My trip to Bali was like stepping into a portal to a different universe, one inhabited by people whom I reckoned were so different from me--almost constitutionally different--both on the inside and out, that I wondered whether any discerning charts would have classified us into different species. They were simpletons, and I do not mean this in anyway pejoratively: they lived day in and day out as if their lives were composed of todays and tomorrows--and nothing beyond that--the past either forgotten or forgiven, either way they lived each day unencumbered by any part thereof.
The Balinese had the complexion of the sunset, that moment where the horizon had swallowed the sun just past its halfway mark, right before the skies dimmed to blue and dark blue. They were the people who had soaked in the sun for generations, darkened and browned, but nonetheless incandescent in their personality like smoldering charcoal. They were warm when I got near them: each word they said was followed with occasional nodding and a smile--almost apologetically, as if their need to verbally explain themselves was a mark of an offense having been committed on their part, and they were trying to mitigate the harm with each placating gesture.
Foreigners walked left right centre in Bali (or at least in Kuta, Seminyak and Legian) and their towering presence was so palpable, it felt almost intrusive. Most tried to soaked in the sun like the Balinese had--they flaunted their skin like they wanted to devour the sun, giving little thought or regard of how conservative or otherwise the places they were at (perhaps Bali was to them this monolithic wash of beach and babes, and all vices in between)--however, alas they were merely charred to pink: their skin blushing on the face of its defeat, accentuating its unnaturalness and the admonition by the Balinese sun. The color of the people of the sun was the Balinese's birthright, their birthmark.
The ubiquity of foreigners had over time woven its foreignness into the local fabric once upon a time displaying complete picture of traditions. By now parts of the old had been taken out--labelled as outdated, backward, or obsolete, while those which had been judged as still in line with the new norms (in other words, those that appeared 'exotic' to the foreign eyes) were kept for their redeeming commercial viability. This was the front advertised to the world. It was uncanny--to me at least--to find many Balinese who spoke English (or even Chinese, for that matter) sculpted by punctuating Balinese accent, the product of which while not altogether grammatical and complete was spoken with confidence and fluency that would put more than few of the English-speaking population to shame. I couldn't understand about one third of what was said (notwithstanding my familiarity with the English and Indonesian language), but I could tell that the Balinese knew perfectly well what they were saying, and apparently, so did the foreigners. It was like a secret club with a secret handshake. I just didn't get the memo.
The word "dodgy" would be modest to describe some of the parts in Kuta and Legian that I passed by. And while at first I wondered why they didn't better the infrastructure of these busy spots (for example, the lanes along these areas were one-way lanes, which forced you to make a long--well, longer than was necessary---detour whenever you missed a place and wanted to go back), but I now begin to think that perhaps this was so 'poorly' maintained on purpose. This had nothing to do with paying heed to traditions (I don't think prostitution and magic mushrooms were ever considered to be a part thereof); it was more about creating the ambience of disorder: hedonistic, rowdy, alive, yet a safe haven for tourists to indulge in the local vices. An order of disorder. Maybe this was why my driver could easily say that in spite of the loud music, the semi-nakedness, the overcrowding of the pubs and clubs, these places were safe and that I had nothing to worry about walking about at night. I had to take his word with a pinch of salt because he did ask me whether I would be interested to drive around the red light district to cuci mata (transliteration: wash eyes), which of course I politely declined. (My parents were sitting in the backseats.)
I dubbed the Balinese the people of the sun because the sun seemed to play a part in their collective pride as a people (I wanted to say tribal pride, but that doesn't sound just quite right). It was a part of their natural beauty, one that they unabashedly wished to share with the world: they wanted to show you what a sunset looked like, and how one should look like. And indeed they knew how to serve the sunset to their guests: with a pool by the cliff from which one could enjoy an unobstructed view of the beach stretching all the way to infinity where the roundness of the globe swallowed the vast sea, and with a healthy supply of alcoholic concoctions whose names reminded me that I was fairly close to the equator. As the sun made its lyrical descent into the horizon, pushing against blankets of clouds--resulting in a healthy mix of moments of light and shade--its reflection diffused on the surface of the waters turned the latter into silvery splendor. It was blinding, transient, unreachable; to borrow E. Gilbert's phrase: an indefensible amount of beauty. I just sat there, using every bit of my senses to drink it all in. This was the world that the Balinese lived in: an unjustifiable spectacle with which perhaps by now they were already drunk to a point of ignorance. However, I was not so lucky as they, but lucky enough to find the time albeit for a fragment of a moment to simply stop and squint.
