The First Farewells (Aug 7)

Today I have experienced the bi-polar duality of life’s emotions, and I have mixed feelings on the results. It started early – well, earlier than it has started since my alarm broke several weeks ago – when my friend knocked on my door around eight. We made plans the night before to go surf together one last time. What he did not know at the time was that this would be my last time on my surfboard as well, as I had plans of giving it to him when he dropped me off back at the hotel later in the day. Already I was excited about the idea of surfing, but anxious about having to catch that one last wave. I had watched with the same mixed emotions as my sister caught her last wave just a week before. The joy in riding the wave and the smile in her face was almost equally the opposite of that when she walked out of the water knowing that was it. I had not helped her at all on her last wave. I told her that she was on her own: from picking the wave to paddling for it, standing up, and riding it. I could not interfere. Surfing is spiritual to me.

My friend and I finally made it to Changgu, a mellow break that we had been talking about going to for weeks, but had never made it. He was not confident in his ability to surf over the rough black rocks that shaped the waves at Changgu. But, to his credit, he knew this was my last chance to surf. We were headed to his village the next morning to spend my last three days there with his family participating in the half-moon ceremony of their village. So we made the forty minute drive north along the coast and found the beach, sandy in itself, but containing large chunks of black rock sticking out at various points.

I could sense his nervousness, even before we began to paddle out, and with a crowd of about twenty five or thirty surfers at each peak, it was not going to be easy catching waves. Still with boldness he paddled, me keeping one eye on approaching waves and the other on him a few feet behind me. At one point he told me that he did not like the idea of going any deeper. We had only surfed the beach breaks of Kuta Beach and Legian, in less than six feet of water and no more than one hundred feet offshore. Now he was in around fifteen or twenty feet of water above the sharp black rocky bottom and nearly a quarter mile offshore. But I convinced him he could do it and, again, to his credit he continued out with me.

When the outside waves continued toppling to the inside, my friend decided he would stay there and play in the breakwater. I asked if it was OK for me to paddle out deeper, and he told me to go. “I will keep an eye on you,” I told him, feeling responsible for any harm that he might face. “Signal to me if you want to go in and we will leave.” As much as I wanted this day to be about me and my last session in Bali, I knew that it was about much more than that. Over the course of the last seven weeks, this man had become my best friend in Bali- a man I refer to as my Balinese brother. We have surfed many times together as I have helped him learn along the way, and this day was not just my last day to catch my waves. It was my last day to surf with my Balinese brother.

But I paddled outside and before the side-shore wind started blowing I had caught a dozen or so waves and had a great time. But I could not see my brother, so I caught a wave all the way to the inside and found him there waiting with a smile on his face. “Nice ride,” he said with a thumbs up. I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to stay for another hour or so. Despite the mushy waves on the inside, he had managed to catch a good wave and I could tell that he was excited. To be honest, I was not the greatest surfer in Bali, but these waves were mellow enough and there were enough people learning to surf at Changgu this morning that I was one of the better surfers on the water. I remembered back to when I caught my first wave that did not close out, in Jacksonville nearly a year earlier, and what it felt like to ride the shoulder of the wave as it peeled toward the shore. I was proud and happy for my brother and this time stayed with him to catch waves on the inside.

After a half an hour or so we decided that the time had come to head back to Kuta. He had to work in a few hours, and I had a series of “lasts” to confront when we returned. There was a last massage, a last poolside sunbathing and reading, a last sunset on the beach, a last dinner with the hotel staff, and all of the “Farewells” that would accompany each “last.” So my brother paddled in, riding a wave to shore, and I sat and waited for my last wave in Bali. I caught what I thought would be the last wave, but it mushed out on me and left me feeling unsatisfied. So I paddled out further, knowing that my brother was on the beach watching, and hoping that a set would move through and that I would not lose my balance and fall, as I had a tendency to do when I got overly excited. Within a few minutes a set moved through, though choppy from the side-shore wind, and I hopped on. A left, as to be expected in Bali, that cleaned up as it moved toward the shore. There was nothing spectacular about it, except that it was my wave. Not only was it my last, but also nobody else had gone for it, leaving me to enjoy the ride without competition. So I dropped down the face and cut back up, then repeated, slowly with my 7’8” “fun gun.” It was not made for ripping. Rather, it was made for waves like these.

