#5 Leaving the Resort Sanctity

With great dismay, only 1 week into our resort stay, my wife announced that she had secured a more permanent accommodation and that we would in fact be staying for the intended 3 months. Better yet, this guest house was out in the burbs. And the owner only spoke French - so I couldn’t even lie to her about how much I liked cats. 

It did tick our budget of 10,000,000 IDR per month (double check that I put enough zero’s - should be ten million). It also came with drinkable tap water, a pool (kids were sold), and 3 beds (take my money!). So, with 1 week left of our resort stay, we decided to leave the rooms for the cleaners. 

Arriving at the destination, my first thoughts, aside from, "why are we here?!", was that if I was a real estate agent for this property, and actually had potential viewers, I would blindfold them. And not just as a means of sharing a personal kink. The house is down a 300m long ‘side street’. Along this ‘side street’ are a few exposures to local life, most prominently, a river running the length of it. Sounds picturesque. Well, this river serves a few purposes: 

• There are, so far as we have discovered, fish, ducks (one that is leashed to a pole?!), crabs, frogs, various fecal matter, and yet to be discovered diseases co-inhabiting this space.

   

• Naturally, it is also a place of play for the local kids. 

• It is better than a wheelie bin for removing household rubbish from one's vicinity. 

• A spare change bank. It has currently funded 1,000 IDR in coins towards our trip, that has appropriately contributed to hand sanitiser.

   

• On two occasions I have seen it serve as a public toilet as well as a place to wash clothes, with, clearly, a lack of communication between the two parties. 

• To top this off, I have also seen someone’s grandmother, stark naked, bathing in the river - who courteously managed to free up a hand for a friendly wave. And, through meticulous observation and planning, not just on one occasion, either! 

So, as you may imagine, there was a lot to take in as we walked up this side street to our accommodation. It was also hot. Fancy that. Made hotter as they burn some of their rubbish along the street! "Hold on", you may be thinking, "I thought you said the river took care of this?". Well, supposedly it must be a bit inconspicuous to dump it all in. So the remainder is heaped together in small piles outside the houses and set on fire. 

One of these heaps, which we hurried our kids passed, also included empty aerosol containers beside the then alight pile. But hey, since when do I let my dubious feelings stop me from freaking the fuck out about why we came! Reluctantly, as ever, I plodded onwards to our accommodation, sweating even more profusely.

Home Away from Home

I want to backtrack a bit here - which is exactly how I felt at this moment, too! Despite my depiction of our new street, Bali is truly a beautiful place. Yes, the pictures you can search online are likely capturing the best areas and touched up a bit - but what isn’t these days. And yes, there will be a disparity between the upkeep of the heavily reliant tourism areas vs the local burbs. 

But even in these places, intricately carved statues decorate most entranceways, each residence has their own stunning shrine area, and, in my best architectural lingo, the roofs look awesome. They have even put a bit of effort into their local temples which are exquisite, grandeur, and hefty in number! It’s a shame that this craftsmanship and care has not been afforded to some of the local dwellings or, dare I say, infrastructure. 

And, if you can manage to divert your eyes beyond the river, a serene natural backdrop of rice fields offers a nice change of scenery. Until they start burning these as well.

Surprisingly, I was breath taken when we finally entered the gate of our home away from home to be. Mostly due from holding my breath to get up the street, but then replaced with admiration. 

The place was a haven. They had grass, as a starter, and it was the real stuff. I have allergies - so I could tell! There was a fish pond at the start of the section, the yard was full of mango, passionfruit and banana fruit trees, and tucked away to the side of the house was a pool, in which the water quality was vastly better than outside. Overseeing this pool was our new lifeguard, Vishna - fitting, because with our kids, we would need all the hands we could get. 

Even the interior of the guest house was remarkable; filled with stunning artwork painted by the landlord and furniture carved with their initials. It was just the retreat this homebody was seeking - a great place to hold up and wait for the return flight home.

Feeding Time

We settled into this new place easily. It had cooking facilities, which relieved some pressure on the jug. Originally, we had planned to cook more but were deterred by a few things. The price of buying food was considerably more expensive than ordering it, especially meat. Some of this food came compromised, such as a supposedly sealed bag of pasta having bugs in it and market meat seasoned with flies. 

Our kids also have exotic tastes so a 500g packet of chicken nuggets cost us 80,000 IDR - essentially the price of a whole meal here. We even splashed out on sausages once, diced them up and started cooking them, only to notice a burning smell. Apparently they individually wrap them in plastic! Meaning the next 20 minutes was unpeeling an overwhelming number of bite sized sausage pieces. Oh how we laughed! 

