Turn for the Worse
First Days in Bali
I took the long way to Bali via Qatar. I have way too much shit with me, so unless I jettison 10 kgs of luggage I’m limited to a handful of airlines with generous baggage allowances. Qatar Airways happens to be one of those.
I stayed with an expat from Rhode Island for the first couple days. He’s been out here a long time, and he’s got his life really well setup. He has a construction company and owns and operates several villas. He’s basically running shit out here, and I was thankful that he put me up and helped me get setup.
I’ve actually been to Bali before about 8 years ago. If it was a western tourist hotspot then, it’s a full-blown white person holiday volcano now. The heavy tourist vibe is a little stifling, but this place is paradise. Warm blue water, amazing waves, cheap delicious food, and beautiful bikini-clad women everywhere. Small bikinis.
So naturally I was having a blast right away. Until I crashed.
A Turn for the Worse
I hit a patch of sand on a corner and washed out on my motorbike. I honestly don’t remember exactly what happened, I just remember being dazed on the side of a busy road. It must have looked pretty bad because someone instantly pulled up next to me and escorted me to the nearest medical clinic. That guy really helped me out, I think I tried to give him some cash but I’m pretty sure he turned it down.
At the clinic they scrubbed me down, disinfected all my road rash, and gave me a couple stitches in my head. From head to toe, my whole right side was cut up.
Can’t tell if my helmet saved me or hardly did anything
It definitely could have been worse, I didn’t even ding the surfboard strapped to the side of my bike. I decided to book my own spot to avoid limping around John’s place for days on end.
Recovery
Being hurt sucked. I couldn’t do much the first couple days. I just slept a lot and tried to heal up as fast as possible. I went back to the clinic every other day to get cleaned up and re-bandaged. The cleanings weren’t much fun. I tried not to look at the surf.
A week after the accident, I got my stitches out and my wounds had all closed up. With renewed excitement and a grandma wrist working my bike’s throttle, I got back in the saddle and back in the water.
Surf
It’s the wet season in Indonesia, which is supposed to mean that it rains and the surf is bad. So far neither has proven true. It’s hardly rained and there’s been fun surf everyday. A few days it’s been pumping.
It’s funny, there are all these perfect setups everywhere but the wave I’ve been surfing most is this weird shifty reek break with lots of current. It’s hard to line up and it’s a hike down to the wave, but hardly anyone surfs it and I love it. I guess you can take the boy out of the south shore, but you can’t take the hunger for sub-par uncrowded waves out of the boy:
Food
The local food here is insanely good. Every lunch I get nasi campur, which is essentially a buffet where you don’t serve yourself. You just point at everything you want and at the end they make up a price. This was about $2.50:
I’ve also been going hard on the fruit. The papaya and dragonfruit are fucking delicious.
What’s Next
I was hoping to check out some other islands, but with my injury chewing up some time and no big swells on the horizon, I might just explore more of Bali. We’ll see.