Lessons in Letting Go (17 page)

I held up my hand.

‘Let me get this clear, Lucy. You, with your long dark hair and perky little body told your driver that you were having a lesbian affair with Little Miss Hot Stuff over here, and the driver was turned
off
? Is Bali in topsy-–turvy land?’

‘Maybe it was against his religion.’

‘And cheating wasn’t? Which driver was this?’

Lucy told us and Dael instantly exclaimed that he had come on to her as well. In fact, it seemed that he had hit on nearly all of the women he had driven around. It was the same driver who had picked me up from the airport on my first night in town. Forty-five minutes I had spent in his car, and he didn’t make a single move. Knowing my luck, he’d probably even had a crack at Vy.

Dael moved down to Legian the next day, and Lucy was going to bunk with her until her plane left. I was staying in the sleepier town of Ubud, intending to spend my time doing worthy things: visiting temples, art shops and cafés, perhaps I’d take a batik class. Dael and Lucy wrinkled their noses at my plans and insisted I come down and meet up with them the next night for dinner. I shyly accepted their offer.

The next night we went to the beachside fish restaurants in Jimbaran. We picked a restaurant at random and wandered out onto the sand. All the tables and chairs were set up directly on the beach and the sun was setting as we took our place near the water’s edge. Tourists wandered past buying hot, coal-smoked corn from vendors with barbecues on wheeled carts. Two children were attempting to fly a kite in the dying dusk wind. We ordered lobsters and mussels and Long Island Iced Teas and settled back. Now I really felt like I was on holidays. Here I was, timid little me, sitting on a tropical beach with two complete strangers, sharing a meal and laughing and chatting like a normal person. I secretly wondered how long it would take for the jig to be up.

We left the restaurant late and went out the front where all the drivers were lined up, touting for business. We tried to find one who would make the hour-long trip back to Ubud but no one would do it for less than double the price I had paid to come in. I tried to negotiate, feebly, saying I could get a hotel room in Kuta for less money. They shrugged and walked away. Dael said, ‘Well if it’s cheaper to stay here, why don’t you? Why not come back to Legian with us and we’ll find you a hotel room?’

I didn’t have a toothbrush or deodorant and the staff at the bed and breakfast I was staying at would be worried when I didn’t turn up. I was meant to be taking a cooking class the next morning, then I wanted to do some washing and answer my emails and check my list of things-to-do to make sure I was on track and not going to miss out on anything. Then I stopped myself. I was rattling around inside my own head again, worried about things I might possibly regret. Hadn’t I just decided to stop this kind of behaviour?

Just a few metres down the road from where Dael and Lucy were staying we found a rundown hotel that charged less than fifteen Australian dollars a night—with good reason. Looking around at the other clientele (middle-aged men with young, heavily made-up local girls on their arms) I guessed I was the only person who was hiring a room for the whole night. I took my key from the receptionist, found my room, shoved the door open with the help of a little light kicking, and walked inside. I checked everything out. Neither the shower nor the hot water tap in the bathroom sink worked. I laughed. I supposed that this was what letting go was all about.

The next day, I half-showered under the cold tap and called the owner of the B&B to reassure him that I was alive. Then I put on the knickers that I had washed the night before and hung over the bedside lamp to dry and strolled up the road to have breakfast with Dael and Lucy. The two of them were going to spend the day shopping and they asked me to join them. I hesitated. I was a hoarder, I didn’t need the temptation.

‘Come on!’ Dael laughed. ‘You have to show me a bogan!’

We spent the day wandering in and out of boutiques. I bought two sarongs, a toothbrush and a pair of sandals to replace the heels I was hobbling around in from the night before. Then I bought some Bandaids to cover the blisters that the new sandals caused. I did not buy any trashy souvenirs or postcards to remind me of the area, nor did I take photographs of every shop we passed for a scrapbook I would never make. Instead, I enjoyed the moment and hung out with my new friends.

I had bought everything extremely cheaply and that was no doubt due to the fact that I hadn’t done any of the bargaining myself. Lucy had been to Bali numerous times and assured us she knew the right price for everything. I was happy to stand back and let her do the negotiating; it meant I didn’t have to do any thinking, something which I was starting to enjoy. Lucy was ferocious, putting on a show that made Sharon Osbourne look like Bambi. She would roll her eyes, clutch at her heart and yell, ‘What are you
doing
to me? Do I look like a Japanese tourist? Do I look like I’m that easy? Local price! Local price!’ Twice when Lucy wasn’t looking, I snuck back into the shop we had just left and slipped the shop assistant an extra couple of dollars.

