Don't be a puffer fish

Last week I took a quick vacation to Singapore and Bali. I needed both sun and a new environment, so a destination along the equator seemed like the best option for me and everyone around me. (Unsurprisingly, I'm not so fun when starving of vitamin D and fresh air.) So in Singapore I got the invigoration of being in a new city with new foods and lots of warmth, not to mention the added loveliness of coincidently coinciding the vacation with my cousin's wife who was visiting her cousins who live in Singapore. Because of the odd randomness that is our small world, I got to enjoy a wonderful Indian dinner with her and her family members in downtown Singapore on my very first day of traveling! For anyone who has traveled by themselves, you know that there is something extra comforting in meeting someone you know along your journey, and especially in the first leg of it! For the rest of the week I felt ever more at home not only in Singapore, but in Bali as well.

I only had that one day in Singapore, with the next day being my flight to Bali and a planned four to five day flop on the beach. I didn't want to be in another city for my whole vacation as I live in a city 24/7 now! Give me nature and sunshine and ocean and fresh air! Landing in Bali I could see almost immediately (even while in flight) that I was going to get the four things I craved with a lot of added spices that I didn't necessarily want but that would for sure make this a vacation to remember.

Once landed I changed my money at the airport, being ushered to the money changing window not out of necessity for myself but because the woman there was the first in a line of eight different money changing windows that were owned separately, had the same exchange rate but that were set up in a fashion that meant the business went to the people who were in the first windows and not the last. (The workers would wave you over like they were more government employees set up to help the traveler, when instead they're there to rip you off first thing.) I knew this but also needed to change my money. Bam, there goes ten dollars in bad exchange rates. Okay, I say, she needs it more than I do. And I go on my way to find a taxi.

There is a window for prepay taxis outside. You say where you're going and they give you a set price. Luckily, I have a head for math and already figured out what the currency was really worth. (100,000 Indonesian rupees is about 10 US$ give or take the rate of the day.) The taxi stand tells me it will cost me 125,000 RP to get to my BnB in Canggu. I tally in my head and realize its just 13$. Okay, I say, that's much less than Korea. So I follow the taxi driver to his taxi across the lot, get in and enjoy a 30-40 minute ride to my hotel.

In Korea they don't tip, so I sometimes forget to now when I'm elsewhere. This time though, I made a conscious effort to tip the taxi driver, again thinking that he needs it more than I do. Yay for my consciousness, but a frown for my supposedly great math skills. I confused the Korean won (where 10,000 won = 10 US$) and gave the guy a 5,000 RP, so approximately 50 US cents. He was probably thinking "Dang girl, why even gesture?" The folly wasn't realized till he left and I had settled in my new abode. Okay, I say, I'll redeem myself later with buying from the locals, or cleaning a beach or something. I change into my bikini and head to the beach with gumption.

There's a typhoon off the east coast of Australia. Bali is but a 1000 miles from Australia. Sounds far enough shouldn't it? Well, I can tell you now that it's not. 1000 miles is a hop skip and a jump for something like a typhoon. Like a titan giant arising from the depths of his cavern and causing a volcano that effects the entire Mediterranean, this typhoon was wrecking havoc on not only Australian weather, but was rustling up storm clouds across the south Pacific. Laying on the beach in my sun starved, white as the day I was born body, I attempted to tan myself in the dull hue of light eking through the haze of pre-storm energized molecules. There was definitely an energy in the air that I was still happy to be absorbing, but it wasn't exactly the energy I had hoped for when I signed up for a beach vacation. After an hour of pathetic sun bathing, I repacked my beach bag, put on my sun shirt and shorts and trudged back to my BnB where I listened to the rain start to fall outside my window as I watched Madmen on the High-def TV. Okay, I say, there's always tomorrow. I've signed up for surfing so can enjoy the sunshine then!

