Sadly, the next morning I woke up in a random grump - possibly a reaction to the sad fact that we're leaving Bali tomorrow afternoon. I keep reminding myself we still have 5 days of stuff in Hong Kong before finally going home, including the Cirque de Soleil, but still, there's a feeling of things closing/winding down.
Or maybe it was just the inevitable contrast with the night before. We went to check out the beach and I was annoyed by the fact of having to pay to sit on some sun loungers, even though that is the way it works, and they were nice and comfy. Then I was annoyed by the waves going up under the sun lounger - I had to move it back, into the sun, away from the shade. Luckily the tide was going out, so this situation didn't last long. The grump wasn't helped by the fact that the Small History of the World (or whatever it is) that I'm reading is aimed at children and written in that 50s? 'writing for children' style that feels very patronising. It's not just that it's aimed at children, it's the writing style - talking to you saying 'Now, you may be asking me, when did this happen....' etc. Interesting stuff, but The Grump was not impressed. It was also not impressed by the many many people who kept coming by trying to sell me things while I attempted to read my patronising book. I retreated into 'pretending to be asleep' until, eventually, they generally got the picture. We had lunch again at the restaurant where Jackie works - and I had another chicken caesar baguette which was, again, delicious. Still grumpy. I had a nice long bath. The Grump is receding. Luckily Zoe is a very patient person. So, when we arrived in Seminyak it was mid-afternoon. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel, and then wandered around a bit. Zoe wanted to do some shopping which took her further afield, so she flagged down a taxi (and I wandered back to the hotel to do some writing). This is when Zoe met Our Taxi Driver. I need to ask him his name again, because my memory is terrible, but I know he said it meant 'Sun'. When Zoe came back from doing her shopping she said that he was a really friendly man, and he is! So when we decided to go to a shisha restaurant place to try a bit, we rang him up (Zoe had his card) to take us there. In the taxi we were chatting away about friends, family, his house/hotel he's building (if anyone wants an idyllic rural hideaway close to Padang Bai and various other places), and things like that. He asked us if we liked karaoke, and we said we didn't really, but somehow that descended into us singing, badly (with completely different music playing in the car) Adele, 'Rolling in the Deep', Ronan Keating (?)'s...was it Words? Baby Can I Hold You Tonight? (Is that the name of a song?) Or something else?...and various other tunes. We got to the place and invited him in and he came along :) Clearly another person, like Jackie, who is more focussed on having a happy life than chasing money (although he is saving hard for his house-hotel). And we chatted about many other things in the restaurant. First, with houses being so cheap here, Zoe and I's madcap scheme to come live here started sounding less madcap - and we shocked him with our talk of house prices and rent in England. We chatted about friendliness/not in different countries. Apparently when you're here in Bali and walking along and all the taxi drivers keep asking you if you want a taxi, well, 'Sun' said, "We know you don't need a taxi, we just...we're just trying to...you know...." Make a connection, chat, be friendly. I told him about my friend Vix from London who came up to Norwich and kept saying things like, "Here they keep offering to help you, and they mean it!" But I had to add that compared to Bali, Norwich was still not great. And he told a story of motorbiking I think it was on his way home, and he saw a tourist stopped under a bridge studying a map. Sun said, "I asked him if he needed help, and he said nothing, and I thought maybe he hadn't heard me, so I asked again. And then he folded up his map and zoomed off, you know, really really fast. And then, later, I caught up and he'd had an accident. I said to him, 'You need to go to hospital', and he said 'I know', and then we called him an ambulance and we all said, 'Don't worry about your motorbike, we will leave it in one of these houses here, it will be safe.' But he didn't say anything else." And. as the night went on, we started talking about film ideas - first Robin and I's war idea (I couldn't remember the ending I'd managed to work out - luckily I've written it down...hopefully legibly), and then Sun suggested I do a film about him, his life, or about all the people a taxi driver comes in contact with (I said a bit like 'Paris Je T'aime', or 'New York I Love You'). Then, because Sun had been talking to us about two Russian friends he had made, who he said were very attractive and only a little younger than us (we said we'd be the judge of that), we thought about 'Taxi Dating.com' - a film about a taxi driver who helps people find love - first he talks to the person looking, finds out what they want, then he trawls the roadways to find them some possibilities. (It should probably be called #taxidating, to fit with these modern times.) Finally, at about midnight, maybe a bit later, our taxi driver took us home. If I hadn't already invalidated my warranty (apparently) by taking Quentin (my new laptop) out to the park to play music at Nicola's birthday bbq, I've definitely invalidated it now.
