There's a time for such dingy depravity as the city of Kuta and, for me at least, it doesn't come often. The second time was out of a necessity of sorts. For Mike, for love. Well, for an ex-girlfriend. We took a taxi this time. 200,000 for about an hour drive, and one the way, at the big hill just before Jimbaran, there's a line of standing officers of the local law picking motor bikes out of the traffic like fish from molasses and checking for, I'm assuming, international licenses. My stomach spun a half turn in memory and I was suddenly glad we decided to spring for the cab.
We didn't know exactly where we were going, and we didn't have an address so when we saw a Green Garden Hotel on the main drag with all the hotels we told the driver to stop, but turns out it's the wrong Green Garden Hotel, go figure.
We were looking for the Green Garden Resort and Spa, which is conveniently a twenty minute walk away. In the scorching mid-day sun. With backpacks on. "It's like the nature walk we never went on!" I say with a can-do smile and a fake attitude.
It's kind of like a nature walk, except instead of green trees and birds and bees and lizards and elephants we're walking down a shit-muggy street on a skinny shit sidewalk with random slabs missing and motor bikes constantly mounting it to get around the traffic of single lane city streets in this city with cars and taxis crawling both ways and bikes, bikes, bikes. The air's nauseating, and within minutes my skin's sticky with sweat under the light weight of my backpack, and all along the way it's hotels, hotels on both sides, and fat tourists from Oz or Eastern Europe, and gift shops and restaurants - there's a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. - and $1 movie stores in Circle K strip malls, and so many hole-in-the-wall massage parlors with women outside begging us, "Come in, please. Massage. Please. Come in." The ladies are so-so, we walk by. It's just like a nature walk.
Bleh. When we get to the Resort and Spa some twenty minutes later, the girls aren't there. The place is pristine. There's a pool and spa (of course), and a bar/restaurant up some stairs by the front desk, and there's scented little birdbaths full of flowers everywhere and glossy stone statues of couple in the nude.
"I don't get it..." Mike says trying to get a hold of Alix. He's texting her on What's App, but it's in vain. There's no response. The last thing he'd heard from them was that they were just leaving Singapore. "They should've landed an hour ago." He's lost-puppy-dogging and antsy. There's nothing we can do though, so I tell Casa Nova to leave a note at the front desk, and in the meantime we should probably have a beer or three.
To the beach. Bin Tangs.
"Tell me again why we can't stay with them?" I say sitting down at a table on the beach. I sip slow from my beer, as always, and keep my feet moving as the ants are thick in the sand and finding it too easy to shoot up my legs.
"Because man, it's her birthday. She wants to be with her friend."
"I thought she wanted to be with you."
"Yeah, well... I don't know. It's fine," he says. "We'll just split a cheap hotel around here. There's gotta be one somewhere."
I really don't care either way.
[stop]
