Dunes, Danes and a bunch of mad Austrians
12/9/2004

With the limited opportunties available in Denmark to get outdoors, you have to make the most of every chance you get. Beaches are universal playgrounds in these brief moments, and the beaches on Jutland’s west coast seem to have a magnetic pull. Literally. They draw cars, trucks, bikes, bocce sets and beer cans. By the dozen.

Take for example the beach at Blokhus: Miles and miles of sand (and I know - I rode a bike along it). Cars are driven along the hard-pack, almost to the water’s edge. I don’t think people here believe in walking. They bring eskies, umbrellas, deck chairs, surfboards (despite the lack of surf), blow-up boats, books and magazines, stereos, tents and towels. They park where they want to sit and set up camp between the vehicles. Dogs and kids run around freely.

The series of massive sand dunes and beachside resorts draws tourists from other parts of Europe too. There were Swedes galore, Norwegians, Germans and Austrians and at least one Aussie.

“In the holiday time, our country is full of German tourists,” one of my Austrian friends explained, “so we come here.”

I came across this particular bunch of Austrians at my campsite in Lokken. It was a great spot: built high on the sand cliffs with a long, steep staircase to get you to the beach. Late at night you could sit on the cliffs and watch the sun set over the beach below.

Near to my own tent was a stand of big, new-looking tents, several cars and a bunch of people who all seemed to belong together. I watched them as they unloaded a van packed with cool stuff. There was sporting gear everywhere, video equipment, a TV, chairs and table, camp stove, food supplies galore and, inside the main tent, two huge boxes: one filled with full beer cans, one with empties. Nearby, there were wine bottles and other suspicious-looking dark bottles that could only contain spirits. Ramazzotti, I was later to discover.

My tiny one-man tent, pushbike, saddlebags and cans of tuna were starting to look inadequate.

As someone who fancies herself as a bit of an adventure sportsperson, I was particularly intrigued at what looked like a parachute and a snowboard outside my neighbours’ tents. I put two and two together:

“Are you kite surfing?”

A big, friendly guy in small shorts, sunnies and a superman T-shirt, grinned.

“Nope.”

“What then?”

“Snowboarding and parasailing.”

I paused.

“Cool…Where are you doing that?”

“Just off the cliffs here.”

A wind sock tied to the fence would tell them when the conditions were right.

There were about seven in the crew, paragliding was the common thread and two of them were snowboard instructors in an Austrian mountain village ("They’re kind of, like…hillbillies,” one of the team tried to explain later).

I joined the snowboarders for a drink later that night. They’d been out on the dunes earlier, and were playing back the video footage through the TV. We struggled with drunkeness and each other’s languages, but from what I could tell they had offered to take me paragliding the next day.

After some negotiation and nursing a hangover, I found myself loaded into the van (bike and all) for the drive to a favoured paragliding spot where we were to spend the day. The crew had one tandem parachute and the most experienced of them - one of the snowboarders - was going to take me up.

My instructor spoke almost no English (somehow it hadn’t seemed to matter until now).

“I say 1, 2, 3, run,” he explained as I looked down on a faraway beach and crashing water, “you run.”

That seemed simple enough.

Flying in Denmark - Austrian-style - involved hiking up the sand dunes carrying your parachute in a heavy backpack, meticulously untangling the lines and then running off a dune with the hope of being lifted up on the thermals, briefly, before bottoming out and having to start again. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun.

I definitely owe the crew an Aussie surfing adventure. One small problem: I think they might be under the impression I can surf.

Dripping: wet, sweat and snot
5/9/2004

It seemed as if the Scandinavian summer had finally hit.

Riding up along Denmark’s coast from Brede to Helsingor, I breathed in the holiday atmosphere. With the sunshine, the national mood instantly improved. Everyone was out on the streets, down at the beach and in the parks. The beaches were packed with white bodies, rapidly turning pink. Families were buying ice creams, postcards, buckets and spades. Students - on holidays - were spilling out from the shops and cafes. Young couples were holding hands, kissing under the trees or flowing down the streets on matching bicycles (OK, maybe they weren’t all matching).

It was the first day of my planned solo cycle tour in Denmark and Sweden, which would see me cross the channel (by ferry) from Helsingor - home of the prince on whom Hamlet was based - to Helsingborg, on the Swedish side. I was then planning to cover about 250km over five days, along the Swedish coastline, before taking the ferry from Goteborg to Frederikshavn, on Denmark’s island of Jutland.

Ambitious, really, because although I had trained in the hills of Suai, I had spent the last 10 days eating copious amounts of Danish food and doing very little at all. (I’m ashamed to admit that while unceasing rain had kept me indoors, it was welcome because I was still recovering from Roskilde - yes, it took that long.)