When I reached the shore I looked back and smiled. The waves of Bali had been good to me, and even better for me. For all of the stress that surfing relieved back home, my sessions on the water here were all the more cleansing, even if they were less than spectacular for most people who travel half the world to surf. I realized in my time here that surfing was simply the thread that held my entire journey together. It was never the garment itself. There was so much more to my time in Bali than surfing. But whenever I needed an escape, or felt like I needed to clear my head, the water was always waiting for me.

We ate lunch at a roadside vendor and made it back to the hotel after sitting in traffic for about an hour in the midday sun. When we pulled up to the hotel parking lot my brother unstrapped the bungee that held our boards in the surf rack on the side of his motorbike and began to pull my board out. “Here, I need to show you something about your board,” I said as I took a fin key from my board shorts and moved toward the fins. He looked at me strangely as I handed him the key and told him that I was giving him my board. “It is yours to do what you need with. Keep it an learn on it, or if times get tough, sell it and take care of your family.” My brother had been learning on a much shorter, much thinner board and was bouncing all over the place as he attempted to ride waves. My board gave him more stability and he had grown tremendously in our time together when he rode it. I contacted Jim, my shaper, and asked him his thoughts on me giving the board to my friend. “It will earn you big time karma,” he said in email. “I think it is a great idea. You will need a new board anyway to reflect on what you have learned this summer.” He was right about everything but the karma. I could care less. I just wanted my brother to have something that would make his life better, even if only on the water. I knew that he was close to having surfing be for him what it was for me: a way to connect to something way beyond myself, to cleanse me of any thoughts or attitudes that needed to be removed, and to find myself in a small place where I belong despite the madness of such a large world. Perhaps this would get him there.

I headed to the pool to read for a few hours before heading out to the beach for one last beach sunset. Though I still had three days in Bali, I would be in the jungle for each of them. I had to say goodbye to the beach, to the ocean, and more importantly to my friends at Jimmy’s. So I made my way down, stopping for a massage at a place I had found when my sister was visiting, saying farewell to those friends and preparing myself for what I knew would be a difficult departure.

The sunset was again no more spectacular than any other since I had been in Bali. The sun was full and bright about ten minutes before setting, but ducked behind thick clouds in the last moments. But this time it was a metaphor for my journey to Bali. My time was quickly approaching, but there was still something to be done before I had to go. I drank a beer and cheered to my friends working at Jimmy’s. I had countless beers in countless days there, and it was only fitting to share one last one with people who had been so kind to me despite the fact I never spent a tremendous amount of money on them. It was the loyalty I had for them, and they for me, that helped us become friends. I was there every evening I was in Kuta, nearly my entire stay in Bali, and they were always just as kind and welcoming to me as they were on my first day.

After the sun set, I paid my tab for the last time and shook hands with friends I hoped to see again one day. Unlike other friends in Bali, I had no contact information for them. I only knew to go to the beer stand in front of the big sea turtle as soon as I got back in to Bali, whenever that might be. And I hoped that my reunion would happen sooner than later. But in saying farewell to these friends, we had to just leave it as “I will see you when I see you.”

Knowing that it is better to walk away without looking back, I shuffled my feet slowly as I kicked the sand from my sandals as I had done every day before in leaving. And as tempted as I was to turn and go back, there was still one more thing I had to do this night. I had paid the hotel restaurant to prepare a meal for the eighteen staff members who worked so hard to keep the hotel looking amazing. Every staff member knew my name, though I had no idea what most of theirs were, and they always greeted me with a smile and a hello. When I had been gone for a week at a time, such as when I was in the jungle or with my sister, they noticed when I returned and greeted me even more warmly. I felt as though this was my home in Bali. And, although they were also getting paid for their hospitality, I knew that they treated me this way because that is who they were. Each of them worked so hard to make the hotel so incredibly charming, I felt that the least that I could do would be to treat them to a nice Balinese dinner and let them feel as special as they had made me feel.

So I arrived at the restaurant at seven and helped set up the tables and bring out the food. I was told time and again to sit down and to serve myself. But that is not who I am. Reluctantly, but with smiles the entire time, the staff let me help setup but did require me to fill my plate first.

