Wow. Today was...wow. Incredible. Just about perfect. Spectacular. Well, I am a little saddle sore from sitting on a motorbike 10 hours a day for the last 2 days, but I’m taking care of that now with a couple of glasses of delicious Balinese rice wine as I wait for my 9:00 massage appointment. Ohhhh mannnn.
Last night I slept like an absolute rock. The roosters didn’t even register in my subconscious and I groggily came to around 8:15. It’s actually impossible for me to sleep in past 6 on school days and 9 on non-school days because my body just wakes itself up. One of these days, though, I am going to force myself to sleep until noon or something crazy like that. Mom and dad, all that complaining you did about how Austin and I would sleep in on the weekends has finally registered with my body. Thanks heaps.
So it’s back on the bike and I’m heading towards Tanah Lot on Bali’s southwest coast. About twenty minutes into my trip, though, I was already thinking how nice it would be just to do nothing today. Or I could ride to Kuta and sit on the beach. Or I could go back to bed. Suddenly, I realized I COULD DO WHATEVER I WANTED TO. Fly home to Singapore, even. Which was exactly the problem: when I asked myself what I wanted to do, my brain said, “I don’t know.” I was honestly excited by nothing in particular at that moment and kept thinking I wish someone else would tell me what to do. It was a seriously weird moment. In the end, I stuck with my decision to ride to Tanah Lot and the mountain lakes, but I cut the distance I was going to travel by a third so I could get home earlier in the day and relax. A compromise, if you will.
Riding through Bali’s main city, Denpasar, made me realize just how great it was to ride in the countryside and in the mountains yesterday. The smog and air pollution was just disgusting to breathe and the traffic and police presence made for a nerve-wracking and stressful ride. I felt 110% better as soon as I left the crowded city streets behind and was back out among the rice paddies.
Tanah Lot is a series of small temples built on a lava beach and along the cliffs above. For a few thousand extra rupiah each, you can see the holy snake (and I think touch it, not sure, didn’t pay) and the holy spring (you get splashed by a priest, a flower in your hair, and rice stuck to your forehead). Despite clearly being a racket, it’s quite beautiful, with waves splashing in the background and clear views down the coast.
Leaving Tanah Lot I headed north for what would turn out to be an amazing drive. At some point the people in the villages decided to start flying flags, sporadically at first then increasing in frequency until they were on every single building. Enormous flags, some so big that their weight was too much to be held up even by the brisk wind blowing today, from every country of the world (though there’s a special fascination with Germany and Denmark, apparently). And it just kept going, for dozens of kilometers, until I headed up into the mountains. With the sun shining and the wind blowing, the road became a brilliant, flapping rainbow that gave me the most incredible high. At that moment everything was beautiful, everyone was happy, evil did not exist, and all was right with the world.
It’s not hard to find your way up to the villages in the mountains; there’s really only one road going from place to place, which, while convenient for navigation, is how the cops were able to corner me yesterday. The road I’m on starts to slope gently up and up, with houses and shops starting to give way to rice fields periodically. The temperature starts to drop as I drive through the clouds that create a mist on the mountain and the number of cars on the road dwindles. Speaking of the road, it’s getting rougher and rougher. Giant potholes, sections washed out by recent rains, slippery gravel, hairpin turns, fallen branches...it’s getting interesting. By the time I get up to the top of the first mountain, Gunung Batukaru, the only other cars I see are motorbikes bigger than mine and 4 by 4s being used by tour groups to shuttle around foreigners. The fact that I didn’t fall at all today is feat I’m very proud of.
From the summit the view is simply stunning: rice paddies carving large steps in the hills as far as the eye can see. One community has started several fires in different fields and the smoke that’s carried up the hill by the wind reminds me of summers at the cottage. It is my favourite scent on Earth. Banks of clouds move through quickly, at times blocking out the sun and causing the temperature to drop about ten degrees. The cold is part of the reason I turned around when I did; I was shivering in my t-shirt, cardigan and jeans.