Still, I was under the impression that Denmark and Sweden were flat, that now the sunshine had arrived it would keep shining and that there would be nothing more pleasant than peddaling through the Scandinavian countryside.

There are three things you need to understand at this point.

1. I get havfever - badly.
2. In my mind I’m in the Tour de France, even if my abilities are better suited to Centennial Park.
3. Sweden is not flat.

Now, I love nature, but at times it really seems to have it in for me. All the rain had been good for something: the crops were high, the fields were full of flowers and along the roadside the grass was tall and seeding. Insects proliferated.

So you can imagine me in my torn shorts, stained T-shirt and yellow bike helmet, backpack and saddlebags bulging as I powered around on my borrowed 3-speed bicycle.

I sweat profusely, and as I tore through the sticky air my blotchy body became dotted with tiny black insect carcasses. My sunglasses were the equivalent of a car windshield at night and at times I’d swerve dangerously as I tried to dislodge a bug in my ear.

When I stopped - which was quite often - my chest heaved for breath, sucking in small flies. I was coughing, sneezing, spitting. Red in the face, eyes itchy and red, nose redder. The latter were both streaming and I would be fumbling in my pocket for tissues while trying to manage the free tourist map (as opposed to a proper cycling one) that I picked up in the last town, because once again… I was lost.

It was a great trip, as these things always are in hindsight, but I still can’t understand why I found it so hard to meet Scandinavian men.

Scandinavian biking tips

So, there are a few rules of cycle touring in Scandinavia that I’m sure seasoned cyclists are well aware of but I had to learn the hard way:

1. Don’t cycle with your mouth open. Reason: You’ll end up eating bugs.

2. Don’t sing whilst cycling. Reason: See above (I nearly choked on a beetle while blasting out an enthusiastic rendition of It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night.)

3. Always wear sunglasses, even in the rain. Reason: Bugs again. Your shades may end up looking like an insect graveyard but at least you won’t have the intense acid sting of a fly in your eye.

4. Stay well to the side when riding alongside a road in the rain. Reason: If you’re not drenched from the downpour, you will be from the splash.

5. The tent always leaks. No reason, it just does.

Those crazy Aquarians
30/8/2004

I watched the group of young, enthusiastic types haphazardly making their way along the waterfront. Several were carrying backpacks that looked to be twice their weight. A skinny guy with big sunglasses was larking around and someone was trying to keep them all together. I was searching for a boat that had been converted to a youth hostel and I surmised they were too.

Stockholm had already made a huge impression on me. A city composed of a series of islands and bridges, it had a huge harbour surrounded by beautiful old buildings. The group I had begun to follow was heading away more purposefully now and as I sped up to move alongside them I thought I saw a familiar profile. I ducked around to get a closer look and, almost certain, called out:

“Jeanette Stephen!”

She swung around, a bemused look on her face, followed by disbelief-tinged recognition.

“Oh, my God!”

She launched herself upon me in a wooly hug. The last time I had seen Jeanette we were playing African drums with about 30 people in the upstairs party room of an elaborately decorated Indian restaurant in Sydney’s inner west. We’re both Aquarians and, as far as I’m concerned, were bound to meet in unusual circumstances.

I knew she was in Stockholm but she thought I was still in Denmark. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to contact her but knew she was staying in a boat-hostel (and not the one I had checked into on the other side of the harbour) - hence my stalking of groups of backpackers.

Teaching English
21/8/2004

Picture a school room in a fairly open concrete block. Bare walls, a blackboard (sometimes with chalk) and old wooden school chairs and tables that scrape noisily on the concrete floor. The rooms echo terribly and noise from adjacent classrooms bounces freely between them.

40 students and one Aussie. No teacher in sight for a full 90 minutes. My Tetun was little more than “hello, how are you” and their English was not much better, but I was expected to hold the attention of the class and hopefully teach them something.

I used up all my Tetun in about three seconds flat. “From now on,” I said in English, “this class is going to be in English.”

Several worried looks came to me across the classroom. What the hell was I going to talk about for 90 minutes? I had an idea. Teach them to ask questions.

The first questions asked were my age, marital status and if I had a boyfriend - so language is no barrier to curiosity. Several of the students also leapt on the advice that they should practice their English whenever they had the chance and turned up at Rama’s front porch a few days later, wanting to talk.

The thing that particularly struck me about the Timorese I met was a thirst for knowledge of all kinds, and particularly the determination and desire to learn languages.