Over the next hour or so all of the staff and any family members they had brought shared a traditional Balinese meal that was like none that I had eaten yet. There was so much food that we all ate until we could eat no more, made doggy bags for those staff who had to eat in shifts because they were on the clock, and still had enough to share with a kind Italian couple who wanted to pay for their portions but were kindly denied by me and the staff. There was very little conversation I could have with the staff over the dinner, as my Indonesian was nonexistent and their English was limited to “hello” and “thank you very much.” However, as I have learned in all of my travels, two things that surpass any form of verbal communication are smiles and laughter. And so we communicated without words throughout the meal by sharing smiles and laughter and enjoying my last night with them.

I had the task of packing for home when dinner was over, so I put it off as long as I could. But when conversation with the Italian couple ended and I was tired of reading my book, I had to do the inevitable. Morning checkout would come early, and I wanted to be prepared to leave for Singaraja without dragging my brother behind on time. So I packed my bags, slowly, feeling more and more anxious with every item I packed. Without a board to go in my surfboard bag, I instead stuffed gifts and linens I had bought for friends and family. Everything about packing made me feel sad, and while I knew this was a natural feeling for the moment, it was not right.

So I finished quickly and made my way to my neighborhood restaurant. My brother was working, as were a handful of other people that had become my friends over the last seven weeks. I sat down and talked with them as a local played the same cover songs as he had the previous night, and the night before that, and so forth for the previous seven weeks I had been there. But all of the other faces in the restaurant were new. No one else would know what I knew about the repetition. But no one else would know what I knew of Anggi or Ketut or Mira or any of the other staff there that I had come to know well. No one else would know how hard they have worked for what little pay to make sure that everyone enjoyed their holiday escape from their own personal realities. At least not unless someone decided to do as I had, and to learn of these people and their lives, and to make their lives as much a part of the staff’s lives as anyone else. Some of the best people that the world will never know work in that restaurant. And as I walked out of the front door for the last time, I hoped that the world would take the time to get to know them, for the world’s sake. I had become a better person because of the people there, particularly my brother, and I only imagined what the world could be if more people knew of my friends there.

Now I sit in my hotel, looking down over the garden I had almost come to take for granted in my weeks here, and I am not so sad anymore. I realize the finality of this trip means that I can share with others what I have learned, can make the changes in my life that I know I must make, and can use these changes to help me live up to the promises I have made to my friends to come back one day to see them again. I hope that day is sooner than later and, though I am still on their island at the moment, I am happy to think that I am many things in life, but a liar is not one that I am known to be. And so as the new day officially begins and the sound of the bars in the neighborhood drifts above the talking among the night staff down below me, I take this time to fall asleep and renew myself, knowing that when I wake I again have the chance to live, and now…

Kuta, a Different Kind of Jungle (Aug 4)

Kuta is what happens when First World bangs Third World and an illegitimate child is born out of wedlock. It is where First World forces itself upon Third World, satisfying its own lusts and leaving Third World to either attempt to hold onto First World, or to face falling further behind in its absence.

You could find everything you needed or wanted in Kuta. From “Western” cuisine and “western” toilets to Coca Cola, Kit-Kats, Mentos, Cheetos, Pringles, and a wide variety of other products and services, all in English and all so much cheaper that you could find back home, wherever that may be.

Kuta is where the Balinese people moved from their tiny hillside villages just to find work, when prices on everything rose too high for family trades and farming to be sustainable. It is also where the Javanese migrated for work, where the cost of living was higher, but so were the wages.

Kuta is where the night clubs and discotheques catered to white tourists from Australia, Europe, and America and thrived night after night, seven days a week. There were no weeknights in Kuta, or weekends for that matter. Every day was just the same as the last. And there was always a reason to go out.

In Kuta the natural beauty of the ocean and its dark, sandy beaches met the discarded waste of First World living. The ocean was more filled filth floating between the toes of tourists than it was filled of marine life. The sand was just the burial ground for trash that was picked through and sorted by nomadic dogs and starving locals.

In Kuta, marijuana was illegal and “magic mushrooms” were the norm among tourists. It was the only place in the world that I have traveled where beer was cheaper at the beachside vendors hawking drinks from their red plastic coolers than it was at the convenience store.

Kuta was also where names were less important that personalities, and people could be whoever they wanted to be- rich or poor, famous or aloof, pimp or prostitute. It was a place of heroes, princes, and queens. Where events of the past could be retold time and time again and would turn into stories of great success, always believable because there was no one there to refute your claims. Friends came a dime a dozen, as long as there was a dime left to put into the machine.