Because I went to bed so early, I thought I woke up far earlier as well. So I took my time and enjoyed my beautiful room and shower and television. I painted my toe nails, read a lot of my book, watched 30 Rock and believed I was killing time till 9:30, the time I had set up to meet with my surf instructor. The television tells me it's 9:20, a rerun of 30 Rock is on. I decide to go out and see if Leo, the instructor, is around. Nope, but there's someone at the front desk. I ask them if he's seen Leo and he says yeah, about an hour ago he was waiting for me. An hour ago? But its not even 9:30 yet! I look at the clock behind the desk, it tells me that no, actually, it is almost 10:30. I look back to the guy working, and try to explain that my HighDef flatscreen satellite fed TV told me the wrong time. He cocks his head to the side and cocks his smile the other way and says, "Huh. K, well I'll call Leo. Maybe wait here 10 minutes? Need to use the net at all?" No big deal, in other words. Don't worry about, said his crooked smile. Leo shows up, I drop my mouth in awe of his Brazilian biceps, fumble an apology and an hour later find myself watching Leo draw a diagram in the same beach where the day before I had just failed at tanning. He tells me that I'll have to find my own balance when I get in the water and on my board, but that I need to have an idea of where I'll be going and how it should go about. Nodding and nodding agreements to his adorable accent, within another hour I'm standing on a board a foot taller than me, riding a rush of rolling water in a fashion not all that different from the mocking dance I do to the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA". Naturally, it being my first time and all, I took a few more falls than I did the surfin' dance. But for the most part, when I did stand I had a pretty good jive! Okay, I say, it all turned out okay. I got to surf, I found my balance,and now I just have to work on keeping it. On the walk and motorbike ride back I got to actually talk with Leo and with RD, the guy who had been working behind the counter at my hotel (he gave me the ride to the beach and back, as Leo's moped was far too cramped with two surf boards.) And talking with them I got to question them on their life in Bali and before it. It was by far the more interesting of conversations I have had in a long time. (Simply because they were not with people who have the same exact job and life as me. Holy crud, I thought, I forgot people have different lives!)

Did you know that Bali is very, very, very near the equator? Like just 8 degrees south of it? So close that the sun in the morning is just as hot as our sun in the afternoon in summer? I didn't know this. Thus, I learned something new! May have been one of the more painful lessons I've learned, yet it most definitely is one of the few I will never forget. Later in the day of surf awesomeness, I went on a day trip provided by the hotel with Leo being the driver and with two other pairs of guests being the sightseers. We all hobbled into the van with plans of a beach day on the west side of island. The couple from Ukraine were the kind that loved a good guidebook, and the mother-daughter (the girl being just 9 years old) pair were the kind that wanted to make sure the latter had a great time. In all they were a wonderful group, and provided another branch of interesting conversation for me the lone traveler. I really enjoyed the beach though it was a little dirty and by the afternoon the typhoon winds had blown in again and were obviously bringing rain like the day before. So we only got an hour on the beach before we had to make plans for elsewhere. The Ukraine couple whipped out their trusty guidebook and discussed with Leo some stops on the way back to our hotel. They asked myself and the mother-daughter pair what we thought, and us all being in adventure-travel mode agreed to anything they wanted to see. Within a half hour our make-shift plans were foiled by the rains and we had to pull over again to make a decision for our next stop. A thai-massage was agreed upon, with Leo's wife being a masseuse at a 'clean' place (i.e. not THAT kind of massage!) We started to drive there and I wasn't certain if it was the coldness of the rain or the high air conditioning in the van or both, but I began to get very, very cold. I mean my muscles started to shake, my teeth to chatter, my lips turned blue and I felt like I could fall asleep on one leg. It didn't happen all at once, but by the time we made it to the massage place I was trying really hard to suppress my discomfort. Inside we got to each take showers before our closed-room massages, and in the shower I realized what was going on with my body. In the mirror I could see that my back, from neck to bottom was a deep, bright, almost neon red. What was happening was shock from sun poisoning. I had no more electrolytes in body and I had damaged my skin so much that it couldn't retain heat like it is supposed to. I hurt of course, but I hadn't gotten to see how bad it was until I looked in the mirror. From just two hours in morning sun on Bali, I had the skin color of a Native American, or my father in July. I really wanted to go back to the hotel at that point, but couldn't because I was with a group day trip where we should be enjoying ourselves, getting massages and eating loads. So, I wrapped a towel around my scorched body and went in to brave the "medium-hard" hands of the young Balinese woman I had picked out at the front counter. Twenty minutes into the hour massage she realized I was not in a pleasurable pain but in a miserable one. I'm not certain if she figured out that the fever and chills correlated with my exceedingly dark skin, but love-bless her she covered me with an extra towel for the second half of the massage, then ushered me to a hot shower whence she had finished rubbing my marrow. I stood in there for 10 minutes just letting the hot water try and warm my soul a little. It worked a bit, as I felt kind enough to smile at her as I left, but then I curled into a ball in the front of the van and awaited death as I watched the rain slosh over the windshield and roads. I tried to keep Leo company after we dropped the rest of the guests off for dinner "downtown", but now can't remember if I did or not. I think I just hugged my knees in an upright fetal position and chanted to myself, "I'm okay. I'll be okay. This is only temporary. I had a good day. I surfed today. I can't wait for bed, for warmth. I can't wait for heat to return. I know it will, I just have to hold out till then. I'm okay. I'll be okay."

That night I painfully dressed myself in the winter clothes I had worn from Korea. 75 degrees, a sweatshirt, fuzzy socks, a hot shower and a hat and mittens, I rocked myself on my side or prone in an effort to generate heat and comfort enough for sleep to follow. I slept for nearly 10 hours.

