Bali – Part Two: Ubud

I’ll give Bali one thing: it’s easy.

No hassles, no need to learn another language, and no need to fear whether or not you’ll be staring down at the regurgitated remains of your meal an hour after you’ve eaten it.

For anyone who has travelled extensively in Southeast Asia, this is a major perk. In fact, up until recently, I had been suffering from a condition I dubbed ‘Third World Burnout,’ a state of mind, I might describe, as one being brought upon by too many crooked taxi drivers trying to rip me off, too many desperate people trying to sell me stuff I don’t want, too many bed sheets that have never seen the inside of a washing machine, and always, always having to be alert – especially when there are gaping holes in the sidewalk.






Fortunately, our last two trips, to Australia and New Zealand respectively, had helped me cope with the neurosis that was beginning to overwhelm me. And as it turned out, Bali served as a good transition between the two spheres, giving me the taste of one, while still being able to keep one foot in the other.

While there is certainly no shortage of people trying to sell you third-rate goods and men shouting at you from across the street to see if you need ‘transport,’ what separates Bali from the rest of Asia is that when you say ‘no,’ they’ll actually leave you alone. It’s an altogether unfamiliar phenomenon – with the exception of Singapore where people generally don’t want to talk to you or get your money – yet nonetheless one that I didn’t hesitate to enjoy to the fullest extent. In fact, it gave me the opportunity to actually be polite to people, going so far as to add the “thank you” to the end of “no,” something I had given up altogether after travelling to India.









And of course, there’s the food, which is perhaps some of the best I’ve had in Southeast Asia. In a place like Ubud, where expats have long since found refuge, there is a diverse choice of eateries that offer delicious local fare, as well as the kind of quality Western food I haven’t seen since leaving North America. Needless to say, our days in Ubud revolved around satisfying a nostalgia for great-tasting food that wasn’t drenched in oils and was actually fresh.










Of course, Ubud is not entirely lacking in its dangers and nuisances, such as the poorly maintained sidewalks that suffer from structural deficiencies and have a tendency to disappear entirely without a moment’s notice, leaving only a gaping hole in the ground where it had once laid.

The sidewalks in Ubud are so notoriously bad that even the welcome book at our guesthouse listed sidewalk mishaps as being the number one contributor to tourist injury, followed by teasing the wild monkey and gluttony.

Having developed a reputation for accident prone mishaps on previous trips that had more than once led me close to death’s door (see Thailand, 2009), Laura ensured that I took note of dangers the sidewalk presented, even going so far as to point out a number of missing sections of sidewalk on our many jaunts through town so that I would avoid them.
“I think I get your point,” I told her after having endured several condescending remarks.

“Well, you know, I’m just making sure you make it through this trip without another hospital visit,” she said mockingly as she continued down the street in a confident strut.

Without notice, Laura was no longer in front of me. Rather, she was in front of me, but lying face down on the ground and half-in and half-out of a gaping hole in the sidewalk. Her leg was suddenly covered in blood from ankle to knee, including a few nasty scrapes on her toes.

Before rushing into the nearest Circle K for some wipes and bandages, I bit my tongue and held back from saying: “Even if it is Bali, you should always be alert - especially when there are gaping holes in the sidewalk.”

And that, my friends, is why I’m still around to write this.