Language in East Timor is plentiful and contentious. Everyone speaks their local lingua and almost everyone understands the “national language” Tetun, which is being developed using local languages, Portugese and Bahasa Indonesian. Being under Indonesian influence for so long, most people speak Bahasa. School is still mostly taught in Bahasa because Tetun is too simple a language. But Primary School is now being taught in Portugese and all Timor’s legislation is being written in Portugese. A language favoured by the politicians who grew up under Portugese rule.

Finally, there’s English. Among the international community, English is probably most widely used because it is the most widely understood. And the Timorese want to learn English because they believe it will be important for education and trade.

I taught English to Rama’s colleagues at the community centre and also, unexpectedly, to a few classes in the Senior High School.

A local teacher we became friends with, Alberto, thought it would be a great idea to have the Aussies in to speak to his classes. Rama and I thought this would be a kind of show-and-tell. We’d perform for five or ten minutes and retreat while Alberto continued the rest of his class.

This was obviously not what he had in mind.

Rama's house
19/7/2004

I need to take you back to East Timor for a while because I haven’t even begun to convey what life there was like.

Let me tell you a bit about Rama’s house in Suai, where I spent most of my time.

It’s a small house with two bedrooms, a lounge area, kitchen and balcony. Altogether it’s about the size of a small townhouse, or medium-range Sydney flat. It’s mostly painted white, inside and out, although outside more than half the house is an aged light blue. The walls inside are whitewashed and the floors are white tile, making it easy to keep clean and (relatively) bug free.

Nature intrudes in East Timor. There’s no keeping it out altogether. We learned to live with the ants that track tirelessly across the balcony, through the living room and kitchen, into the bedrooms and back outside again. The spiders weren’t harmful and together with the geckos, they did a good job of eating the bugs. The only problem with the geckos was their loud, guttural mating call that would ricochet off the tiles and walls at odd hours of the night.

(Incidentally, East Timor is the first place I’ve ever heard a chorus of geckos. It’s a little like you’d imagine giant cicadas crossed with frogs might sound, and quite a lot like listening - in surround sound - to your neighbour trying to pull-start a reluctant old lawnmower early on a Sunday morning. Despite this, it’s not an unpleasant sound. It’s raw and instinctual and would probably work quite well on one of those nature tapes.)

But back to the house. The best thing about Rama’s house was the white tile front patio, where we spent most of our time. I loved to eat a breakfast of poun (the local bread), cream cheese and marmalade and drink my cup of strong black tea while watching life on the street unfold.

The street is quite busy with microlets (small buses) driving by, music blaring, and motos whizzing up and down with two, sometimes three people aboard. Motos are an increasingly popular form of transport in East Timor and you’ll see locals using them for all their transport needs - fathers carrying babies or small children; people riding with boxes, bottles or building materials strapped to the back; young women going to and from the market. Most riders don’t wear helmets and others can be seen with full-face helmets, but tipped back so the chin-piece rests on the tops of their heads.

People also move about on pushbikes or on foot, carting water from the well or carrying firewood or palm fronds, or bamboo. There’s an intermitent stream of school children of all ages, in neat uniforms, going to and from their classes and pigs, dogs and chickens move about fairly freely.

Beyond the patio, Rama’s front yard has several potted plants on the concrete paving, which gives way to a dirt driveway and sparse lawn. Twin coconut palms bend upwards on either side of the house. At night their magnificent fronds frame a stunning cut-out of star-speckled sky. It was this aspect we would enjoy while cleaning our teeth outside, hoping that no coconuts would fall on our heads.

The bathroom is out the back, beyond the concrete work area, in a type of outhouse with corrugated iron roof. The building has two rooms - a toilet and a shower. There is no running water. The toilet is a conventional bowl and seat, plumbed so that waste can be properly drained away. To flush, you scoop water from a tile and concrete mandy and pour it directly into the bowl. You may need to repeat the procedure several times.

The “shower” is a well-drained room complete with a large mandy that holds the clean water. To wash, you use a scoop to pour the cold water over yourself. No matter how you do it, there’s always an initial shock, but it’s actually quite a nice experience that leaves you feeling refreshed and alive but also thankful that this is balmy East Timor. It’s not the type of bath I’d like to experience in colder climes.

There is no generator, so like the locals Rama enjoys electricity only every second night, and even then it can be unreliable. Cooking is done on a gas burner, often by candlelight, but there is no fridge so food stocks have to be non-perishable. Fresh fruit and vegetables can be bought at the market and we became adept at using whatever local produce was available to concoct some excellent meals.

There’s no TV but Rama’s portable CD player, hooked up to mini-speakers, provides music. Suprisingly, the nights when there is electricity are little different to the nights without. It’s a chance to charge mobile phones and batteries and to cook with constant light.