The next day I had to change hotels/BnBs. Luckily, RD, the kind easy-going guy from the front desk offered to help me. My sunburned ass complained to my sunburned skull, but the sunburned skull did not care. It wanted to still have fun on a mystical, tropical island. So it did. RD ended up showing me around the island, taking an hour long motorbike trip to a huge statue of Garuda, the Hindu-Balinese god who is believed to be the protector of all transportation (thus the name of one of the airlines, and the airline that happened to later bump me up to first class on my return trip to Singapore... perhaps there's something to that god?), and thereafter we went to the beach where Eat, Pray, Love was filmed, and then after I took a nap and he went to work, he showed me around Kuta (the foreigner hub of Bali) that night. We went dancing, albeit in extreme pain on my end, and got to enjoy ourselves like real people. I couldn't help but think on my taxi ride back to my new BnB, how with a little bit kindness and ease from another person met with a little of those traits from myself, that we were able to have fun like old friends. And because we were able to do so, we both got a bit of balance from the other one. I was able to look out the window and think, "I'm okay. Today, though a little more painful in the skin department, was a good day. I had a very good day and I think I helped someone else have one, too."

My last day in Bali was Friday. I woke up later, I got going later, I did everything a bit later, and you know what? I didn't think about it one bit. Later was simply that, more late in the day. I walked along the beach for forty minutes just to have my breakfast/lunch at a new place. I sat there for two hours, sipping my avocado juice, enjoying my nasi goreng and finishing The Scarlet Letter in a time of my own fashioning. I didn't worry about seeing anything, doing anything, being anything more than what I was capable of. I enjoyed, is what I did. I sat back and let it be. The hawkers still crowed around me, the people still babbled, the rain still came and I still burned. Everything was not perfect, but it was not altogether imperfect either. It was simply okay. And I was okay with it being just okay.

On my walk back to my hotel, in my very nonchalant mood, I came across something that had washed upon the shore. I could see it rolling in oscillation with each wave, and as I got closer to it I realized it was a puffer fish. It wasn't puffed at the moment, but from its buggy eyes on the side of its head to the spikes encircling its body, poking out a little as it tried to grasp for a breath of water, I gathered that it was such, and that it was laying in doom. I had never seen a puffer fish before, at least not in the 'wild'. I stared at it at first, in awe of its weirdness. (They are really, very funny looking.) It's flippers tried to steer it, but were too weak for the strong and incessant waves. One wave would give it hope as it receded while another would break its hope with a crash and a push further up the beach. I realized quite quickly that the fish had no hope. I was to watch it die, to be its witness and cheerleader. I couldn't help it, you see, there's no help for a fish that's washed ashore unless you have a way to carry it over the current of the waves. I had to watch it die. It was the only humane thing to do. To be there with it until it breathed its last. At least, I thought that's what I could do. But I'm not as creative as Aussies.

Two Aussie women in their mid-forties are also walking along the same beach. They see the puffer fish and they see me watching it as it dies. Okay, I admit my freakishness. It's a pretty darn morbid thing to sit and watch something die without appearing to help or have any emotion for the creature. I do realize this. But, in all fairness, I was keeping it company while not scaring it in its last moments of life. The women approach, one tall and skinny with skin like tanned leather, the other not so much any of those characteristics. Huffy would be the best description of her. I glance at them and say, "Want to help it, but think he's done for. Better off as lunch." The tall one kind of smiles and nods while looking at the fish, Huffy puts her hands on her hips and ignores me altogether. I then watch Huffy, in her deep caverns of shallow thought, take off her flip flops and approach the fish. "No way" I think, she's not going to try and roll the damn thing back into the ocean is she?

FLIP. FLAP.FLIP.FLAP.FLIP FLIP FLIP.FLAP. FLOP. As soon as she rolled him, he blew up to full puffer fish size. By the third roll towards the ocean she was pushing a spiky balloon with bulging eyes and little fins that flip-flapped against the wet beach with every roll, her flip-flops making a similar sounds as she flip-flopped him. WAVE. FLOAT. ROLL. Guess what happens on beaches - Waves crash upon the shore! Did you know this? I did. But then again, I'm a know-it-all when it comes to common sense. If only Aussies were. I watched for five minutes as Huffy tried to huff and puff, flip and flop that puffed puffer back into the deep blue. FLIP FLAP FLOP FLIP FLOP. Would go Huffy. WAVE. CRASH. FLOAT AND ROLL. Would go Puffy. I assumed the latter was to die of a heart attack any minute, so I stuck around to full fill my duties in keeping it company (and also for the free entertainment of watching insanity in its prime - the definition being to do the same thing over and over again.)

With every huff of Huffy, I think Puffy puffed a little more. The puffing being the biggest problem as with itself full of air, it would float instead of sink when in the water. Er, "on" the water, I mean. Huffy didn't understand that it was puffing because of her huffing and that its puffing was going to be the biggest cause of death. (There could be a case stated for her speeding up its death, which I would then be the bad guy. But I think the best speeding of death, and the one in which I would most definitely have been the bad guy would be a case where I clunked it on the head with my flip flop, thereby sparing it the craziness of what was to happen next.)