Dreams were realized in Kuta, where years of saving, planning, and looking at pictures became real. And dreams were often shattered by lofty expectations, a bad sunburn, or an argument with a lover. Dreams were fantastic in Kuta, the result of an excess of new experiences, faces, and language combined with the escaping of one’s worries and anxieties of home that came along beneath one’s mind, despite the effort to leave it behind.

In Kuta one could get by on their feet, a motorbike, car, or even horse-drawn carriage. The smell of gasoline and engine exhaust was as strong as the smell of the ocean in the sea breeze. It was where sidewalks were as useful to motorbikes as to walking pedestrians, where roads were congested with shuttle buses, taxis, and tour buses, and meters were all but useless as one could easily sit in traffic thirty minutes to go only eight blocks.

It was a city without skyscrapers to block the sunshine, where people walked around in board shorts and bathing suits instead of business suits and dresses. It was as laid back as you could want it to be, but never more intense than the occasional rain that cleansed the city streets and kept travelers inside their hotels for no longer than thirty minutes at a time. “Ambition” was just another four-letter word forgotten in never being spoken, and “time” was just another forgotten idea lost between the sunsets.

But for nearly two months Kuta was my home and I was mysteriously drawn to its oddities and amazements, and had great sadness in the thought of leaving. It was, as an Australian described it on our return from the jungle, “a different kind of jungle.” And in all of my time here, I have never once regretted not leaving it for a more subtle, quiet place. I was enticed by her awkwardness, and enchanted by all that she offered. The thought of leaving put me into a withdrawal similar to one attempting to escape the addiction of alcohol, nicotine, or heroine.
There was no substitute for Kuta, and no weaning off of her. One could not just have a little without returning shortly thereafter to experience everything.

I loved Kuta for its craziness, knowing that whatever chaos could possible occur within its streets was nothing compared to that back home. It put things in perspective for me: what it means to want and to have, to love and to desire, to breathe involuntarily and to live. Each opposite was only amplified in its contrast here. Good was great. Bad was unheard of. And somewhere in the middle one could live the rest of their life here.

That was me, fifty two days later, somewhere between fantastic expectations of everything great and beautiful in life and contentment in the thought of never leaving. Sickness had its time, as did loneliness. But both healed quickly in the warm sand and in the cool sea.

I saw myself here indefinitely – work or no work, money or no money – living twice the age I would be had I returned to the toxins of home. And those thoughts of never going home made the days more enjoyable, but also made them pass more quickly. Until there was only two weeks… one week… five days…

And so with great sadness I have resigned to return to my home, wondering if the enchantment of Kuta has permanently engraved itself into my existence and if I will be constantly reminded in my struggles back home of a beautiful island half the world away. Or will the unconscious dreams of my reality replace those vivid Bali dreams, and leave me wondering if this whole experience was just a dream in the first place… born from a desire to escape a life felt lived in cages and concrete, and desperate for all of the freedoms that Kuta had to offer.

Is this my drug, Kuta? And will you stay within my system long enough for my return to this dream of dark sandy beaches, colorful sunsets, powerful crashing waves, and busy streets – your reality?

Death at Uluwatu (or, The Rock at the End of the Island)

The beat still blared from Sky Garden, and the streets were still filled that night with drunken men and women looking for their escape. But for me it was silent, as the morning began with the loss of a comrade, though unknown to me before, and I could not help but ponder in silence the finality of his death. We had rented a driver and raced out to the eastern side of the island at six in the morning to try and catch a sunrise session near Nusa Dua before the wind picked up and closed out the waves. But even in our dawn arrival, the waves were too blown out to even attempt to paddle out. So I stood at the waters edge and measured the size of the waves against myself, sure that, had I the chance, I could handle them. They were breaking to the right after all. I turned as the sun crept above the clouds on the morning horizon and saw my sister squatting nearby in the sand, smoking a cigarette as though she were on the cover of an old black and white film. The morning started well, and quiet, as we each had our own space to stretch our minds and bodies on the beach, contemplating our next move.