Maybe it would change if I were there longer, but I preferred the candlelit evenings, with friendly company (we held almost nightly dinner parties for Rama’s local colleagues and other internationals) and good conversation.

About the only thing lacking was a cold beer, but fortunately the red wine was just fine at room temperature.

Eternal pork and In the Name of Mud
7/7/2004

I have to digress from East Timor briefly because at the moment my preoccupation is mud.

I am in Denmark, you see, and having just recovered from the Roskilde Festival I want to get this down while it is still fresh and sloppy.

To begin, I have to emphasise that spending a month in a developing country could in no way have prepared me for the living conditions at a 100,000 strong Scandinavian music festival.

It is no coincidence, I believe, that the festival grounds usually house cattle, because as we were herded from pen to pen, into group showers and toilets, or to the food stalls around the festival site, in many ways we resembled the lumbering beasts.

We were tagged, manhandled (well, searched) and kept outside for the most part, left to huddle, in groups, against the elements. And, this was supposed to be the Danish summer!

I really couldn’t content myself with the brief moments of sunlight inbetween squalls and torrential downpours. I was expecting some rain, sure, but I was also hoping there would be long periods of glorious sunlight where the mud would cake and fall from our skin, clothes and tents like dust and we could worship the sun god with Tuborg, the religous chant of “skal” and hands raised to the heavens.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead we drank to deaden the pain, mute out the rain and blur the mud till it was more of a chocolate swirl - OK, we had to drink A LOT.

The music and crowd were diverse, with everything resembling music from the sweet pop sounds of Danish singer Swan Lee to the Concord-like rumblings of the metal masters Morbid Angel (the name is so “metal” that I thought it was a joke).

The Danes come from Viking stock and it seemed natural that they should drink hard, party heavily and like their music hard and heavy too. Apparently the Viking version of heaven is something like Roskilde (with less mud) and features a pig from which you can just slice off a fresh piece of meat whenever you are hungry and it will regenerate: Eternal Pork. That has to be the name of a Danish metal outfit. It just has to be.

But back to the mud. I have never seen so much mud in all my life. Really. If you were to collect all the mud I have gazed upon in my 27 years and dump it into one place, you might just fill the East Camp at Roskilde. Just.

And this brings me to something that has been troubling me since the festival. If the Eskimos can have more than 30 names for snow, how is it that the Danes are satisfied with only three words for mud. (My Danish-English dictionary lists them as mudder, dynd and slam but I don’t know what the distinctions between them might be).

So I thought that in the spirit of multiculturalism, I would give them a bit of a flying start with the following names and definitions. I have deliberately chosen words that I believe would work well in both the Danish and English languages (apologies if any of them already exist for something else - I didn’t check):

slog - for mud the consistency of porridge, that plucks at your boots and sticks you fast as you try to take a step - often with the result of overbalancing the slogger.

sloop - for the thick, soupy mud that sloshes around your ankles and readily flicks itself at nearby targets (including the slooper’s upper body) at every step.

gluggle - for the wet brown substance that behaves almost like water, but is of the colour and consistency that makes it impossible to judge how deep the puddle of gluggle might be.

gludge - this mud is easy to recognise by its smell. It has a high component of cow dung and reminds one of the smell at a dairy.

crugoo - mud that has a thin upper crust, but underneath it oozes like slimy lavae.

crug - hard dry mud that forms solid waves in the ground, making it difficult to get an even footing.

scutter - The once liquid mud splatters that have since dried, leaving small, hard spots on clothing and skin.

oogle - for mud with no water content but made purely from dirt and human piss.

uugrr - specifically for mud trodden in with human faeces.

Note: the above two mud types are also known, in English, as “festival mud” and “Roskilde mud”. They are not known to occur in any great quantities in other environments.

Going offroad? Take the bus
30/6/2004

We spotted it up ahead. A green Mitsubishi Colt bus. It looked like all the other green Mitsubishi buses I had ever seen in Dili, but this one was different. It was the bus we were meant to be on. I don’t know how our cab driver knew this, but he took chase, beeping. Each time we nearly caught up, a speed hump or moving obstacle would prevent us from drawing alongside to signal the driver.

Finally we made ourselves known and the bus stopped.

“Ba Suai?”

“Sine.”

We proceeded to unload the cab - pushbike, 4 x 10 litre water containers, 2 x giant backpacks, 1 box of food, several smaller bags and ourselves. All this was hauled unceromoniously onto the bus. The bike went on the roof. The front seat was already taken, which meant we were in the back with the other passengers, chickens, pigs and produce. It was going to be a long, hot, 10 hour drive.

