by Mike
In retrospect, the decision to relocate from Ubud to Medewi might have been a questionable one. We’re farther west than the tourism corridor, we’re out of Ubud, away from Kuta, away from Munduk and the capital Denpasar; and though we’re ecstatic any time we leave the tourist trail, our first sign of trouble was the price of the ocean-front hotel room: it was LOWERED to 100,000 Rupiah ($10) before we even asked. The staff was apparently resigned to run a low-quality establishment. (read more)
There are bugs in the room, and this evening I came home to the nastiest spider I’ve ever seen, relaxing next to our lightswitch with an air of entitlement. It’s definitely not the paradise Lonely Planet promised, but I reminded Azure, half-encouraging myself, that if we could overcome our dependence on nice rooms we would save a lot of money (and therefore travel longer). She reminded me that nobody at home would consider any of our rooms “nice,” and we do save a lot of money because of it. Oh yeah. Azure wrote a hilarious post about the hotel here: http://www.quarteryear.com/us-vs-bugs
Right now, at 8pm, prayers are echoing in our room from two separate mosques, one voice from the east, one from the west. It’s beautiful, if haunting, and it’s a little bizarre that one muezzin is a child. This area does feel different than other parts of Bali. The young men leer more. Hindu locals have told us that this is what Muslim areas are like. I’m sure Muslim locals would say the opposite. I don’t know the religion of the young men, but, compared to the rest of Bali, Medewi is much less welcoming.
Two miles past Medewi beach we rode toward the water. Groups of young men perched on their motorcycles hanging out next to the ocean beaches, tons of men. There were some women here and there, but mostly just young men staring at us, calling out, “HEY! HEY MAN!” I don’t like when people yell at us. When we first encountered this in Kuta I wanted to ask the touts, “How would you feel if someone yelled, ‘HEY!’ at you?” Maybe not that bad, it turns out. At a homestay in Ubud the owners did exactly that to get a family member’s attention, yelling down to the courtyard, “HEY! HEY! HEY!” It really rubs me the wrong way, but that’s how they do it. A nasty old woman there was responsible for both the yelling and the loogie-haucking outside our window, several times a day.
Back in Medewi, to the west along the shore, a series of pens at the edge of the beach hold cows who graze the trees and grasses. Across the road rice paddies sprawl under the most plastic bag scarecrows I’ve seen anywhere in Bali. The bags are tied to strings that run across the mature rice, and when a farmer notices birds eying his field he yanks the strings and the bags jump. If that fails, a lady standing in the field yells and swings a large flag toward the flocks. From here a number of Hindu shrines dot a village road that lead us inland. We stopped to watch two cocks start a pickup fight.
We crossed the main road and drove toward the mountains, an hour before sunset, surprised that the small towns here aren’t as poor as we expected. The brick houses are well-constructed and the neighborhoods are cute and clean, even deep into the hills that roll down from the national park. The road pierces the jungle for miles and just when we were convinced it would cross to the opposite coast, it petered out to gravel. We turned around.
High in the hills we ran into a mobile vendor who sold us some tasty fried tofu snacks wrapped around beansprouts. The people were nice, most smiled at us, as is usual outside the cities. We were so deep I’m sure no other white people had been up that road any time recently, and the people who didn’t smile at us gawked in surprise. One side of the road teased glimpses across a valley that’s raw and thick with coconut palms and primary growth, jungle toppling onto itself. I wanted to take a picture of the natural beauty, but it would have been a picture that demands a pre-delete button, Azure and I joke. You know your next picture will be a throwaway, so you press “pre-delete,” then take it anyway.
We coasted down the hill and stopped at a grocery store for some carb snacks – chocolate bread, jackfruit chips and peanuts. At a gas station Azure offered a chip to the driver behind us, and he happily took her up on it. Everyone lol’ed.
We stopped at some food stalls and ordered bakso (soup with balls of “meat”), though after watching a lady make an egg-filled, veggie-rich soto ayam (chicken soup) we second-guessed our decision. The bakso held its own anyway. While deciding where to sit we did the usual smile-at-people routine, and one little boy called, “Tourist! Tourist!” but his mom shut him up quick. It reminded me of something that happened regularly when I said something stupid as a kid. Specifically I remember the Canadian Exchange – a yearly event when players from a Canadian soccer team stayed with families from our American team, then a couple weeks later the roles reversed. I welcomed the Canadian kid to our home, saying, “Welcome to the lifestyles of people on Somerset!” imitating Robin Leech. My mom shut me up quick, even though it was just silly in my mind, because of course we weren’t rich & famous. It was just another house, to me. Maybe we were rich compared to that kid, though, I don’t remember.
