Cranial Vomit

Oooo found another lost blog post from Bali!

The rest of them can be found here.

Scanning this post quickly, it’s obvious that I haven’t proofed it or even finished it off - given this happened over a year ago, I’m not even gonna bother trying to finish it off but given I put at least 10 mins of effort into it, I might as well post it.

Anyways, onto the post……..

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mmyarrgh the pain!

I think I may have pulled a muscle last night during my midnight drunken stumble through the dark and deserted alleyways of kuta.

When in Bali, I walk.

A lot.

Although taxis are a bargain, walking seems the way to go - never seem to do enough of it at home, so i might as well to 15 times as much overseas. After 1 night, my battle wounds are beginning to show. A bung left foot, 2 nasty blisters (who knew $35 thongs could do so much damage) and a mean bruise on my hip. Not so sure about the bruise - I don’t get them easily.

Was I in a fight? Was I at a rodeo?

Did I decide juggling bricks would be a good idea?

dunno.

Last night was the first night in a while that I attempted sleep with no sleeping tablets. Bad idea.

Havin’ a belly full of whiskey, combined with half a day of trekking through the urban jungle - I assumed I’d be knocked out cold. Round about 4AM though I had another sleepwalking episode. I stumbled round the room wondering where I was and tried to leave. I couldn’t find the key (which was in the door), so I gave up then went back to bed. No damage done, but worrying nonetheless. I don’t particularly want to be wandering the hotel gardens naked. Might find myself being kidnapped by that 60 year old bloke who keeps looking at me funny from the porch of his villa. If he is thinking about brutally ass raping me, it wuold be nice if he smiled when I walk past - or at least buy me a few drinks. Common courtesy is expected from everyone in bali. Even potential creepy old sodomising rapists.

I’m having lunch now - first proper meal in 24 hours. Decided to skip the complimentary brekkie at the hotel. No guests seemed to be eating there so chances are I’d be consuming reheated fried noodles or one of the staff’s packed lunches. The Bali Aussie restaurant seemed to be the only place with people in it within limping distance. The more people in a restaurant, the better odds of getting fresh food and lowering the chance of getting a nasty case of the shits.

Thats what the tourist books say anyway.

If those books told me that jamming a chopstick up my left nostril was a sure fire way to getting clean ice in my coke, I’d do it.

Oh Lonely Planet, you learned book you.

Food here at this place is rather spicy but I’ve been craving carbs all morning. My head is a little fuzzy but not in the usual post-bourbon way, but more like a flu kind of way. Chances are I’ve probably got that avian disease or a bad case of girl cooties. Haven’t had an injection for that since grade two.. mental note : must touch the invisibility tree before going to the beach again.

With all this pent-up anxiety in me waiting to be released, I figure its time to go and get felt up for cash by some woman I haven’t met before.

That is, get a massage.

With no phone in my room, it’ll be annoying to get coin and use a public phone. I could use the front desk’s phone, but its within ear-shot of the tour desk and ill probably get pounced upon by that grazy Rendo guy who keeps wanting to take me on a private tour of his “very very special volcano”.

Whatever that means.

I slip on my most touristy shirt I could find and step out of the hotel grounds. 30 seconds later, I turn back clutching a handful of brochures which seemed to appear from nowhere. God these guys are good. With my newly aquired pamphlet in hand, I sip on a jacks whilst browsing the services on offer. hmm, a full body massage sounds nice, plus I might even get a manicure too. There were plenty of massages on offer, ranging from a peppermint scrub and rub - i dont particularly want to walk out smelling like a freddo frog.. to a rose oil deep body treatment. The descripton seemed promising - ‘an erotic massage, promising relaxation and a feeling of well-being’. mmmm, erotic eh? I read on: ‘you will leave feeling like a new woman, confident and sexy’.

Yes, I’ve always fantasised about being a woman, but I don’t think I could handle the bikini waxing, make-up and continual oogling by men.

I get that enough already.

Nope, just a traditional massage will do, with no bells, whistles or dig dong removals.