From there all that was left to do was take the winding road down the mountain to the pair of lakes in the valley. The first sits next to the mid-size city of Candi Kuning, which was also supposed to have a lovely temple, but it was just one of a half dozen that I tried to find over the 2 days I was riding yet couldn’t seem to locate. When I rode by the first lake, Danau Bratan, on my way down the hill the sun was shining and it was an idyllic scene of boaters, fishermen, and even a guy hanging from a parachute and being pulled by a boat. After spending about thirty minutes sitting on the skeletal dock at the second lake, eating a snack and watching the fishermen out on their platforms, I turned around and headed back to Danau Bratan. This time I couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in front of me; this colossal lake a couple miles wide had been engulfed by large, low-lying, grey clouds, as if someone had drawn a curtain. It was like the gods thought the first scene was too ‘peppy’ and decided to put an end to all that nonsense.
Back on a large road (a Balinese expressway?), I head down the mountain and past dozens of ‘pick your own’ strawberry fields. Quite cute, really. I’m sorry to say, though, that I’m going to make an observation that will support a racial stereotype my friends and I already believe--Indonesians tend to drive like they (and most Singaporeans) walk: all over the place, paying no attention to the people around them, never moving in a straight line, and swerving/changing directions without warning. It sounds terrible and at first we all thought it was just a few people doing it, but over the last 11 months I’ve seen it many, many times each day and we expats have developed very short tempers with Asian pedestrians. Phew, glad to get that out. It’s much easier getting home today, though, because it’s light out and because I know better where I’m going. I return my motorbike early, about 6, because while trying to see one last temple a dozen kilometers outside of Ubud I saw a police roadblock up the street and decided it was a sign to just go home.
After riding for only two days, I’m thinking that I wouldn’t be able to do a substantially longer trip, at least not anytime soon. It’s loud, it’s dirty, I get nervous when I see how badly others drive, I’m not mechanically-savvy enough to fix the damage I do to my bikes, and, like I said before, I’m having some serious physical discomfort issues. The hardest part, though, is that you can’t just watch the scenery, like you can as a passenger, because you have to watch the road. But the road is boring. So you start to think about other things. THIS IS THE TRAP! When you have a chance to think too much, your mind goes places it shouldn’t. Yesterday I created visions of getting a ticket I couldn’t pay and being held under arrest at the airport because I tried to just leave and skip out on it. Today the focus was on how much I miss my family. And how if I got in an accident here no one would know about it because no one knows exactly where I am. A sobering thought as you take another hair-pin turn going down a mountain. But it is true that I love the freedom of having my own transport; there’s nothing better than realizing you’re seeing something or going someplace other tourists will miss completely. And of course the look of shock on people’s faces as a single, white lady goes roaring by on a motorcycle is just priceless.
All right, enough. I'm tipsy enough that I will probably fall asleep during my massage, but considering it's about $5 for an hour, who cares?
So it’s back on the bike and I’m heading towards Tanah Lot on Bali’s southwest coast. About twenty minutes into my trip, though, I was already thinking how nice it would be just to do nothing today. Or I could ride to Kuta and sit on the beach. Or I could go back to bed. Suddenly, I realized I COULD DO WHATEVER I WANTED TO. Fly home to Singapore, even. Which was exactly the problem: when I asked myself what I wanted to do, my brain said, “I don’t know.” I was honestly excited by nothing in particular at that moment and kept thinking I wish someone else would tell me what to do. It was a seriously weird moment. In the end, I stuck with my decision to ride to Tanah Lot and the mountain lakes, but I cut the distance I was going to travel by a third so I could get home earlier in the day and relax. A compromise, if you will.
Tanah Lot is a series of small temples built on a lava beach and along the cliffs above. For a few thousand extra rupiah each, you can see the holy snake (and I think touch it, not sure, didn’t pay) and the holy spring (you get splashed by a priest, a flower in your hair, and rice stuck to your forehead). Despite clearly being a racket, it’s quite beautiful, with waves splashing in the background and clear views down the coast.
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