Bali Human Connections

I walked along the Sanur beach path on a Saturday morning for twenty minutes feeling slightly wrong. A man selling kites finally said, very quietly, excuse me, your shoes. I had put them on the wrong feet. He said it so gently that I felt like a person with a secret. I thanked him, changed them on a bench, and bought a kite out of gratitude. The kite is on my wall. I look at it whenever I think I know what I am doing. It helps. Left, then right.

Emma

A monkey took my hat at Uluwatu on Thursday afternoon, and I made my peace with it. The next day, at the same wall, the same monkey took my phone. I chased it for a hundred meters with my arms up like a goalkeeper. A stranger in a green shirt started shouting banana, banana, from behind me. The monkey dropped the phone for the banana. I have never been so grateful to a piece of fruit. I wanted to thank the man in the green shirt but he was gone. I would like him to know the monkey still has the hat.

On my first morning in Sanur I nearly stepped on a small woven tray of flowers outside a shop. Then there was another outside the next shop, and the next. They are put out fresh every day with a stick of incense. What usually goes wrong for newcomers is exactly what nearly went wrong for me, which is looking at the phone instead of the pavement. Now I look down, walk around, and keep going. Also, I keep some rupiah cash in my pocket for small things, because it is what most places expect.

Quick one for people who live here. We are new and want a regular evening walk along the Sanur beach path. Weekdays look calm when we pass but I have no idea about weekends. Also not sure if we should bring cash for anything on the way. So, is the Sanur beach path pleasant on a weekend evening, or should we save it for weekdays?

A couple outside a cafe in Canggu asked their private driver if the temple was far. 'Not far,' he said. 'Just slow.' They laughed, then stopped laughing when he said it again, more kindly. I have lived on this island long enough to know he was giving them the most accurate answer available. I am still confused about how distance is measured here, and apparently that is normal.

You went past me in Canggu on a Tuesday afternoon on a scooter carrying an entire wooden door, upright, at about forty. Every dog on the road turned its head. I was walking with a smoothie and I stopped drinking it. The door wobbled once at the roundabout and kept going. A man next to me said, it is fine, it is always fine. I would like to know where the door was going. I would also like to know who ordered the door. I have walked that road at 2pm every Tuesday since, and so far it is only scooters.

My fan died during a power cut in Pererenan on Friday night, so I knocked on the guesthouse next door to ask for a spare. The man there did not have one, so he carried his own across and sat on my balcony until the lights came back, which was two hours. We talked about surf, the price of rice and his sister in Java. That was four months ago. He still brings me a coffee whenever the power drops. I have started to wish it would drop on a weekend.

A storm came over Tanah Lot with no warning on a Wednesday afternoon and a crowd of strangers ended up in the same shop doorway. Someone shared a plastic poncho. An older couple argued gently about the way back. A student read the forecast out loud in two languages and was wrong in both. We stood there for forty minutes. When it stopped the sky went pink and nobody took a photograph. We looked at it for another two minutes and walked back to the car park, in different directions, in step.

I climbed up to the gate at the Uluwatu cliffs on a Saturday at 3pm in shorts, and the guard shook his head. A woman behind me unwrapped her own sarong, handed it over and said she had another in her bag. I tied it on. We walked the cliff path together without speaking. At the exit she took it back and tied it on herself in four seconds, and I never learned her name. A monkey took my sunglasses two minutes later. I still came out ahead.

I was sick for three days in Sanur and walked the beach path every morning at seven because my room felt too small. The woman at the coconut cart started handing me a cup of water first, then the coconut, and she never added the water to the price. On day four I felt fine and told her. She clapped, twice, and gave me a second coconut for the road. I have bought every coconut from her since. I do not need coconuts. I need to know that she will clap.

My phone was dead and I was lost on a dirt lane near Berawa on Sunday morning, staring at a rice field like it owed me directions. You came past on an orange scooter, slowed, and held up your phone so I could see the map. Then you turned around and led me, at about fifteen kilometers an hour, all the way to the main road. You did not say a word. At the junction you pointed left and rode off right. I went left. I got home. I hope the scooter is running well. I hope the rice field is not offended.