Sunday, December 18, 2011

Last Moment in Bali

“Brusshhh..brumb….” it is slightly echoing  in my ear. The noises keep me away from the crowd, stress, and daily activity. It comes soft to my ear and gently whisper where I am. As soon as I gain my consciousness, the warm feeling inside stretch my lips into a smile. The fresh air is telling me to go outside but the blanket smother me and manipulate my mind to go back to sleep. The same noises suddenly change into another lullaby. “This is the sea-wave,” I was talking to my mind. “Ahhh…it’s been 5 days I am in Bali with my girlfriend and her friend. In a perfect place called Bungalow which is located in Tabanan beach. We live in an exotic bamboo house facing the beach and surrounded by banana tree. The place is far away from the crowd. It is approximately 6 hours from Denpasar, the capital of Bali.

“Ilmanko.. wake up.. wake up… see the beautiful sunshine. Let’s go outside,” my girlfriend nudges on me and woke me up from my second sleep. I was too lazy to wake up, but as the curtain open and sunshine coming through the window, it forced me to wake up and jump out of the bed. My girlfriend is an active person and very passionate about traveling. She is a woman in need of affiliation. Easily touch, full of emotion and sometimes meticulous. Compare to me, I am more passive, thinking logically, look emotionless but cheerful. Her friend is somehow similar with me; she is ‘motovidlo’ (a generic term in Slovak to point somebody with slows motoric). However, her friend is a very nice and smart girl. Three of us have been traveling in Bali for 4 days and finally we need to prepare ourselves fly from Bali to China through Singapore and Macau.

“This is the scooter key,” I said to the man who rent us the scooter. “Ok, you guys can take a bus from here to Denpasar and continue with taxi,” said the man. “Ok, no worries, thank you for the scooter.” Yeah, we were traveling in Bali with scooter, and only one scooter. 3 people in a scooter? That’s insane! Well, when you have no better option with limited budget, you need to take a risk. On the first day, we were traveling to Pura Besakih, a Hindus temple located in Karangasem County. It is about 80 km from our place. We knew that it is against the law to ride the scooter by 3 people. And I knew that we are going to have a problem if the police caught us. Therefore, we came up with this strategy. If I saw a police from the far, then I will stop and tell my girlfriend to jump out of the scooter. That strategy seems work. Moreover, I believed that there would be no police patrol on the street. In fact, finally I realized that in touristic island, they are doing more. We were so happy riding the scooter, but not until we arrived in a big roundabouts. I couldn’t see the police as the road was climbing. When I said “jump” to my girlfriend, it was too late and the police dragged us to their post not far away. My girlfriend was exploded when the police fined us with Rp.50,000 around US$5.5. She was crying, complaining and started to hate Bali! I was trying to relief her, and gradually she can understand. After this incident, we change our strategy. Instead of taking the bus, we were more adventurous! My girlfriend decided to hitchhike! She is an experience hitchhiker. She eventually managed to hitchhike a big truck until Karangasem County! We were following the truck with the scooter by then. All that crazy stuff in the morning was nothing compare to what happened on the evening. On the way back to our Bungalow, we cannot hitchhike anymore as it was getting dark. No other options than going back home with 3 people in a scooter. If you never experience riding a scooter in 3 people, that’s good. And don’t ever want to try it! This is especially if you have a long destination. We were sharing middle size scooter seat into 1/3 tiny part of it. The first 3 hours was ok for me, even though it was raining. Another 3 hours, it was torturing! It was such a pain in the ass. And guess what? We were riding scooter in total for 8 hours!!! I was almost screaming in the end of the ride, but keep it cool with Craig David’s “Insomnia” in my head.

Well, our first day was crazy but not so bad for the second day. We met a girl from Canada who is happened to stay at the same Bungalow. On the second day, we didn’t have any trouble for transportation. The girl was renting a scooter as well; therefore my girlfriend’s friend can go with her. We decided to go to Kuta beach in Denpasar. Everything was fine until I realized that we missed each other. Me and my girlfriend was thinking everything’s going to be fine and that was true, as later on we met them healthy in the Bungalow. The second day was amazing for us. Me and my girlfriend were having so much fun playing in Kuta beach as well as Nusa Dua beach. She had that exotic feeling from Bali as well as romantic. The ocean wave was high and calling us to jump in. The sun was bright and warm. The sand was very warm as well. The crowds were breaking apart and mostly populated in the downtown. The beach was quiet but loud enough to carve our memories.
We were outside of the bungalow complex with our backpack and hand bag and then cross a nicely pave small road in front of our bungalow complex. Al though the man suggest us to take a bus from the Bungalow, it seems it’s going to take an hour or two to wait for the bus. Suddenly we saw a police mini truck park nearby Bungalow complex and just about to leave. Of course this is like an exogenous phenomenon, giving an idea to the hitchhikers. Interestingly, the policemen allow us to go with them until the roundabout! Yes, the roundabout where we were caught by them! There is another funny thing about the roundabout and the police. On the 4th day in Bali, we came back to our Bungalow in the midnight. I believed there would be no more police at this late night. However, I need to convince myself twice that we were in touristic place. The policemen are always around the town. On that night luckily I saw them from far away, and I managed telling my girlfriend to jump out of the scooter. I was confidence! But I should know that the policemen are not stupid. They stopped me and they knew that my girlfriend was with me. The worst was, they were the policemen who caught us on our first day in Bali. They completely knew anything about me. I was ready to pick up my wallet and spent some more money. Fortunately, the policemen just let us go. The main reason remains a mystery, but I thought it was because we look so damn poor.

After we arrived at the roundabout, we took a bus to go to bus station in Denpasar. We stopped by at Padang’s restaurant and continue on to the airport with public transportation. We were arguing before we took a public transportation to the airport. My girlfriend was insisting to try hitchhiking, her friend try to be rational to take a taxi, and I suggest them just to take the public transportation. We were arguing for 10-15 minutes until I was really upset and drag them all to the public transportation. I didn’t want us spending time for small things. Every day was challenging in Bali, although the beauty will not fade away from our memory. The first day was with policemen, exhausting and horrible journey. The second day, we missed each other. The third day, we were struggling in finding the cheapest available hotel in Denpasar after we realized that we were too exhausted to go back to our Bungalow. The fourth day, again! We were missing each other. That time it was even more terrible as my girlfriend was separated from us and she didn’t bring anything with her, not even a penny. I had enough with all of those adventurous situations. I hoped our last day in Bali would be at peace. Yet, since we were in the public transportation, we cannot stay in peace. We were so nervous because there was a long traffic jam on the way to the airport. We were kind of relief after the driver made an initiative to jump into pedestrian walk and made our journey as if in Rally Dakar! Eventually we arrived at the airport on time, two hours before our departure. We were so happy and thinking about souvenir to buy. We entered one souvenir shop on the airport and spent a lot of time there. We start to be panicked when we realized there were 20 minutes left to go for check in. We were rushing to our airline counter, running like crazy. We were so glad that it wasn’t that far from the souvenir shop. Finally we reach at the airline counter and telling in a hurry that we wanted to check in. Suddenly the officer of the airline told us that we were in a wrong counter! We were in domestic flight counter and we need to move to international flight counter! We were extremely panicked; we were running out like crazy! By the time we arrived at the international flight counter, it was 5 minutes late for check in.