Now you might be wondering how it could take 10 hours to cover what is really no more than a few hundred kilometres. It’s a combination of factors, but mostly it has to do with the poor state of the roads. And I’m not just talking potholes. I’m talking landslides, mudslips, river crossings, places where the road used to be and now there are just piles of rubble. Places where the road kinda disappears and you drop several feet onto uneven gravel. Places where you wonder if there ever was a road and how the hell they managed to build in such a precarious spot on a jagged mountain.

The drivers over here are incredible. They’ll take humble buses places my hardcore four-wheel-driving mates wouldn’t take their Landcruisers. Seriously. I have never seen a bus handled with such precision and skill. But the trip is slow - necessarily. It’s not good to lose buses full of food and passengers off the side of mountains.

The fantastic thing about bus rides - apart from the driving - is the scenery. You get to travel through tiny villages - all traditional grass huts with thatched roofs, trimmed unevenly like a bad haircut. You get to pass incredible mountains and rock formations, follow rivers, traverse cliffs and cling to coastline. And you get to pass markets full of all sorts of people and produce. All for $5 or less - no matter how much crap you take with you.

East Timor road rules

The Portugese theory of driving in East Timor goes something like this:

1. If it’s a goat and it’s eating, no problem. It is occupied and won’t jump in front of a vehicle.
2. If it’s a cow and it’s eating, ditto.
3. If it’s a pig, beep once and it will scamper.
4. If it’s a dog, start beeping from a few hundred metres away and it will move. If not, one less starving dog is no big deal.
5. But if it’s a chicken, you’ve got problems. Chickens are unpredictable, they like to cross the road for dumb reasons and if you hit a chicken you have to pay. That’s a family’s Sunday dinner.
6. Finally, beware the night buffalo. They’re big, they only come out at night and you don’t want to tangle with them - even in a UN vehicle. (Note: Night buffalo cunningly disguise themselves in sunlight as the less sinister day buffalo. Don’t be fooled.)

When I first heard this theory, I laughed. Surely the chaos of driving in developing countries could not be so easily categorised. (Except for the bit about night buffalo which is, of course, common knowledge.)

But the theory was put through rigorous UN testing procedures, with independent witnesses, and time and again the animals behaved as predicted. We are at this moment waiting for the theory to be written into scientific law.

The only other rules on Timor’s roads involve complicated etiquette with regard to using the horn.

You should use the horn to:

- say hello as you pass houses in a village
- greet people at the side of the road
- move animals that are on the road
- move animals you can’t see that might be on the road
- warn people who are on the road to make room
- greet traffic coming the other way
- alert traffic going the same way that you are about to overtake
- warn traffic coming the other way that you are about to fly around a blind corner in the middle of the road (if you hear an answering beep - hit the brakes!)
- if, for any other reason you feel like making some noise

Warning! Crocodiles live here
23/6/2004

The crocodile is sacred in East Timor. According to local stories, crocodiles will not eat people - or at least, not local Timorese people. My friends were not so sure about their appetite for malae.

However, they insisted we visit the spot at Salale Beach where they are most often seen.

Just the day before, my friend Sheryl had encountered a 3 metre croc lazing on the beach.

“They can move pretty fast,” a worried Sheryl (from north Queensland) had cautioned her Timorese companions.

“Don’t worry,” they grinned, “we can run faster.”

I hoped we would not have to get that close.

We edged around the lagoon, and although my UN friend Ramil had his pistol on him, I was not too keen to encounter one at close range. The Timorese also believe it is bad luck to kill a crocodile and I thought it might be bad luck to get eaten by one, so it could have presented an interesting dilemma.

We didn’t see anything at first, but our Timorese friend John ensured us they would come. We spotted one in the shade at the far side of the lagoon and I ensured them that was fine for me, but just before we left we saw another salty, nearer to us, just poking its eyes and nostrils above the water in the centre of the lagoon.

Apparently Timorese crocodiles are more timid than our man-eaters in Oz, but I was happy to head back to the car without testing that theory.

East Timor is a dangerous place. There are killer crocodiles (Sheryl knew someone whose son was taken off Suailoro Beach, so I guess they don’t all stick to the rules), killer snakes and killer insects.

The first morning I spent in Suai I had a close encounter with a small green snake. I reached out to pick up a damp towel I had carelessly slung over a shelf in my room and a felt something heavy writhe and drop to the floor. I looked down in time to see a dark green snake, about the length of my foot, slithering out of the room.

Now I’m not particularly squeamish and in Australia small green snakes are tree snakes and quite safe, so I wasn’t particularly concerned. It wasn’t until a later conversation with some doctors that I discovered small green snakes in East Timor are highly poisonous. A bite could lead to amputation, or even death.