Basically, this morning Zoe and I got up at about half eight and sadly had breakfast. Then we mournfully waited for a horse-taxi, flagged one down and depressedly (is that a word?) held on tightly as it jolted us to the harbour, to get our Semaya One boat back to Bali. Now, on the way out I was in the front, with the water smacking the boat then splooshing over it. This time I was at the back. I had a roof over my head, as did we all, but the end was completely open, and although I had a top, front and two sides, the right hand side of me got gradually wetter and wetter. I moved my bag as far left as I could, but it still got a bit wet. However, Quentin still works! That's either a) his particular brand of toughness where occasionally bits of him fall off and I have to gaffa tape him back together, but he continues to function, or b) the combined waterproofness of the rucksack I won at one of my works + The Economist and other bits of paper, blocking the water from getting to him. So I got wet, and I'm still rubbing dried salt off the right hand side of me - I'm a human salt-lick! Maybe it's doing a lot of good to half of my skin. The two people sitting right at the back, with only top and front - no back or sides - well, they might as well have swum across. They were German, I think, and took it very good naturedly. The staff apologised and the man said, "Don't worry, we'll dry." I alternated between finding it fun in a roller-coaster kind of way (a bit of a rough crossing - well, rougher than the way out) and, increasingly towards the end, burping quietly to myself and telling myself not to worry, that I didn't feel sick. Mind over matter: it just managed to last the 1hr 45 (ish) it took to get across the water. The Semaya Fast boat people happily changed our shuttle to Kuta to a shuttle to Seminyak (apparently the 'glitzy' part of Bali). We looked in The Book (Lonely Planet), picked a hotel and went to it. That hotel was full, but they happily booked us a taxi, recommended a good place, checked it had space for us, and so now we are here, at the Seminyak Paradiso. It has all the prerequisites: Balinese (I presume) panpipey music playing to me as I sit in the cafe, ornate wooden carved bits, running water, paintings, slightly scary god/idol things. Only downside is the wifi is only available in the cafe/restaurant, not your room, and they seemed to want me to buy a cup of tea to sit here and use it. However I never mind buying tea, plus the man automatically brought me milk. Good work! Or perhaps Top Hole Old Chap, I should say, or something very English like that. Zoe and I have been for a small explore, and found a food place I think called Lucky Bar. The guy serving us was very friendly, and when he asked us our names and I said Jacqui, he was so pleased, because he is Jackie too - he said his friends sometimes call him Jackie Chan. He suggested - and we agreed - that we should take a picture! He was a great guy. We were talking to him about how we don't want to leave, about our madcap schemes to stay and work in Bali (Zoe keeps threatening to run away when we get to the airport - I might have to give some kind of letter to her parents - 'Zoe has run away to Bali, sorry!') and he was saying that it'd be easy for us to get work in a top hotel because we spoke English, and that would be in high demand. I said I was a teacher, and he thought that could work too! Jackie emphasised that in Bali money wasn't important - as long as you had enough - and that that was the secret to happiness. A fairly obvious truth to me and I'm sure to many people, but it's good to re-hear it from time to time. I'm hoping we could come back there tomorrow maybe, just to say hi to him. The food was delicious too and (unusually for Indonesia) was exactly what we ordered. (Yesterday I ordered a chocolate mousse, and what appeared was able to support the weight of a scoop of strawberry icecream and a cherry. It was nice. Very rich. Probably ganache - definitely not a light, fluffy mousse. Zoe said: "Welcome to Indonesia." Lol.) Oh, and this place gave me TWININGS Earl Grey tea. Yes! (Excited Jax photo.) Anyway, I'm going to go remove the rest of the salt from the right side of my body. So today we managed to be even lazier than yesterday. Yesterday we at least walked into the main 'street' for lunch and then back again, along the dirty tracks across the centre of the island, by moonlight and following in reverse the signs to our hotel (generally successfully), to try to have dinner at this place that sells something like chocolate salami as a dessert - but it was booked up for at least the next two days, by which time we'll be gone. So at least we did those things yesterday (and back again, by moonlight, this time walking the coastal way and hoping the tide hadn't come in too much).
