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.
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| 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 4th 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).
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| 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.
