T H I S+W E E K

> Bali low
By Cintra Wilson
Loveless in paradise

D E P A R T M E N T S

The Surreal Gourmet
By Bob Blumer
The $25 Upgrade

Mondo Weirdo
By Amanda Jones
Sleepless Goddess

Readers' Tips and Tales
Trips Close to Home -- In fact, in 'em

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Your virtual travel agency

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LA S T+W E E K

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 1997

Burma or bust
By Joshua Cohen
A charmed traveler in China takes the hard road to a forbidden border

A full list of all
Wanderlust articles

PAGE 2

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I am here with my best girlfriend, M., who is getting married at the end of the year. Flocks of Asian secretaries are apparently also taking big trips together before marriage -- a last big spurt of free-girldom before the world moves them into another chrysalis, before they are happily encased in the role of Someone's Wife. I can see the logic of a bunch of future brides traveling together. Nobody else could stand them, I don't think.

M., the smartest and most interesting person in the world, is cocked stupid with Love of the sighing and planning variety. "Oh, Shaaaaane," she moans dramatically, a lot, even though she's being very careful to not be overly tiresome about it. "He's so cuuuuuuute. He's so special. I love him so much. He thinks about me every single second. W're going to move to Africa. We're going to have 18 children. I'm so haaaaaaappy."

"You deserve it," I say. She does.

This is kind of like water torture to me, the romantically disemboweled, the drip, drip, drip of her big diamond happiness on my scalp day after day. But I love her. I am truly happy for her, fucking hap-slap-happy. I just feel like a starving Stalinist concentration-camp victim whose jailer is sensually enjoying a rum-laced Bavarian cream puff just outside the bars. The hurt animal in me feels entitled to what she has, but doesn't see any way to get it. So we go through Indonesia -- M. with her future happiness pregnantly crawling on the horizon ahead, and me with a late book manuscript equaling a couple of thousand hours of dark, fretful time in front of a computer before I'll ever be able to breathe normally again. This is the interior color of my Indonesia.

There were several moments here, though, that really got my mind off of everything. Snorkeling over a Lombok coral reef, for example, is the coolest thing in the universe next to autonomously flying naked over an alien landscape. Swimming in sacred Balinese hot pools in warm sulfurous bath water that continuously poured out of stone dragonheads was also a big perfect treat, as was bonding with a mean baby monkey, who after two days of continuous corn-puff feedings, finally consented to lying in my lap for 45 minutes while I petted him. These were experiences I could never have if I wasn't on vacation here, and they all had that time-stopping, superdimensional feeling of antique opulence and divine natural joy.

When I didn't allow these moments to pull me in completely, out of my own head, I felt like an asshole.

"Look where you are!" I had to keep telling myself. But it's hard to be fully present when things are so spectacular. It's unreal, like dreams or television. I am in a turquoise world without gravity. Fish of every fluorescent geometry are fluttering inches from my nose. There's M., in a swimsuit, which means I am here, and it's real, but she's upside down and surrounded by bubbles, tickling the space around a giant clam and watching its velvety ruff pucker. New York, back in my head, full of cement and chemicals and dull, wordy anxieties seems real, and this warm zone of organic pleasure seems like a Philip K. Dick satanic illusion. I have little talent for relaxation.

There is more to Indonesia than pancakes and papaya, and the beach-hawkers who screech and please and weepily insist that you buy their warm bottles of noxious strawberry Fanta, and the beautiful, if interminable, shadow-puppet shows, which evidently cover the entire myth of creation in real time. The cloppy, metallic jangling of the gamelan orchestra is the blood pace of the people, and if you go to non-tourista-honky areas, like the 2nd class ferryboat between Bali and Lombok, or the train station in Bogor, Central Java, you'll see the real Indonesia, which is dusty brown arms and legs all tangled together and sprawled out over every inch of floor like a carpet of banyan roots.

These people are poor, and there are about a kazillion of them, crouching in every breathable inch of space, but almost none of them are beggars. They will chew the cuff off your sleeve to get you to buy a dumb bone necklace or a cheap sarong, but in two weeks I was only directly asked for money twice. I get solicited for donations twice an hour in New York, but there the contrast between the haves and the have-nots is starker: A dirty poor guy seems a lot worse off sitting in front of a Banana Republic window than he does sitting next to 60 more dirty poor guys on a piece of cardboard. In one place extreme poverty is the norm, and in another it is the exception. Where it is the norm, it is life, and there is nothing more that can be done.

There seems to be a remarkable lack of lustful sleaze in Indonesia. There must be prostitutes, but I haven't seen any, nor have I seen any pornography of any kind. Perhaps it is the Hindu/Islamic religious climate. Still, there is something that they do to women here that is perhaps even more damaging than staring covertly at their shaved parts, and nowhere is it more evident than on Asia's version of MTV, which is ubiquitously shown in every hotel lobby: Here they make the women excessively pretty.

All the chanteuses in Asia look exactly alike: long black hair, sprayed into stiff curls. Waxy red lips and enormous white teeth. Sheathlike Imelda Marcos-cum-Miss America formal dresses with too many straps, or flowing diaphanous Christian garments that reveal exactly none of their bodies. They sing earnestly and exclusively about the pain of love or their yearning for the pain of love. Their whole tribe roams very slowly and alone through huge, sparsely-furnished apartments with enormous fan drafts and mood lighting that gives them the enameled complexions and preternaturally innocent eye-glow of Hindu sacred cow paintings.

Every once in a while a doll head will roll across a beige carpet, a crushed flower will fall from a manicured hand, a glycerin tear-bolus will travel down a peachy, powdered cheek from a cosmetically accurate, curved eye, to swelling synth-strings and a final impassioned whine, but other than these radical breakthroughs in video directing, the women are all exactly the same.

She is a fantasy girl. Pretty lady singing pretty song about pretty thing. There are hundreds of them and you can't tell any of them apart. There's no individuality, no sexuality other than a kind of chaste flirtation, no argument with any aspect of the world. Courtney Love would be an ugly old loudmouthed whore to these people. They want their women meek and formal and perfumed, with no nipples and plastic underwear that never comes off, like the old Barbies.

This was way scarier to me than the fact that the toilets are just holes in the floor.

I have Gone Somewhere. I'm in Beautiful Indonesia. It's Great. My favorite parts of it are underwater. My best friend is getting married, and tomorrow I'm going to see about getting a scuba-diving license in Sulawesi. The Indonesian word for love or pretty is "cinta." All the chanteuses on the TV sing that word about 50 times a minute.

New York is 12 hours different, time-wise, and 30 hours away, but I think I am still there.
Sept. 9, 1997

Planning a trip to Bali? Check out the Wanderlust Marketplace guide to the region.