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Back from Bali |
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Sunday, July 18, 2004 DB has decided he doesn’t like Bali very much. Too many rip-offs, too many people hassling him once he sets foot outside the hotel. In Cambodia, I was the one who lost patience with the persistence of the hawkers; here, it is the normally relaxed and easy going Dave. With the added stress of long-distance work, he finds it all “too much in your face”. One pleasant interlude put the smile back on his face last night: an outdoor dinner with Gary and Sue (Liz’s in-laws) here on a 10-day R&R from Adelaide. Gary had brought in a couple of bottles of very good red wine which went well at Ma Joly, a French restaurant on the beachfront at Kuta. They had horror tales of passing through Immigration and Customs here – it took them two hours to get through Immigration, and a spot of judicious money-changing-hands for the wine to be allowed through Customs. Another guest had told of a three-hour Immigration saga. (By contrast, we breezed through Immigration and Customs in 20 minutes). By the way, last night’s dinner bill came to nearly one million!!….. (rupiahs -less than $A40 a head). *** It doesn’t pay to have an accident here. We saw the aftermath of one road incident, probably involving a couple of motor bikes, on our way to dinner last night. One injured child was being taken to hospital on the back on a motor bike, held in the arms of the pillion passenger – another was being lifted energetically into the back of a ute. Obviously, ambulances are a rarity. *** Today, we are hiring a car and driver for a day-long tour of eastern Bali. Not sure where he’ll take us – it’ll be an adventure finding out. And then this evening, a sunset dinner cruise somewhere. Should be good. Monday, July 19 Bali is only a little as I expected. My experience of tropical resort islands is limited to Fiji, the Barrier reef and Malaysia’s Langkawi – so I expected something along those lines. This was a fair way off the mark. Yes, Bali has beaches, palm trees and resorts, but also crowded scruffy little towns and villages, plus an extensive degree of cultivation: mainly rice (below), but plenty of other crops as well.
Away from the coast, medium-sized mountains provide a pleasant change of scenery, plus some cool relief, with lakes and temples scattered around.
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According to out taxi driver yesterday, Bali is still a long way from recovering from the Sari Club bomb blast, and the number of closed business premises seems to bear him out, although there still seems to be plenty of foreigners around, on both sides of the tourist peninsula.
The nightclub fronted a pokey little street, just about impassable to Sunday afternoon traffic – it would have been an impossible, horrific nightmare there on the dreadful night. A waiter on our dinner cruise last night on the Bali Hai told us he was at home the night of the blast, and that the thump shook the windows of his house. Only thing is, his home is 30 kilometres away from Kuta…. Wednesday, July 21 Back in KL. Another DVD-buying expedition, the last before I’m out of here… One of the ones I picked up was Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11:; DB and I settled down to watch it last night on my computer. It wasn’t quite what I expected, even though I have seen most of Moore’s earlier work, both television and documentaries. Since it won the top movie prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I was a little disappointed with its production qualities, and found it was somewhat disjointed – and it was a struggle to find any real relevance in a couple of sequences. Perhaps a better description of the film would be a “commentary”. As a documentary, it is preaching to the converted, and although I count myself one of the converted, particularly on the issue of George Bush, the legitimacy of his election, and the war in Iraq, I think its hectoring tone lessens the impact Fahrenheit 9/11 should have. Nonetheless, it does deal with several disturbing issues, particularly the less-than-honourable motivation for the Iraq war, the shady business dealings going on in the months leading up to the invasion and during the war itself, plus the manipulation of public opinion that accompanied it. *** Dave’s replacement has arrived from the US, so DB shouldn’t be long in following me home. In a funny sort of way, we’ll both miss KL; certainly we are regarding the weather reports we are getting from Sydney with some consternation. Bleak, cold days will replace our daily warmth, not a pleasant prospect, since we are now basking in the low to medium 30s. Still on the agenda here: shopping for things priced at bargain basement levels; deciding which stuff to take home, what to pass on to those staying here, and what to throw away. In retrospect, last weekend’s break at Bali probably wasn’t a good move for Dave – three days simply wasn’t long enough for him to de-stress (not that he made a serious effort – contending with the unreliable internet connections each day so he could still work on wasn’t conducive to a relaxing time). He was pleased to arrive back in KL, saying it felt like coming home! I think he is happiest when he is working, although he would deny that. (The dodgy internet connection led me into emailing last week’s dairy entries multiple times to family members, which would have puzzled everyone). Thursday, July 22 I’m now in wind-down mode…. This time next week, I’ll be on a plane back to Oz. Today’s chore, if I can get the energy, is to complete selecting which digital photos I want printed before we leave. The cost of printing pics here is less than one third the Oz price, so the savings become significant when the selection is running well into the hundreds. I’ll need more than a few photo albums to put them into. *** This afternoon, another first. KL has scores of businesses offering “reflexology”. I was always a little uncertain about what this involved, but since most of the premises displayed highly-coloured diagrams of feet at the entrance, it was a fair guess that it’s some sort of foot massage. So, purely on impulse and with my feet toughened up by nearly a year of traipsing around the capital, I found myself entering one of these shopfronts this afternoon.
It’s not a relaxing foot massage – therapeutic (verging onto the pain threshold) would be a better description. The little Chinese gentleman who ran the business has more strength in his little finger than I have in my whole body. For half an hour, every muscle and tendon below my knees was given a thorough workout– all for the princely sum of about $A9. I should have investigated reflexology sooner. *** Today, an intriguing and controversial decision in a court case here in KL over the rights of Malay Muslims to renounce Islam… The Federal Court avoided an actual declaration on this, confining itself to dealing with an appeal against a three-year jail term for a group of Malays from Kelantan, who declared in 1998 that they were no longer Muslims. Two years later, they were instructed to attend, but didn’t, repentance classes for apostates. It was this disobedience that led to the jail terms. The Federal Court said in effect that they were still Muslims at the time of the office since the Syariah (religious) court hadn’t ruled at that stage on the legality of the group’s original declarations. The court therefore today dismissed the appeal and the penalty stood. One of the grounds of the appeal (but not ruled on) was that religious freedom is supposed to be guaranteed in the Malaysian constitution, but some are saying that all this means is that freedom to practice Islam is all that is guaranteed to Malays. Of course, none of this applies to the other racial groups here, Malaysians of Chinese and Indian ancestry. They can go to heaven (or hell) in their own way. *** Tonight, an outing to see a play at a theatre at Bangsar. Now, I’m not normally a culture vulture, but Denise Bruce has some charity tickets, and since she couldn’t persuade her husband to go with her, I was the next target. Ah, the things we do for friends! Friday, July 23 Last night’s theatre was a joy! But I can understand Rob Bruce’s reluctance. The play was Menopause: the Musical – not a topic that most Aussie men would be comfortable with. But it was hilarious. A few of the male members of the audience obviously didn’t get some of the jokes their womenfolk were crying tears of laughter over. Before the show, Denise and I ate at a Bangsar Chinese restaurant. I liked it, primarily because they cooked in a way similar to my favourite Asian restaurant in Newcastle. But there were some items on the menu that won’t make it back home: e.g., frog meat…..
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On our way back from our drive to the mountains of central Bali, we
detoured to Kuta’s Legian district to see for ourselves the
scene of the Sari Club tragedy. There’s nothing left to see there –
just
a cleared block (left) fronting a road chockers with other
tourist
stalls and shops. Building work is going on across the
road, the site of Paddy’s Bar which was also destroyed by the blast.