by Rob Binkley
The first fight of the trip erupted.
I ran toward the commotion and saw Brian in the center of the melee (he was the tallest one and the only one wearing a white police shirt). Then one, two, three, four, five, six—seven guys charged him.
Brian took off and ran a block into a dead end alley. When I turned the corner, I could see the seven Indonesians showing off their karate moves as they closed in to throttle Brian, who had nowhere to go. Brian covered his head as the gang kicked and punched him everywhere. By the time Felix and I arrived, the gang had vanished. Brian was a mess. His head was bleeding. His arms were turning purple and an inch of meat was gone from his thumb.
“This is what they call an ‘Indonesian drive-by,’” Brian moaned. “Was it something I said? I got jumped by the tiniest gang ever.” Brian tried to laugh but could only cough. They pounded him really good. The two Aussie girls who were first responders were no help. I’m sure the guys targeted Brian for being obnoxious or impersonating a police officer. Or both.
The crowd dispersed; no one had answers. Brian wanted to go looking for the guys but one of our rules on the trip was to avoid fights since the outcome would never be good. On the walk home, I asked Brian if he taunted them with slanderous jokes.
“I may have mentioned I screwed one of their mothers.”
He was kidding … I think.
The spectacle of our idiocy got even more foolish the next night when we went out again, this time on the Kuta strip. Brian was still wearing his bandages from last night’s beating like some American POW on shore leave.
At some point, a two-hundred-pound Swedish woman named Inga attacked me on the dance floor to the tune of “Baby Got Back” from Sir Mix-A-Lot. I danced with her but feared her horniness. She could have picked me up and taken me home with her so I went into critical inebriated-thinking stage.
I proceeded to tell her the sickest things I could think of as a form of repellant. That didn’t work. My filthy talk turned Inga on more. She whispered in my ear that she wanted to take me home and do disgusting things to my orifices. She was fondling me everywhere. This is why women are afraid of aggressive men who get too grabby.
I needed a buffer so I grabbed Brian, who was more wasted than me, and threw him at Inga while I fled for the bathroom. When I came back, Brian had disappeared.
Uh oh, I thought. This is how serial killers nab their prey. I scanned the dance floor; Inga was nowhere. I assumed Brian probably got lost outside, so I collected Felix and the Swedes for an Indonesian style search and rescue mission.
We hailed a taxi, bought six large Bintangs, and began driving around. I offered the driver every other sip of my beer to get him on our level, but he wouldn’t have it. Since there were only so many bars in Kuta, once the beers were done we called off the search and I went back to our guesthouse. When I arrived home at four o’clock in the morning, our building had no electricity. I staggered in the dark.
I heard ABBA coming from our open window. I crept up and peeked in. The lime-green cock candle was burning inside. In the haze of candlelight, there Brian was tied to my bedpost in his underwear like a rag doll. Brian appeared to be out cold.
I tried to get his attention. “Pssst! Wake up, you kinky bastard.” No response. “I hope you don’t have Inga in—”
I heard a Swedish baritone gargling mouthwash in our bathroom to the tune of “Fernando.” It was Inga. Did Brian actually sex her up? How drunk was he?
From the zebra-striped overnight case on the bed, it appeared Inga was planning on staying a while. I threw a bag of Skittles at Brian’s head and whispered, “Dude! Wake up!” I stayed crouched in the bushes. No way was I walking in there, or Inga might have me for dessert.
When Brian finally opened his eyes, I could see the horror wash over him as he realized his search for experience had gone horribly wrong. The warning from the Indonesian kid echoed in my mind: “Men who aren’t safe aren’t safe here.” Covered in what appeared to be Balinese guacamole, Brian tried to wriggle free but Inga had tied him down good.
Brian and I locked eyes. I could see tears running down his face, silently pleading for someone to save him.
Brian nudged his head toward the bathroom. I saw the reflection of Inga in a mirror coming our way. She looked angry, like a rabid Kong. My heart was pounding; I had seconds to free him. I wondered how would his mother take the news? Our first month on the road and he’s already a sex casualty. He’ll be humiliated postmortem.
