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Voodoo in the woods

SarahAlderson

April 21, 2010

It is the dead of night. The moon is shrouded with cloud. Eerie Gamalan music is drifting through the trees. We are stalking through mud, smacking into branches and tripping over ditches. The high priestess is ahead of us, springing like a mountain goat over the puddles and broken ruts. She is balancing a basket on her head too. I wonder if the Ouija board is in it. I have no basket and am managing to lose my balance as well as my flip flops. I am stumbling like a drunk and cursing loudly.

John tells me to stop swearing because the spirits might hear. I look at him to see if he is taking the piss. He appears not to be. Huh. Usually I am the superstitious one.

The priestess is old and toothless. She babbles something at me. I smile and nod. She could be saying anything. In fact she could be anyone. I have a niggling suspicion that the landowner has just brought his mother along, told her to say some gobbledegook, light some incense and chant. There are no chicken bones or Ouija boards involved, not even a slaughtered goat. I have to say I’m kind of disappointed. Instead after about five minutes of us standing in the silent darkness our translator comes over and tells us ‘The land is good. She says it is good place for build.’

I look over at her. She is laughing with the landowner.

I lean over to John. ‘She’s saying these stupid ferengi, they believe all this voodoo shit? Now, how much are you going to pay me for this nonsense? I could be at home right now in my slippers watching corrie.’

John tells me to shhh again.

‘I think we should get the arsonist priest over here. You know, for a second opinion,’ I say.

I’m guessing he’ll do some real voodoo shit. Or at least some pyrotechnics. Then at least I’ll feel I got my money’s worth.

Karma Inspeksi

SarahAlderson

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April 19, 2010

‘Do we just text 118 118?’

‘Where in the yellow pages would you even look for one?’

I tweet to see if anyone can help but Balinese priests don’t hang in the twitterverse apparently.

Richard, John and I are in the back of a van touring the back lanes of Bali. We’re talking priests because we need one urgently. Not for the last rites or anything. No one’s dying (well not unless you want to get all philosophical about it). And anyway, we’re not talking the Catholic kind of priest. We’re talking the Balinese kind. The kind that come in the dead of night and tell you whether your land is haunted.

We need to know whether the land we’re looking at buying is inhabited by evil spirits, the type that might make Lula’s head spin around 360 degrees or burn our house to the ground for larks. It’s called a Karma Inspeksi. It’s the equivalent of getting a survey done in the UK to check for subsidence. A priest comes along just like in the Exorcist and he tells you if there are evil spirits haunting the land who might cause subsidence, thus doing away with the need for an actual survey.

It’s like we’re in Challenge Anneka. We pull out our blackberries and laptops and start strategising. Who do we know that might know a priest? We email and call all our Balinese contacts. Eventually I get an email back – it says this:

I know priest. He has very clear sense and can heal people as well. He can do some predictions as well. He burnt his temples when he was grade 11 and was in jail because of it. He did not want to be a priest.

But now he returns to be priest.

Crazy young priest, by the way…

Needless to say, we’re parking that guy for the moment. Until we need someone who can commit arson. We found another priest. Turns out that when you start asking it’s like rent-a-priest around here. We got three in half an hour. Not even Anneka could have managed that one.

So tomorrow it’s all set. In the dead of night, John, Rich and I are meeting our chosen spiritual surveyor on the land for our Karma Inspeksi. I’m wondering if there will be chicken bones, slaughtered goats and a Ouija board involved.

I swear Quentin Tarantino couldn’t write this shit.

The Green School

SarahAlderson

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April 18, 2010

Al Gore is visiting later this month. Richard Branson popped by for tea a few weeks ago. The dude from Ben & Jerry’s ran an ice cream-making workshop a month or so ago. So you know, they’re used to visiting dignitaries. We fit in well.

The Green School in Bali – it kind of defies description. Imagine a giant bamboo cathedral/Swiss Family Robinson style edifice. In the midst of jungle. Now picture a giant Marimba ensemble in the middle of the building. Now add in 130 children dancing to the sound. With parents joining in. Imagine if you will girls dancing in the tropical storm, three year olds holding hands with fourteen year olds. Imagine the vibration of feet thundering in time with the rain and wooping normally only heard when Twihards catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson.

