Take Bali, for example. People talk about this island like it's one cloud away from Heaven. A quick Google search overwhelms you with images of mist obscured mountains, toned bodies in Natarajasana pose at sunrise, and the impression that everyone in Bali blinks and laughs in slow motion.
(Photo shamelessly copied from an online Bali travel website.)
Our good friends Carol and AJ, and their two awesome boys, came from Canada and met us in Bali last week. It was an amazing trip, but to be honest, there was more heat exhaustion than yoga pose striking.
The sensory overload from the heat and the sun and the smell of incense burning was enough to trigger a migraine. Our hotel was just around the corner from the Bali bombing site which was a little unnerving, and a short walk down the street brought hawkers' aggressive invitations to buy sketchy souvenirs and sensual massages. I was trying to figure out why Julia Roberts would film a movie here. In fact, Pat and I are watching 'Eat, Pray, Love' on Netflix right now, trying to figure out what part of Ubud this paradise could have possibly been filmed in.
We hired a minibus and driver, and he brought us to a few tourist spots, like this place where they make weavings and batik. The pictures look like an amazing cultural experience, but it was actually quite the tourist trap, where we had to weave in and out of tour busses to find our way out.
And then to the 'Cat Poop' place. This is where they make Luwak, or civet cat, coffee. The cats eat the coffee beans, they 'naturally' ferment the beans, and then they poop them out. The beans are collected, roasted, ground, and made into coffee.
In a moment of heat-induced delirium, we decided to try a cup.
I cannot tell a lie, it was the best coffee I've ever tasted.
We got back into the bus, and our driver said he would take us to a nice restaurant for lunch. We got all settled and comfy, the driver started up the engine and drove us ... 10 feet to the restaurant directly next door.
(Too hot and sweaty for a real smile.)
This was Pat's adventurous, Balinese, meal. I felt like I had been adventurous enough for one day with the cat-poop coffee, so I had a burger. It was bad. Really bad. AJ had one, too. We are still laughing about how very, very bad those burgers were.
We visited the Monkey Forest in Ubud, which turned out to be kind of terrifying. The thought of monkeys jumping on her turned one of our group back to wait in the bus. After being jumped on by a few monkeys, we stumbled outta there with our hands up. 'We surrender! No food here! Don't jump on us!'
We also went to a Balinese Fire Dance in a Hindu temple, overlooking the Indian Ocean at sunset.
Amazing, life-changing and romantic. Right?
Well...
It started out with miscommunication with our driver, who didn't realize our kids needed to eat before the show which started at sunset. And after a hot walk to the temple, with the threat of monkeys jumping on us again, we sat in the blazing sun for 45 minutes.
By the time the show started, our kids (and maybe one or two of their parents) were already overtired, overheated, overhungry, and headed for meltdowns. 15 minutes into an hour-long show, we decided to call it quits. We ended up having a past-our-kids'-bedtime dinner at McDonalds. Pat and I even shared some choice words with each other over everything that had gone down that evening.
Amazing, life-changing and romantic, alright.
Originally, Carol and AJ had booked a room in the same hotel as us. They arrived a few days before we did, but the lack of locks on the hotel room doors, coupled with a bathtub that spat up other peoples' hair, was enough to send them running.
All the way to the Hyatt in Nusa Dua.
We spent a good deal of time visiting their hotel, pretending we were real guests, and then returned to our ghetto hotel to sleep each night.
Just look at this place! Waterslides, a private beach, multiple pools ... Amazing.
And then, the trip with all its ups and downs came to an end, and about 24 hours after arriving home, something strange and mysterious happened.
Bags were unpacked, clothes were washed and put away, and the sand and smell of incense was washed off in the shower. Stomachs were settled with familiar foods.
We began to scroll through the images of our trip in our minds and on our smartphones, and the transformation started. The edges of the memories began to turn hazy. The heat was drawn from childrens' foreheads in the photos. The core body temperature of those adults in the pictures dropped about 5 degrees, to a manageable level. The winding roads we drove straightened out, and the motion sickness disappeared. The fear of monkeys jumping on us slipped away and turned into great stories. We lazily walked through the tropics in our minds rather than on weary legs in the blazing sun.
Long shadows and mist crept into our memories. And before we knew it, our mind's eye returned to Bali, and it was side shot of our children looking out over a Bali sunset.
They blinked, and sure enough, it was in slow motion.
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