The Rest Is Yet to Come: Bali Bailers.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of change, but I've managed to safely land my vessel (I'm piloting my body in this metaphor, yo!) at its destination. Let's cover the when and where before I delve into my usual tangential musings.

After Nicole and I got every little bit out of the Gilis, we finally made it to our Southeast Asia exit point: Bali.

Bali isn't an enormous island, though too big to explore in a few days. Due to our time constraints we spent the last four evenings on the tourist-packed beaches near the airport we were booked to depart from. Upon arrival, my body came down with some sort of slightly debilitating infection. No hospitals this time, but I spend an inordinate amount of time in bed, sleeping off whatever migraine or funky bleh I might've been dealing with. Nothing too bad to keep me from enjoying Bali, but there was also nothing in the area for me to really fixate on. Aside from good food and some nice massage, nothing unique really bubbled through the thick layer of shops and tourist attractions. The touts were annoying as per usual, the traffic was dense, the prolific redundant souvenir and fashion shops dominated the streets, but it wasn't altogether that bad. Nicole and I walked down the beach one morning, stopping a handful of times to check out some cool patterns in the sand. The surf looked good, but it just didn't appeal to me without my Monterey friends with me. Admittedly I never really got into it, but I got a lot of social reward out of the whole experience. The idea of going into that ocean without the same friends just made all prospects of enjoyment unlikely. Oh well! It was still fun to walk around, eat cheap Balinese food, and take some down time while I was feeling mediocre anyway.

If anything brilliant came out of these few days, it was Nicole's impression of Jude Law a là Talented Mr. Ripley in the boat scene which he confronts Matt Damon with just how boring of a sociopathic mimic he is. She even re-engineered Law to have a very posh British accent, despite playing an American in the film. This became a bit of a running joke for the next few weeks any time we slipped into a bout of boredom, all inspired by a rather insipid Belgian who graced us with his mediocrity for an evening. Although there's nothing wrong with being boring, there's just nothing interesting about agreeing with everything a person says in order to win their favor and hopefully have sex with them (the object of his desire being Nicole, of course). As a rather average looking male, this isn't something I come into contact with often. After playfully making fun of our new friend behind his back (we're such nice people), we then admitted that he would've been that much more charming if he were simply physically attractive. Or not boring. If you're going to be so translucent about wanting to have a one night stand, you might as well have a personality. This guy was so agreeable that he booked a room in the same hotel, perhaps in order to spend more time with Nicole, only to bail in the morning without paying the owner. The landlady's response was a little heartbreaking: "The tourists think that the locals rip them off, but often it's the tourists who rip off the locals." In a sort of weird way, it's pretty common to come into contact with a few touts and automatically presume that all Indonesians are out for your wallet, and foreigners react to this by being dicks to *all* of the locals. At least things like this remind me that assholes can come from any culture. And another benefit to this guy being a dick is that now we can safely detest him for his bland personality. Good riddance.

And speaking of good riddance to assholes, Indonesia and the whole of southeast Asia finally gets pleasure of saying goodbye to some rather burdensome thorns in its side. Don't worry, the sentimental overload doesn't kick in for a few more weeks, but in the meantime we are finally Auckland-bound. Lianne and Brendon are in for a treat!