This was the motivation I needed. I flew through the open window and untied Brian from the bedpost just as Inga walked in. She stopped dancing when she saw me. “You here to join ze party too?!”
“I don’t think so, Inga!” I fought off her advances, using our backpacks as shields as Brian crawled out the window.
I was left in a Mexican standoff with the hulking Swede who was totally naked. I tried to talk sense into her. “C’mon, fun’s over. Time to go home, darling. Let’s make this easy on both of us.”
While we stalked each other around the room I managed to stuff all our belongings into our packs. Inga hurled a litany of Swedish curses at me for ruining her afterhours party. She wasn’t leaving; the woman was out of her mind. As soon as I had all our gear packed, I blew out the cock candle; it was suddenly pitch dark. I bolted for the window. Inga stumbled around in the dark screaming unintelligible gibberish.
I grabbed Brian, who was lying on his back in the courtyard, and we took off running. We didn’t stop until we saw ocean. I finally got a look at Brian and busted out laughing. He was in his underwear with rambutan fruit (a local delicacy) smeared all over him.
Brian was gasping for air. “Did that just really happen?”
“I didn’t know whether to hug her or tackle her!” I gave him a bottle of water I had in my pack.
“We will never speak of this again.” He guzzled the water and collapsed on the beach.
I inspected the jelly all over his body. “What the hell is all this?”
“Stop asking questions. Must forget.”
“Did she penetrate you? I saw an apparatus.”
“Mock me in the morning—can’t talk.”
“It’s morning now.”
The sun was coming up. I pulled towels out of our bags and made a bed. I laughed myself to sleep while Brian moaned with a towel over his head. Good times.
We never returned to Palm Gardens.
The next morning I awoke face down on the beach with a host of mosquitos sucking blood from my sunburned back. I forgot to grab our mosquito net (which never worked anyway) during last night’s hotel exodus.
The island was spinning. I looked around; our stuff was strewn everywhere. Tourists were on the beach sunning themselves around us. Brian was washing himself in the surf, scrubbing away last night’s residue.
I shouted, “I wanted to take a picture before you cleaned up!”—not trying to cheer him up. Brian walked back to our beach spot and plopped down on a towel.
“I need to chill today. Isn’t that what we came here to do?”
I couldn’t remember. My mind was scrambled eggs.
We didn’t move from our beach spot all day. The plan was to detox, just drink Sprite and rediscover our souls. Our friends Nick and Mag showed up and were disappointed we weren’t drinking; they thought we were alcoholics for some reason. Their disappointment waned when they saw our Sprites were loaded with Southern Comfort that Brian had hidden in the sand. Brian needed to drink away the memory of last night. He didn’t say a word all day.
Everyone said we were getting ripped off at Palm Gardens anyway, so we spent the end of the day wandering around town looking for new, cheaper digs where Inga would never find us.
We had each budgeted twelve thousand dollars for the trip (one thousand dollars a month), which we still thought could get us around the world in a year. “As long we stick to third world countries and don’t develop any habits harder than alcohol, we should be able to make it.”
Brian,
Felix, and I decided to share a room to save money; also, there was safety in numbers. We only needed three small beds with a fan. Air-conditioning was out of the question. Soon we found a place called Kedin’s Inn that was in our price range. It was basically a thatched hut with two beds in the front room and one in a back room. We went to the front desk to pay for our room. I got them down to twelve dollars a night, four dollars per person.
We became friendly with the teenage boys working the front desk. They said we would get a free night if we “put on a show” for them.
“What kind of show?” Brian asked, rubbing his bruised body.
“If you bring home a girl and do naughty things to her, will you let us watch through the open window? You can have that night for free.” These kids were little pervs!
Felix thought this was hilarious. “Do you like big Swedish girls?” I told them about last night’s adventure; they were rapt by my story. The memory was too fresh for Brian, so he went outside to find a pay phone to call his girl back in the States.
While Brian was gone, we shared a few beers with the horny weasels at the front desk, and Felix and I agreed to give them a show—somehow, someway.