Regardless, there was excuse enough to turn to ordering our lunches and dinner. This was both more convenient and more economical - as we could order food for both lunch and dinner daily for less than 150,000 IDR ($7.50 per meal). We were making these stretch by topping them up with more rice, but that’s not bad for delivered cooked meals! Once more, a huge shout out to Gojek and Grab services for making this possible.

One problem. Spicyness. Unlike the bedroom, we prefer to limit the burning sensation with meals. Now spicy for us in New Zealand is a bit of salt - hold the pepper! Well, we were in for a culture shock. Balinese food is practically glazed in discomfort.

We did our best to minimise this. We added a request to our orders; “Feeble Foreigners - no spice please”. And I expect that they did their best to accommodate this, likely ashamed at the blandness of the food they were restricted to. Yet still, it burns. Now it has become an excuse for the children not to finish any unfavourable (generally vegetable base) parts of their dinner, citing undue hardship. 

Reluctant Traveller’s Tip: If spicy twang ain’t your thang, then treat any sauces as hostile! Furthermore, invest in ketchup and sour cream and have these fridged pronto! On one occasion, I finished a dish that was even too hot for my wife - and she (clearly) likes things hot. The next 30 mins I was applying sour cream to my tingling lips. 

Also, grateful for the advice to store some toilet paper in the freezer! Another way to ease the burn.

Sharing our Accommodation

One notable, unexpected inclusion for our rent was the bugs. I have learnt that I have lived a sheltered life - in shelters that have been adequately sealed. I have come to appreciate this bygone luxury.

Now I have touched on mosquitoes - as one does prepare for mosquitoes when visiting Bali - and we did our own encouraging research about the animals that could kill us; the likes of snakes, stonefish and Komodo dragons.

As an aside, I’ve learnt through humiliation that they are not kimono dragons - although how cool would these be! But not enough publicity is given to the other insects. 

For instance, ants don't just come in one size. Apparently, some types of Bali ants do not conform to size constraints. And they thrive with the introduction of three children who keep the tiled floors generously stocked for them. Sweeping (although much more satisfying than vacuuming) is an hourly necessity. The kids enjoy setting up a defensive perimeter in the lounge - which I forgot to mention is opened walled on two sides (bit of a design oversight, I reckon) - with the broom, dust brush and mop, pushing the invaders back out. Philosophically, I did suggest the possibility that we were the intruders, but no mercy was afforded. Kids have a tough sense of justice. Silently grateful, as the next ant advance was repelled.

However, the ant situation became laughable when we encountered their hornets. Easily two to three times bigger than the wasps we are used to. Two of which felt comfortable enough to come into the house. One had even managed to get trapped inside the closed mosquito net of the bed - a comforting thought. 

Tactically, I did manage to unload a whole can of bug spray in the general direction of one of them, which I am confident only made it stronger, before gracelessly retreating. We have now decided that if they do come in, the simplest means of resolution is forfeiting the home.

I sent a scout in hours later (one of the unexpecting children) and the screams helped me track down one of their corpses. Of the wasp that is! I tell you, it’s much more unsettling when you cannot locate them later! The thought of having a pissed wasp, scheming somewhere in your room is terrifying. Even when dead, they are still intimidating with their stingers hanging out, especially when the removal requires an intimate, close range brush and dustpan of their disturbingly solid bodies. They thunk against the dustpan when you scoop them. Take my man card if you must - it is already a tattered, pathetic thing - but it gives me the goosepigglies even writing about it.

Now, if this doesn’t sell the experience, we also found a huntsman spider chilling in the bathroom, having crawled in through a gap in the ceiling. Those things are big. And they can move! The easiest way to convey this is that you can actually hear them scurry. The next 30 minutes was a game of keep-your-eyes-on-the-spider until it eventually scuttled out into the bedroom, coming tantalisingly close to entering the open clothes wardrobe (which would have been fun for days!), and then escaping out the window. 

Safe to say it is never far from mind now, and we enter every room checking the corners first. Like a well trained SWAT unit. This, alongside copiously spraying the rooms each night, investing in automatic insect repellants for all the bedrooms, and, routine remaining, mosquito repellant-ing up, helps us safely integrate harmoniously into our new environment. 

The classic ‘argh, fuck off and die’ approach.