22 days in Desa Anturan

We stayed in Anturan for around 22 days.  This was always the plan - to 'settle down' somewhere and to write.  I was, of course, writing my play and E was putting the legwork into being a travel writer (!).

The days were very much the same - breakfast and letter/diary writing followed by a combination of things.....

Chatting to Suidi.  The tone of conversations seemed to depend entirely on how well business was going.  Her tactic was to lure you into the shop, sit you down with a cup of coffee and chat to you whilst you gradually remembered all the things you needed - from books (Postcards from the Edge on one occasion, Maybe the Moon on another) through to suntan lotion and cigarettes.

Ketut - the chap who worked in Mandhara cottages (and his dwarf friend who sported a denim waistcoat with Tom Cruise on the back) and who's sexuality I spent a considerable amount of time wondering about whilst playing cards for E's hand in marriage.

Massages.  The beach was teaming with massage ladies with no-one to 'service'.  One was deaf and dumb and ancient.  She had her own form of sign language that you gradually got a handle on.  All of the massages that we partook in seemed, on reflection, to be of varying quality - usually varying to the lower scale of the register.  One of the massage ladies didn't get any business but the others gave her a cut of their earnings to protect them from bad luck!

Swimming.  I seemed to get it into my head that I needed a 'health kick'.  And the occasional swim in the sea was the extent of it.  I usually found excuses such a 'choppiness' and 'it was full of s**t' to not.

Sheltering from the Rain.  This was a trend, it seems.  The raining season had started to arrive by this point in proceedings and the result was a large number of days sheltering in our first floor balcony room.

A cockfight.  Indeed.  E was insistent that this was part of her vocational research and, to her credit, she sought one out.  It was as you might have expected.  Both an anticlimax and a dirty, visceral and disgusting experience.

Trips to Kalibukbuk for eating, drinking, dancing and watching films.  Bootleg versions of everything from Philadelphia through to a film called Blown Away (that I can't recall and won't be bothering with googling) followed by either a long walk back to Anturan or a motorbike taxi at high terrifying speed.

Writing.  It's interesting to see how much time I did, indeed, immerse myself in writing and in the process, technicalities and multi revisions of writing.  I unearthed the Play What I Wrote with this diary and flicking through it is.....interesting.

Dolphin Spotting.  or not.  A disastrous trip to sea with a french woman and a halftank of fuel in an outboard motor that had seen much much better days.

One big row (ish) with E about the fact that I wasn't paying her writing enough attention and that I was dismissive of her attempts at the expense of diverting attention back onto my own.  I'll just leave that there although it was the source of considerable scarring at the time.  Something that I would, in fact, return to when a similar (or not similar at all) disagreement broke out at the time of her wedding.    We might get there at some point.  Or we might not.

And that was me 'living' in Bali for a bit.  Living is, of course, a youthful exaggeration.  But 22 days are quite a few days.  They seem to be peppered with everything from me-style fidgets and bad moods (the combination of homesickness and post-nap grumbles) through to extreme contentedness and marvelling at 'i'm in Bali - isn't that something'.

Meno to Tirtagangga to Anturan

So - diary number two was in a box in the attic.  Goodness knows what I was trying to hide - and from whom!

So - jumping quickly backwards before we go forwards again.

New Year was spent in an unexpected location called Tirtaganga.  The journey from the Gills was long and arduous and finished for the night in a hilltop homestay in the pouring rain.  And it seems that its collection of animals (from chickens to porcupines) and its exceptional breakfasts were enough to convince us to stay.  There seemed to be an emerging theme at this point in the diary entries about 'money worries' but they seem to pass a little down the line.

New Year, now the diary reminds me, was spent in a local restaurant and then at the 'village party'.  And impromptu Kecak dance ensued which was followed by the inevitable reggae disco.  We seemed particularly amused that it was only the men who danced, never the women.

The mixing of the drinks and the inclusion of various types of arak resulted in sore heads the next day.  And that coupled with the 'bank holiday' vibe on the Bemos (in case I didn't say, they're minibuses that you squeeze onto (or hang onto) and shout "Girri' ('Stop') when you, indeed, want them to Girri) resulted in some frayed moods.

We found the fabled village of Anturan though.  This was where J had stayed 18 months prior and which had reached such elevated status in my mind (up there with The Beach (not written yet I appreciate)) that we had to stay there.  And indeed we did.  Firstly in a place called Mandhara and then in 'Simons'.   The latter was negotiated by E who's particularities needed accommodating.

The village was, indeed, very welcoming.  We got to know people by name and character.  From Suidi who sold us cigarettes and ice creams and rented us pedal bikes, through to the Austrian woman who rain the beachfront cafe and who'd been there for 2 years and spoke Indonesian to other longstanding Westerners because that was just as good a common language as English.

And many of them remembered J.  They remembered him and his guitar and the places he stayed in.  And that they'd tricked him into eating Dog Sate.  Maybe.