nose dive into the scenery

The other rider Owen actually managed to catch my nose dive into to the elephant grass (picture falling).

Ramang

Ramang did not even break a sweat and left Owen and I unable to speak after the final uphill. The less travelled roads of Bali are amazing and completely different from the congested areas around Kuta. The remaining ride was uneventful and we finished off at Ramang’s house north of Sanur followed by a quick shower, packing the bike (This was accomplished by reverse engineering- had taken 10 pics when I unpacked it) and a flight back to Singapore. Philip has told me we need to achieve a V0₂ of 40% - which means you need to be in decent shape to suck up oxygen in your blood to enjoy the Long Ride so this is a step in the right direction.

*Disclaimer: all persons, facts and situations are fictional and if they accidentally correspond to real life people or situations it is purely unintentional.