I mosey down to the place. It seems quite classy for the price. I introduce myself to the well spoken receptionist and arranged to get the works done. She invites me to sit next to a giant marble man holding a spear whist they degrease and disinfect the room. As I sat there sipping on my complimentary jasmine green tea, I thumbed through the guest comment book. Nothing but high praise from all.

One comment written by Maureen from Doubleview Western Australia reads: ”best massage I’ve had in years. I came 3 times”.

huh?

perhaps i should change my request…

After a short wait, I’m invited to one of the private rooms. It was a great massage, completely professional and even lasted longer than the hour I paid for. Much better than my usual - she was quick, firm and if she worked on my hamstring muscles any longer, I would have done the same as Maureen from Doubleview.

During the manicure she spoke to her co-worker sitting next to her who was doing a petticure on a very rude japanese lady in her mid 30s. She commented to her friend on how i had really nice hands. I seem to get that comment a lot. really, to me theyre awkward, skinny and my fingers are too long. but i guess i dont know a good hand when i see one. evidentally its my best feature. perhaps tonight i should use them in my next pick-up attempt.

”hey ladies, check THESE out. theyre GORGEOUS! Next to creating adam and eve, hey are the best job that god has ever done. Thats right…. I am the perfect hand job”.

Smooth.

No, stupid.

really stupid.

Well, lunch is over now and I’m getting tired blah blah blahdslfkjdslk

I found yet another blog post I wrote in Bali a few months ago.. For more of these Bali posts, click here.

Just got off the phone from a friend back home. 30 min call. ouch, that’ll cost a bit. but its well worth it and managed to bump up my homesickness a bit. But right now i shouldn’t be worrying about home - I should worry about who’s bed ill be in tomorrow.

Its Sunday night, almost 11. this time tomorrow I’ll be… somewhere else.

I hope.

My stay in Bali was always going to be a chaotic one. The plan was that I was going to move from hotel to hotel and from city to city. Unfortunately for me, I seem to be in Bali at the worst possible time. It seems that it is a national holiday so most of the cheaper hotels are booked out by the Indonesian holiday crowd. My villa will be taken over by someone else within the next 12 hours. Naturally, I haven’t secured a place to go to, being a lazy bastard n’ all but all is not lost.

Because I……… I have a guy.

Before you get all queer with me, it has to be said that every self respecting man on this planet wants to be known as the man who can get things done. If something can’t be done, then that man will rely on his vast network to secure the deal.

Need work done to your car? I’ll call my guy. Want help securing a good bank loan? I’ve got a mate that can help you. Want to score some illicit substances? don’t worry, my guy will hook you up.

It’s the ability to be known as the guy who gets stuff done is what makes us alpha males tick. The more “guys” you have in your network, the higher social status you have. At home I’ve got my men - plenty of them and they’ll hook you up good.. Over the next few weeks in Bali I shall acquire some more.

Whilst trying to de-stress today after visiting over 20 different hotels in the area, I decided to go to the bar and unwind. I got talking to a German ex-pat who was working here for a shipping company. He had a guy for me and after a couple of minutes and a little bit of sweet talking, his guy is now my guy.

Tomorrow morning it’ll pay off. Well, it better….

Otherwise ill have to re-jig my budget and stay in a pricier hotel or sleep on the streets.

Considering that I slept on the beach with a group of Queenslanders a few nights ago, I’m not overall fussed.

But as I sit here writing this blog post and after thinking about it, I realise I already have a mini network of guys here already. Cheap transport, a good tailor, a guy who will get me any DVD/CD of my choice regardless of how rare it is, a bar tender who gives me happy hour prices regardless the time of day… and I’ve only been here for a few days.

I love my men.

As I finish off this glass of Jacks and coke, a chipmunk scampers past my feet. It stops at the bin at my front door and rummages through it.

After a few seconds it stops, aware that I’m watching it. It gives me a bug-eyed look of desperation for a second and then runs away. I love chipmunks, strangely enough they remind me of a girl who I once had a crush on in grade 4. No, not because chipmunk can hold two walnuts in its mouth and still have room for more, but because we used to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks after school at her place. She let me touch her girl bits in the pool in exchange for my carton of chocolate milk. I thought i was the luckiest kid on earth at the time. Now if only girls these days were as cheap…

I never knew chipmunks were native here.. not even sure if it was one. probably it was an overgrown rat who had just gone the next stage of evolution. wish I had a pet chipmunk at home….