Yeah, there was a moment where I thought maybe the teachers had slipped some LSD into the milk round. Where it felt like a giant evangelical church experience crossed with that bit in Avatar where all the Na’vi are swaying and chanting. And then I was just swept away by it all, kicked off my flip flops and joined in. You can’t fight joy like that.

After the music stopped I walked straight over to the admissions guy and asked him who we made the registration cheque out to. We hadn’t even seen the classrooms, had barely scanned the curriculum, but if I had got to go to a school made entirely of bamboo where I could dance in the rain and learn to grow rice, where Al Gore dropped by to say hello and Mr. Jerry made me ice cream I wouldn’t have spent so much time faking sick notes and forging my mum’s signature on them.

The trigger point

SarahAlderson

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April 15, 2010

‘At what exact point did you decide you weren’t going back to live in the UK?’ Richard asked.

What was the trigger huh?

Well, you know, it wasn’t when I got my fiftieth pile of clean clothes back from the laundry people. It wasn’t when Alula went to play with our neighbour’s family. No, the trigger point came when John and I wondered into a shop in Ubud to look at a pair of Sulawese ancestral statues, carved from stone, that we’d seen in the window. About knee high, one was of a woman clutching her stone 38DDs and the other was a man holding his giant erect penis.

‘I can’t quite see these sitting on our doorstep back home, can you?’ I said to John.

They won’t be sitting on our doorstep here either because they cost 700,000,000 rupiah, which even when you take off five noughts is still a lot.

But it was whilst I was admiring those statues, that I realised I would be the same as that statue, other than the 38DD part, if I tried to live in the UK again. I wouldn’t fit. I’d just sit there, perhaps not naked and perhaps not groping my boobs, but with a stony expression on my face, staring at the rain, wishing I was back in Bali.

The cost of being a woman

SarahAlderson

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April 11, 2010

The only thing I have to complain about vis a vis Bali is the price of tampax. We’re talking $9US for a box of 8. That’s surely criminal. Some customs man is definitely getting rich off the pain of others.

I wrote down tampax importing business on my list of ‘possible ways to find money to sustain this lifestyle’. At the moment it’s riding quite high on the list. Only because the list is short. The only other thing on the list is me answering the advert for ‘sexy dancers’ to work in Kuta. I think I’m ten years too old and possibly even the wrong sex to make any profit from that.

So….Tampax or the sexy dance?

I need to work on my list.

Politics and laundry

SarahAlderson

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April 8, 2010

‘It’s interesting reading about the election in the UK isn’t it?’ Richard says.

‘Er. No. Actually. It isn’t.’

When I think of the UK I just think grey. And Cameron. And having to do my own laundry.

‘So do you think you’ll go back?’ he asks

‘You know Rich,’ I say, ‘I just can’t see it. I mean I have a pool here. I haven’t done my own laundry in three months. How could I possibly ever go back?’

A little voice in my head started screaming MONEY MONEY MONEY. I ignored it.

Today I met someone who after 10 years in Bali is going back to Scotland. I looked at her like she was crazy then I looked across her lawn to her swimming pool and to the kitchen where the full time nanny/maid was making her coffee and… again with the crazy thought. But maybe she’s a closet tory and is returning after a self-imposed decade in exile. In which case.. again with the crazy thought.

‘This place rocks,’ I tell Rich.

Every morning I feel like Snow White. A squirrel ran across the living room as I ate breakfast. Two butterflies waltzed over my head. The gecko family (Money and Hoola Hoop – named by Alula) sit sleepily on the ceiling. I’m waiting for them to start singing in harmony about my prince arriving one day. I look at John plugged into the matrix and think ‘yep, still waiting.’

Just kidding.

Eight years ago John, Rich and I were all cramped in a London flat. Now we are all here in Bali. This is totally an upgrade. So no, I can’t see myself living in London permanently again.

