Homage to the Speedo
Bali is sensual to me. It appeals to all the senses like no place I have ever been.
Bali is touch. Bali is sand under your feet, sweat beading on your upper lip and holy water being splashed upon you. Bali is always warm, always humid; it feels like walking into a steam room that has been turned off for a while. Some days Bali is heavy with moisture, some days it is breezy and cool, but always it is the temperature of safety, laziness and happiness.
Bali is taste. It is sates, peanut sauce and water spinach, red rice, yellow rice and black rice pudding. Bali is shrimp crackers, chili oil and sea salt. Bali is palm sugar, lime and ginger. It’s lemongrass and watermelon. Bali is coconut, Bin Tang beer and coffee. Bali is a tropical ever-lasting gobstopper.
Bali is sound. Every corner reveals a new instrumental feast for the ears. Metallic xylophones, drums, gongs and bells, always bells. Clanking wind chimes, and windmills set up to keep birds away from ready-to-harvest rice fields, provide constant background noise. Scooters, beeping horns and barking dogs can be heard through even the thickets of helmets. Bali is a constant stream of impossibly optimistic taxi drivers asking "Transport? Motor bike? Transport? Maybe tomorrow?" Bali is the snip, snip, snip of workers 'mowing' lawns via hedge clippers. And then there is the laughing. The real sound of Bali is laughter.
Bali is smells. Perhaps more than anything else for me, Bali is a smell. If there were and eau de toilette d'Bali it would be a blend of equal parts orchid, tuberose, frangipani, jasmine, incense, clove cigarettes, moth balls, decaying fruit and two-stroke engine exhaust. Any of these components will no doubt bring me right back here in my mind should I ever smell them somewhere else.
Bali is also a few other things of note. Bali is virtually free food, stray dogs and Kuta Cowboys (aggressive womanizers who prowl local bars). It is pushy beach salespeople, kites, gardenias, deep fat fried everything, honeymooners, drunk Aussies, drunk Americans, drunk Eurpeans. Bali is yoga, cheap but blissful massages, healers of every variety and Bali is opportunity.
Finally Bali is a last safe vestige of the Speedo. And so I end this chapter of my travels with my homage to the Balinese Speedo phenomenon. Consider it my gift to you dear readers.
And as my final Bali shot... While this doesn't constitute a Speedo in my book, as technically they are tighty-whities,they were used as swimwear on this particular day and as you can see my friend Kevin (coiner of the cross-training phrase) was able to make peace with that.
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