Bali Part 2: Beach Life ramble

YE OLDE CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW: 

the lounge area at Bamboo Paradise

After our rapid mad-tour of Ubud, we slowed way, way down to do the beach part of our trip. We started off in Padang Bai, a port town. It was spitting rain the whole way cab ride from Ubud, but it cleared up just after we checked in at Bamboo Paradise hostel and the receptionist brought us fresh tamarind juice. The owner of Bamboo Paradise is this ultra-capable, hip, side-shaved, way-too-young-to-own-a-hotel kind of person. If you're in Padangbai ever, definitely stay there. It's clean, it's cute, the staff is awesome, there's hot water, there's dogs to pet, it's cheap, it's all good.

My feet, and Lauren at Beach Bum Hotel Bar. 

   We were only there a night, before we headed to Gili Trawangan. The fast boat set us back 450,000 rupiah for round trip. The island's really cute in a rustic kind of way. The shops are decked out in bamboo and the sand is so white. The bars have colorful little pillows around low dark-wood tables. The place is adorable, one giant Instagram wet dream for accounts with names like "gypsettravelwanderlust" or "halfnakedveganorthorexicdoesyoga." Unfortunately, the weather was pretty... gray. The main drag was a writhing organism made of drunk Australians with backpacks and aggressive islanders with flyers pushing us to EAT HERE, SLEEP HERE, DRINK HERE SNORKEL HERE. We booked in advance at a place called "Beach Bum HOSTEL." It had a swim-up bar, trippy murals, and cheap Bin Tangs so I was cool with it. We stayed on Gili T for 2 nights, did some boot-leg snorkeling and more than a little bit of drinking.

Gili T is beautiful. This is the far side of the island.

After Gili, we returned to Padang Bai just for the night. The boys and I ate dinner at a place called "Topi Inn" where I devoured greasy fish wrapped in banana leaves and (SHOCK) more Bin Tang. As much as I liked Padangbai, we were out of there by noon the next day headed for Seminyak.

The infinity pool at Potato Head. 

Oh, Seminyak. To be fair to the place, I saw it during the rainy season. It's supposedly stunning during high season. And to also be fair, it is quite a bit more resort-ish than Ubud or Gili T. And by resort-ish I mean expensive. The beaches are about 60% sticky black sand and about 40% garbage. During high tide , there was no place to even walk at all because of unchecked erosion. Lifeguards shoo-ed us out of the water because of the aggressive rip-tides.

With no hope of enjoying a beautiful natural landscape, we took refuge in the beach bars. They are pretty nice. Lauren and I checked out Potato Head Beach Club which was just the right amount of beachy and upscale. Infinity pool overlooking the ocean without having to get an eyeful of the ugly beach, comfortable couches, attentive waitstaff, and pretty upmarket drinks. There was plenty of human eye candy around too, which was nice. I also partied (and by partied I mean played with a hula hoop in the back of the dance floor) at La Favela, which might be the most insane bar I've ever been in. It features the most ornate and photo-worthy bathroom ever. Restaurant by day, club by night, La Favela is all live plants and antiques and stairs to nowhere. It was open until 4 am with people dancing to cheesy tunes you might remember if you attended a high school prom in the 2000s.

La Favela's crazy bathroom. 

Talking about Seminyak, I need to acknowledge the awesome hostel we stayed at, called "Capsule." Lauren and I got a private room, the boys shared another private room. It was the nicest accommodations of the whole trip.

So many small things made it stand out:

1. Outlets everywhere! Outlets with adapters already on them! Outlets by the bed! Outlets in the bathroom. SO MANY OUTLETS!
2. Cheap liquor at the bar. Judging from how sloshed I was, the liquor was real, which is more than I can say for a lot of bars in Bali. Or Vietnam for that matter.
3. The bar served nitrous balloons.
4. They fined people for having sex in the shared dorm rooms, 150,000 Rupiah per person inconvenienced by the aforementioned sex. Nice policy, I think.
5. They had hair dryers and brushes for girls to use in the bathrooms and they WORKED.
6. It was clean! Super clean!

This is a pointless meandering story about a naked person on Gili T and also drugs:

I was, and still am, scared shitless of drugs in Indonesia. Sure, possessing illicit drugs anywhere is a risky, bad idea, but especially in Asia, and ESPECIALLY, ESPECIALLY in Bali. The Indonesian government loves imprisoning foreigners. They love this probably more than Australians love drinking. Some examples: the Bali 9, some Australians caught trafficking heroin, several were put to death. Or Michelle Leslie, an Australian model who got 3 months in Balinese prison for possessing 2 ecstasy pills after a random search. She was facing 15 years, but she converted to Islam to help her case. Or, last October, a 54 year old Australian man was caught with 10.07 grams of hashish in his house. He is facing between 5 years and life in prison! With stakes like that, what is to stop a crooked police officer from using the insane laws to shake you down? Western governments have, over and over again, warned their citizens to be careful while in Bali, and Australia has called citizens who mess around with drugs there "stupid." I'm sure, by the way, that the Indonesian government would love killing Americans too, but we don't have the same vacation time that Australians do to get all the way to Bali and get into all this trouble. 