Today we have not ventured out of our resort. And it's not that big. We got up for breakfast, Zoe then went back to bed and I, who'd slept well and snorily, with a nice dream in the morning about the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, who'd heard about this man with an amazing, lavish, rich rich apartment, and really wanted to see it - I went to the cafe, sat looking out at the sea and wrote. By 'wrote' I mean thought about Robin and I's film idea, and checked my emails and Facebook. Other than that it's been a day of reading, eating, drinking a really nice chocolate milkshake (another nice one - I had my first one from the resort yesterday), wandering on the beach/coral stuff (in my sandals - pointy!) finding shells, and bits of coral (obviously), and checking Facebook a bit more. And it is NOT a waste of my holiday. :) And speaking of Facebook - Zoe is onto me. And this has helped, because I was not until now onto me, or not completely. This afternoon, as Zoe and I were playing Uno on the sun lounger things (but under an umbrella) - occasionally having to catch the cards to stop them from blowing away - well, I had lost another game, although I have won a few, mainly by luck, and I said something, I can't remember what, but it was another incidence of me realising I am dopey, and Zoe said, "You know, I always say to everyone you're really clever, and I used to think that, but now...now....well you're not!" "I know," I said, DJ at work calls me the cleverest person there, and I keep telling him I'm not." (although obviously I enjoy the praise). I continued, "I mean, I have no body of knowledge, I'm not very good at working things out...." And I could have continued. Zoe said, "But everyone thinks you are." I said maybe it was because I had a masters, and people assume that means something, although it doesn't really - or not in my case. Zoe said, "Yeah, well I'm going to have a masters soon [in social work]." (She said it in a joking/scoffing way.) We thought for a little while. Zoe suggested it might well be me sitting around in cafes with my laptop looking like I'm doing something very important - when really I'm just on Facebook. We decided, however, that what I do, and the best way to get people to think you are clever is to go around saying everything is 'interesting'. Any time you want to describe something as 'nice' or 'pretty' or 'cool', just replace that with 'interesting' - try it out! As a final thought for today, before we have some dinner and watch a movie or two - yesterday afternoon, I heard this little girl having this brilliant conversation with her dad. It went something like this: Girl - "Daddy, Daddy, I've worked it out!" Dad - "What dear?" Girl - "I'm becoming a mermaid, with long green hair." Dad - "Ah, I see." Girl - "Maybe that's why they keep giving me juice." So last night we watched a DVD then had an early night. Today we managed to get up for the buffet breakfast (mainly because I was hungry). Zoe used her powers of reading to find the tea - it was in a coffee pot labelled 'tea', and I had dry chocolate cereal because I don't like sweet milk particularly. Or, at least, not when linked to cereal.
Other than that, just a wonderful day of reading (finished Good Omens, started Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay - spare World Book Day books I got from the prison, and will leave somewhere good before I return home), snoozing in the sun (with the kanga - apparently it's a kanga - Sarah Y got me from Kenya draped over my head. I lost it, then found it where I'd left it in the morning. Phew!), sitting in a cafe planning a timeline for the ideas I've been thinking about for Robin and I's next film, sitting - before that, in the morning, trying to write bits of the script. Zoe thinks the current ending sounds pants. It probably is. I must try to avoid quiet endings. I don't particularly enjoy watching them myself, so why do I always write them? Something to work on. I miss Bruce - our giant (well, biggish) lizard who lived in our bathroom in the last hotel. Here we do have a few tiny ones, but they're not Bruce. Most of the cats here are missing most of their tails. Why? My current two main theories are a) a cultural/religious practice of tail docking like with terriers, or b) cat tail soup. Well, now for the photos :) |
Jax BurgoyneI am a writer. (If I say this enough times...) Archives
September 2013
Categories |