TheTraveler

 

Alone in Bali
By Katherine McIntyre

A massage on the beach, manicure and pedicure included...

My buying trip in Indonesia is finished; my baggage is stored in Denpesar’s airport. I have a day to myself; time to catch a glimpse of Bali’s famed beaches. My guidebook directs me to Legian Beach. I fantasize. I am sitting in the patio of a fashionable hotel, sipping exotic drinks and nibbling on anything fishy.

Legian Beach is a disappointment. It is shanty, vendors of everything are everywhere. I walk in the white washed sand, clamber over a small wall into the restricted hotel area. There in front of me, is exactly what I had in mind, to while away a few stolen hours, a spotless, manicured hotel complex overlooking the sapphire blue Indian Ocean. Its winding paths lead past guest bungalows with their own private gardens and into a gigantic multi- storied hotel compound with many, many flower-bedecked balconies. Best of all there is an elegant open-air restaurant and on the menu is sea food. But in my wallet are remains of my Indonesian money and lunch costs, about the same, as a night in my guest house in Ubud with three meals included. Is a day of luxury worth the price of lunch? It is.

I pretend to be a guest. In fact, I am the only guest in this off-season month. I linger over lunch, lounge on a beach chair and gaze apathetically at the ocean and am restless. What is down the beach? It’s another huge hotel complex. This one filled with a tour group of pale Europeans, their winter white flesh pushing into tiny bikinis and the masculine equivalent. Then the protected area ends and the action begins. “Lady, do you want a manicure, a massage?” A massage under a palm umbrella, in a secluded cove on a white sand beach, with the Indian Ocean lapping at my feet. Maybe? Yes!

We haggle. A price is set, manicure and pedicure included. I strip down to my modest Canadian underwear. The questioning begins: “How old you lady?"
“Seventy and a bit.”
“You good, you strong, where your husband?" I admit to my husband-less solitary state.
“You have children?”
“Six and many grandchildren.” My unfortunate singleness is forgotten.
“You live with your daughter? You take care of her children.”
“No, I live alone.”
“Your daughter bad? Oh poor lady.” The manicurist clucks in sympathy as she works on my toes.
She brightens, “Poor lady would like a flower on her finger-nail?"
“Yes, yes.” Anything to lighten the mood. I watch as she painstakingly turns minute small dots of brightly coloured nail polish into a tiny flower. We swear eternal friendship as my place is taken under the palm umbrella by a balding, heavy-set man. I hear. “How old you?”

Languid oiled and perfumed with my flowered finger nail, I return to my lounge chair in the fashionable hotel complex. I feel something itchy, something stinging. My body is swarmed by an army of red ants attracted by the sweet smelling oils. How does a non-guest find somewhere in a monster hotel complex rid herself of ants? Desperate I duck into a tiny washroom and emerge scratching my bites.

The heat of the day is over and I drift back to the public beach where my day began. It is alive with people. Australians in next to nothing pass Muslim school girls from Java, modestly dressed in long sleeved white shirts and ankle length trousers, their hair hidden by their hijabs. The Muslim girls are giggling and holding a camera. They want me in their picture and we pose, their arms entwined in mine.

It is time to leave Bali, time to wonder why the Muslim schoolgirls want to photograph a seventy-something grandmother in her basic black travel outfit. Am I an oddity, a woman traveling alone? I will never see that picture, I will never know.

Back to TheTraveler.