I imagined that there would be some kind of fear or reserve in the midst of the harsh punishments. This was NOT the case, at least on Gili Trawangan. Hoodied guys on the street repeated "marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy" over and over almost like a religious chant. And, it seemed from some of the manic behavior and giant pupils, a lot of tourists were buying more than drinks. Lots of what the Australian government would call stupid. 

Of all the drugs that were up for grabs on Gili, mushrooms seemed to be the least illegal. I'm actually very confused about whether they actually are legal, because half the bars had "magic mushrooms" ON THEIR MENUS to order. I googled this question, and I am still confused. 

Picture a candy store of psychotropic drugs on an island paradise with little electricity inhabited by a bunch of millenials on holiday, after all the bars have closed. If you're full chemical energy and didn't take anyone home from the bar, theres not much to do besides sit on the beach and look at the water. This is where all the intoxicated leftover party-goers end up, groping the sand, talking bullshit about the universe or why people like durian or Donald Trump (your narrator excluded, obviously, from all illicit or otherwise unsavory activities. Hi Mom! I'm still not dead!)

ANYWHO. There's a whole gaggle of people washed up on the beach. We were there for hours. I was playing with my hula hoop, which attracted more random beach wanderers to our little degenerate camp out. 

When... out of the night appears this skinny white figure. My eyes are pretty bad, and it's pretty dark, but he's stumbling around in sand, kinda walking with his hands over his crotch.

As he gets closer, it clicks. Oh, that's 'cause he's completely completely naked, and he's got that wide-eyed jaw-clenching look that people on something have. Someone yells "hey, what's up?!" and he throws his hands up, showing us his flaccid penis as a response. Great.  

"Have you seen my clothes?" he slurred. No, none of us have seen this guy's clothes. We're all sitting down in our little sand kumbaya circle, and he's standing and swaying around, phallus all a'flapping at eye-level. There's an element of discomfort here for everyone involved. 

"Ok," he goes. And walks off, his ass practically glowing white in the moonlight. We comment, collectively, on how ridiculous this is, but kind of forget about it for a little while.  

But then he comes back, still without a stitch of clothing. And this time he brought a friend! An equally naked girl. She is crouching behind him, trying to completely disappear in his shadow. 

"Have you seen our clothes?" the guy slurs again. 

"No mate," says someone from a country where they use the word 'mate' unironically, "We've been here all night, we never saw your clothes."

"Come on," says the girl, "They were right here! Did someone take them?"  

"No one took your clothes, maybe you left them further down the beach," someone says. 

"Maybe they washed away, the tide came in," someone else says. 

"Can we HAVE some clothes, then?" the guy begs. 

Now, I did feel bad for them, even though I found this situation hilarious. There was nothing I could do though. I was wearing this impractical hooded dress with no bra underneath and shorts. I had absolutely zero clothing material to give these guys. No one else helped them out either. Sucks to suck, I guess. They were both pretty upset, looking about frantically on the empty beach for their clothes that were definitely not there. I didn't see them again as they walked off toward the more hostel-y side of the island. 

So maybe the best part of this story isn't actually what happened, but what I imagine happened. Which is this: 

I figure that these two are a previously existing couple, or at least traveling companions. Otherwise, that girl would have been long gone from the random guy she found in the bar. I know I sure as shit would have just booked it as fast as I could back to my hostel. Or maybe I misjudge naked people on mushrooms. Which is another assumption I make. I am assuming they were on a bit of mushrooms. I picture them being a bit further up the beach from our group. They lay their clothes down on the sand, perhaps a bit too close to the lapping water. Maybe they have sex on the beach, but I doubt it. I think they probably just went skinny dipping. The water did seem inviting and the waves seemed mild. But they weren't, really. So they go skinny dipping, they're tripping and a little drunk and they don't notice that they're getting slowly pulled down the beach. Away from their clothes, and toward our after-after party. I'm picturing the conversation: 

"Oh shit," she goes, looking at the shoreline which is pitching and swaying in her psilocibin-soaked brain, "when did all those people get here." 

"They better not have stole our clothes," he replies. "I'll go check. Stay here." 

Imagine the panic of being on mushrooms or god knows what else in the dark on the beach, naked, and at least a little far away from the safety of ones' hostel. In Gili, which is technically Lombok (not Bali), which is this super conservative Muslim country where everyone covers up way more than say... the Jersey Shore. Worse still, even the closest hostels to this part of the beach were at least a quarter of a mile away. 

I like to imagine that they lost their rented bikes and that they had to walk of shame back to their hostel on the other side of the island as the sun rose. Past all the drug dealers, the worshippers headed to the mosque, and the market. But I'm not a monster, I also hope that they made it back safely and laughed about it all the next morning over complimentary banana pancakes. And now I like to imagine that they are home in Australia, where I am assuming they are from, and this is but a footnote in a long and debaucherous adventure.