Weirdly, being here makes you pretty chilled out and philosophical about such things - although I have been more cautious when picking up towels left lying around. And I always keep my eyes peeled for crocs when walking on the beach.

Malae, malae!
21/6/2004

A bare white foot, miskept nails still showing a dull glean of month-old varnish and the sole marbled with black dirt, rests deliberately in the open window frame of the bus. Front seat.

The music blares from the shoddy speakers - something unintelligible to her - Indonesian, she thinks. Her face is turned to the wind and eager blue eyes work to absorb the view as it transforms from long coastal stretches to thickly woven forest to flat red dirt and eucalypts.

The smile that first spread across her face as the green bus, loaded with people and produce, wound up and out of Dili has not faded for a good hour. A bead of sweat gathers at the nape of her neck and the backs of her knees are covered in a fine film. It’s nearing midday and the yellow sun is bearing down on the land with full ferocity, etching out in fine detail each rock, leaf and blade of grass.

As the bus pulls into a roadside marketplace children and adults openly gawk, laugh and point. “Malae, malae,” the kids cry. It’s a friendly word the Timorese use for foreigners. And it’s rare to see a foreigner - especially a white woman - on a public bus. The bus driver leans out the window and laughs with the locals. She’s not exactly sure what he’s saying, but it’s something along the lines of “check out this crazy malae I’ve got here”.

She smiles and waves - weird, she thinks. Like being a cross between a two-headed freak and royalty…

The East Timorese are friendly, interested in and slightly reverent towards foreigners. If you are white, they assume you speak English.

“Hello Missus” is a common cry as I ride my pushbike along the battered roads around Suai. If they address me in Tetun I’ll reply with “bondia” or “boatardi”, and if in English, I’ll use both - “hello, bondia”.

Sometimes people will ask how I am and I’ll reply and reciprocate. These exchanges might be in English, Tetun or both. And usually that’s the limit of our ability to communicate with eachother.

These sorts of encounters go on all the time. Everyone I pass waves and smiles. I think I provide great amusement. People openly point and laugh, but it is not in any way malicious. How do I know this? I dunno, you just know.

5/6/2004

Bali, part one

Scene One: A makeshift pool hall behind the busy shopping streets of Legian, Bali. Three Balinese men, roughly in their twenties, are playing pool and gambling on the outcome. It’s 8-ball, but each man has a hand of cards and they have to sink the balls matching the numbers in their hand. The first man to sink all the balls in his hand wins.

Marty, black denim home-boy pants hanging around his arse, is about to take his shot when he notices a Western chick striding past. She glances in with mild interest. His companion, a skinny guy with a goatie, calls out and she waves and smiles, then continues on. Marty wonders if she knows where she’s going. There’s nothing down that way.

A moment later she walks back, a little sheepishly and props herself on a bench near the pool table to watch them play. They nod towards her.

Girl: Can I have a game?
Marty: Sure, take a seat.

They go back to their game. He takes his shot and looks over to her.

Marty: You can play with me.

She smiles. The tall guy with heavy tattoos and a goatie comes over to speak to her.

Goatie: What’s your name?
Girl: (without thinking) Jessica
Goatie: Where are you from?
Girl: Sydney - Australia
Marty: Sydney? I’ve been there. Last year. It’s big.
Goatie: (cutting to the chase) Do you have a boyfriend.
Girl: (laughs, hesitates) Yes.
Goatie: Where is he?
Girl: Surfing. He’s been surfing all day. (Rolls her eyes and shrugs her shoulders elaborately).
Goatie: (slightly disbelieving) Ah, Aussie surfer huh?
Girl: Yup. Sydney surfer. From Bondi. You know Bondi?

They nod. Marty racks up and they begin to play.

Bali, part two: In Bali, you must pay

I hate bargaining. Really, I must be the worst bargainer in Bali.

I hear the seasoned Aussies haggling and to be honest, it makes me sick. Middle-aged women, peroxide blonde hair and too-short surf skirts will spend half-an-hour beating the Balinese down to a couple of dollars for three pairs of sandals or two sarongs. These women know the game - and they have tactics.
“What if I take four?”
“I can get it down the road for half that price.”

I have a couple of problems.
1. I only ever want one. One sarong, one pair of sandals. “I have no room in my bag,” I try to explain to the bemused store holder. Obviously excess baggage is part of the experience for most Westerners buying up big on cheap goods in Bali - or maybe they come with empty bags and no clothes.
2. I just don’t get any satisfaction out of milking the hardworking Balinese of goods that would cost five or ten times that amount if they were to be purchased in Australia. Sure, I understand exchange rates, economies of scale and all that, but to me a fair price is one where we both win. I don’t want to rip anyone off and I don’t want to be ripped off. Can’t we just discuss our costs and expectations and both go away happy?