I’m sure I know a guy who could organise that..

[tags]Bali, Indonesia, travel[/tags]

One of the things that I had always remembered about Jakarta is how congested their roads were.

After 17 years the situation is about a thousand times worse.

Back home in dear ol’ Western Australia, a traffic jam would delay things by 15 to 30 mins. here, you cold add up to 3 hours to your journey if you took the wrong turn… Here I am, trapped in traffic. There are 3 lanes going in one direction yet there are at least 6 queues of cars spread across them. Most of you reading this might know bad traffic from perhaps Sydney or even Bali - thats not even remotely close to what its like here. To get an idea, drop some acid, staple a 500 gram steak to your chest, blindfold yourself and throw yourself into a tank full off sharks with frikkin lasers tied to their heads and you might experience how chaotic it is here.

Everything is at a standstill now. To my left, an elderly woman with an outstretched hand begs form money from the comfort of a piece of cardboard sitting on the side of the road. She is enveloped in thick black car exhaust spewing from a Mitsubishi lancer idling next to her. To my right, a kid no older than 10 years of age goes from car to car trying to sell bottles of lukewarm water and corn chips. A steady stream of scooters flow around him at breakneck speeds yet the kid seems completely ignorant to the fact.

Over the past few years the Indonesian government had tried to ease the strain on the main arterial roads by improving public transport. This was to be done by constructing a series of bus lanes and commissioning a brand new monorail. Just like the Simpsons episode, the whole thing failed miserably - unfortunately for the people of Jakarta, there was no musical song n’ dance to the whole ordeal. I’m not exactly sure to the whole story but evidentially the funds dried up so the workers walked away. The failed remains of the project litter the landscape of the city in the form of skeletal concrete towers and roads going nowhere. I guess nobody thought of a back-out plan as it certainly would cost billions to clean up the mess and reclaim the land that was taken away from the same roadways it was supposed to save.

Law enforcement must be non existent on the roads - street signs are ignored, traffic signals change from red to green with no apparent influence to the flow of vehicles and pedestrians jaywalk the streets like ants scurrying around the floor of a rain forest in anticipation of a pending thunderstorm. Cars weave in and out of the makeshift lanes in a vein attempt at saving an extra 30 seconds to their travel time - it doesn’t always work, sometimes they gain an extra 20 seconds… good enough for the drivers.

Ahead of me a Mercedes scrapes the side of a Hyundai. Both drivers quickly jump out to survey the damage, chat for two seconds, then a wad of cash is exchanged followed by the drivers getting back in their cars. In the time this event took, not a single car had the opportunity to move. No phone numbers exchanged and no insurance papers to fill out.

Efficient yet completely insane.

At home you regularly hear people whine about how bad it is on the roads these days. Try spending 10 mins behind the wheel here. That’ll shut you up. In the meantime - thank god for personal drivers.

I’m gonna nap now - gotta fly to Bali tomorrow.

Sundays when people would be at church praying for their sins, I’d usually be in the city performing great dirty biblical style sins onto my credit card… yes, I’d be out clothes shopping.. how heterosexual of me…
Today i needed some spiritual guidance. Thankfully Jakarta is indeed a shopping heaven.

Knowing i was bored shitless, my cousin offered to drive me to the closest shopping mall. It was huge.

No, I mean HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.

Several storeys high, jam packed full of outlet stores, a multiplex cinema and a food hall featuring dishes from every corner of the globe, the place was absafuckinglutely packed. There would have been tens of thousands of people there, christmas eve at the centro galleria wouldn’t be remotely as busy as it was here.

Things weren’t that cheap in comparison to home - unless you went for the higher priced stuff. I spotted Pierre Cardain business shirt and tie i has bought last season in David Jones for $120. They had it for $35. not bad.