One of the years I stayed with a Vancouver family who lived in an apartment. They ate french fries with gravy and had a toddler daughter named Sidney – I felt sorry that she’d grow up in an apartment. I called my parents collect (they were proud that I could pull that off), but I was homesick and scared because the family was unexpectedly different. I don’t know if I felt sorry for them or uncomfortable about being outside my bubble – probably a combination – but I remember crying.
Today, in Bali, as we drove through some of the poorer neighborhoods and watched the pickup cock fight, I thought about how last year we passed similar Colombian poverty and felt sick from a distance. This year we’re in it, on a bike of course, but we face the differences and keep pushing ourselves to understand it. As we went deeper and deeper into the mountains I started feeling nervous. I glanced at the gas, we had plenty, so I had to ask myself, “You’re not nervous about the scooter; do you trust the people?”
On this trip I’ve come to the conclusion that fear is not a good reason to not do something. Fear is an emotional response to perceived risk, and our perceptions are so often wrong.
Back at the food stalls Azure ordered a delicious pancake thing heavy with chocolate, peanuts and condensed milk, and the cook battled flying ants as dusk dropped to night. We drove home through a storm of flying ants, they were all over the road, maybe attracted by the headlights. They floated thick like Seattle’s cottonwood blooms in truck headlights, then rolled like dry leaves as the trucks passed. As we crossed the bridge into Medewi two swarms of larger bugs pelted my neck and chest, at first I thought it was gravel. It was disgusting. As soon as we got home, and I snuck past the enormous spider, I washed my face and hands. Not much you can do about that.
Posted on January 1, 2010 at 10:26 am.
by Azure
After 36 hours in transit, we arrived in Bali in the heat of the day. It was quite a shock stepping outside the airport to 90+ degree weather, having boarded the original plane in Seattle with near freezing temperatures. We got a cab to Kuta beach (the backpackers slum of south Bali) and found a guesthouse that we liked on the second try. Had the location been different, this place could have been a real hit. It had a pool surrounded by tropical foliage and wifi! (No photos were taken in this location)
(read more)
Posted on December 10, 2009 at 3:34 am.
We pulled into L’Ile Rousse (on the west coast of Corsica) late in the afternoon and immediately headed to the cute center of town. There were bunches of people playing petanque (bocci) in the main square, old men of course, and many just hanging out watching. That’s not our scooter.
We watched for a little while then walked down the two small streets that make up the centre ville and of course (of course) discovered nothing was open.
It’s an interesting little town.
Posted on May 1, 2009 at 12:12 am.
by Azure
We woke up yesterday morning feeling some of the residual effects of the night before. After resigning ourselves leaving the scooter at Jean Paul’s house and selling it for whatever price we got on ebay (I truly would have been happy to get half of what we paid for it) we went out to see the only American we know in Paris–a bar owner from Florida whom we met because he was the guy who bought the bar that Mike worked at in 2001. The night only ended with a reinvigorated hope and some good old American can-do attitude. He thought we could sell it here or there for this much and our eyes lit up and we thought that maybe we’d sell it easily again.
Nope. And luckily this revival of ambition didn’t last longer than 9am the next day. We really had to leave Paris ASAP and kept telling ourselves, we’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul. We’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul.
We packed up our bags and loaded the scooter for the real last time. It was a little nerve wracking because we didn’t have insurance and it was registered under Jean Paul’s name, so he was liable for us. And, as I pointed out to Mike, driving through and around Paris put us in contact with more people and police than we had seen the whole rest of the ride. We looked it up online, however and saw that the fine for driving without insurance was a mere 1500 euro fine, but no jail time. Of course our motto of the day was “No jail time!”
We made it ok, of course. We drove past the Palace of Versaille and I caught my first glimpse of the enormous place, up the side roads and made it to the “Buffalo Grill” parking lot where Jean Paul would meet us. There was one random checkpoint at one of the roundabouts, but we made sure to exit the roundabout before we got to the checkpoint. Of course my heart raced.
When we parked the scooter in Jean Paul’s garage and he said we could leave it there until next year when we came back to pick it up, I paused and thought, well maybe… My mind appears to be completely incapable of remembering pain or fear. We still had our helmets on when he mentioned leaving it, my heart was just slowing down from fearing the police, and I actually considered it. Of course we wouldn’t do something like that because that would be a pain for him, but now I think why wouldn’t we buy another scooter? We would just go about it differently. No lesson learned.
He invited us in for a glass of wine, we got to witness the most incredible being on the planet, Morgane’s dog and later, Jean Paul took us to the RER. The next part was shockingly fast, coming from a vehicle that went a top speed of 70km/hr, but averaged more like 50. To ride the scooter from Paris to Poitiers would have taken us about 14 hours, we would have scheduled two days for it. When we fell asleep on the train out of pure emotional exhaustion, we woke up to find we were over half way there. The whole ride only took 1.5 hours. (on another note: I just don’t think you see the country the same way when your are going that fast)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QHZFdDLx-Q&hl=en&fs=1]
“The most incredible being on the planet”
Nash picked us up in the old white chateau car. It was good to see that some things don’t change AND that some people appreciate good old vehicles. We pulled up to find many of the flowers in bloom and the place to be just as tranquil as I remember it. I feel like we’ve been put out to pasture here to spend the remainder of our time roaming about and doing projects on the grounds.
