Bali, after the fall
"Al Gore"
I arrived in the famed island of Bali for the first time on November 7, 2000. The chance to be half a planet away from my thesis had won out over the chance to watch the election results.
It was after three long flights and a full day wandering the maze of narrow streets of Kuta in search of a recommended guest house, that a sunburned CNN-starved American tourist told me who had won the election.
I reveled in that alternate universe. I got battered in the surf, ate platefuls of $1 mie goreng and said tidak to the constant offers of motos, marijuana and "massages", all safe in the knowledge that U.S. politics, and my thesis, could wait. It was not until finding a copy of the Jakarta Post a few days later that I learned that the US was engaged in an electoral test of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
The remainder of the vacation is a blur. Like many travelers before me, I fell prey to Bali's magical spell, and equally magical bacteria. On the flight home, I vowed to return to the one day, with a completed thesis and better antibiotics.
Four years, three rogue states, two terms and one broadly-defined war later, I finally made it back to Bali. The island once famed, now infamous.
It had been a long four years for Bali and for all of Indonesia. After 9/11, western countries designated Indonesia the "world's largest Muslim country", as if the affectation reflected a dangerous affliction rather than a demographic fact. Tourism was affected even in the literal and metaphorical island of Bali.
The next year, the horrific bombing outside the foreigners-only Sari Club in Kuta destroyed over 200 lives and Bali's reputation as the calm amid the Indonesian storm. Subsequent suicide bombings in Jakarta and the devastating tsunami in distant Aceh cost hundreds of lives and cemented Indonesia's reputation as a disaster zone.
Bali was always the tale of two islands, half Hinduism, half hedonism. it was oases like the countryside around Ubud, a mysterious Shangri-La of roadside temples, of centuries-old rice terraces, or dark green forests. And it was also the hot spots like exhilarating, exhausting Kuta, a non-stop party of wild surf, of all-night clubs, of cheap drink, of even cheaper drugs.
In Balinese Hinduism, the spiritual world, the inner world, is always protected from the chaos in the real world. So, even in Kuta, amidst the clubs, the surf shops and the touts are refuges from the madness. The most inexpensive losmen would have a carefully landscaped garden and a small temple.
That odd balance between ancient calm and youthful exuberance made Bali the world headquarters for the legions of wanderers clutching the Yellow Bible, the Lonely Planet guide to Southeast Asia. There, young travelers began their first overseas experience, a journey that, much like its starting point, would be a bit hedonistic, a bit meditative, and a lot innocent.
I returned to Bali fearing the precarious balance had finally been upset, that the chaos had defeated the peace. Instead, I found the newer Bali quieter and, sadly, more pleasant.
The litany of disasters accelerated Bali's maturation as a tourist destination. There were more upscale shops, restaurants and resorts, many with security. In Kuta, there was even a new western-style shopping mall featuring underground parking and a Starbucks. The streets of Ubud were populated not by dreadlocked backpackers but by expatriates of Shangri-la, Inc., selling free trade coffee, yoga classes and vegan muffins.
Even the notorious touts of Kuta had dropped in number and become far less aggressive. I was still offered drugs on the street, but the salesmen were all terribly discrete, relying on faint whispers or barely decipherable hand gestures.
On the final night of the trip, I walked down Kuta's Jalan Legian to the visit Bali's Ground Zero. The loud, foul Sari Club was gone, replaced by a monument to the 202 lives lost. The young travelers were still there, thinking there but for fortune, rather than where is the line for the bar.
That night, I dreamt of the alternate universe I visited back in 2000. A few votes in Florida may not have changed the fate of Bali or anywhere else touched for terrorism. But it was nice to imagine a world where no bombs had fallen, and where Bali was its old bewildering self.
The next morning, as I crossed Kuta Square, a man not so subtly coughed the word hashish in my direction. It was right there in broad daylight, amidst the shiny new stores and the uniformed policeman. I declined, as I had hundreds of times before. But that one time, I did so with a smile.
A few months later, a suicide bomb exploded in Kuta Square, just feet from the aborted sale. I was eating breakfast back at home in Princeton. I don't know where the salesman was.
News of terrorism or war conjures thoughts about family, about friends that have been lost, about communities that have been broken.
I think of Bali. It is just one of those places. Bali stays with you. Like intestinal parasites. Like an old friend.
