Arrival

It takes almost four hours to fly from Perth to Bali, about half of which is just over the northern expanses of Western Australia, which contains a whole lot of not much. At first glance the landscape looks like a completely uninhabited, barren desert, rendered into a pattern like marbled paper by the seasonal floods; it’s like flying over the frontispiece of a 19^th century book.

But if you look more closely, even here, in this flat, arid, empty landscape, you still see the works of man. The neat grid of evaporation pans at a salt refinery. The rigid straight line of a road, or a causeway, or an airstrip, cutting surgically through the swirls and blotches. The tiny white apostrophes of the wake behind boats, themselves too small and far away to see. It might make the eco-minded froth with indignation, but I find it comforting. We’re here, as a species, and we’re making even the most inhospitable parts of our world what we want them to be.

I landed at Ngurah Rai Airport around 3pm, and spent the next hour and a bit standing in queues waiting for the slow grind of Indonesian customs to drag me through its rusty gears. But I eventually emerged into the balmy late afternoon and found an overpriced taxi to take me to my resort hotel in Seminyak.

I’m assured that Bali has changed in a the last seven years, but apart from the disappearance of the pirate DVD shops, it seems the same to me. There’s a vaguely incense-y smell everywhere that I instantly remembered at a very deep level. The city is filled with a sense of amiable chaos which would be frustrating if you actually wanted to get some work done, but which is charming if you’re on holiday. There’s no graffiti except on long-abandoned buildings, and even then, not that much of it. Any unused space is quickly swamped by exuberant plant growth. The streets throng with taxis, scooters, skinny stray dogs, and the odd random chicken.

After checking into my hotel, and changing out of the winter clothes I’d been wearing in Perth and into the summer clothes I’d brought with me, I decided to start on my List. Before I’d left Australia I’d researched the best small bars and restaurants in Bali, and compiled a list that I could handily reach from central Seminyak. It was disappointing to see that some iconic establishments, such as Metis and Sarong, had closed during the pandemic and never reopened. However others, like Merah Putih and Mamasan, were still in business, along with a slew of new “it” places that have impressed food and beverage critics.

I decided to start with one of these new ones, Motel Mexicola. only 500 metres seaward from my hotel. I had flashes of familiarity as I wandered towards it; the incongruousness of smart shops next to overgrown vacant lots, the absence of sidewalks necessitating darting around traffic on the road itself, the open sewers half covered with concrete panels or optimistically semi-concealed by ornamental planters of bouganvillia or fairylit clumps of bamboo.

The restaurant itself was fully booked – almost inevitable in Seminyak – but I could sit at the bar outside and have drinks and light foods. Which suited me fine. After the deep, abiding cold of the last few nights in Perth, sitting outside in the balmy tropical heat was glorious, and it was gloriouser with a frozen margarita and some chips and guacamole.

Cory and Cody grabbed their boards and hit the closest thing to a wave in the near vicinity. But clearly one of them underestimated the chances of a wipeout.