Night 8/9 & Day 9
So 6pm arrives - the lights are low, the gin chilled, nobody is here yet we've all completely forgotten about the music and I'm fiddling with my ipod, which just happens to be completely out of battery and refusing to re-charge. I ask my step-dad what the choices are to save this night, so early... and it's one ABBA CD and a Glen Campbell compilation. Nice.
Gay landscaper arrives - "hey", he mentions matter-of-factly at the ABBA spinning in the background at a volume I can barely detect... "welcome to 1979". I like him immediately - not conventionally a pretty-boy, towers over me, wicked Aussie humour, busting on me from the first conversation. He holds court around the pool with stories from that time on until, around 9pm with the canapes, champagne, beer and G&T's all drained, the power fails. Perfect timing for Mum - time those that were thinking about dinner, move on, she announces. And so we do - out into the night go 2 gays, a straight man and an older woman aquaintance I insist accompany us, to try and drag the night to the 'light' side.
We end up at Mama San's - I've heard of the place, but not paid enough attention to know where it is. The decor is superb - huge wall mural at the back, dark wood and matching staircases snaking up the wall. We're all pretty well on the way by the time we arrive there, and a few premium glasses of red each don't do much to help. Gay man #2 decides he will head to the upstairs bathrooms and on the way, stops halfway up the left side stair and proceeds to sing from his Juliet balcony - don't ask me what. It was loud, long, and entirely inappropriate. The remaining table members tell him from distance to shut the hell up and move on - which he does. When sometime later I investigate the bathrooms myself, I'm impressed with the layout and the size. There's even a towel waiter to help me wash my hands afterwards. We MUST be back in Seminyak!!
Dinner passes in a blur of shared dishes and more red. The prices are high, but the quality is outstanding. Before I know it, we are out in the warm night again, piling into a taxi. Unfortunately, woman wing must go home at that point (around 11pm I think), which leaves the gay boys and me. Guess where we are going now?..
I don't know the gay strip in Seminyak well enough to tell you the names of these clubs (and let's face it, how many of you honestly want to know?) but I can tell you the taxi ride was short, the 3 clubs were all side-by-side, and we visited all of them, travelling between this triple threat at will. Someone was buying me a lot of red coloured champagnes, which I was downing as fast as they came. Freed of the shackles of my family, I busted out every dance move I could remember from my clubbing days, on every podium I could find. Bathed in sweat and smiling madly, gay landscaper and I set the place on fire (or so you always think). It was an amazing highlight of the trip - true, wild, f@#k it all, abandon.
A couple of hours later I was sitting across from the clubs getting a breather, watching this human soup writhe in front of me, and a taxi did a slow roll past - it was time. Sometimes you just know - and this was my exit point to a night that had spent me, and a convenient out, to avoid all sorts of inevitable offers from my very kind hosts and friends should I go back in. So I poured myself in that door without another thought and disappeared without a trace. The perfect getaway.
Next morning was horrendous - I had mixed every drink I could name into my system, and a few I didn't know the names of. I had at least awoken alone, but how much dignity I had shed I was still unsure of. Breakfast would have to wait - it was pool time, a proven hangover cure. Slipping under the water did temporarily appease my pounding head, and breakfast seemed to make things better, but by lunchtime at hip teahouse Biku, I couldn't face lunch. Sitting at one of the low tables at the back, the family and I enjoyed the surroundings of vintage found (?) wood panelling and furniture. The menu is also excellent and you can, if you're up to it, enjoy a full high tea here on a stacked tri-platform cake stand. Some young Japanese girls were outside in the sun, doing just that, taking photos of themselves and throwing the V sign with their fingers at each course. God they make me laugh - but not today. I can barely raise a snigger. This damn head...
SMS arrives from gay landscaper shortly afterwards - "hey, was a great night. Glad u got home OK, I left not long after you. We make a good team. Lets hook up later at Ultimo for final dinner". Oh god, thats right.. I leave Bali tonight! Well, at least it doesn't appear I have done anything stupid and if I did, no-one seems to remember.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in the pool, going in and out from the sunlounge to water, with not much more energy than a wet cat. Knowing more booze is on the menu, inevitably, tonight, I drown myself in glasses of water too. Reaching hot restaurant Ultimo around 6pm, our family are the only table, bar one table full at the very back in the garden. Massive menu of Italian favourites and quite a few I didn't know, plus the usual extensive wine list for this area. A nice bar area at the front, just inside, is the perfect spot to wait for tables or your dinner guests and watch all the action in the kitchen and on the restaurant floor before you. Prices were reasonable too - service efficient and the atmosphere exciting. By 7.30pm the place was full to brimming - I suggest you book ANY night you are thinking of coming here. A perfect end to my holiday eating.
The Garuda flight out of Bali I have is an 11.45pm pig. No, it is, the whole journey is just an absolute shocker. It deposited me completely sleepless at 8.20am Melbourne time and I needed to sleep the entire afternoon here to recover. I doubt I would use it again, unless desperate. Be careful of this one, unless you are the rare breed of man or woman who can sleep sitting up and likes being woken up every 2 hours anyway. I am not that man.
** Thank you for all the comments - I read and noted every one, and hope you all enjoyed at least some part of my meandering notes. Next time I venture to Bali, I will be sure to avoid my family as much as possible and be taking a tour through the more savoury heterosexual hotspots of the island, for your vicarious reading pleasure.
Until then..
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