I’m writing down some memories.
You can start at Chapter One if you like, or just keep reading here.

The bemo dropped me off near the beach in Kuta, and I walked to the far end of town to find a losmen. Bali is full of tourists now, and I expect there are Benidom-style hotels and resorts everywhere, but back then it was quiet, and most backpackers stayed in simple hostels, called a losmen.

With my losmen sorted, I walked down to the beach to find hundreds of Benidorm-style tourists from Australia and Japan soaking up the sun. Each tourist was surrounded by dozens of merchants selling cheap and nasty tat. I bought myself a couple of tasteful glass bracelets, then went surfing.

In the evening, I went to Paddy’s bar to watch Australians getting drunk and fighting with the Japanese. We think of the Japanese as civilised, sophisticated and peaceful, but I watched two teams—one Australian and one Japanese—having a drinking contest in the Cock and Bull Bar. When the Australian judge picked an Australian winner, he was immediately attacked by a dozen Japanese who beat the shit out of him. Kuta was rowdy.

Back in Australia, I had met a guy travelling in the opposite direction, who told me to learn Indonesian, so I bought myself a book. Indonesian is as easy as you can imagine, and I learned it quickly. The Balinese have a language of their own, but everyone speaks Indonesian, so I got around quite well.

Knowing Indonesian was especially useful on Kuta beach, when the tat-merchants showed up. After a few sentences of Bahasa, they’d leave me alone. Even better was when they’d sit down and chat with me, and I soon made a dozen friends. They asked me questions about Europe, and invited me home to meet their families; one lady even washed all my horrible backpacker clothes for me.

The next day, I found a quieter bar, and American Jeff joined me for a beer, and before long, we were joined by a Balinese woman called Nyoman.

Nyoman took us on a tour of all the cultural highlights, and we took her to dinner.

Nyoman was very well educated, and she told us all about Balinese culture and history. We learned that Hinduism arrived in Indonesia two thousand years ago, and was wiped out everywhere except Bali, when the Muslims arrived a thousand years later. Bali had no contact with India for two thousand years, but they remembered all their stories and traditions. They even remembered the language, Sanskrit, for religious ceremonies, though no one understands what the words mean anymore.

We learned that the Hindu Trinity is similar to the Christian Trinity, with three Gods—Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the protector, and Shiva, the destroyer—who are manifestations of one divine being, like the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

After several days of this, I headed up to Ubud—the cultural centre of Bali—with two English dudes from my losmen. Ubud is another of those places that has probably changed a bit since I was there. Back then, there were no hotels, no roads and almost no tourists. We found a losmen on the edge of a rice field, where we sat and soaked in the beauty. We happened to be in Ubud during a religious festival, and took in several gamelan performances and religious ceremonies.

I was hooked on Balinese culture, and I read everything I could find, starting with the Ramayana, where Lord Rama rescues the beautiful Sita from the evil Rakshasas. I did plenty of art shopping, and I still have my paintings of Rama and Sita and friends, and my wooden carving of Rama riding the divine eagle, Garuda.

I rented a bicycle one day, with no destination in mind, and after riding aimlessly, I found myself at the foot of the volcano in Kintamani, and I decided to ride up to the top. It was already dark when I reached the top, so I stayed at the only losmen, looking out across the lake.

On my way back to Ubud, I strayed into the garden of the artist Antonio Blanco, and his wife made me tea and told me all about what it’s like to be an artist in Bali.

I loved Bali, and for the next few years, I dreamed of going back to live there. But it was time to move on now, and I jumped on the ferry to Lombok.

Lombok at that time had no airport and nothing for tourists. It was just raw Indonesia.

I took the bus to the top of the island and jumped on a ferry to the Gili Islands. The ferries were just long dugout canoes with a car engine on the end of a long pole. They were just big enough for ten backpackers. We made it across OK, but the next boat capsized. Everyone on board survived, but several lost their backpacks.

Gili Air and Gili Trawangan were lovely, quiet places with beautiful beaches and no tourists—just a handful of backpackers in a café, eating fish and drinking wine. When you asked the waiter for a fish they were out of, he’d wave to the fishing boat to see if they’d caught any. Then they’d give you more wine. It was heaven on earth.

Sumbawa next.

I didn’t know anything about Sumbawa, so I got a bus to the middle of nowhere and walked down to a village in the forest. I felt like David Attenborough exploring the Amazon with no map, no directions.