To Uluwatu. On a smaller swell like this there was sure to be a crowd. But the waves would be a few feet bigger and, in sets, perhaps overhead and clean. Driving down the road, paved at times, but severely damaged by the rains of summers past, I was anxious to meet the infamous Uluwatu. Since the discovery of the break by surfers in the seventies, Uluwatu has been claiming lives on a regular basis. And surfers continue to make the pilgrimage there, as if called by some mysterious force, to brave the chance that they are the next offering to the ocean. I was among them this day, considering my fate as compared to the rest, and calculating my odds for survival. It was a small swell, and already there were thirty bodies bobbing up and down on their surfboards in the swell. Surely if one must be taken, I might be spared.

Then word got out as I was stretching, before making the journey through the terraced steps of the rugged cliffs, that one man’s life had already been claimed that morning. It was only seven thirty and the news hit me with mixed emotion. I felt relief as though I had been spared, perhaps until a later moment, and yet there was a mystery in this speculation. No body had been seen by anyone cliff side yet, though the locals were crowded around all ledges looking for the corpse that was undoubtedly mangled in the rocks from the surf. A morbid air hung over the cliff, stale and peculiar, and I doubted whether today was the day to surf Uluwatu.

But my friend was there next to me anxious to hit the water, and my sister had come all this way to watch me surf. I could not back out, regardless of the dire consequences. So we stepped down the steep steps toward the cave at the bottom of the cliff. We were the only ones headed down for now. It seems the morose news had either turned others away, or at least suspended them in their quickness to paddle out. We made it to the bottom of the cliff, still alone, and entered the cave one at a time. As I stared at the entrance to the cave, about twenty feet across and full of a rising tide that kept waves smacking angrily into its sides, several men in red and yellow lifeguard suits turned the corner dragging something cumbersome and stepping carefully as they walked. Another man carried two surfboards, and another man helped carry what appeared to be the body of the fallen.

I assumed that the man carrying the two surfboards was a friend of the dead, and I could see vomit still trailing from his beard from where the seriousness of the event must have rattled him at his core. The other bearded man carrying the corpse kept his composure until they reached the coral sand beach, only ten feet from where we stood, and then he ran his hands through his hair and murmured inaudible words over and over again that I interpreted to be words of disbelief or pleading for this just to be a bad dream.

Frightened at the prospect of paddling out, and paying homage to a fallen brother, we each stood still as the scene unfolded. Behind us were the voices of spectators now climbing down the cliff eager to see the sight of the dead body, no doubt so they could be the first to spread the news. In front of us the cave entrance cast an ominous visage. But there was only one thing to do - that which I had come here to accomplish. So I took a deep breath, bent down to strap my leash to my right ankle, and stood up to exhale. I followed my friend to the water’s edge and as a wave crashed down over a shallow rocky ledge, I leapt into the air and landed on my board with enough momentum to get me going toward the mouth of the cave.

It was a quick paddle to the cave’s entrance, but more difficult once I made open water. The ocean seemed greedy, in already having taken one life, but still seeming to want more. I followed my friend through the entrance of the cave and paddled to the right, away from the crests of waves that were breaking at several peaks to the left. I never stopped paddling until I had joined the crowd of surfers sitting in the line up deep into the outer break, and even then I could not stop thinking about the body I had seen.

Speculation said that the man was either pushed or that he tripped over the edge of the cliff and feel to his death. Others say that he jumped willfully to his death. Still further reports claim that he was taken by the ocean as he was trapped on the inside and worn out against the reef and the rocky shoreline. Regardless of how it happened, the finality of the event stuck with me with each stroke I took and each moment in which I sat up on my board and scanned the horizon. Some surfers seemed either unaware of the incident, or unaffected, but to me and my friend, the reality was as clear as the water beneath us.

As I sat patiently waiting for my first wave, I admired the beauty of the cliffs and the small restaurants and shops dug into its side. We were at Uluwatu, the rock on the end of the island, and if one had such imagination they could picture the continent of Antarctica with no obstructions between here and there. The waves were scattered that morning, making it extremely difficult to predict where the next wave would peak, or where it would turn to mush and lure you inside. I still had cringes of fear inside of me as I thought about being tricked inside in the jungle, and the consequences I faced when the sets rolled through. Still I knew that the only way to overcome the sinister atmosphere of the morning was to find my wave and to catch it.