But I will tell people it’s because I can’t step foot in a Tory run country. I won’t mention the laundry.

Yoga keeps chasing me

SarahAlderson

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April 5, 2010

We went to the Bali Spirit Festival. There were no psychics or people communing with dead people just a lot of people communing with their inner spirit and doing yoga. Yeah Yeah, get over it, I wanted to yell. But they outnumbered me by about one thousand to one. They were everywhere, shaking, dancing, ashtangaring, saluting the sunning, raw food evangelising and displaying their beautiful bodies like it was a competition for who could be leaner, tighter, do the highest handstand, contort the longest, smile the most serenely, move the most gracefully yada yada. It was a competition I was bound to lose. I’m just jealous. I wish I could get a body like that by saluting Bintang beer and chocolate brownies.

Alula got to pet a snake, bang a drum, hoola hoop, find her inner light and get her face painted like a tiger.

Ubud, Bali is like Brighton crossed with the Hamptons crossed with an ashram. It’s like a lusher, less stressful version of India. But with the added benefit of there being a dvd store that sells every film you could ever want, except Generation Kill, for £1 a pop, and a little man on the street corner who sells the best fake sunglasses on the planet.

Alula has started at nursery – a place so perfect John pronounced it the most gorgeous school he’d ever seen (because prettiness is so much more important than academic standards). It sits amidst rice paddies and all the lessons are in Indonesian and English.

So everything is perfect. Except for the fact John is making me cycle everywhere.

Bali: Is the search over?

SarahAlderson

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April 5, 2010

The question ‘Can we live here?’ becomes rhetorical in Bali. Like it’s followed by a silent ‘Do bears shit in the woods?’

Can we live here?

What do you reckon?

The neighbours live in a 200 year old teak house. John looks at it. ‘I feel bad. It’s like they’re living in the potting shed.’

I look up at our villa, towering over the Teak potting shed. It looks like the set of a vogue fashion shoot. There is an antique daybed overlooking the pool. It is draped with mosquito nets and strewn with so many pillows and cushions that climbing on it requires crampons. I grin back at John.

‘You’re enjoying it aren’t you?’ he says.

‘Yep,’ I say.

I pull on my fake Fendi’s. ‘So all we need to do now is figure out how to get a permanent visa.’

Dodgy Poos and Cosmic Karma

SarahAlderson

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April 1, 2010

Aside from the fact we’ve just spent two months in India and aside from the fact I am already familiar with Neasden, John is insisting we visit Little India. Whilst we are in Singapore.

I don’t want to visit Little India. I want to visit air-conditioning and malls and clean sparkling buildings. I want to get reacquainted with all these lovely things. Not with samosas.

‘Dude,’ I say, ‘you dragged me out of air-conditioning to see this? To see what exactly?’

Some skanky streets with skanky backpacker hostels on them? Because that seems to be about it. Even DisneyWorld could have knocked up a better Little India than this.

John asks if I’d rather be somewhere like a mall. He is being sarcastic and I narrow my eyes as if to say ‘no, I’m not that vacuous thank you very much’ but in fact I’m thinking YES. YES a mall. I want to be IN A MALL.

It is hot. I am bothered. I am bothered that John has made me get off an air-conditioned bus and deserted me on a street corner whilst he goes off to rummage for vinyl in an outdoor market. Leaving me with a child who won’t walk, who is now folding herself double screaming ‘I’m tired’ in the middle of the pavement AND who has as she so eloquently puts it ‘dodgy poos’. All in five thousand degrees and 400% humidity.

‘I need a poo,’ Alula announces. She puts on her thinking face. ‘I think I’ve done a dodgy poo.’

We can’t be in an air-conditioned mall with marble floored bathrooms and silk toilet paper. Oh no. We have to be in a replica of a Mumbai street with equivalent bathroom facilities. If we were actually in the real India – the big, grown up India – I would have no qualms about squatting her over the gutter by the side of the road but this is Singapore and you’d probably get hung, drawn and quartered for that here so instead I grab her hand and march her across the road (jaywalking – lesser FINE – only $500SGD) and into a backpacker hostel. The staff wave us towards the back. I nudge open the door to the bathroom and Alula and I flinch in horror from the scene. And then I flinch in horror at the mess she’s already made – never mind the state of the toilet…I manage to hoist her somehow over the bowl. She poos Armageddon style and then I look for toilet paper. There is none. Of course there is none. This is Little India.