Six men approach, island men. They are all wearing the same blue T-shirt. They must be employed somewhere along the beach, I deduce. With the strut of all wannabe macho men everywhere, they puff their chests in mock puffer fish fashion and ask if they can help. Huffy gesticulates to the puffer fish and the ocean, motioning how they should be together in marriage and then proceeds to place one flip on one side of the fish, and one flop on the other. She squishes just a little, the flippers of the fish flapping in fear and opposition, and picks up the fish in an effort to carry it over the waves. Guess Puffy was heavy because she drops him at first. He takes a big puff. She tries again. This time holding him with a bit more pressure, because nothing gets freaked out when you squeeze it too tightly? With Puffy between her flops, she then attempts, because the rip tide is too strong to walk in, to throw him over the waves.

If there had happened to be an Olympic shot putter around for Puffy, that idea may have been okay. But as there wasn't, and as Huffy's strength was about the same as a forty year old, non-exercised woman who hasn't thrown a ball in twenty years, the idea was an extremely, EXTREMELY futile one. Puffy became a magically flying fish, perhaps now making the genetics of all puffer fish a little bit different (give it a millenia and maybe they'll be fliers!), he flew about a meter and a half. He landed in water, I'll give Huffy that - she got him in his correct element, but as soon as he landed (or watered, in this case) that dastardly wave came in again to wash him back our way. Huffy huffed at this, and bent over to try again. But the males who had also thought this situation entertaining decided to think it also vexing and perhaps, hero-establishing. So the first one waves her off and says that it'd be much better if he threw the fish because he was stronger. She agrees this is true and consents to him being the new savior of the fish. (After all, it's all for the fish! She a selfless Samaritan! She will save one fish at a time because it will count to that fish! (I read that story, too, about the starfish and how it mattered to each one. I was inspired as well, and give you kudos for taking it to heart. But one thing about stories, they often omit common sense. Common sense and puffer fish that is.)

We all watched as the males tried to throw the fish back into the ocean. Puffy got to fly over and over again in its last moments. That's about all I can say for him. We walked away as soon as we realized that they were going to be no more successful than her. (I walked away because they were less entertaining, and because Puffy was pretty close to death.) So, I never actually saw him breathe the fateful exhale we all see in the movies, but I'm very certain it happened, and that it happened in confusion and fright.

Because Huffy was done with her huffing, I tried to express my admiration for her trying (and suppress my annoyance at her stupidity), and said, "That was a valiant effort. You are much braver than I!" Her friend glanced, as friends without their own minds often do, and Huffy didn't even glance. She found her nose and stuffed it into the air in obvious disdain for the freakish, morbidly fascinated girl who did not at least try to help the puffer fish.

As they walked away, up the beach and over to their hotel, I wondered, in my freakish, morbidly fascinated yet vegetarian mind, just what THEY would have for dinner... crab? lobster? cow? pig? fish?


So, that night, over my vegetarian nasi goreng, I thought about my trip and all that I'd learned within just five days. I thought about my apathy towards money and how I should learn to save more, my desire to push myself when I should stay home and rest, my forgetfulness for the most important things such as sunscreen and time when both are important to my well-being and others, and then of course my calmness towards something like death. Perhaps I should have tried to help the puffer fish. Maybe I should have been more huffy and thought I could help. But then again, had I tried to help it, it wouldn't have been real helping as I knew it wouldn't do anything. Instead, the vegetarian wanted a peaceful death, while the meat eaters wanted a natural death in the ocean - with Puffy being swept up in some gargantuan bycatch and being killed by suffocation only to be eaten by some rich-bitch friend of Huffy's? In that respect, I don't think I actually learned anything but the simplest lesson of them all -

Don't be a puffer fish. And don't try to huff a puffer fish to safety.

Because in the end, the fish died. The lady went and ate her seafood and I went and nursed my sunburn. We all went our separate ways and healed ourselves in the best ways we knew possible (apart from Puffy, he had to heal in the afterlife.) But we each were okay before the situation, and after. It was during that we needed to take a breath in a calm and collected fashion and think about what was happening. Puffy puffed, Huffy huffed. Neither were able to breathe correctly, and so not think correctly either. They each freaked out because neither were able to process the foreign-ness of each other's world.

Thus, my lesson from my Bali trip, "Don't be a puffer fish", is this: be okay, be smart, be calm, be collected and most of all? Remember to not huff the small things and to run away if you can from crazy people who want to pick you up with their flip flops in the hopes of saving you. Especially if they resemble Aussies with too much pride and not enough smarts. They tend to be attracted to things that go PUFF.