So I did, a moment later, and with the adrenaline of dropping into it went my fears and worries for my life. The ocean was kind to me then, and I was kind in taking it easy on this wave, riding it as long as she would let me, but knowing that at some point the reef was waiting hungrily for me. Before the wave closed out I bailed out through the back of the wave and landed on my chest on the board with enough momentum already to carry me toward the line up again. I had done it. I had defeated my ominous premonitions and faced my fear.

To most out there that morning, and most surfers on Bali that day or any other, Uluwatu is not the most intimidating break. However, only two surfers began their session with the sight of a dead body that day. And for me and my friend, survival was always a priority. But I had survived, and as rain began to fall and calm the restless sea, I found greater peace in sitting undisturbed out on the reef. I could not fathom the pain that the death created for so many people I would never know. But for me it created a sense of survival within myself. I was reminded of my own frailty, my own defeat of self in the surf at the jungle, and I smiled to know that I had been given another chance.

As the morning ended, I caught only a handful of waves, and found myself trapped several times on the inside. But instead of panicking, I thought about what I had already experienced, what I had seen earlier in the morning, and what I knew I had left to do with my life. This day was not my day to go. I still had so many great thoughts about so many great things, so many people to meet and lives to change, and so many more opportunities to learn to live in the moment. If anything, the sight of the dead body reminded me of the sanctity of life, the purity we each have within us, and the perfection to which we should all strive to be in every moment. The ocean cleansed me that morning. Though I had failed at many things in life on many occasions, I was perfect on the water in that moment. The only thing that could destroy me would be myself, and I was confident that I was neither willing nor able to do anything more than to sit and enjoy the view of the rock at the end of the island waiting for my next wave…

Explaining the silence...

The last two weeks have been quite busy, with my sister having arrived on the twenty third and leaving only late last night. I have had more time to talk than I usually do, and far exceeded my one hundred spoken word limit that I had grown rather accustomed to on my own. I also had plenty of time to think, as much of the time together was spent seeing Bali on the back of a motorbike. My greatest thoughts have always been in transit. I wonder, as I reflect on this phenomenon, if it is these thoughts that keep me desiring perpetual motion?

I will reflect more on some of the thoughts I had these last two weeks. But now I want to summarize why I have been so quiet lately, as I spent the time with my sister wandering Bali.

Friday: After keeping myself awake until a half an hour past midnight, I made my way to the main road near my hotel and picked up motorbike transportation to the airport. Not feeling too social, and anticipating my sister’s arrival, I plugged myself into my iPod and cruised to the terminal, then waited an hour or so for my sister to clear customs. “Ca-caw,” I cried when I saw her approaching through the glass doors, and I held up my handmade sign that said the same. In all of our travels together, this simple expression has allowed us to find each other.

We arrived at the hotel around two and, having walked through the crowded streets containing the Kuta clubs, we were both too restless to sleep. So we wandered the streets for a few hours, catching up quickly on recent events and exploring the emptiness in the night that is usually so crowded and chaotic during the day. We ended our wandering around four and managed four hours of sleep before the alarm went off to begin her first day in Bali.

Saturday: My friend Komang joined us at our hotel, bringing his wife, Ayu, and son, Krisna, and we rented a motorbike. Afraid of driving, among several other reasons, I gave the keys to Ayu and she took my sister on the back of her motorbike, while I joined Krisna on the back of Komang’s bike. We cruised out of Kuta and eventually made it to Sanur, to the ocean’s edge, where an island-wide kite competition was taking place. The strong offshore wind kept large and magnificently crafted kites suspended in the air indefinitely as the judges critiqued them according to their standards.

After the morning in Sanur, we traveled to the Bali Zoo just outside of Ubud. It began raining, making the motorbike transit interesting. But we did not care about the rain. It was the experience of spending time with friends, doing things that the average visitor to Bali would not think to do. The five of us wandered the Zoo for a few hours, taking a handful of fruit and vegetables to feed various animals along the way. I paid $3 and was given a metal pole with a piece of raw chicken on the end and reached the chicken through a metal cage to feed a grown male lion. My sister fed the lions a different way, by placing a pig heart on a rope that was pulled out over the lion’s den. We also fed deer, goats, camels, monkeys, various birds, and my favorite, an orangutan named “Jacky.” Part of the experience of feeding Jacky was learning that the Indonesian meaning for “Orangutan” is roughly translated to “Jungle Human.” If you’ve never paid close attention to monkeys, I challenge you to see how eerily similar we are in structure and behavior to these furry little friends.

