8degreesoflatitude

HECTOR’S DIARY

Titbits from his regular diet of worms

THE CAGE

Bali, Monday, Jun. 4, 2018

THE practice among some western tourists here of going around in their beachwear well away from the beach has caused comment before, among the Balinese themselves though they are polite people and chiefly keep silent, and among some of the more sensitively inclined resident foreigners.

Contrary to the exhibitionist argument, it is not prudish to suggest that riding around clad only in a little string bikini is rude. It is not an elective option that anyone would choose who is not either dotty or self-obsessed or both. The Diary is not a prude, or exempted from the proclivity of that half of the human population in possession of an extra chromosome, to look at the sights. We do understand that this can alarm persons who are not thus genetically equipped, especially these days when you’re not really supposed to notice something lissom and very nearly naked.

But, thank goodness, boys are still boys even these days, or are for the most part, and those with good manners don’t make a nuisance of themselves.

There’s a general acceptance that in tourist areas, practically anything passes muster. Bars and nightclubs are where people misbehave, after all. That’s their purpose. A beachside bar is fine if you want to be cheeky and to let it all hang out. But the “tourist areas” are fairly closely defined, or should be. Sitting on a scooter on a traffic-jammed road wearing less than most Balinese would consider decent for underwear is simply rude. It’s also very stupid, because if you’re in an accident your two tiny little scraps of fabric won’t protect you from anything.

The same principle applies to men. Riding around bare-chested or in budgie-smugglers isn’t a good look anywhere, unless you’re a narcissist or are being paid to do a photo shoot. Despite the claims of some westerners that Bali’s unique culture is licentious and sexually explicit, an argument that is banally bolstered by references to bare-breasted village grannies, it’s not like that all. The culture does embrace a measure of eroticism and is the richer for this. But it is stylised in public performances and otherwise kept for the village or the home.

It has nothing to do with westerners who like to think Bali is just the place to come and get your gear off.

PHOTO: Snapped in a By-Pass traffic jam last week.

Er, Yer

IT was amusing to read recently that Bali’s legislators have turned their querulous collective minds to the matter of culturally appropriate architecture. Well, it would have been amusing, if, as usual and in the way of politicians everywhere, they hadn’t mistaken their target and fired a fusillade in the wrong direction.

They called on the state-owned operator of Ngurah Rai airport to ensure that infrastructure to be built largely on reclaimed land at the seaward end of the airport was culturally appropriate. Stuff with Balinese touches, they mean. It’s a utility area and moreover an airport, so architectural flourishes are probably unnecessary anyway. And they haven’t said a word about local opposition to further interfering with the tide line, which those with any acquired memories will remember was fairly disastrous in the area in the 1960s.

More to the point, if the legislators wish to ensure the future of Balinese glimpses in local architecture, they should turn their attention to the built environment outside the airport. It may be too late, which would be a pity, but for our money it would be really good if visitors exiting the airport on arrival were not encouraged to assume, by the vistas that confront them in the vast unplanned metropolis that is South Bali, that they’ve just landed in Jakarta; or back in it.

Read, Weep, Smile

AT the other end of Bali’s demographic, where real people live, or try to, and which sadly is a slide-rule and not a spirit level, the peripheral details that bother politicians and those who advise them are of little importance. This is something of which the writer and private spiritualist Jade Richardson reminds us in the latest post on her blog.

It’s about Made, who lives at Amed and whose commercial life is collapsing around him because his little beach hut hire point is ignored by the sort of tourists who chiefly come to Bali today. You should read it and weep. Then you should smile. Made would like that.

A thought reoccurs: It’s such a shame that theoretical Marxism and original Christianity long before it never really got off their starting blocks.

Island Life

THE former muse of Mengwi, the remarkable Susi Johnston, has resurfaced.  Remarkable is one adjective, ours; another is marvellous, a third indomitable and a fourth fabulous, for all of which references we are indebted to our spotter of ephemera, Philly Frisson, currently in Sydney. Johnston is living on another island. It’s smaller than Bali (and cooler) but it’s one where the right to occupy or dispose of property for which you have paid is a legal certainty. It also has properly engineered roads, effective policing, a functioning local government, and a few other benefits. It’s called Vashon Island and it’s in Puget Sound just off Seattle, on the northwest coast of the continental USA. It’s virtually within hailing distance of Canada, that pleasant country that is home to unarmed North Americans with health insurance.

Johnston is opening a gallery, Aspidistra, on Vashon Island, where her skills in interior design development and details, custom masterpiece furniture, furniture design, as an art advisor, and in art acquisition and specialist sourcing will surely be much sought. What a great outlet for quality Indonesian art and other cultural elements.

The grand opening is tentatively set for Jun. 16. We wish we could be there.

A Little Seasoning

THE Mulia, the concrete hotel and resort complex at the southern end of Geger Beach at Nusa Dua with occupancy rates that would make a confirmed recluse feel lonely, seems not to know in which hemisphere it is situated. It’s planning a huge adults-only party on Sep. 1, apparently to be called Rapture (will partygoers get beamed up?) and says it is destined to be an annual “end of summer” signature event.

The seasons don’t really matter in the tropical zone, especially to tourists, except insofar as to whether they’re wet or dry, but Bali is south of the equator. If anything, Sep. 1 would be the calendar start of spring and hence the end of winter.

Maybe we should pass the hat around and buy the Mulia a big globe as a decorative presence and educational tool. Perhaps they don’t care, but that big line round the middle of it is a dead giveaway.

So There!

A LITTLE game was going around Facebook recently, in which it was claimed the No. 1 song on the charts on your fourteenth birthday describes your life to come. We think it works.

The Diary’s song was It’s Only Make Believe. We’ve always believed that.

Chin-chin!