The other Bali‏- Fri 10/17/08

Dear People,

Remember the other e-mail about how the insanity of this country is really just disguised efficiency. Try to keep that in mind.

The other night after work, during a mini-monsoon, the bartender from the restaurant took me out to some of the local bars to show me a good time. I rode behind Pauling on his scooter but since it was storming, he had me hold a large golf umbrella over us to keep the rain off. As we zipped along, getting sopping wet from the waist down, he steered with one hand and used the other to grab the edge of the umbrella to keep it from turning inside out.

We went to a couple of places and it turns out that middle-aged German women absolutely love Pauling (who speaks their language fluently). It seems he was one of the so-called "Cowboys" that can be found all over Bali; men who try to seduce unhappy older women in the hopes of getting off the Island. Although he did almost marry a German woman at one point, that fell through and now he is married to a Balinese girl and has more or less given up "hunting" (his word not mine).

The second bar he took be to was a reggae bar on the roof of a craft store. It is called Napi Urti ("hello" in Balinese). It is designed like a tiki hut and is plastered with pictures of Bob Marley, swaths of tie-dye, and various other brightly colored curiosities meant to draw the eye. It was there that I was introduced to Arak, the local moonshine distilled from either rice or coconuts, depending on the speak-easy. It starts off smooth and then turns on you like that pet gaboon viper your friends told you not to buy. You might survive but you won't be especially happy the next day. It is popular since it is a fifth of the price of everything else. One of the expats we were hanging out with began raving about the mushroom shakes at the bar. It turns out that although drug trafficking in Bali gets the death penalty and drug use can lead to life in prison, psychedelic mushrooms (which grow naturally in dung piles here) are perfectly legal. This brings me to another conversation I had on a different night.

I was talking to a man from Long Island (with the accent to prove it) the other night at the restaurant. An expat in his forties, he was telling me about the time he took Salvia, a legal herb that induces brief periods of hallucination. "I was fighting the pages of this giant book, man, and they were closing on me and I was ripping them up and, like, fighting for my life and losing. Then I was falling and there were bees and fluff all around me and I was trying to grab the fluff the whole way down. When I came out of it, my room was in shambles, all the stuff on my walls was torn to shreds. My friend said I was out for like five minutes but it felt like days." I couldn't help thinking, "wow, for a drug dealer you certainly aren't selling this very well. I think I'd rather have a colonoscopy."

He went on of course. Talking about herbs he had found that made pot look like ragweed, various products of various potency that he ships off to Europe and the States by the kilo. Despite their mind-altering potential, the various governments of the world haven't yet declared them illegal. I can't understand why except to suspect that they might not be very good.

So I guess I've inadvertently wandered onto a sort of psychedelic crossroads? A place that one 60 year old expat referred to as the 4th dimension. Is there some reason that it would be here in this country, where drug trafficking brings such harsh consequences, that I would find so many people either using, searching for, or profiting off of mind altering substances that, as yet, defy governmental classification.

Despite the fact that I am not strongly inclined to try these herbs, I'm thinking that maybe I shouldn't send this e-mail to my parents.

All the best,
Alex