I arrived in the famed island of Bali for the first time on November 7, 2000. The chance to be half a planet away from my thesis had won out over the chance to watch the election results.
It was after three long flights and a full day wandering the maze of narrow streets of Kuta in search of a recommended guest house, that a sunburned CNN-starved American tourist told me who had won the election.
I reveled in that alternate universe. I got battered in the surf, ate platefuls of $1 mie goreng and said tidak to the constant offers of motos, marijuana and "massages", all safe in the knowledge that U.S. politics, and my thesis, could wait. It was not until finding a copy of the Jakarta Post a few days later that I learned that the US was engaged in an electoral test of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
The remainder of the vacation is a blur. Like many travelers before me, I fell prey to Bali's magical spell, and equally magical bacteria. On the flight home, I vowed to return to the one day, with a completed thesis and better antibiotics.
Four years, three rogue states, two terms and one broadly-defined war later, I finally made it back to Bali. The island once famed, now infamous.
It had been a long four years for Bali and for all of Indonesia. After 9/11, western countries designated Indonesia the "world's largest Muslim country", as if the affectation reflected a dangerous affliction rather than a demographic fact. Tourism was affected even in the literal and metaphorical island of Bali.
The next year, the horrific bombing outside the foreigners-only Sari Club in Kuta destroyed over 200 lives and Bali's reputation as the calm amid the Indonesian storm. Subsequent suicide bombings in Jakarta and the devastating tsunami in distant Aceh cost hundreds of lives and cemented Indonesia's reputation as a disaster zone.
Bali was always the tale of two islands, half Hinduism, half hedonism. it was oases like the countryside around Ubud, a mysterious Shangri-La of roadside temples, of centuries-old rice terraces, or dark green forests. And it was also the hot spots like exhilarating, exhausting Kuta, a non-stop party of wild surf, of all-night clubs, of cheap drink, of even cheaper drugs.
In Balinese Hinduism, the spiritual world, the inner world, is always protected from the chaos in the real world. So, even in Kuta, amidst the clubs, the surf shops and the touts are refuges from the madness. The most inexpensive losmen would have a carefully landscaped garden and a small temple.
That odd balance between ancient calm and youthful exuberance made Bali the world headquarters for the legions of wanderers clutching the Yellow Bible, the Lonely Planet guide to Southeast Asia. There, young travelers began their first overseas experience, a journey that, much like its starting point, would be a bit hedonistic, a bit meditative, and a lot innocent.
I returned to Bali fearing the precarious balance had finally been upset, that the chaos had defeated the peace. Instead, I found the newer Bali quieter and, sadly, more pleasant.
The litany of disasters accelerated Bali's maturation as a tourist destination. There were more upscale shops, restaurants and resorts, many with security. In Kuta, there was even a new western-style shopping mall featuring underground parking and a Starbucks. The streets of Ubud were populated not by dreadlocked backpackers but by expatriates of Shangri-la, Inc., selling free trade coffee, yoga classes and vegan muffins.
Even the notorious touts of Kuta had dropped in number and become far less aggressive. I was still offered drugs on the street, but the salesmen were all terribly discrete, relying on faint whispers or barely decipherable hand gestures.
On the final night of the trip, I walked down Kuta's Jalan Legian to the visit Bali's Ground Zero. The loud, foul Sari Club was gone, replaced by a monument to the 202 lives lost. The young travelers were still there, thinking there but for fortune, rather than where is the line for the bar.
That night, I dreamt of the alternate universe I visited back in 2000. A few votes in Florida may not have changed the fate of Bali or anywhere else touched for terrorism. But it was nice to imagine a world where no bombs had fallen, and where Bali was its old bewildering self.
The next morning, as I crossed Kuta Square, a man not so subtly coughed the word hashish in my direction. It was right there in broad daylight, amidst the shiny new stores and the uniformed policeman. I declined, as I had hundreds of times before. But that one time, I did so with a smile.
A few months later, a suicide bomb exploded in Kuta Square, just feet from the aborted sale. I was eating breakfast back at home in Princeton. I don't know where the salesman was.
News of terrorism or war conjures thoughts about family, about friends that have been lost, about communities that have been broken.
I think of Bali. It is just one of those places. Bali stays with you. Like intestinal parasites. Like an old friend.
Memorial at the site of the 2002 bombing
Typical site in Bali
Only in Kuta
Balinese play