By midday it was too hot to shop any longer so we lunched at a beachside Italian restaurant and fortified ourselves with cocktails. Dael looked out over the balcony, pointing at people and calling out loudly, ‘Corinne, is that a bogan?’

Dael, I had discovered over the last day and a half, was one of those people who saw her opinions as facts. The night before she had grabbed my iPod, flicked through the song list and pronounced, ‘You are listening to the wrong music,’ before pulling out the headphones and putting it back in my handbag.

At breakfast that morning I had tried the traditional rice
bubur
that was a staple of the Balinese diet. Dael stared open-mouthed at the porridge-like substance in front of me.

‘You cannot eat that for breakfast!’

‘The Balinese do, Dael. I’m sure if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’

‘Well, that is just crazy and they are wrong.’ I couldn’t help laughing at her horrified expression.

Now, she was leaning over the balcony and pointing at a pale young man in a sleeveless T-shirt. ‘That one with the bad hair! Is that a bogan?’

He looked up and I pulled Dael back into her seat. ‘Shhhh!’ I whispered. ‘No, he’s just English.’

After lunch we had a massage, all together in the one room. As I undressed, Dael frowned, pointed at my underpants and said, ‘This is why you are single.’ For once, her point was fair. Hoarding ancient underwear was one thing, wearing it was quite another.

That night we had more cocktails at the hotel bar overlooking Kuta beach. Lucy was to leave in a few hours’ time and I was finally going to head back to Ubud. We talked about how much we were going to miss each other and what a great time we’d had. Dael laughed. It was her first time overseas on her own and she couldn’t believe that she had managed to land on her feet so well. Lucy smiled and said, ‘You two should buddy up for the rest of your time here.’

Dael and I looked at each other.

‘Why not?’ Lucy encouraged. ‘You’re both on your own, you have no plans, there’s no reason to go your separate ways.’

Dael looked expectant. I wanted to say no. I did have plans. In fact, I had an exhaustive list of things I wanted to do in Bali—there was a temple I wanted to see, a cookery class I wanted to take, a traditional dance show I wanted to attend. I had drawn up a timetable with carefully allotted hours for each activity and I was going to have trouble fitting in everything as it was. If I buddied up with Dael I would have to compromise and I did not want to miss something and regret it later. I was just about to say that I couldn’t join her and then I stopped myself. There was a real human being sitting opposite me, a real-life, possibly crazy, human being. Surely the experiences we would have together would be more fun than ticking stuff off a stupid list.

‘Sure thing. Dael, you up for it?’

‘Of course! But you can’t wear that dress again, Corinne. It is bad.’

As the sun set, we watched the parade of tourists stroll past on the road that divided us from the beach. There were families, young couples, old couples, newlyweds. Then I saw a couple with matching mullets. They were so tanned they looked like they were getting ready to enter a George Hamilton look-alike contest. Their hair was almost white from what was probably a combination of too much sun and household bleach. The woman was wearing a bikini one size too small and it was struggling to stretch across her enormous bosom. The man was wearing nothing but a pair of fluorescent pink Speedos, his enormous leathery brown gut hanging down over the front, but not far enough to hide the most enormous pair of testicles I had ever seen. They knocked back and forth inside his Speedos like an executive desk toy. It was almost hypnotic. I snapped out of it and punched Dael in the arm.

‘Dael!’ I pointed in their direction. ‘Bogans!’

As she looked up, they started talking loudly to each other in what sounded like Italian.

‘No!’ Dael said. ‘No!’

‘What?’ Lucy and I said it at the same time.

‘They are Dutch!’

It was the only time I ever saw Dael distressed the whole time we spent together.

Lucy left on a late flight and I grabbed a car back to Ubud. Before going our separate ways the three of us hugged and promised to meet up again. The next morning I packed up my hotel room, checked out, threw my list in the bin and moved down to share Dael’s room in Legian. I felt so carefree that I rang the airline and extended my trip by another two days.

Dael and I sunbathed, took a surfing class and went white-water rafting. The only nod to my now-abandoned list was an afternoon spent visiting an art museum. I did this on my own while Dael let herself get spectacularly ripped off by a guy selling fake watches on the street.