The Chateau car
We had dinner (Salmon topped with creme fraiche, caviar and mint, sides of potatoes, broccoli and salad and of course cheese and wine and chocolate) with Nash and Linda (the owners of the chateau), their son Syrus (sp?) and Patty, a woman I met my first time here who also cooks for guests and has made a really great part-time life here. We had great, easy conversation, though afterward I feared we talked too much about ourselves-oops. It turns out we have a lot in common, not only our living proximity to Greenlake, but our love of food and slow life and gardening and just the ability to live part, or in their case all of our lives over here.
We are staying in the building that is the back side of the chicken coop (this reference is probably only good for Kim and Adam). The chateau grounds house a small abandoned village, where all the work used to be done. There is a barn, carriage house, paper press building, a place to house the farm equipment, the list goes on. These buildings go about one city block along an unpaved road. All of the buildings are being turned into either living spaces (ours has been turned into a 3 bedroom apartment) or spaces to house events. Our room is lovely and the bed is the most comfortable we have had in a long long time.
When we walked back from dinner in the darkness I felt so at peace, so opposite of how I had felt the night before — we are already a whole world away.
Posted on March 27, 2009 at 4:57 am.
by Azure
We are still in Paris. My meh has turned to a MEH!!! We’re not actually in Paris, just outside in a really really cheap hotel. Although we’ve ended our long and abusive relationship with Avventura, the shop that sold us the scooter, we are still in Paris suburbia hell. Mike says there are days in Seattle when he feels like he has spent the whole day doing nothing. That is our existence here. We wake up, post some ads on the french websites listing the scooter and wait for emails to arrive that we neither fully comprehend nor have the means to respond to. That doesn’t stop us from trying, but it does hinder the amount of responses that we have gotten to our replies. Or maybe not. Maybe these guys are just too lazy to write back or come see the scooter.
Here are some of the correspondences over the last week (translated to English of course).
“Hello, I am interested in your scooter. Is it still available?”
“Yes, when are you available to come see it?”
-nothing-
“Your scooter interests me very much, I propose 1000 euros?”
“Yes, that sounds fine, when would you like to see it?”
-nothing-
“40,000 miles, I will propose 800 euros.”
“No thank you.”
“400 euros.”
“Go fuck yourself”
“400 euros.”
“Sounds great, when can you come look at it?”
-nothing-
“Your scooter looks perfect, but I can only afford 800 euros.”
“Ok, that will be fine, when can you come look at it?”
“I can bring 300 now and the rest in one week.”
-we’re leaving tomorrow?-
“Is your scooter still available? I can trade a computer and 100 euros.”
“Ummmmmm”
“I am interested in your scooter, I can trade it for my diesel truck”
“Thank you for your response, however, the ad says I must leave Paris and can’t take a scooter, how will I take a truck?”
And it goes on and on and on. Not one person has looked at the scooter. If they did, I know they would driven away with it. Mike finally wrote a rant on Craigslist, but since no one looks at it here, there were no responses, oh unless you count the fake response that you get every time saying that they want the “item” and they will pay by check and also pay for shipping. Um, do you know that it is 200 pound scooter?
Today we thought we had found luck when we called a scooter shop and they said they bought scooters. When we took it out there, the guys said it was of NO value to him. NONE! We said, well is it worth 10 euros? And he said, well of course. To which we responded, well how much is it worth then. We are starting to think that people think differently here. Almost everything in worth something, especially when it has taken two people to Corsica and back with no problems last week.
As we drove back, I kept looking at people walking. I thought we should give it to an immigrant man or someone who it would be of value to. At this point it is no longer about the money. Current Azure has already borrowed the 400 euro that she is losing from future Azure that is richer and has disposable income. Or maybe she is just less cheap. We respond to the ads where people are nice, they use common courtesy words like “hello.” We want the scooter to go to a good home, since we know what it has and can do for someone.
It is a difficult situation since we no longer want to be here, we are ready to move on, it’s time to put the scooter to bed, but we don’t know how. Tomorrow, we are planning to take it to Jean Paul’s house and sell it on ebay. After MUCH worry and discussion, it seems the best option. If all goes well, that will be the end of our journey together. If all doesn’t go well, we will be paying a 1500 euro fine for not having insurance. Just a little more to borrow from future Azure I guess.