That night, after our day of semirecovery, the Southern Comfort was getting dangerously low so we ventured out again with Felix, Nick, and Mag. Brian said if he spotted Inga, he was “getting the hell outta town”—with or without me.
“What are the odds we see her again?”
“This is a small island. I’d say pretty good.”
Fate must have been smiling on Brian that night. Once it became clear Inga wasn’t going to surface, Brian relaxed. He partied hard to forget his pain and did such a good job he never made it back home. I was concerned he had forgotten where our new room was or that he was dead in Inga’s closet until he showed up around ten o’clock in the morning with a huge Bali Hai Beer in his hand and a fake mustache glued sideways on his cheek.
“How’s that mustache workin’ out for you? You look like a Picasso painting.”
“I’m still alive, aren’t I? Rakow shoots, he scores!” He laughed then tried to kick his empty beer bottle into a nearby trash can, failing miserably.
The next morning we committed to bringing girls back to our new digs at Kedin’s Inn to save some money on our room. That night, I somehow managed to bring home a nice, svelte Swedish girl named Olivia. We walked through the front courtyard and the little perverts followed us to our room, keeping what I thought was a subtle distance. Olivia picked up on it. Our sick little jig was up.
We were determined to save the twelve dollars. so we went out on a serious prowl the next night. We all got separated. Brian and I never even made it home. I ran into Brian staggering home the next morning. We found Felix waiting for us in our room wearing a big Aussie grin. “Where you two idiots been?”
Brian looked at his bed; it was a mess.
Felix looked disappointed. “You ruined the surprise!” He explained he brought us home a “gift” last night. Since he was getting over getting dumped, he thought he would “treat us” all to an Indonesian hooker. He assured us she was female. “I paid good money for her. I can’t believe neither of you came back.”
Brian said, “I have two questions: Did you open the window and make sure the boys got a peek?”
“The window may have been open,” Felix said.
Brian picked his sheets off the ground. “And why are my sheets on the floor?”
“You don’t expect me to screw a hooker in my bed, do you?”
I busted out laughing.
Brian shook his head. “You’re a very sick boy.”
We were running home in the rain that night when six prostitutes on mopeds attacked us. They shouted, “You owe us two dollars!” in broken English. Apparently Felix never paid one of them for last night’s sex show. We ran for our lives in flip-flops, which was hard to do in a downpour. Brian yelled as we ran, “You didn’t pay, you idiot!!”
Felix screamed, “I paid! I just didn’t tip!”
The prostitutes tried to run us down repeatedly with their mopeds, but we dove to safety into some bushes. We lay low for a while. They cruised by a few times with flashlights but never found us. When the coast was clear, we crept home, totally caked in mud.
From then on, we were marked men in Kuta. I couldn’t believe it.
“So you’re saying a gang of hookers wants us dead because of a two-dollar tip?”
Felix rationalized, “I broke custom … and it’s the Indonesian economy, mate. It’s rainy season, times are tough.”
“Yeah, yeah. Things are tough all over.”
I tried to pay Felix’s debt the next day when I ran into the only hooker from the gang who would still speak to us. She said her pimp hated arrogant foreigners who don’t tip because his father was a pale, freckled bastard from Amsterdam who abandoned him.
“Rico’s poppa never tipped his mama.” And Rico the Pimp never forgot.
I ratted out Felix. “Listen lady, the bad tipper wasn’t us; it was actually a freckled Australian, so …”
The hooker chewed gum and smoked. “Rico don’t care. You all look de same.”
She gave me the universal “throat slit” sign, then flicked a lit cigarette in my face and hauled ass on her moped, spraying mud on my shorts.
Our days in Kuta were numbered; I knew we had to start moving if we were going to avoid pimp retribution, another run-in with Inga, or round two with the tiny gang who beat the crap out of Brian.
Back at Kedin’s Inn, I told Brian and Felix the story while cleaning moped mud off my clothes. “No wonder they call streets ‘gangs’ here; the streets are full of them!” I kept messing with Brian as he packed his stuff. “This place has a gang problem, get it? The gangs are full of gangs.”