After leaving the zoo, Komang took us to his apartment, a small room just big enough for a mattress, mini-fridge, and television. With great enthusiasm, the four of us sat on the ground and shared a meal of rice and satay, marinated pork on bamboo skewers, while Krisna danced around the room picking up various toys to keep himself entertained. We talked about the day, and the Indonesian way of life. This was a big deal for me, spending time with my friend in his home, and I was grateful for the opportunity to again see Bali from a different perspective than most.

We returned just in time to catch a sunset at Jimmy’s, my afternoon hangout on Kuta Beach which consisted of a couple coolers of Bintang, the local brew, and two dozen lawn chairs.
Sunday: I dropped my sister off to get pampered at my other friend’s salon, where she had her first Balinese massage, manicure, and pedicure while I wandered off to the beach with a couple other friends. When the pampering was done, my sister joined us at the beach and we rented an umbrella and lived like tourists for a few hours, except for the company of four local girls who were friends of my friend. It was a lazy day that ended rather uneventfully.

Monday: Another lazy day at the beach, though full of rain. Since my sister was going to be surfing off and on all day, and because we were both at the beach on Bali, we did not mind the intervals of rain. So we spent the day surfing, drinking beer at Jimmy’s, wandering the beach for lunch and other snacks, and enjoying life. My sister did very well on her first day learning to surf.

Tuesday: We hired a driver to take us through the Bukit, the southernmost end of the island known for its surf breaks up and down the coast. We first headed to the east side of the island to try and catch a few waves before the wind kicked in. But by the time we got there, just as the sun was rising, it was already too late. Taking our time to eat breakfast, we enjoyed our time there and then headed to Uluwatu, perhaps the most famous break in Bali. I have written another piece to describe the incident that occurred there. See a future blog.

From Uluwatu we headed up to Padang Padang, Bali’s other famous world-class break, which was currently hosting a surf contest. The surf was pretty much flat this day, so the contest had been postponed until another swell moved through. My sister got her first encounter with Balinese monkeys, which were taking it easy on the beach, poking their fingers and laughing at the tourist monkeys also lying on the beach.

From Padang Padang we headed to Dreamland to spend the rest of the afternoon surfing, sunbathing, and relaxing. My hopes were that my sister would be able to surf the sandy break. But again, there were no waves here. So we sat in the sun and relaxed until I could not take it anymore and I decided to paddle out anyway. After two hours of sitting in the sun I caught two small waves that were barely large enough to hold me up, and I called it a day. Exhausted from the day, we made it an early night, bought some drinks and movies and stayed in the hotel.

The next couple days were a blur, and seemed to be on repeat of Monday, with the exception that on the afternoon of one of the days my sister had an encounter with my surfboard that resulted in her having a severe bloody nose. We managed to make it out of the water and to the lifeguard station before she became too dizzy to walk. I threw my board to the ground as soon as we left the water, not caring if someone would take it or not, just worried for my sister. The lifeguards were surprised at how much she was bleeding, and instead of treating us there, walked us to a small hospital a few blocks away. Over the course of the next hour or so, a kind Balinese doctor helped slow the bleeding, cleaned up the mess that had become my sister, and provided us reassurance that she would be OK. Covered in blood myself, I surprisingly had not panicked as I would have had it been my blood. I just knew that I had to take care of my sister, and that nothing else mattered.

In walking back to the beach to grab our things from Jimmy’s I found that my surfboard was untouched where I left it, an amazing thing about Bali that would not exist in most other places in the world. When I returned to the hospital to check on my sister and to pay our bill, the doctor kept telling me that the money did not matter. “We first take care of her health, then we talk money.” Another profound revelation about the way of life on this beautiful island with its beautiful people. While the country is poor and most people live in poverty, they have more character in them than most of the people I have met back home. And he was right, with time my sister was feeling well enough to leave, and after running to an ATM for cash, money was never an issue.

We took it easy the rest of that day and into the next, when we had another trip planned with Komang and his family. We were going to his village, about a half an hour away from a town called Singaraja on the northern coast. This would require another motorbike rental, a four hour trek across the mountainous center of the island, and a bumpy ride through countryside back roads. We ran later than we wanted, but eventually made it to Komang’s childhood home, which his parents had abandoned in search for more stable work. Farming a small plot of land in the hillside was not enough to keep them alive in their village.