I was the first white person who had ever been to this village, and all the kids ran out to touch my white skin to see if it felt the same as brown skin. After a bit more touching, one of the older kids said they had a football match against the neighbouring village that afternoon, and he asked me if I wanted to play. I said, “Sure!” and he asked for some money to pay for the prizes.

The other village team showed up, and both teams had brought their goats. They tied the goats together so they could wander around the field while we played. One trick that I soon learned was to kick the ball between a goat’s legs, then jump over the goat.

We played for a couple of hours until I scored the winning goal, and our captain ran off to buy bags of flavoured ice with the prize money. While we sat together munching our ice, they asked me dozens of questions about what it was like to live in Europe, to fly in an aeroplane and to sail in a ship.

The next day, I got back on the bus and took the ferry over to Flores.

I landed at a tiny fishing village on Flores called Labuan Bajo. There were quite a few backpackers there, and we all hung out together at the one cafe, drinking plum wine, and eating nasi goreng—fried rice—with chicken or pigeon or fish. More than once, they ran out of chicken and grabbed one of the chickens running around our feet. They killed it by wringing its neck, then they plucked out all its feathers, before making the next batch of delicious nasi goreng.

After a couple of days of this, a group of us took a little cabin cruiser over to Komodo Island to see the dragons. Komodo dragons are lizards, about eight feet long; their bite is poisonous, and they eat deer. When we jumped off the boat and our guide led us down a small, dusty path, we were terrified that a lizard might jump out and eat us at any moment.

Our guide pointed out lizard tracks to show there were dragons nearby, and our fear went up several notches. Just then, a lizard ran across our path, and our guide trapped its tail in the forked staff that he was carrying. The lizard was still able to walk, but our guide was able to guide it along like a dog.

Our fear went down a few notches when we saw how easily these enormous lizards could be subdued, but our fear went back up to eleven when another lizard came running at us from out of the bushes and chased us down the path. We ran and ran down to the hut and jumped over the fence, and a group of hungry-looking lizards watched us from outside.

I had intended to take a bus to see the rest of Flores, then nip over to Timor, but the bus was delayed by a massive tropical rainstorm. It was still delayed the next day, and by now, I was running out of money. If the bus arrived the next day, I could make it to the nearest city and get some money, but when I woke up the next morning, the bus had come and gone in the middle of the night. I was stuck now in Labuan Bajo with absolutely no money, not even enough for a nasi goreng.

Garuda Airlines had an office in Flores, and I managed to persuade them to let me fly back to Sambawa and pay at the other end. They told me to wait for my plane at the airfield at 7:30 the next morning, but when I got there, there was no one else there. Just a shed in the middle of a field.

After a bit of a wait, a man walked out to the shed, and I asked him if I was in the right place to catch my plane. He said I was, and the plane would arrive shortly. He unlocked the shed and took out two ping pong bats, just as the whirring of a propeller announced the arrival of my plane.

The man with the ping pong bats guided the Cessna down to a safe landing; I got on, and two men got off. The propellers whirred back into action, and as we started bumping along the grass, I realised we only had a couple of hundred yards before we reached the edge of the cliff. As we went over the cliff, the plane headed straight down towards the ocean until it picked up enough speed to get properly airborne and take me back to Sumbawa.

After we landed in Bima, I walked down to the bank to get my money, then over to the airline, where I tried to explain that I had just flown from Flores for free, and now I wanted to pay. They thought this was ridiculous, but they let me pay anyway. Lucky I am honest.

I had enough money now, but I didn’t fancy going back to Flores, so I walked down to the bus station to catch a bus back to Bali. The bus station was huge and busy, and I was the only European there. Dozens of buses were coming and going all day long, and I sat there for hours waiting for mine. It was dark by now, and a dodgy-looking man came and sat next to me on my bench and started asking me questions. Lucky for me, my bus showed up at just that moment, and I was off to Bali.

My bus was already full, but there was one seat left next to a peasant woman who had chickens running around her feet, and a huge bowl of rotting fish on her lap. It was eighteen hours and two ferry rides back to Bali, and my neighbour’s chickens pecked at my feet all the way, but she offered me some rotting fish now and again to make up for it.

When we eventually made it to Bali, I headed back to Kuta to find my beach friends, and after a few more days of joy, I jumped on a plane to Singapore.

See you there!

I’m writing my memoirs. Follow along if you like.

All About Me

I’m writing about my adventures here.
Maybe you’ll enjoy them too.