A typical exchange goes like this:
Hapless Aussie female: This is nice - how much? (First mistake - never admit you like it).
store holder: For you, special price: 60,000
HAF: No, (with mock surprise). That’s too much.
store holder: OK, what your price? (Second mistake - never let them put the onus back on you).
HAF: (thinks) Ah, 50,000 (Third mistake - if they were asking 60,000, they will probably be willing to take half that and you should start bidding much lower).
store holder: OK, special price: 55
HAF: Um, (tries to do conversion in head - unsuccessfully) OK, then.

The store holder smiles and the hapless Aussie female walks out with her purchase, unsure whether she’s been ripped off or not, but pretty certain she has been. Ah well. The world needs its share of suckers.

Bali is exceptionally cheap, even for people like me, but there is one rule I learnt the hard way. You must pay - for everything. You pay for deckchairs to sit on the beach, you pay to enter and leave the country and even on guided tours, aside from paying for the trip, you must pay for your own lunch.

I took a trip to the Mt Batur volcano which, I thought, was an all-inclusive tour. We pulled up at a roadside restaurant that did buffet lunches. I didn’t see any money exchanging hands except for the drinks waitress and I had my own water. I piled my plate and sat down inbetween some Chinese tourists to take in the spectacular view of the volcano and lake.

It wasn’t really my sort of thing. A whole bunch of fat tourists gulping down second-rate food while their local guides waited outside. I would have preferred a cheap meal at a local warung and hoped my guide Made (pronounced Mardy) was able to get something to eat. I finished my food and promptly left to find him.

I was purchasing postcards from a young vendor outside when a troop of Balinese tromped up the stairs towards me. They looked mad. In a country where people are mostly smiling and friendly, there is nothing more frightening that an angry Balinese. Their brows furrow and their usually bright eyes take on a cold, hard glare.

A man took my arm, roughly, and I knew I was in trouble - but for what?

“This way,” he said. I put up a meek protest.

I attempted to finish my transaction with the postcard vendor - I had spent some time looking through her collection for a couple of postcards I liked and I wasn’t about to give them up now. I knew I had some small notes in my money pouch, but right at that moment all I could find was a 50,000 note and I wasn’t prepared to part with that for two lousy postcards.

The man insisted: “You must pay now.”

“Ah,” I said, realising my mistake, “yes, yes. One minute.”

He eyed me suspiciously then disappeared to attend to another guest. Still rifling around for some change I was then accosted by two severe-looking women.

“You must pay, you must pay,” one was shouting.

“OK,” I said. My search for change was becoming desperate. I never was good with numbers under pressure. They stood over me like two police awaiting the conclusion of an illicit drug deal. I was obviously guilty of trying to leave without paying. How could I explain it was a mistake and I just wanted to finish buying postcards?

After what seemed an age I located a smaller note and shoved it in the hand of the postcard girl as I was being marched back inside the restaurant. My humiliation rose as these women, in front of a full restaurant of paying customers, continued to yell at me.

“Why you not pay?” they demanded. “You eat, you must pay.”

“I am so sorry. I didn’t understand.” Any further explanation was more than I was capable of.

“You must ask waitress if you don’t understand.”

“Yes, OK, I am very sorry.”

They handed me the bill - more embarrassed rifling for the correct amount (I didn’t dare ask for change).

They looked at my 50,000 note with distate.

“Why you pay only 50,000?” She pointed to another figure on the bill. It appeared I had been reading the subtotal. This clinched my guilt in their minds.

“Sorry,” I said again, finding the extra 10. They obviously didn’t believe me. The two of them glared at me with towering contempt and I feared they would not allow me to leave. Moments passed. Eventually, in school-principal tones, one of the women relented.

“Next time, you ask,” she insisted.

“You not do that again.”

I hurried to my guide, shame-faced, with the mental promise there would be no next time.

Bali, part three: Final thoughts

Me, a bottle of Bintang and the roar of the surf at a cheap hotel in Bali. At lunch it was the crackly sound of Bob Marley and a plate of nasi goreng. I like it here, despite the mayhem. The buzz of motos cruising up and down the streets, the busy market areas filled with hagglers and bargain-hunters, the bars and restaurants brimming with families, lovers, backpackers and empty-nesters. There’s life here - in abundance - and it’s strangely welcoming.

I didn’t dwell on the Bali bombing or visit the sites. The tourist industry here is undoubtedly still recovering, but having not visited before I had nothing to compare it with.