About an hour into it, i stumbled into a book store and immediately fell in love. books lined the shelves at a quarter of the price of home. there was a book I immediately HAD to have - it was an architecture book detailing unique building designs used in Europe in the 80’s. a hardcover monolith, it was as thick as a box of tissues, as wide as the Sydney Morning Herald and weighed a tonne thanks to it’s ultra glossy fully illustrated pages. I had to concede though. It simply was too big and would severely cause luggage issues. A book like that would easily cost a few hundred bucks at home - assuming a book store would even import it. There it was, taunting me with it’s $50 price tag. damn book tease.

As i browsed the English hardcover aisle I bumped into Heather, a tiny 5 foot something brunette law student from Brisbane with piercing blue eyes, a mischievous impish smile and a flawless tanned complexion. She had taken a year off from her studies to travel Asia. We met while both reaching for the same book about the rich history of the American democrats. She immediately recognised my Aussie accent when i apologised and we started to chat about our mutual interests of the American political system, their upcoming elections and how corrupted the Indonesian parliament was. The topic then swung to tastes in music, literature and the usual casual fluff. i didn’t care what the subject was - out of the thousands of people in the jam packed mall that we were in, i had found a friend.

A friend me likey.

After 20 mins of banter, i invited her for a coffee at the Starbucks round the corner. She momentarily stared off into space as if she was having an internal debate with herself, then she apologetically declined explaining she only popped into the store while her partner Gina was in the shop opposite browsing for wigs.

Hmm, a traveling lesbian law student in Jakarta.

Good for her.

We exchanged email addresses and i bid her farewell with a kiss on the cheek. She grabbed the book we both were looking at and promised i could have it if i ever visited Brissie. Then she vanished into the crowd as if she was Lestat and the crowd was smoke pouring a shitload too much fog onto a movie set.

damn, i really wanted that book.

I then moseyed on over to the over sized food hall. It had everything I would have needed. KFC, A&Ws, Wendy’s, Kirispy Kreme, Boost Juice, Taco Bell, White Castle and any other American classics. I love cheap yankie fast foods and aussie food that pretends to be cheap yankie food but pretends it doesn’t.

I crave it. Like a junkie who craves for a cheap smack pack.
If you want to impress me, turn up at my front door naked. if you want to make me fall in love with you, turn up naked with a taco bell meal with extra cheese in one hand and a 2 litre bottle of a root beer in the other. If you brought along a Starbucks caramel frappuccino, I’d probably pleasure you orally as well….. not sure how you could hold the cup though. given you’re using both hands to hold the meal and the root beer….

Tonight tho, Japanese seemed the way to go. I ordered as much sushi, sashimi and yakitori as AU$50 could get me. I ended up eating enough raw fish to reconstitute half a whale and got a bad case of heartburn. I didn’t care - the food was fresh and cheap. Plus it was the first real food i had feasted on in what seemed like weeks.

My phone chimed, i had spent 5 hours at the shopping mecca but it had only felt like an hour. My ride would be waiting for me downstairs. I trundled down the escalators and the crowd parted in front of me. This seemed to be a religious moment for me… I was moses, escaping a cruel world in search for better life.

But it was all in reverse.

Beyond me was my past life which I had to return to. Behind me, my own personal paradse. I turned to take one last look at the holy pilgramge i had just took.

My deciples: overtly cheerful shop assistants.

My god: the giant plastic colonel sanders thar stood before the food court.

My heaven: the tubs of fake cream cheese stored under the counter at Taco Bell which beg to be poured over my begging nubile body.

I promised myself that i would someday return, i doubt know when and i don’t know how. But the second coming IS imminent. I swear to god and the root beer floats at A&W, the all American family restaurant. you know I’m serious when i swear on a fast food menu.

forever and ever, RAmen.

Err yes… a few weeks ago I kinda lost all my blog posts for my trip to Indonesia. Well, I’ve got 1 back so far.

Woo!

Enjoy!
Its been 17 years since i last was here. the place seemingly hasn’t changed one bit. despite the chaotic sprawl that lay before me, one thought comes to mind : welcome home Chris.

welcome to Jakarta..