‘But he came to the cash machine with me and showed me how much money to withdraw!’ Dael was protesting against my scepticism. ‘He was very helpful!’

‘I have absolutely no doubt about that Dael, but the watch isn’t even working.’

She rolled her eyes and looked at me with sympathy. ‘Well of course not,’ she said. ‘they are special watches that work off the energy in your body. I have to wear it for a while for the electricity to build up inside.’ And then she carefully packed it away.

That night, we were going out nightclubbing. I desperately did not want to go, but as I had convinced Dael to go white-water rafting with me the day before, I now owed her a favour in return. I have never liked nightclubs. There’s too much noise, the people are too drunk, the prices for drinks are ridiculous and they never, ever play any Bruce Springsteen. I used to go when I was a teenager but only because if I had said that I preferred to go somewhere quiet where we could have a nice conversation, my friends would have shrunk away from me like I had tuberculosis. The only way I’d got through it was to drink so much I thought I was somewhere else.

I chose the quietest, most deserted nightclub I could find. Dael wrinkled her nose at me and I tried to avoid making eye contact with her.

‘It’ll fill up soon, it’s just because we’re here so early.’ I hoped I was lying.

Dael moved onto the dance floor and started jiggling to the music. She was the only one out there. I watched our handbags. I wasn’t cool and carefree anymore, I was back in high school, sitting on the sidelines trying to pretend I liked it. The jig was finally up. I lost sight of Dael and when she reappeared, she had two men in tow. They were carrying drinks for us.

‘They are French! This one is called . . . actually I don’t know. It’s too loud in here. I think that one—’ she pointed at the taller of the two ‘—is called Van Damme.’

Van Damme grinned shyly.

I smiled politely at the Frenchmen, waited for Dael to sip her drink and when she didn’t fall unconscious, I sipped mine as well.

It turned out neither of them spoke perfect English and unless we were booking a single train ticket to Calais or needed to find the nearest
école
, my French was going to be useless. But they seemed sweet, so Van Damme and I spent a delightful twenty minutes yelling into each other’s ears and saying ‘Pardon?’ a lot which, thankfully, meant the same thing in both languages.

Dael didn’t let the language barrier stop her at all and gabbled away happily to Van Damme’s friend, who had the more plausible name of Fab. He didn’t say anything in response, he just stood there grinning. Dael was wearing a pair of tight, low-cut white jeans and an equally tight, low-cut white top. If I was a man, I wouldn’t have cared what she was saying either.

‘We went white-water rafting yesterday and Corinne head-butted a Korean!’

That was not strictly true. I didn’t head-butt him, I fell backwards in the raft and smashed my helmeted head into his face. He was very polite about it and there was no blood.

‘Then we went surfing and she cried!’ Dael was laughing.

Okay. That was definitely not true. I got dumped by a wave, hit in the head with the surfboard and I inhaled a lot of salt water. I wasn’t crying, I was choking. Mostly. Thankfully, because it was so loud, neither of the Frenchmen was able to understand what Dael was saying.

Van Damme and I moved to the back of the nightclub and found somewhere quiet where we could almost hear each other. It didn’t really help as neither of us had spontaneously learnt the other person’s language in the few metres we had covered. In the end, we amused ourselves by teaching each other the names of various diseases in our own languages. By pointing at imaginary dots all over my face and pretending to scratch at them, I found out that chicken pox is called
varicelle
, and by miming first my hands and then my legs falling off, I discovered leprosy is called
lèpre
. Van Damme told me the French word for herpes is
herpes
, you just had to say it like you were Pepe Le Pew. Thankfully he knew that off the top of his head and he didn’t attempt to act it out. Although yelling ‘Erpeez!’ in a crowded nightclub was probably not endearing him to anyone except me. Eventually, we ran out of illnesses we could successfully mime. I tried for measles, but it looked too much like chicken pox and Van Damme was getting frustrated because I couldn’t figure out what illness involved flapping like a bird. We were struggling for something else to talk about when his face lit up and he said, ‘Ahh! The French word for the seal—you know,’ he clapped the backs of his hands together and made a honking sound, ‘the animal of the sea, yes? The French word for that is
phoque
.’ It sounded exactly like ‘fuck’ and I laughed like a child. Apparently Van Damme and I shared the same infantile sense of humour.