So, I spent a night cruising on the back of a moto, a day touring the Ubud district, a sunset on the beach at Legian, playing my newly purchased and beautifully carved djembe with a bunch of strangers (Americans and Balinese). I spent hours and hours walking the streets and market areas of Legian (OK, I was lost half the time, but it counts) and I’ve made my practical and mental preparations for East Timor.

I have a cheap bike and my air ticket (it’s purchase has probably cost me a fortune in bank fees as the delivery guy had no credit facility and the ATM would only dispense 400,000 rupiahs at a time). So I think I’m ready to move on.

I’ve made a good friend in my guide, Made. Although to be fair, he makes friends with all his customers. Good-natured, with a slightly wicked sense of humour, he took me under his wing and happily ran me around the place on his moto after work, taking me to eat seafood on the beach and willingly answering all the dumb-arse tourist questions I hit him with. He wants to take me to his village in East Bali when I come back.

But now it’s off to East Timor - a big unknown - with none of the tourist infrastructure of Bali. And none of the Westerners in holiday-mode crawling the streets and beaches. I’ll let you know what it’s like…

Airports. What strange cities.

Places noone wants to be; an inconvenience on the way to somewhere else. They have their own etiquettes and rules. Who would have thought you'd be a departure when you arrive, and an arrival when you're about to depart? You can always check in but never check out. There is a constant sense of agitation. People killing time, or rushing to make it up. Noone is content just to be, or happy to wait.

Globalisation

Irish pub in the heart of France. I sit here, waiting for a train. Californication plays on the sound system. Palais des Papes and Pont de Avignon seem miles away. In fact, they're just down the road.

Irish pubs and McDonalds - the two constants in this global world. The yellow arches of the McDonald's M faithfully proclaim the direction to every major tourist site in Italy, more accurate than the Metro signs, more constant that the traffic.

Cinque Terre

The Mediterannean races out before the wind like ink blown gently across paper. It splays out in fingers across the glassy expanse - waves in conception. Above, the steel grey rock mirrors the water below, layer upon layer curving up in violent waves, swirling and circling in static motion. Again, larger, the fields assemble in terraced order, following the contours of the hills, yet strangely symmetrical. the work of man over hundreds of years. This place echoes the forces of nature and emits the sweat of local farmers who so laboriously tried to tame it.

Time-elapse sunset

Location: Sweden, Lerberget to be precise.
Time: just on sunset.

The water is perfectly still here - more like a lake than an ocean. Boulders protrude from the surface and weed congregates around them. Every so often you see a sea-bird perched on one of the boulders. Sea and sky are almost indistinguishable. Both are a pale white-grey and both are tinged with a stream of the faintest pink, where a half-arsed sunset is trying to occur. A cormorant, flying across the water, is shadowed by his own perfect reflection. If it was not summer, you would mistake the water for ice. A few ships, near the horizon, appear frozen in place and the tip of Denmark's Zealand island looms dark in the distance.

Ten minutes later:

Now that sun, that I chastised for being so lame, has created a ruby red doorway in the clouds, crowning their tops with a deep orange-gold. The colours are being reproduced, unfaithfully, on the water, that has broken out in ripples: perhaps the effect of the three children, waist deep, laughing and playing in the murky shallows.

Fifteen minutes later:

Now a burning pink globe dominates the sky, casting its light into the cloudscape, which, in turn, throws it out like paint, in generous handfuls, onto the water below. As the rain begins to come down - the tap gradually turning up the pressure - the whole sky has blown apart. Red-pink clouds separate in places to reveal a still-blue sky, clinging to its colour as night closes in.

Is it possible to accurately convey this in words? No. Pictures? I doubt it. This is stuff that can only be experienced with all the senses. The wafting seaweed smells, the wet-dirt-like smell of rain, the damp-feathery whiff of seagulls and the stench of dead shellfish. The light touch of rain on your skin, forming trickles and rivulets on the landscape of your exposed arms and face. The sense of space, standing on a small rise and looking across to the open ocean, feeling the immenseness of everything ahead, behind, to the north and south, above and below. The cushioning of damp sand, held together by sparse grass, beneath your bare feet. The way the wind attacks in flurries, all teeth and spit - like a small white fluffy dog, trying to be bold. And finally, the sight. The colours and contours, the light, shadow, depth, breadth, jagged lines and smoothed-out curves. Now a dot painting, now a water colour, a sketch, an oil.

No, it cannot be captured. Only experienced and hinted at in the retelling. It is you, the audience, who will join the dots, fill the gaps, colour-in between the lines, choose the hues. Your mind's eye will fill in the film's missing frames, or blend the pixels to create the on-screen image. You are as much a part of the art as the artist. Interpret.