I spent many years as a child here, although Aussie born I am from a multicultural background. Mother from Indonesia, father from France. My Indonesian heritage stems back all the way to the Indonesian royal family, as a kid I used to think that was the bees knees – I was a prince of sorts.. although to be honest, I have as much royal power an electric toothbrush. After two years of Australian schooling my parents moved back to Indonesia where I was chucked knee-deep into an Indonesian education system that was completely alien to me which most likely was one of the cornerstones thar turned me into the persnickety and eclectic minded person who is writing this blog entry for you today.

Jakarta, where the rich get richer and the poor pretty much all stay the same, but they still manage to smile all the time regardless the situation. well i think they are smiles… quite possibly they are just grimaces of pain.. I’ve never seen so much tooth decay in my life as i have in the last 3 hours.  its hard not to be in sheer amazement that Jakarta’s populous hasn’t already descended into pure anarchy- let alone imploded upon itself in a giant mushroom cloud of despair and hopelessness.

the last time i was in Indonesia, the Aussie embassy was bombed. i do have to give those terrorists credit though, to actually find their target amongst a landscape that resembles a metropolitical puddle of chunky Sunday morning spew is simply an amazing feat.. heck, I’m having  enough trouble trying to find the sky let alone where the embassy is. its as if the whole city was encased in a giant bubble of smoggy filth. the attack on the embassy wasn’t a cold blooded act of terrorism, they were simply trying to blend the ambassadorial headquarters into it’s surroundings.

after a 2 hour drive to my uncle’s house which would probably take 30 minutes if several million people just got off the roads in unison, i finally get the opportunity to relax… well sort of. the block of land in which this house is situated on would fit quite snugly in my lounge, dining and family room combined. there are 8 of us in this house at the moment. i haven’t gathered enough courage to ask where i am sleeping - after finding out there is no hot water on site, let alone anything remotely resembling western plumbing. this is slumming it at it’s best.

as i sit out at the front to have my first smoke in 10 hours, i notice the constant smell of diesel exhaust accompanied with the never ending background noise of cars honking at each other around the corner.

mmmm carbon monoxidey. 1 week here will shorten the lifespan of my lungs by a month. Thankfuly I have nicotine to drown out the worries of my deteriorating lungs.

a glimmer of blue sky momentarily pops into existence above me, but as quickly as it comes into view - it vanishes. the rarely used term ‘acid rain’ jumps into mind as i stare into the bleak grey cloud cover. all around me i can see the gradual weathering down of buildings thanks to the harsh pollutants in the air. Walls which were once white are now stained brown and are showing signs of crumbling to dust.

Everything just seems dirty and not in the fun “dirty” you’d normally associate with ditsy club-hopping blondes who have mastered the fine art of circular-breathing but a dirty in the way that you’d associate with absolute filth, much like the scene at the local kebab shop’s toilet at 3AM on a Sunday morning.

There is a fine layer of dust on everything and I’m afraid that I might catch some sort of tropical bubonic plague type disease if I was to simply walk within 5m of an open sewer. Unfortunately the ability to avoid such things are completely lost on me as there seems to be holes everywhere, uncovered and filled to the brim with a black sludge o’ death.

Reminds me of the night when I polished off an extra-big bottle of black sambucca at a friend’s 17th…. The toilet became my friend. I even gave him a name. It was Larry.

Larry and I were more than friends. You could say we were lovers. I spent a lot of time inside Larry that night. To this day the smell of lemony fresh toilet duck still gives me a semi..

This is the part of the trip that I had been regretting. I agreed to do the Jakarta thing because of the family – it had been too long and chances are that if I don’t see them now, ill probably never see them again. I had already missed the death of my two aunties, if any more of them decide to croak, I might as well get a mental refresher to what they look like….

The last time I put pen to plasticy screen, I was trapped on the flight of hell.

Screaming children, crappy entertainment and i was starting to get an itch on my upper left thigh. But before I could scratch that itch, I was in panic mode – my plane had landed somewhere that wasn’t Jakarta….

