Bali: Day 1-3 (or, Please Stop Reminding Me)

It all started on the plane. Prior to take off, the guy occupying the aisle seat in my row, got up to do something and it appeared as though I had the row to myself at the exact time the flight attendant was doing a quick scan of the passengers. “You’re all by yourself?”she asked.

Bitch.

Then I got to the hotel to check in. They prepared my check-in paperwork and handed me a small folded key card holder that contained key cards for the room and others for pool towels. Then looked around and saw that I was the only one in the lobby area. “Only one? Not two?” Then he took back half the stuff he just handed me and showed me to a twin room. I said that I had asked for a room with a double bed, not two singles. “You only one so only use one and call reception tomorrow and maybe different room available”.

Thanks.

At breakfast the next morning I found a small table near the front of the restaurant, with a view of the ocean. I breathed in the ocean air and smiled, determined to make this an awesome holiday. “Your room number please? You are alone? Oh.” And then she removed the second set of cutlery, plates, glass, tea cup, napkin and place mat at my table, which I think is probably the proper thing to do in terms of restaurant etiquette but also somehow felt – in terms of general discomfort and awkwardness - as the place setting equivalent of doing the morning after walk of shame (though to add insult to injury, I obviously hadn't even gotten laid, so there wasn't even any bounce in my step).

Hrumpfh.

This of course was only the beginning of a trend that would continue for days. I've grown accustomed to doing stuff on my own sometimes and can enjoy my own company; normally it wouldn't bother me as much as it was, but you know (see last post).

After working up the nerve to go out on my own for a drink and some dinner, this happened. It was surprisingly detailed and made me a momentary celebrity among the middle aged female customers also at the bar. The Indonesian guy at the table next to me leaned over and told me that it was "small. Aussie size". I will refrain from further comment.

I went shopping, wandering the streets looking at crap of varying quality trying not to shop my feelings (though that’s arguably better than eating them).

Street sellers called out to me, with their annoying propensity for calling everyone Darling. “Hello Darling, come look. Looking free!”, “Darling where you from?”, “I have sarongs, 100,000 rupiah but give discount for you Darling. How much you want to pay Darling?” I found very little comfort in their unearned familiarity, but it did serve to help minimize any damage I might have otherwise done to my bank account – I find being hassled as much of a shopping turn off as I find pervy mustaches a turn off with men – I might want what you have to offer, but not that badly. Never that badly.

(And don’t even get me started on terms of endearment. You need to earn that shit people. Until then, call me Miss. Or Ma’am if you’re feeling like being a bit of a dick. Or “sister” or “auntie” if we are in Africa and you are actually trying to be respectful.)

One of the best things about Bali is super cheap massages. So after wandering around I finally succumbed to one of the many women with spa brochures who line the streets trying to temp tourists. She didn’t call me Darling and I was trying to get away from one of the other vendors who had been calling after me telling me he was single too (he had caught me off guard and I had momentarily lost my usual immediate response to the question of relationship status, which is that ‘yes, of course I am married’). She led me down a side street and into a small massage shop. 

My hour long “traditional Balinese massage” was $5 very well spent, though proved that she was perhaps more comfortable with my nudity than I was.

As I was getting dressed, in that slightly euphoric haze that goes along with getting off the table and rejoining the real world after a massage, she started to ask me some questions. Where was I from? How long was I staying in Bali?  Then something that I couldn’t quite understand, and she repeated herself, adding emphasis for clarity. She wanted to know my age.

“Eighteen?”

I just laughed because I must have heard her wrong.

“You how old?”

“I’m 32”

“No. You look young like 20. Maybe 23. Not 32”

She looked at me a little longer then asked

“You married?”

“Nope” (I’m alone)

“Ah. That why you look young. Marriage make look old. That my baby there” (and pointed to a sleeping child at the back on a couch), “I look young like you then I get marry. Now look like this”, and she made a face like someone farted in an elevator then shrugged it off.

“You lucky Darling”.

Well at least there’s that.