A different view
My morning coffee has looked differently lately. I’m not at my desk or in the kitchen. I’m sat at a bench table looking out to sea, watching surfers bobble and fisher-boats return after a night of catching barracuda. If it wasn’t so cloudy I’d be able to see the coast of Java. This is our last morning in Medewi, Bali.
When we left home last Thursday the mornings were getting cooler. You’d be a fool for forgetting to leave the house without a jumper. I brought one cardigan here, since the plane ride it’s been sat in my suitcase. You can feel the humidity on your skin on waking. A light sheen over the body. I was surprised to learn of a place nearby offering a sauna, I feel it’s unnecessary given half an hour in the sun here offers a similar experience. We’ve had daily storms arriving around 2pm and lasting into the evening. Big downpours of rain. I wondered how hard it would be to catch and export some of that water to Victoria…
This is my first time to Medewi and Sam’s third in four years. He knows some of the locals by name. I’ve now met the famous Raff, the Balinese surfer who helped Sam paddle to shore after his accident four years ago. And Supri, the hotel manager who drove him three hours to a hospital in Denpasar. Raff surfs when there’s surf and works when there’s work. Sam gave him his broken board four years ago, which Raff fixed and now rents out. Sam’s seen strangers out in the water paddling on his old board. Supri has been a hotel manager here in Medewi for four decades. He asked Sam to play badminton with him and his friends next time he visits. Supri’s son has lived in Bendigo for two years now, he might be saving up to buy a house in Medewi, but also Supri is worried he likes it so much he might stay longer.
I’ve finished two books since arriving here. Propped up on the lounge on our balcony with the rain pouring down. Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Stern Men’ and Liane Moriarty’s ‘What Alice Forgot’. The last one is the story of a woman who knocks her head and forgets ten years of her life. I feel oddly similar. Time feels so scarce at home, so abundant here. Five days in Bali have felt like a month. It’s not quite long enough for me to forget every project I had going on at work, but it’s close to. My mind has slowly been erasing line after line of to-do’s bringing me back to a blank canvas. I feel bored, borderline under-stimulated and it’s glorious. We leave our phones in the room and spend hours watching the waves. I’ve gone on slow photo walks, captivated by this little fishing village/surf town, paying attention to the little wooden decorations on top of the boats that rest on the rocks in the daytime. We’ve hired a scooter, driven through the local village in a downpour, waving to kids standing on the road with their hands up and yelling “hello”. I’ve been to yoga, often the only one in the class, in an open aired room, laying in Savasana and listening to the waves and the boat engines and the rooster crow. There’s been not enough to do and that’s been perfectly enough.
I’ve had time to think about Richert Ranch. Returning to photos I took in Launceston City Park of rows of Dahlia’s and a bench set amongst the flowers. Inspiration for something in our back paddock. I’ve been thinking about a latch hook I want to do for the hallway. I’ve been thinking about getting our Solar Panels cleaned and inspected. I saw eggplants growing in some gardens over here, and now I’m thinking about that too for our garden. These might sound like to-do’s, but really they are things I want to think about. Things I’m curious about, things I care about. Out here it doesn’t give me anxiety to wonder about these things. I pick the thoughts up, turn them over in my mind and then drop them again easily.
In an hour our driver Gede will pick us up to take us to our accommodation in Ubud. A three hour drive. We’ve known Gede since our first trip here in 2018. He brought McDonald’s to the hospital when Sam had his accident in 2022, his wife had come with him and brought a herbal remedy she’d made for the bruising. There’s a photo of Sam and Gede taken here in Medewi in 2023, by the pool of this very same hotel. On the drive out here we passed rice fields and homes with a garden and chickens. Gede lives in the city, he said “that’s all I’d wish for, my morning coffee, a garden and the chickens, that would be my dream”. I hope to hold onto that for a long time.