As I got off the plane, I wondered to myself why nobody else was questioning the unusual sequence of events. After getting out of the shuttle bus that brought me to the terminal, I suddenly realised where I was….

Bali.

I’m in Denpasar… BALI. I’m supposed to be in Jakarta..

To those people out there who are geographically retarded, the distance is similar between Sydney to Adelaide - so it wasn’t a case where the pilot just took a wrong turn somewhere at that invisible roundabout hovering in mid-air.

After chatting to a rather official looking bloke who was having a smoke directly under a no-smoking sign, everything started to make sense – it was a transit flight. Nobody told me about this prior to me getting on the plane and given that I was too busy trying not to fit my fist down the esophagus of a preschooler, I would have missed the announcements made by the pilot en-route.

After a 30 minute wait in the transit lounge, we were told to get back on the plane. The majority of the passengers had disembarked to Bali – including the little brat so I was now surrounded by bunch of new unfamiliar faces all eager to get to the nations capital. Not one westerner was on the plane with me. The flight attendants were speaking to me in Indonesian, the short film was in Indonesian and even the smell started to feel very Indonesian. Very soon, the culture shock will hit me.

I braced myself for impact…… Nothing..
No matter – Jakarta, here I come! Farewell Bali, see you again in a couple of days..

I hope.

– o –

On my way to the capital, I have to say the view is spectacular. Unlike the trip to Bali which primarily consisted of flying over flat, dull terrain and even more comatose inducing ocean - the island of Java is unbelievable to view from the air.

firstly, flying over an active volcano is AWESOME. being able to see the steam spew from the vents and the volcanic pools ripple in the sunlight is breathtaking. The size of the crater was just beyond ridiculous.. either we are flying only a few hundred meters above it, or there is a huge fuck-off crater in the middle of Indonesia that nobody knows about. Then again, that could be possible. A few weeks I found a $100 note stuffed in the breast pocket of a jacket I hadn’t worn in years. Perhaps this behemoth was just hidden away amongst the moth balls and old issues of Hustler magazine.

A few mins later we fly over civilization.. i figure Indonesian domestic airspace is a lot lower in comparison to Australia’s as i can see individual buildings from this height. the pollution is quite apparent from up here with the coast line growing increasingly browner the closer we get to large cities. streaks of what look like oil slicks radiate in all directions from the various port cities twinkling with all the colors of the rainbow, resembling an exploded firework frozen in time. housing density is huge as well, with suburbs looking like red play dough being pressed through a fly screen door. out the window i can also see another plane, seemingly heading the same direction. i can almost see people’s faces through the windows. thats a little too close for comfort.

very unnerving indeed.

By this time I’m beyond exhausted, writing on this thing has given me a cramp, but I seem to have this unnerving compulsion to keep on writing. But really i should stop. My wit has all dried up and I’ve been noticing myself falling into micro-sleeps..

before I sign off, lunch is served… wooah! metal cutlery! I haven’t seen knives and forks in metal form on a plane for years. Shame that kid didn’t stay on the plane, cos I’d bet this knife could do serious damage to his trachea, especially when inserted through his rectum by using this metal fork as a tool to keep his puckered little hole open.

The food which was served seems to be some kind of a mystical meat dish.. one bite it tastes like fish… another bite it tastes like veal. the taste sensations dance on my tongue like a dog chasing it’s tail with a live chicken strapped to it’s back.

mmmm. mystical meat indeed.

Accompanied with the meal is a carton of water.. for some reason the manufacturer decided to call their water “Asian Water”…. it says so right on the container. mmmm Asian water and it’s asiany goodness. Somehow Asian water tastes better than the usual crappy Australian water - I suppose everything tastes better when manufactured in massive Asian sweat-shops.

Even Reebok shoes. Delicious when served on a bed of mashed potatoes.

The rest of the flight was rather uneventful. Some turbulence managed to dislodge one of the overhead compartments, allowing some hand luggage to go flying, ricocheting off some guy’s bald skull. I laughed, he glared, I pretended it was the guy behind me.

Eventually things started to get darker as I felt my eyelids getting heavier.

Next stop - Jakarta.