After a short time in Australia, I was really eager to return to Asia.  I'm really proud of this realization.  You can imagine that sometimes it's challenging to figure out where you want to go next.  In Australia, things work so well and the culture is so relatable.  I wanted to be somewhere that felt totally new. 

I would spend a full month in Indonesia.  What an amazing gift.  I thought I would have spent a month in Thailand, but I didn't end up lasting more than 5 days due to the heat.  I started out in Indonesia in a place I had sworn off: Bali.  Way too many backpackers that pissed me off in drunk conversation told me how much they loved Bali.  That automatically put it on my no-fly-zone.  Fred and Farina, whom I met in Samoa, told me that there is a way to enjoy Bali and eat healthy food all the time and that it's worth going to.  I really trusted their travel judgement from our time together.  I decided that Bali would be a good hub, if nothing else.

Once I arrived, I started off really disliking it as well.  I was about to cut my loses and leave.  I was so confused about what I was seeing.  Where is the tropical paradise everyone talks about?

I started to understand Bali when I decided to read up on it.  Bali is not some small place.  I unfortunately read travel blogs that used the words "Bali is small, so...".  No, Bali is not small.  Bali has a population of 4 million people.  It is 95 miles wide, at its widest point.   Granted, the majority of the population live in the densely arranged southern tip of Denpasar (airport), Kota (drunk Australians), Legian (older Australians), Seminyak (families and LGBT), Canguu (surfers), Sanur (port), Nusa Dua (workers) and Jimbaran/Uluwatu (wealthy tourists).  It is made of up connected cities with zero planning.  Getting around Bali, for me, required riding on hired motobikes every single day.  I had a few rides in cars when I needed to move my luggage.  Motobikes are the way around traffic issues and are notoriously dangerous.  Lots of people die yearly of head trauma.

My next three posts will document my journey northward.  I started in Seminyak.  I then went to Ubud and took a day tour of many temples and rice terraces and Mount Kintamani.  Finally, I went to the mountainous northern town of Munduk,

Between all of these different small cities lie famous temples.  How do you coordinate seeing temples and determining which cities to stay in and which city is the best to get to them?  After seeing temples in the sun, I want a swim.  How do you plan to see temples and waterfalls in the same day?  This is one of the challenges of Bali.  You have to hire drivers or rent a bike yourself.  If you know me, I was not about to rent a bike.

Each time you rent a driver, you must negotiate.  The negotiation experience, I suppose, is part of the Bali experience.  The prices vary widely from $1 for a 5 minute motobike ride to the bars to $25 for 30 minutes from the airport to Seminyak to $30 for an 8 hour multi-region tour of the cultural highlights of Bali.  Learning a few words of Indonesian language, I discovered, helped with the negotiating process.  I got more respect and street cred when I called out the drivers on their BS (in Indonesian).  "Sengat?  Sengat??!"  That's: "Really? Really?!?"

On the subject of language, I learned how to order food, discuss where I am from, why I am in Indonesia and do some basic counting.  I also learned of the famous video of President Barack Obama visiting Indonesia and speaking some Indonesian by ordering nasi goreng (fried rice).  He gave a speech where the audience went absolutely wild; the kind of sound that is unmistakably that of happy people.  It made me miss him quite a bit.  It also made me feel oddly more connected to Indonesia.

With all of the references to drunk Australians and the proximity to Australia and how the beach isn't really that great but you can great a great pool, I realized that Bali is the Cancun of Australia.  In the US, we go to Cancun to chill at the resorts.  We do not really experience Mexico in Cancun.  The same goes for Bali.  You have to travel to the outskirts of Bali to experience Balinese culture and just like Mexico, if you want to experience the real country, you have to go outside of Cancun.  In this case, you have to fly to other parts of Indonesia.

Maybe this is a good time to talk about religion?  I mean... why not?!  It's everyone's favorite topic (sarcasm).  Here's a phrase I heard a few times about Bali: "Indonesia is primarily Muslim but Bali is Hindu so it's more open".  Yes, that is true.  However, almost everyone I met was Muslim.  Why?  The answer is because Bali is also a sanctuary for LGBT people in Indonesia. It's not just that the Balinese are more open or that Hinduism is more accepting.  Muslim people from all over Indonesia move to Bali to feel free.  Indonesia also isn't simply "Muslim".  Each island has different ethnic groups with different customs (and reputations between ethnic groups).  Their practice of Islam, Christianity or Hinduism differs as well.  I met trans people who identified as Muslim.  I met Muslim-identifying men who have same sex relationships.  This type of pluralism and religious-cultural redefinition is more similar to how we mix religion and culture in the US than I ever thought.  Yes, there are Islamic police and there are incredibly strict regions of the country, like Aceh in Sumatra.  We have super religious areas of the US too.  It was explained to me at one point that many Indonesian women wear hijabs to symbolically show solidarity with the Muslim people of the world, not necessarily because of religious beliefs. Indonesia is dealing with problems with foreigners exerting Islamic extremism just like they are dealing with it in Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines, the European Union, and the United States.  We really aren't that different. 

Should we talk about being Jewish?  I think I told one taxi driver in Indonesian that I was Jewish.  He was a Christian.  He did not seem bothered by it.  The truth is, people in Indonesia do not really know anything about Judaism.  They don't really even know any Jewish people.  What they hear on the news about Jews is typical antisemitic propaganda but most Indonesians don't really care about the news.  They are like everyone else and just want to eat good food and be with their families.  I didn't bother "coming out of the Jewish closet" to my Indonesian friends because I know how brainwashed they are.  The "Jews" they hate are not real people; they are green goblin monsters.  Sometimes I know I have an opportunity to educate and all that, but I did not want to risk hearing any sort of antisemitic tirades or getting into a political conversation as a guest in a Muslim country.  What I understood is that Indonesians are genuinely good people who are transforming their culture since overthrowing their dictator in the late 90s.

I did not end up seeing everything in Indonesia.  I saw almost all of the things I wanted to see.  My tush got tired of being on motorbikes for 30-40 minutes at a time.  The intense heat made me delirious at times and I left my debit card in an ATM early on.  Shout out to my brother David for sending my replacement card via FedEx.  The bank sent the replacement card to Staten Island instead of Bali and Dave helped me out big time!

After 2 weeks in Bali, I was looking forward to fewer motobikes.  My Indonesian travel itinerary would include a visit to the eastern Komodo National Park.  The motobikes ended up being replaced by boats as Komodo National Park is a series of islands. I would then return westward to Bali region and spend 5 days on the small island of Nusa Lembongan and visit its sister islands of Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Penida.  I'd go back to Seminyak for a few nights to readjust and then head to Jogjakarta on Java Island (the same island as Jakarta).

I cannot count how many motobikes I've been on.  The conversations with my drivers and the locals on the streets were incredibly fun.  Learning a few words of the language and being appreciative of their hospitality went a long way.  Indonesia is a place you should visit too, just don't call it "indo".  That's not cool.