Uh Oh

Uluwatu Temple

Uh, I’ve made a big, big mistake. I had heard that Bali was touristy and I came prepared for that (or so I thought) but I had no idea it would be THIS touristy, full of nothing but white people and Western brand stores/restaurants and hotel after hotel after hotel. My first clue came the moment I exited customs yesterday when the very first things I saw at the airport were, no lie, Burger King, Starbucks and Coldstone Creamery. I should have just turned around right then. But I had a hotel reservation so I forged ahead. Plus, I figured, this is just the airport and I’m sure the whole place can’t be this bad, right? Turns out it can.

At one point he even tried on my glasses!

I had mistakenly thought that Bali was a beach haven so I specifically chose a hotel right ON the beach. Not having been here before, I did some quick research about the best beaches in Bali and one kept coming up over and over. I booked it, sure that ALL those people couldn’t be wrong. Turns out they could. Turns out that that beach is the one SATIATED with tourists, in the most touristy of all the touristy places, full of nothing but westerners. Okay, I still think after arriving, I’m sure the beach will make up for it all. I put on my suit and headed out to dive right in. It didn’t make up for anything. In fact, it only made things worse. There was a narrow strip of beach filled with lounge chairs all occupied by white people. And instead of the quiet beaches in Lombok, where the only sound you hear is the crashing of waves, here you can’t hear the waves for all of the jetskis and motorboats and parasailers. And, as a final insult, there was repair work happening on the deck by the pool so even more beach was sacrificed AND there was loud construction hammering and drilling happening not ten feet from my beach chair. I could have cried.

Very rarely, if ever, have I so instantly despised a place and been immediately, intensely desperate to get out. ASAP. I went back to my hotel room to check out what was to do in this area, still trying to be optimistic about the things that may be around to experience. I mean, there has to be SOME reason this place is so world-renowned, right? I found one thing that interested me. One.







So today I went to the Uluwatu Temple (aka the Monkey Temple). I learned that while Lombok is predominately Muslim, Bali is largely Hindu and there are LOTS of temples here. Uluwatu Temple sits on the very top/edge of a sheer cliff overlooking the sea. Pretty stunning. And it just so happens that the forest around it is infested with monkeys. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m oddly obsessed with monkeys so I was all over it.

I would conservatively estimate that 10 different people told me not to wear sunglasses when I was walking around. The monkeys will steal them, they said. But do I listen? Of course not. I wasn’t there 3 minutes before I stopped at a fence and set down my water bottle so I could get something out of my bag… and suddenly out of the blue, in a literal flash, my sunglasses were swiped right off of my face and the water bottle was no longer mine. It was all so fast, it took me a moment to realize what had even happened. And then I saw the little guy just sitting there, holding my glasses and, amazingly, unscrewing the cap of my water bottle and drinking it. My instinct was to reach out and try to take them back but he bared his teeth at me as if to say “These are mine now, white lady.” Cheeky little bugger!

It was SO hot and SO humid and the sun was SO intense that I bought another bottle of water. But this time I thought I’d be really smart and hide it in my pocket, pulling my shirt over it so it was totally out of sight. Yeah, I guess monkeys are pretty attuned to the sound of water sloshing around a bottle and I wasn’t 50 feet down the path when a really big one came up to me, lifted up my shirt and tried to pull the bottle out of my pocket. We played tug of war for a while but, ultimately, he won (I have a feeling they always win).












I stayed long enough to watch the sunset over the temple, which was lovely. Not as lovely are the insane number of mosquito bites that I have gotten in the past two days. Nearly a week in Lombok, not one single bite. Two days here and my arms and shoulders are covered in them. Oh yes, one more thing to love about Bali!