As it turns out, we might end up selling it before it gets to the house. There seems to be a few serious options that we found tonight. We can’t count on people anymore. That is the hardest part for me, not being being able to control the situation at all. We don’t have a phone and email is hard for a lot of people. There are so many queries, but no follow through. It’s like dating and I can’t tell if it is them or us. As Mike says, we love her too much to burn her, so the search continues for someone else to love her.
Posted on March 25, 2009 at 4:52 pm.
by Azure
We arrived in Paris with a real “meh” attitude (meh is the noise one makes when they are whining.) The whole story is that we really didn’t want to come to Paris at all. We found out we were uninsurable soon after I arrived in Nice, but with all the paperwork, we figured no one would ever check up on it. We continued to ride because that’s what we loved doing. But, on our last day in Corsica, we got word from the scooter shop that we weren’t technically allowed to own the scooter and that it wasn’t registered. Hmmmm.
Not that we were being legal by driving it 1000km from Nice to Paris, but at least we felt like we were making an effort to be legal. Now that it is parked outside the hotel in Paris, I can breath a little better. There were a couple nights of up most of the night worry, thinking about Mike being arrested, but they passed and as soon as we mounted the scooter in the morning, I again realized that no one gives scooters a second look no matter what they are doing that is illegal.
More worry came in Pont de Vaux when a black cat crossed my path and I told myself not to be superstitious, but less than a minute later, I heard Mike swear and the scooter crash down. When I looked over, I thought everything was alright, but then on the ground was our right mirror. Crap. We drove out, worried that we would be pulled over for not having a mirror and it was a tense ride. We pulled into a couple places to see if they had mirrors, but they didn’t. We would have to go to a bigger city to find a Piaggio specialist.
Relief came when the last place we went told us it wasn’t obligatory to have a right mirror in France, only the left. Wow, lucky! We rode on, past town after town, Gendermarie after Gendermarie, each time trying to act cool. Mike would even wave at the motorcycle cops, but to no response. Thankfully.
When we got to Paris, we found a cheap hotel near the scooter shop and parked ourselves semi-permanently. We didn’t go into the city, Mike fell asleep before 10pm and I shortly after. We were exhausted from navigating our way into Paris on all side roads (it’s A LOT harder than you would think.)
Saturday we woke up and went to the shop to talk to Gilles about the scooter issue. No easy solutions, we can’t sell the scooter without a carte grise and we can’t get a carte grise without being residents, but we fiscally own the scooter. Hmmmm. We’ll either need to transfer it to our friend’s parents or to find a buyer ASAP. So, we have her up online, with URGENT: RIP US OFF PLEASE attached to the ads. We’ll see.
But not all bad things come out of being stuck in a beautiful city that has brought us much joy. We went to Mike’s favorite falafel place that he found roaming around in 2001. Every time we come here, we hit the shop, only this time, it has gotten popular. So popular that we waited 45 minutes for a falafel. We walked up Rue Rivoli and I got a new windbreaker. Later, we went out for a real night on the town. First the Absinthe bar that Anthony Bourdain had on his show. It turns out it’s totally a metal bar with Goth paintings of naked zombies and stuff. We tried a couple different kinds of Absinthe and ordered a second glass of our favorite. Then we totally college-kid’s-first-trip-abroad-ed out and went to The Moose Bar, a Canadian bar that was showing all the NCAA tournament games. We ate a burger and a stir fry and had Pastis. Mike was likened to an old Frenchman for ordering it, which I know he loved. He chatted up some youths from Maryland and we sat and watched the Huskies go down. All in all, we got back to the hotel in better spirits about being here and plans for what to do for the next few days while we figure out how to deal with our baby girl.
Posted on March 22, 2009 at 6:00 am.
A woman in Bangkok accidentally showed interest in a bracelet
Hello Everyone!
Being on the sailboat for 5 days was interesting, we learned a lot about how self-sufficient a person would have to be to live as cheap as they do. I’d like to try some day (be able to live comfortably on virtually nothing), but not right now. Unfortunately it ended up being a bit cramped on the boat (7 people) and we didn’t really liking the guy who was the captain. He was arrogant and didn’t listen to a word we said. So after a few days in a harbor we jumped ship and stayed at this little beach called Ko Ma on the island of Koh Pha Ngan.
Continue Reading…
Posted on December 10, 2006 at 8:29 pm.
Hi Everyone!
So Azure and I spent a week or so on Ko Lanta and just loved it – the best thing we did was rent a motorscooter ($5 a day) and scoot all over the island. Most of the people who visit Ko Lanta stay on the west coast of the island, so Az and I made our way over to the east coast and biked through the little towns that aren’t as touristy – old chinese fishing villages, a community that lives in the mangroves (swamp-like forests that protected the community from the tsunami – currently under threat from resource harvesting), groups of monkeys, etc.
Continue Reading…
Posted on November 30, 2006 at 8:24 pm.
