The Beginning... January 1st, 2008

In the beginning there was me and a backpack and the first day of 2008. And it was good. Like any good story it began with a girl. Unlike said story the girl is not a major character and all the strange build up with her in the months that led up to Bali fell apart rapidly in the physical world contact that followed. Essentially, anticipation was better than participation. In fact, there was no participation, for when I got here I realised that there was a severe lack of attraction.

Maybe this woman acted as a good catalyst to get me here. Maybe that was her purpose. Or perhaps she was the start to a great lesson learned in 2008 – see through the veil.

So things with this Balinese woman ended before they began and I found myself going for a cleansing bit of action with an American girl after about a week or so of arriving. Cleansing was right – as my night with her was mysteriously linked with 6 days of bali belly that rendered me immobile, having to be within 10 quick steps of a bathroom. It was on one of my many long porcelain celebrations that I realised it for certain – I’m travelling again.

The belly cleared up only as she left town and I found myself, after 3 weeks in tropical Bali, to be in need of a holiday! So I left town and headed out to Lembongan Island – a place known for its scuba diving and snorkelling. There I spent as much time as I could underwater.

Do I tell you about the dive that we had, 2 dive masters and 2 beginners, when we were caught in a downcurrent that took us 18 meters further down than we were supposed to go? About the 50 year old woman, that I had convinced that diving was a safe sport, who took water into her mouth at 40 meters and panicked? Who nearly didn’t make it to the surface and when she did had lips of purple-blue?

Probably not.

She survived and we moved on. Me – onto the Gili Islands. Here I had a shake out of debaucherous fun in the islands off the mainland of Lombok where the cops don’t go. It was just the kind of good times I was looking for, and when I returned to Bali at the end of January, I was ready to hit the reset button and go again.