Why Indonesia made us say OMG!?

While planning our departure out of Japan, we were brainstorming new endeavors into our next country. It was Japan to… INDONESIA! Never really looking at the map to even know where this country was located, this was our next destination. Bali, baby! We hit the ground running, arrived late at night, came off the plane from snowy Japan to hot, humid Indonesia and walked into a small army of taxi workers. We instantly felt overwhelmed because their way of selling was to shout “TAXI, TAXI” louder then the next guy, all the while following you around saying “Only 16,000.” 16,000 sure sounded like we were getting ripped off, so we broke free to hide behind the shadows of a large tree where no one could see us. We hadn’t done our homework and felt massive culture shock, unsafe and unsure. We pulled out our map and decided to walk to our hostel, which was only about 5 km away.  How hard can it be? Well, let’s say we suck with hot temperatures, especially when we have 20kg backpacks on.  Our hostel ended up being a shady surprise because we were going for ultra cheap accommodations but we found out we have a WATERPARK close by which had us excited for the next day.

Here in Kuta, Bali it was like we were puppies coming out of a box for the first time, being excited and curious but intimidated. From our hostel, we walked down this road that had abandoned buildings on both sides and looked like it was from those zombie movies. We noticed that some older women were occupying sections inside the buildings and selling food at their stands. Oh man, we’ve never had authentic Indonesia Padang Padang before. So we walked in and she starts speaking her native tongue and pointing to serve ourselves out of their kitchen. Will had no idea what he was doing, he gobbed about two pounds of rice on our plate and Paulina was shocked by the shear amount of rice, then there was an arrangement of colors, smells and shapes we’ve never seen before to add to the rice. Taking a wild guess Will started putting random things onto our plate. After it was all said and done we had about 2.5 pounds of food in front of us and had no idea how much this meal would cost. We ended up eating the whole plate of food (which was delicious but too much) because we didn’t want to disrespect the woman’s cooking and food which ended up only costing $2 CAD… WOW! We also didn’t consider that we had just filled our bellies with spicy new foods, were in a super hot climate and were about to enter a waterpark. We crossed our fingers that the food would stay in us.

We were feeling like kids again in Waterbom Bali going on all the slides, playing in the pool and having our afternoon naps in the sun. We ended up meeting these two guys on vacation who had some interesting stuff to tell us about their new country… East Timor.  They told us they work for the capital city doing city planning. It took us for a spin seeing young guys building a country and having the kind of passion they had for it. And thennnnn off to more slides!

We ended up spending our next few days in a different part of Kuta and a new hostel of course. We explored the lands, streets, people as well as the vibe and saw the beaches, resorts, and fireshows. Heading back to our hostel we had to walk down this intimate community of expats and locals which is where we found our new friend Gill. Gill is a wise, comedic, showman; a great conversationalist that had so much advice to share with us. Will tends to gravitate towards older people for their wisdom, knowledge and life stories.  One of the coolest parts of travelling is that your chances to connect with others increases dramatically because travellers are in a different head space and really have a common ground to relate on.

In the evening we found ourselves walking down the beach only to be shouted at by a group of people having a fire on the beach and playing music. It was a little set up that these three young guys had called Three Wings Beach Bar. Yoji was the party tribal leader performing songs that we could all swing along to. We met the rest of the gang and found them to be Australian. They were a crazy fun bunch and we sang songs, talked, and enjoyed the randomness of our chance meeting… Oh and we hung out with a little baby monkey one of the couples bought. The night was so good we couldn’t help but not capture a few moments.

Our new friends were all characters that had their unique qualities. The story goes that Simon was newly released from prison, had this gangster persona about him and his hair in braids. Rick was a prison guard from Australia who was escorting Simon on this trip as part of their rehabilitation program. Rick thought this was a great opportunity to bring his better half, Rose, and the family for the ride. Simon’s beloved, Janita, was in Kuta doing some cocktail bar singing gigs as part of her world tour.  Janita blessed us with her presence and had enough fuel in her after a night of work to perform a solo with our Three Wings host Yogi. Zac and Nicole were two very entrepreneurial people who purchased a monkey at a local auction. They had this great idea to start a stock-picking company based on the principal of the monkey throwing darts at random companies posted and having people purchase the picks for that day to invest in the stock market. It was the best of times.

Getting back to reality, we were in search of our next place for beautiful water. We ended up renting a 125cc scooter and decided that Will would drive… he’d never driven a scooter nor has he ever driven with a passenger. As we were driving, just shooting around randomly in disorganized Bali traffic, we were anxious, soaked in sweat and shaking because of how stressed we felt. We pulled into a coffee shop to recoup and decided to find some beaches in South Kuta. One hour into our drive we got hit by a road block that was only stopping tourists; it was the crooked police. We were pulled over with two other girls from Europe and off we all went into the “police station”. By the looks of it, the two girls have been through this before but it was our first time. The police officer retained our driver’s license and said we didn’t have an international license so we needed to pay $300 to him; then he would let us go. Well, we had a clue that this would happen so we hid our cash on us and kept very small amounts of money in our wallet. The two other girls refused to pay him and started to argue. He wanted money and we were wasting his time while he could be cashing in on other tourists. We ended up paying $10 to him for our release and headed off with the other tourist gals.  We decided to follow them to some beaches and it turned out to be one of those places that made your jaw drop. It was a cliff-side beach that had houses built into it, locally rigged up shelters with a view that was incredible. Walking down the hundreds of steps we spent some time enjoying there company and of course playing in the water.

We noticed time was flying by and we were pretty far from our hostel. We headed back up to see that our only means of knowing where we were was a dying cell phone who’s battery power was slipping through our fingers. Speeding back to our hostel the highway became five times busier. Just to give you perspective, Indonesia is the fourth largest population in the world with a very small land mass compared to the other world leaders like China, India, and the U.S.  There was one point we were driving down a hill with scooters all around us, no more than half a foot away on all sides, and a 747 descending in with its screaming engines no more the 800 meters above. In that moment, the shear mass of human civilization gave us sensory overload and a stamp in our memory.

Then our phone died… We were in the city we needed to be in but still had to find our hostel. We parked our scooter along a familiar beach and decided to track our homestead down first and worry about the bike later. Every thing worked out.

We loved the excitement of being free, off leash and unplanned in Bali so we decided a large part of our travels would be “to just go for it.” ‘Til our next set of random stories, we hope you live out this life-prov and make your scene one to remember.