It hits you as soon as you step off the plane, a mixture of heat, humidity and a hundred rotting fruits – the smell of the tropics.
Even after midnight, it seeps into the airport, slipping underneath the air conditioning and spreading its sweet and sour scent through the arrivals lounge. It wasn’t a smell I was used to.
We had left the beginning of winter behind us, back in Sydney, where the rain had fallen constantly for the last few weeks, running in small and at times raging rivers down the hill beside the house, transforming the slopes into swamps and driving even the leeches to seek shelter inside. Direct flights hadn’t returned yet and so, what should have been a very manageable six-hour hop turned into a 12-hour, all-day slog. We set off from Sydney airport at midday and didn’t touch down in Denpasar until after midnight.
The flight over was filled with every kind of traveller: middle-aged couples in matching cargo shorts, eager to recharge their fading summer sunburns; cherubic school-leavers desperate for their long-delayed initiation into adulthood; Indonesian expats with bulging carry-ons stuffed with gifts and Australian groceries; and of course, laptop-toting young professionals like ourselves looking for a new life, their travel pillows fastened firmly around their necks.
The streets were silent as Ketut, our driver, brought us to our hotel, telling us along the way of how the locals had only just begun to return from their villages now that the borders had reopened. This was my first time in Bali, but even with nothing to compare it to, the impact of the last two years was evident in the abandoned currency exchange kiosks and rows of padlocked shopfronts we passed during that short drive.
I thought about Ketut’s comments throughout the next day. From our hotel in the middle of Petitenget Street, it was hard to feel as if anything had slowed down. Shirtless English tourists snaked through traffic on rented scooters or strolled along the footpath in singlets and oversized sunhats, and old Australian men that looked as if they had never left sat in the shade of grimy hotel patios sipping Bintangs from 11 o’clock in the morning. It was everything I had ever expected from Bali.
At the warung next door, the owner’s son stood on the street cooking satay-laden grill baskets over coconut husks burning in a brick fireplace. Around the corner, groups of uniformed women sat out the front of their beauty salons, offering a menu of pedicures, manicures, facials, and massages to anyone who passed. Everywhere there were people: sitting, smoking, shopping, selling. Silicon Valley may have commercialised ridesharing, but it was clear that Indonesia invented it – every man with a moped beeped at us as he drove by, raising two fingers from the handlebars in the gesture that asked without saying, “Taxi?”
But just a few minutes further south, the activity of Petitenget Street disappeared. We had wandered through a hotel and onto Legian beach in search of a table, an umbrella and an afternoon beer. The beach itself was deserted – something my partner Madi told me was not a usual occurrence – and all along its length, hotels stood not just empty but abandoned, their fountains silent and filled with stagnant green water, bar furniture stacked hastily inside the beachfront cabanas.
It hits you as soon as you step off the plane, a mixture of heat, humidity and a hundred rotting fruits – the smell of the tropics.
Down the path, we came across a small warung with a handful of tables scattered across the sand. Asides from a dog and a man receiving a massage in the shade of a boatshed, we were alone. The owner of the warung walked over and asked us what we would like.
“Two Bintangs and one chicken satay please.” A moment later, two beers in faded koozies arrived beside us on the table. I picked mine up, took a sip and looked out over the empty beach. A silver and orange Jetstar plane was swinging low on its approach to the neighbouring airport, and behind it, across the ocean, came another, and another, and another.
Words — Nick Ainge Roy
