The beginnings of my Bali holiday went like this: my friend Emily asking if I would like to escape the dreary Hong Kong skies for a few days for blue skies and vistas of endless rice paddies. My own yes, followed by our finding a remarkably affordable air and hotel deal and the accompanying realization that the economic downturn would at least grant me a four day in return for destroying my job ambitions.
Bali is a small island off the coast of Indonesia. Though officially part of the country, it is markedly dissimilar. While most of Indonesia is Muslim, Bali is Hindu. While most of Indonesia is desperately poor; Bali is a tourist hot spot. My little knowledge of Bali previous to my trip was based on hearsay: my sister Sara warning me to be careful since there had been a bombing at a night club on October 12, 2002, which killed 200 people. In one of the strange twists of my Bali visit, I met an American ex-pat who had been living in Bali at the time of the bombing. On hearing the news that night, he rushed to the hospital to help out. From what he witnessed that night, and from his knowledge of an Indonesian culture in which young girls leave home without telling their families in order to earn money, he estimates that the actual number of people killed that night was closer to 400. He said that many of those killed may never have been reported missing, since they were probably girls who had left home and whose families will wait in vain for their return.
This American ex-pat, complete with shaved head and Harley- Davidson air, was one of four Americans that I met at a Bali restaurant known as “Naughty Nuries.” The other three were equally striking. One purported to be a CNN reporter, talking to Wolf Blitzer on his cell phone. Another got up in the middle of eating to hand a bag of pot over to a waiting client, while the third was the owner of “Naughty Nuries.” (The restaurant is named after his wife- no details necessary!) As dining with old men dealing pot is not my usual social fare, I was at first hesitant to converse with them, though they showed no such reticence when seated with five young American girls. The Harley-Davidson man delivered a long monologue denouncing the death penalty; he also offered some insight into Hinduism, though once again the story was gruesome.
His Balinese “grandfather” (a man who spent long hours working in a garden outside his house and thereby became his pseudo family) was killed by two young children driving a scooter bike. While Bali children are not officially supposed to drive a scooter bike until the age of fourteen, we saw children who looked as young as eight driving them, and they were probably the age they appeared. While this accident might elicit outrage at the children’s parents in the United States, in Bali the reaction was very subdued. The Harley Davidson man described how police and witnesses brushed off the old man’s death, and how the children seemed more concerned with their cut knees than with the elderly person they had run down. While he himself was outraged that his “grandfather’s” death went unpunished, it is an example of how Hindu’s belief in fate sometimes plays out in real life. In Hinduism, everything is attributed to fate. In reality, this means that there is little reason to take responsibility for your actions, since all actions can be attributed to fate, meaning you were meant to do them. That is not to say that Balinese people are not welcoming, but just an indication that they are of course not the simple island folk of postcard fantasy.
While Bali’s religious beliefs may be difficult for westerners raised with Christian beliefs, its scenery is most welcoming. With green rice paddies, blue skies and the most multi-colored sunsets imaginable, it is probably one of the most beautiful places on earth. The cuisine was equally enchanting. Fresh fruit juices, fried pig skin, pisang goreng (fried bananas) and Nasi campur (steamed rice with some vegetables and meat) were a few Balinese specialties that I sampled and enjoyed.
