Sunday, August 20, 2006

Hanging Out (Bali)

There are many things the Balinese have refined to a fine art form; not the least of these is hanging out. It's one reason I never concern myself with whether or not it is rainy season when heading to Bali. So it's raining! We'll just hang out at the warung and talk to whoever is there, learn the latest gossip and drink bintangs until it stops.

One of my favorite places to hang out at night used to be in Andong at a little warung that no longer exists. We'd drink beer, play guitar, watch bad Indonesian soap operas on the little TV and yell out to everyone who passed by - and everybody I knew within a 10 kilometer distance of Ubud eventually passed by.

Neither does the bar Bulan exist any longer, where I once spent Nyepi with friends. Nyepi is actually enforced hanging out. On Nyepi, everyone must stay inside their compounds and not use electricity or cook. It is meant to fool the evil spirits into thinking Bali has been deserted so they leave it alone for another year. And woe to anyone the Banjar patrol finds out on the street on Nyepi.

Dogler and his staff and his girlfriend, Debbie, my buddy Abang, Dee, a flamboyant gay guy from South Africa Debbie had solicited to cook there, and other assorted characters, mostly Balinese, settled in at Bulan for 24 hours, stocked with food and videos. A couple of us had hotel rooms at the cottages across Monkey Forest Road, and we ran back and forth after we looked carefully up and down the street to be sure the Banjar police weren't patrolling. I'm not sure why I rented a hotel room, since we all stayed up all night and finally fell asleep on the pillows and mats at Bulan, but it gave us a place to go swimming later. Anyway, we'd watch videos, play some of Abang's house mixes, play cards, drink Coors (we had run out of Bintangs) and talk. Somebody up front would yell the banjar police were coming so we would turn down the lights (no electric light allowed) and turn down one of the many action videos Dogler or Wayan or somebody had brought along. Bulan was short-lived, but I helped them with their flyers and the spelling on their menus, and if I had nothing else to do at night and it was late, I could always run into someone I knew at Bulan.

Long before Bulan, we used to sit right on the sidewalk of Monkey Forest Road, playing acoustic guitar, singing and smoking Sampoernas. But they don't let us do that anymore; the local hotel keepers complained, so Ubud has lost just a little bit of its charm.

But no worries, there is no lack of places to hang out in Bali. There are still a thousand little warungs, still bars that spring up and close and spring up again with new names, still open roofed, open-air platforms in friends' compounds, still open-air pool halls and the temple courtyards, the temples that are alive with the socializing and gambling that accompany most any ceremony.

But this week, in San Francisco, I'm too busy to even think about hanging out. I'm about to start three marketing projects for three different clients, I have a job interview, I have a trunk show for my side jewelry business, I promised a friend I would help with her store opening and I promised another friend I would drive to San Mateo with three van loads of donations for a charity event. I dream of Bali, and I sigh.