We woke early the next morning, after sharing another meal and a liter of arak on the floor of the main room, had a breakfast of fried bananas and rice cakes, and headed forty five minutes to Lovina, where we caught a traditional boat ride out to sea to chase after dolphins in the bay. To my surprise, there was probably around fifty boats full of tourists doing the same thing. Since we left Kuta earlier the previous day, I had not seen white people. Where we were, deep into a jungle village, there was no telling when the last white people had visited. But in Lovina, the people vastly outnumbered the dolphins and, after a beautiful sunrise and salty air in our lungs, we headed back to Komang’s village.

We walked the narrow streets a few hundred yards to Ayu’s parents’ house, abandoned in similar fashion when her parents moved to Ubud in search of work. There, looking over the sloping hills full of tropical vegetation and farmlands, one of the neighbors climbed a coconut tree and cut three coconuts down for us to share. As a trade, he cut three branches from the tree to take back to his home to make rope from the leaves. Money had very little use this far deep into Bali.

We drank the coconut milk and scraped its flesh from the inside before getting on the motorbike again to head back toward Kuta. We made several stops at waterfalls along the way, trekking a half an hour through the jungle and rice fields to find them, and one stop at a lake in the middle of the mountainous center of the island. Taking lunch there, a bowl of noodles, lumps of meat, vegetables, and soy sauce, we gained enough energy to survive the cold of the higher elevation and made our way back toward Ubud to visit the Monkey Forest. I had been there before, on my first trip with Komang, but I wanted my sister to have the opportunity to meet the monkeys that had changed my opinion on how much I liked them. I think after a half an hour or so of being chased, climbed, and screamed at by the monkeys, my sister also lost her interest in monkeys. Still, it was a nice place to spend some time in conversation and to take a break from all of the riding.

With one last stop at the famous terraced rice fields of Ubud, we caught another sunset on the back of a motorbike cruising through the rice fields and coconut palm countryside. In darkness we crept through Denpasar and eventually back to Kuta. Exhausted, we made an early night of it, knowing that the next morning would be the last for my sister.

We shopped the next morning, buying the things that could not be captured in memory, and making gifts for our friends. In the short time that my sister had been in Bali, she had been immersed in its culture more than most will in several months of living there. My friends had become her friends, and all of us together had become family. It was difficult for both of us to cope with her leaving, but as “they” say, all good things must come to an end.

Not wanting to leave the island with a bad taste in her mouth about surfing, the last thing we did with the remaining daylight was to get back in the water. My sister wanted to catch her last wave and overcome the fear that had most naturally resulted from the accident a few days earlier. I was proud of her for her desire to get back in the water, and though I cringed as she paddled after every wave, she finally caught the wave that would make her trip worth every minute. The sun was just barely hanging above the ocean, its reflection on the ocean bleeding into the colors of the sky, and she had done it. She had caught her last wave, and a tingle raced through my body as I was so proud of her for doing so, and I was starting to think about the fact that my last wave would only be nine days later.

I dropped my sister off at the airport around midnight, after a few last drinks with friends at the restaurant I frequented, and watched through the glass as she passed security and received her boarding pass. She came back to me to give me the thumbs up that everything was all right, and we communicated stupidly through the glass, making sure that the last picture each of us had of each other was a smile. Then the moment passed, we both turned and walked away, and I did not look back. I have learned in traveling to never look back in parting. All it does is to prolong the inevitable separation and make it that much more difficult. So I found transportation back to Kuta, again on the back of a motorbike, and a day that had begun with such great company ended alone as I walked the dark alleyways back to my hotel. All that was once crowded and full in my room felt empty. I spread my things back over the second twin bed, preferring to look at them than at thoughts of my sister no longer with me.

The next morning I woke up alone and struggled to get used to the fact that I was again on my own. I found breakfast at a local restaurant and tried to plan my day. Unsure of what to do, and forgetting the routine that I had before my sister arrived, I did the only thing I knew to do. I walked to the beach and put my toes in the sand and let the water rush up over my ankles. A few hours later I found myself paddling out over the reef just minutes before sunset. Again the colors of the sky blended with those of the ocean and I did not care how long it had been since I caught my last wave. I was where I needed to be – where I was supposed to be. And again, I breathed, and I realized where I was and that I was alive…