Brian was clearly disturbed by our legion of island haters. “What if they all ganged up? Look at me. I can’t take any more abuse. We’ve got to pace ourselves if we plan to survive this trip.”
“Now you’re talking like me. C’mon, you look fine. So you’ll have some mental and physical scars. That’s a part of being young.”
“I, for one, am not waiting to find out what happens next.” Brian convinced us it was finally time to motor. We loved Kuta Beach, but we didn’t love Rico the local pimp who was out for our heads. Felix wasn’t interested in “staying around to die” so he tagged along.
We kept pushing ourselves forward into the unknown. Bali suddenly was full of too many people who wanted us dead. We decided to dry out on some remote island and avoid chaos. Brian, Felix, and myself (the newly minted threesome) threw on our backpacks and got out of town.
We took the bus to Candidasa, a small fishing village that was only a two-hour ride from Kuta on the other side of the island. It was a perfect, serene spot that was also a jumping-off point from Padang Bai to some of the smaller islands we wanted to check out.
We spent our days hanging out on the beach, reading and napping in our little palapa. There could be no debauchery as Brian and I shared a bed in an attempt to get back on budget. Felix took the other bed.
We were thankful our nights were uneventful as we had a chance to regroup and catch up on our reading. Part of this so-called “personal renaissance trip” was expanding our minds in every direction; reading was a part of the plan. We had lost focus on our plan somewhere along the way, but now we’d found it again.
After two days, we took a bemo (a jalopy bus on three wheels) to Padang Bai, then hopped a three-hour boat ride to Lombok Island where we spent the night in Senggigi, which was a beautiful little town. Our room was ten dollars, but we had our own beds. It had an amazing pool and bar. Naturally we fit right in at the bar, our natural milieu.
The following day, we took a boat to the Gili Islands, three heavenly little desert islands with white sandy beaches and coconut trees. Each island had a unique vibe: Gili Air had the cool local character; Gili Meno was the lovely little island you wanted to spend a day on with your girlfriend; and G
ili Trawangan (known as Gili T) was the most developed island, with bars and a happening party scene. Gili T was also the largest of the three islands so we stayed there; we felt it probably wouldn’t sink if a tsunami hit.
Surrounded by coral reefs and beautiful hues of blue water, Gili T is the stunning palm-fringed island of your dreams. It took us two hours to walk around it; we found beautiful seashells on our hike and climbed coconut trees to get coconut juice.
The next morning, Brian, Felix, and I jumped on a tiny open-air dinghy with three girls and a guy. We were all going to check out Gili Meno, the smallest of the Gili Islands. As luck would have it, the dinghy was so small we got a chance to get to know the girls.
Due to close quarters, my leg had the pleasure of brushing up against one of the girl’s leg when the boat swayed—her name was Kelli. After a chat, we realized we’d struck gold; we were sharing a dinghy with probably the only Brazilian girls in Indonesia, and they were stunners. Their accents were incredible. Granted, our bar was slightly lowered but these girls—especially Kelli and her sister—could have fought for a seat at any nightclub in Rio and won.
One thing I learned from my travels is some cultures raise their young ones to be skilled socializers; the top of that list has to be Brazil. By and large Brazilians show everyone a great time, even here on a remote island in the middle of the South Pacific. Brazilians will smile their beautiful smiles while drinking you under the table and dancing you off the sandy floor, always laughing and chatting you up so you feel like the most important person on earth. Their beauty and charm is bewitching.
We had our eyes on all three girls. I was already plotting how to dump the guy overboard but nothing drastic was necessary; it turned out the guy was Kelli’s brother. We asked the girls questions that required long answers and just listened. We became fast friends. Amazingly enough, Kelli was carrying a bottle of champagne, a rare libation in these parts; it happened to be her birthday. Brazilians and champagne—travel nirvana!
The boat ride cemented the start of a wonderfully crazy night. When we reached the smallest Gili Island, we all got adjoining rooms.