It is always a mistake to revisit a place that holds a special meaning in your life which in my case is Bali, an island I visited over 40 years ago. Other than Europe, it was my first real oversea’s destination and only then at the urging of a travel agent who had found a cheap flight to Australia and suggested casually I might want to go there. It was the very best type of travel; I was naive and more than a little afraid (yet still less than I should have been) but absorbed it all like a sponge; I came without preconceptions and found myself to be the clumsy, unsophisticated person that I always suspected I was and left with a new understanding of the possibilities of the world, an appreciation of the unique cultures and energies of the East. It was a much needed mirror for me, the cynicism of the world I had acquired at as a teenager was found to be just a pose which quickly disintegrated in these wondrous and strange surroundings. Although I couldn’t claim to have gained any deep insight on the complexities of the Island, its secret rituals and ceremonies, in those months I did start to understand myself for the first time and what I wanted to do with my life.
So I knew that revisiting Bali after four decades would break my heart and I was prepared to some degree yet still hopeful that it would not be as bad as I had heard. I warned Mary that there would be adversaries that bit, stung and might even try to eat you, but the greatest risk at least to me was the hazards of memory and nostalgia. In the South of the Island it was worst than I could ever have anticipated. We stayed initially for five days on the very tip of the Southern Coast in Uluwatu about an hour from Denpasar Airport, arriving through densely packed roads buzzing with scooters and cars. Our accommodation was selected out of romantically and aesthetically inclined goals – perched on the edge of cliff in what remains of a rain forest populated by Monkeys who are entertaining on the first brief encounter but quickly become pests. We had an open view of the Ocean and could watch the surfers far from shore, the helicopters low passes and the constant loud respiration of the sea which I fell asleep to each evening and sometimes also to the night rain on the roof. It was a remote, beautiful spot and a little treacherous to reach along a path that had slippery steep stairs and few hand rails which only amplified its somewhat eclectic nature.
Despite what people might associate with Bali, this part of the Island is no paradise, there is frenetic development all around, billboards for villas with 35 year leases being built by and sold to Europeans, Russians, Americans….and the associated garbage that covers the sidewalks and the ocean that no one seems to care about or want to attend to. A German owned restaurant we frequented for a few evenings had Russians at a table next to us one night and Ukrainians the following, all military aged men and women. For me this part of the Island was a dispiriting place and I had to force myself to look at the new buildings, embarrassed by the red earth scars in the landscape, like a motorist encountering a traffic accident knowing you shouldn’t look but cannot help yourself. These new structures are all of course of a bland international style, poured concrete, large windows in black metal frames, nothing to do with the place itself or references to local styles, vernacular traditions nor use of local materials, seeming to exist to protect the owners from its environment rather than to participate in it.
A short walk away from the main streets and down a smaller path however might take you to some of the older traditional buildings and temples and on one occasion we strayed and heard an old Balinese man playing music for himself on a bamboo instrument which generated deep, melodic sounds which resonated widely into the surrounding fields and buildings, a soundtrack that would have been familiar a hundred years ago. The temples also were things of wonder, both at once elaborate and calming, despite or because they are surrounded by all the building activity.
But how will this resolve itself…..for those locals left with their delicate, personal, elegant rituals and beliefs against the immodesty of its visitors? Those twenty somethings who come here to live cheaply and forge an alternative lifestyle, apparently based around yoga, flat whites and hedonism who blindly accepted the digital world; the QR codes, WhatsApp and the credibility of the unsubstantial new vocations; “digital nomads” and “influencers”. There is a dire downward cycle also for some of the recently prosperous Balinese; thanks to their land being sold for serious money a young middle class has arisen looking to the West for its values and obliterating two thousand years of history and culture in a single generation. When I first visited Bali women tourists were told to respect Hindu traditions of covering their legs and shoulders, this time while in Uluwato we had no choice but to laugh despairingly at the sight of a Western women walking past wearing only a g-string and teeshirt and it came as no surprise when I read about a young Russian influencer, Luiza Kosykn, who was deported after outrage over a post where she posed naked in front of a 700 year tree.
We left the over populated South Coast and travelled about seven hours to the north of the Island. It was a car ride that had optimism at it’s root, I imagined that once we had gone north of the airport we would encounter old Bali; an Island of ancient building’s, rice fields, a gentleness to the temperature and a tenderness to its landscape and to some degree this was fulfilled but not before encountering the surreal situation of traffic jams in the country side. Even the most casual observer will realize that the existing roads are not be able to cope with the level of people on the island today, how will they manage with the completion of the new buildings? However from the frequently stationary vantage point of our car we were amazed at the colors of Bali; the vibrancy of the crudely painted greens, blues and oranges on hand trucks, walls and doors, the natural, primal gaudiness of the fruit on market stands and the sumptuousness of the elderly women’s traditional garb.
Our accommodation in Banjuwedang, in the North under the shadow of a cloud smeared volcano Mount Agung, was a hugely ambitious project and generally more successful form of tropical modernism. Unlike the buildings being constructed in the South, vacuum sealed against their surroundings, these are open and generous with outside bathrooms and kitchens leaving only the bedroom closed to the more frightening aspects of nature. It is the creation of a Dutch couple who fell in love with this part of the Island and built and then built more and more of these brutalist concrete structures letting nature interact with the architecture in way that makes sense.
It is much quieter in the North West, fewer scooters and tourists and the only real break in the silence is the rattling melody of the mosque loudspeakers that dominate the town for several hours each day. But the real magic of Bali lies under the Ocean and on a couple of occasions we snorkeled at the edge of the reefs; on one side in wonder at the abundance of multicolored fish, Parrot, Butterfly, Sun, and the other Ocean side the unworldly volume and depth of the empty blue void. Finally we encountered a large sea turtle and followed it for a while, imitating is movements and speed until we both drifted and floated onwards to our own worlds.
jnmanson 