I arrived in Ubud on a wave of flow. My guesthouse, Narasoma, was beautiful – very simple,
but with lovely accents like carved wood beds draped romantically with
mosquito netting, statues of Buddhas and Hindu gods surrounded by flowers,
sweeping vistas of rice fields. I
chatted with my neighbors on the shared balcony where we all breakfasted, each
in an alcove in front of our rooms.
Later, I
floated off to find the yoga studio and had a super-healthy meal at the café
underneath it. As I meandered home, I
passed the Ubud palace where a performance of the Legong dance was about to
begin, so I bought a ticket. For an hour
and a half, I watched elegant dancers robed in shining gold sarongs and
elaborate gold head-dresses dance to the tinkling and chaotic (to my ears)
gamelon orchestra. The next day, I rose
early and trotted off to yoga class, where I stretched and sweated with a smile
on my face. All was good.
But the next night I didn’t sleep very well, and my fan room felt hot
and stuffy. Groggy, I skipped morning yoga,
vowing to attend the afternoon class. I
moved slowly and felt like I should go see the sights. I had long imagined going to Bali after filing my dissertation; now I was actually
here. What now? What was I going to do with my days? So, I fell back on traveler default
mode. I was backpacking after all,
shouldn’t I go out and do and see things?
I set
out in the heat of the mid-day sun to go explore the Sacred Monkey
Forest, which I imagined
as cool and green. The streets of Ubud are noisy with motorbikes vrooming, zooming, veering around. And every two feet someone is trying to sell you something - transport, madam? massage, madam? And the Monkey Forest Rd, where I was situated, is clogged with tourist shops selling all manner of crafts. On my way down the road to the Monkey Forest, I somehow got sidetracked,
looking at guesthouses. I was already
suspecting that air conditioning might be a nice thing since it was much hotter than I had anticipated and I wanted to price
rooms. Also, my friend Kiki was due to join me the following week, and sharing
the cost of a room means the possibility of an upgrade.
Before I knew it, I was walking down a lane, trying to gauge
the distance between a possible new guesthouse and the yoga studio. The lane was strewn with garbage, and a dog
was gnawing on the skull of something. A
goat? The guidebook spoke of how in Ubud
“one is never far from rushing water.”
It neglected to specify that this water is often an open drainage canal,
choked with garbage. It was hot, and
though I was wearing a hat, I started to feel a little weak.
Then, as I headed back toward the Monkey Forest,
a little old man wearing a sarong accosted me to buy a ticket to a dance
performance. I said no, and started on
my way, but as I tried to leave, he pleaded, “come see my paintings.”
I knew exactly what was coming, but he was insistent and I was trying to
recover the flow of the previous day.
Maybe I should just go with it. Maybe I'd learn something new. He led me down a dusty lane, to his tiny house, and started showing me
paintings, which were quite nice, but as I had no intention of buying and the
detour was not as scenic as I had hoped – no insight into Balinese life besides
that everyone lives from the tourist trade – I tried to get away. Then he brought out the wood carvings,
desperate for a sale. It worked. I broke down and bought two small monkeys
(which I later gave to a guesthouse employee for his kids) for some small change. I was starting to feel a little disenchanted with Ubud.
By the time I got back to the street I knew I was in trouble. I was overheating, sweating and feeling
faint. I needed shade and a cold drink,
and went into a nearby restaurant. As I
sat, I started to feel really weird, really, really weird and detached from reality. I sat, drank cool drinks, ate a light
meal. But I wasn't feeling much better. The smart thing to have done would have been
to take a taxi back to the guesthouse immediately. But since I was in the area, there were a few
more hotels I wanted to see, and maybe if I walked slowly, sipped water, and
wore my hat, it would be okay...
An hour later, I finally took the taxi and crashed. My insides felt like they were trying to jump
out of my body, my skin was crawling, and my head about to explode. I realized that I hadn't drank much water, so started an intense re-hydration campaign (worrying at the same time about how people die from drinking too much water because their body salts can't keep pace with the water), took a cold shower,
rested. I felt awful, really awful. I
made myself go out on the balcony and chat with my neighbor so that someone
would know if I keeled over and never got back up.
I was hungry, craving macaroni and
cheese, takeout, anything but having to go back on the noisy street and search for a
place to eat. Eventually I crawled out
and drank miso soup at a Japanese restaurant, my body craving the salt. I crashed at 9 pm, feeling like I was surely dying of spinal meningitis or dengue fever. Luckily, I woke up alive and feeling better enough to pack up and move.
I switched to a gloriously air-conditioned guesthouse that morning – Dewa Bungalows (dewa means god), surrounded by temples, where I
hear gamelan music and chanting at all hours of day and night. It is a peaceful place, my room above the
pool with a balcony shaded by a frangipani tree, the flowers littering the path
to my room. It's on a relatively quiet (for Ubud) street and a short walk to the yoga studio. I forced myself to spend an
afternoon in aircon until I felt myself again.
In the cool air, I re-assessed my objectives: this trip was for me, to recover, to
reflect, to rejuvenate. I felt anxiety
at the prospect of all those days, by myself…what would I do? I thought of going off to the beach, or
mountains for a few days. But I began to
see the heat exhaustion as a prompt to slow down, to be still, to relax, to see
what it would be like to be alone, with no plans, except to be.
It was wonderful.
What an experience, to be alone, in a peaceful place, to return to my
natural rhythms, to remember who I am when the layers of stress and anxiety
about everything are removed. I examined
the clouds, woke early and went to bed early, started reading a book on
transitions, wrote in my journal, went to yoga class, feeling stronger each
time, made friends at the restaurant across the street, took a motorcycle taxi
for the first time, took a day trip to the north, wandered around the city,
went to dance performances. I didn’t
hurry, I didn’t rush myself, I didn’t force myself. And bit by bit, I found myself relaxing into this solitude, finding both richness and peace. It was marvelous.