Anyway, Alula leaves the place commando style. I have attempted to use the hose provided to get the worst of the dodgy poos off but it’s not been that successful because the water was cold and she almost hit the ceiling when I fired it at her.

‘I’m tired,’ she says as we start walking up the street.

John does his fatherly duty and picks her up and deposits her on his shoulders. I open my mouth to warn him about the danger that might represent then I shut my mouth again.

That’s called Karma baby.

The lights go out on the shop of top.

SarahAlderson

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March 30, 2010

Somewhere over the Bay of Bengal, whilst John and I were busy decanting our cabernet sauvignon into plastic glasses and grinning manically at each other (it was the first red wine we’d had in two months. The fact it was 10am seemed inconsequential – as I argued to John – somewhere else in the world it was 10pm and at 36,000 feet wine o’clock concepts are literally out the window) but somewhere over the Bay of Bengal Qantas diverted our flight to the planet Natalie Portman lived on in Star Wars.

It’s immaculate and shiny and perfect here. Like a sci-fi version of the Truman Show. I half-expect our taxi to the hotel to be a space pod with a robot at the wheel. Everything is pristine and clean like the world has been rinsed in floral scented bleach and then buffed with a chamois. Even the radio playing in the taxi is sanitised. Phil Collins croons to us softly as I sink back into the cool leather seats with a sublime smile.

‘Is this still earth?’ I ask John.

‘No. It’s Singapore.’

Just eight hours before this we were in a creaking death trap of a taxi spluttering and honking and careering our way through the streets of Mumbai to the airport, passing slum after slum and beggar after beggar along the way.

There are no slums in Singapore. There are no beggars either. Considering they fine you for jaywalking here imagine what they’d do to you for asking for small change. It takes a while to realise what else is different here. Then I realise it’s the noise of a billion tuk tuk drivers honking in unison. The cars swish here. They stop in a neat line within their lanes. And they are silent. The traffic light beeps for the pedestrians. There is actually a Green Man. I stare at him like a long lost friend unsure of what to say or how to treat him. The cars rest patiently, indolently, before cruising smoothly off into the night. There is a pavement on which to walk. A smooth, shit-free pavement. How is this real? How does Singapore exist in the same world as a place like Mumbai? It’s like living in The Truman Show. I’m not sure this can be real.

Our bed is made up of white sheets. White feels like a brand new colour. Our bed seems to sparkle. It makes me blink just to stare at it. And it makes me cry to lie on it. It’s a mattress. Not a hardboard plank. There’s a duvet. It’s soft and warm – like lying in a cradle of feathers.

We pass by Raffles hospital.

‘I want to get ill just so I can go in there,’ I tell John. It looks like the Ritz through beer goggles.

I enter a coffee shop and three people rush smiling towards me as though I’m the Queen come for tea. I sit. The waitress brings me some iced water without me asking and then she compliments me on my necklace. In the USA when customer service people are this nice I want to slap them (I say the US because in the UK this would never even happen. It’s not even capable of being a hypothetical) but here, here I want to take this girl home and make her my best friend.

But you want to know the best bit? The very best bit about Singapore?

There’s a Topshop. That holiest of places. It gives me chills just to enter it. But that could be the air-con. I’m not used to air-con. I want to fall to the floor and sob in relief and gratitude and happiness at the sight of all these pretty clothes and shoes. Which are definitely not, in any way whatsoever too young for me.

And then I check out the price tags and realise that even if it didn’t come from Dharavi, there is no way I can justify spending £40 on a bikini. Not anymore. I turn my back on the bright enticing lights of the shop of top and walk away.

Maybe something happened to me over the Bay of Bengal too.

There is however a Topshop in Bali.

So we’ll see how long this commitment to virtue lasts.