It is about to dump rain. The sky over the hills that surround the beach are the color of steel and sinking fast, ready to bring the saturation that happens every afternoon here. But I’m on the beach anyway, watching the Bali Sea go from lake-water calm to kicking up with actual waves. Even the intrepid snorkelers have all come in from the reef off the beach. The town as been working to restore the reef the last several years, with some seemingly jury-rigged electrical contraption that helps the coral to grow, or stay alive. They’ve made it sort of an underwater garden, putting statues of Buddha down there among the brain coral, so when you paddle around, you find things underwater that you expect to see on land. You can sponsor a bit of coral for $35. Your name will be wrought in metal and put at the base of the coral under the water. They’ll send you pictures of it for three years so you can watch it grow.

I’m on day three here in Desa Pemuteran in the north, and as beautiful as it is, I’m feeling unsettled and I’m glad for a change of venue to Lovina tomorrow, which seems like it will be somewhat more populated. With whom, I’m not sure. It’s the off-season, so most places are relatively deserted—to the point that it seems like no one actually comes to Bali. The hotel restaurant is nearly empty at nights, serving club sandwiches and mie goreng and Balinese roasted portk to one or two tables at a time. The tiny beach bar, however, is packed, but because it’s tiny, that means maybe eight people are the ones who are packing it. I’ve spent the last two evenings there, mostly eavesdropping, but also chatting with the other people there.

…

Lovina now and just arrived. It is indeed more populated—a mini Kuta is how Made described it, and while I’ve made a point of avoiding Kuta, I figured a mini Kuta situation might be manageable, and perhaps a nice change from the calm, meditative vibe in Pemuteran. But that said, having walked around for about an hour, I’m glad I opted for more time there rather than two nights here.

As I was walking along the ocean front road, lined with stalls to buy colorful and cheap dresses, sarongs, shirts, shorts, scarves, etc., and bars, restaurants, lounges and “discos,” I recognized another woman, also traveling solo. I saw her at Taman Sari. She and I are, for the moment, on a similar trajectory.
She was in the beach bar last night, surrounded by the three cats that slunk around the hotel. Scrawny things with short, curling lynx-like tails. The wonderful couple, Jim, who works as a facilities manager for the US foreign service, and his lovely, charming wife from South Africa, Ursula, had bought me a drink and invited me to join them for happy hour, which turned into evening which became dinner. We sat under the palm roof of the open air bar and marveled at the sheets of rain, talking loudly to be heard over the rumbles of thunder. The woman was there, a table away. She’s probably about my age, she was drinking white wine and the orange tom cat was lounging comfortably on her lap while she read a book. At some point in my half-inebriated state, I entertained this brief fantasy of sitting down with her and striking up a conversation. In my head we got on fabulously, fast friends, just two ladies making their way around Bali all by themselves. I had a thought, silly in the moment, but it was a nice thought: to see if she wanted to come and explore Lovina with me. Just a day, no big commitments or anything (I loathe the idea of being perceived as some creepy hanger on, desperate for company—true as that may sometimes be).

Had I been on my own in the beach bar, and not engrossed in all manner of conversation with the delightful people who invited me to spend the evening with them, I may well have done as much. But I didn’t.
So, there she was suddenly walking alongside me down this twisting little street in Lovina that leads out to the beach. And I thought, hey, it’s happening!
“Hi!” I said.
She looked at me like I was a crazy person. “Hi?”
“Did I see you last night in Pemuteran? At Taman Sari?”
“Oh, were you staying there?”
“Yeah! I saw you bonding with all the cats.”
“I liked those cats.”
Throughout this innocuous exchange she was moving away from me, tracing her escape route.
“Yeah, those were cute cats.” If two single ladies can’t talk about cats, really, what’s left?
Then she kind of gave me a weak smile and darted off in the other direction.
So much for kismet.

…

When today’s batch of rain began in earnest, I ducked into the nearest place, which turns out to be an open-air sports bar. And now I’m sort of stuck here until it stops. All the Dutch people are here. Actually, I’m pretty sure that 90% of the tourists in Bali are Dutch. They are everyplace I’ve been, all tall and pale and traveling in pairs. They are more amenable to chat than the other Americans I’ve met, the one wonderful exception being Jenny (lifeaftercollege.org), a New Yorker I met in Ubud, who’s living there for a month then Chang Mai for a month and running her life-coaching business from abroad. She’s a delight, and it’s nice to have a friend in Ubud who I can make actual plans with and have conversations where both participants are speaking their native language. Not that I can complain in the slightest about the language skills of my host country. Everyone here is undaunted by the communication challenges, wanting to talk about the usual things: Where were you before? How long are you here? Where are you going next? How do you like Bali? And when they learn I’m American they smile hugely and say, “Barack Obama!” When they learn I’m from California, it’s, “Arnold Shwarzenegger!” Sometimes even imitating a passable Austrian accent.

When two people who speak two different languages that aren’t English start talking together, they almost always fall into English. It is truly the universal language. Makes me feel like a lazy shit for not having learned any other languages, while the rest of the world seems to have to know two at minimum to get by.
The volley ball court/parking lot outside this bar is now a lake. I’m not sure I’ll be able to affect an escape before dark…