Settling Down, Take Two

The first week of school passes mainly in a frenzy of house-hunting. That is to say: stabbing at the Facebookz like a starving lab-rat, visiting messageboard after messageboard, scouring the small ads in the various bits of local press, and dealing with sundry South Bali middle-boys and girls.

Practice makes me fairly fluent. I can walk into a two-bedroom “villa” that’s actually a teensy holiday bungalow with an open living area that won’t quite fit a sofa and a “plunge pool” smaller than some rolltop baths, and estimate the middle-boy’s margin comfortably.

I’m already aware that places sold as Echo Beach aren’t usually even in sight of the beach, and that “five minutes from the beach” usually means “five minutes if the road was empty, had no potholes and you floored it on a Byson”. Further, I’m starting to become familiar with the local landmarks where you meet the middle-boys and girls, AKA know one random petrol station from another.

A lovely 2-bedroom house with guesthouse and small pool goes for a song at some point during the 18 hour gap between the last time I visited that board and the next. Gah!

My parents arrive the next week; we’re commuting around 3 hours a day, albeit with driver, and I don’t even want to think what’s happening to the bank balance, because self-employment and house-hunting don’t go together, even if someone who might become a new friend (yay!) has directed me to the fast wifi at Milly’s.

The driver’s costing us two million a week because my ankle’s gyppy and even if I were triathlete-fit biking Ubud-Canggu at 6.45am during the rainy season is my idea of hell, poncho or no poncho.

Friday rolls around. I limp, yet again, into Canggu Deli, the rather pricy emporium of Western food and veggies-all-Australians-can-recognise that’s a local expat staple, and note the 2-bedroom place that looked quite heinously expensive at 11 million rupiah monthly (that’s over $900) is still available and looking, in fact, considerably cheaper than it did.

Further, it’s round the corner from the school. I’d like a three-bed, not least to have somewhere to put my parents (although I can always sleep on the sofa). But I sure as hell can’t fit my parents into our little place in Ubud, plus the driver’s costing us two million ($170) a week because my ankle’s gyppy and even if I were triathlete-fit biking Ubud-Canggu at 6.45am during the rainy season is my idea of hell, poncho or no poncho.

I ring the dude up; he meets us at the deli; we follow him round the corner; we have a look around; I test the water pressure and make a feeble attempt to haggle; the dude says no; I request some kitchen equipment and a thorough clean-up, bung him the cash I have left after paying the driver, and agree we’ll move in on Sunday.

Sorted. Or summat. We can stay three months if we want to, and after that we’d need to commit longterm.

I used to be able to pack up everything we own in under 10 minutes. Packing up all this pointless crap takes me the big end of an hour.

Sunday swings around. I make fond farewells to our most lovely landlords, Ketut and Komang, pay my electricity bill, give back my Ubud rental bike, arrange a Canggu rental bike, and pack up.

It’s still the case that everything we *use* fits into two backpacks and a ‘puter bag. Sadly, that is no longer the case for everything we *own*. The cheap-even-for-Dahab gym bag, which I bought in Egypt to keep things that I should probably keep now we’re settling down, and which broke before it even left said nation, weighs a bloody tonne.

Its contents? Random sundries like broken camera lenses, wetsuits, shredded clothing I intend to copy at some point, magazines with articles I wrote in them, books it seems worth keeping now that we have somewhere to put them, and bits of paper that might one day be important. Further, I now own stuff like oil and vinegar and spices and rice.

I used to be able to pack up everything we own in under 10 minutes. Packing up all this pointless crap takes me the big end of an hour.

There has been something of a vogue for “open living” in Bali over recent years, a trend which a cynic might connect to the roughly contemporaneous increase in crime.

It’s a nice house. We’re a couple of hundred metres from the beach, there’s a posh hotel across the way, there’s lots of timber and cute, semi-open bathrooms, and a tall glazed downstairs area, plus a terrace up top with open stairs that means the place is physically impossible to lock.

There has been something of a vogue for “open living” in Bali over recent years, a trend which a cynic might connect to the roughly contemporaneous increase in crime. And, believe me, it gets a lot more open than this.

I ask about security. “Oh, the guys at the hotel keep an eye on things,” he says. “But you need to be careful about shutting the doors – that’s usually what goes. Small things, like phones or laptops.”

The internet doesn’t work. Bugger. He’ll fix it. I can work in a cafe, for a change (not). On the plus side, Bali is extremely well-set-up with cafes, many of them replete with people poking at laptops – I might even make some friends!

We head up the road for sushi to celebrate our new abode, and the fact that tomorrow’s school run will start more than an hour later than Friday’s.

As a regular activity, in my universe, cooking is hugely over-rated. I feel rather the same way, to be honest, about getting up in the morning.

As in China, the boy, being at school, would prefer a home-cooked meal to going out to restaurants. This…. riles me. In fact, settling down riles me.

It’s not that I don’t like cooking. I do like cooking, honest!

Just, once in a while, when I’m feeling inspired or the boy wants something specific, or I’ve invited people round, rather than as a daily (or, heaven forfend, twice or thrice daily!) event. Left to myself, I suspect I’d cook about once a week. As a regular activity, in my universe, cooking is hugely over-rated.

I feel rather the same way, to be honest, about getting up in the morning. Left to myself, I’d stay up till 3am and rise at 9. Or 10. Or 6, if I had something I wanted to do.

Tidying? Cleaning? I loathe both activities with a passion, and here the cleaners only come once a week. This is not an uncommon attitude among women who choose to travel longterm.

Sometimes, in fact, I wonder whether I am at heart a teenage boy. I’m even feeling sulky.

This whole endeavour was his idea in the first place and I’d much rather be wandering the Galapagos gawping at marine iguanas.

My spawn, who is by contrast an actual teenage boy, is enjoying school, which is fortunate, given this whole endeavour was his idea in the first place and I’d much rather be wandering the Galapagos gawping at marine iguanas.

As in China, he sets his own alarm for bedtime – plus a really-must-go-to-bed alarm after that – and his own alarm for morning, followed by a really-must-get-up alarm half an hour later.

Me? Well, there are some saving graces. I have managed to set up a number of interesting travel stories – well, a few people have asked me to write things, and then I’ve managed to work out some things I can write for other people while I’m in the place I’m going to for the other people, and sell them to said people, so I guess that means I’m rockin’. (Kids! Don’t try this at home!)

This means I can go and be a bona fide travel writer on assignment rather than just meandering through having adventures and typing about them and once in a while selling something to someone who’s interested after the event, and, most importantly, that I won’t go absolutely stir crazy due to lack of movement.

Honestly, I love Bali, and I love Indonesia even more. If I HAVE to settle down, I’m glad it’s here. But, fundamentally, settling down sucks. Bigtime.

Catching the garlicky whiff from my armpits, I conclude that wherever we end up should probably have a pool. I add “daytime and night-time temperatures” and “ventilation” to my house-hunting checklist.

My folks arrive, which is kind of cool – despite the fact that the boy is in school from 8.20-3.20 and I spend much of that time hunched over a laptop, frowning and confusing Twitter with work, while simultaneously feeling guilty about not spending time with my family, which then makes me all passive-aggressive and weird. But, ya know, it’s nice they’re here, and all.

We head up to Amed, which we all love, one weekend, discovering the amazing Tirta Gangga water palace en route; they take themselves off to circumnavigate Bali in a car, get quite an impressive distance and find some new stuff; we eat a lot of sushi, drink a lot of Negronis, explore the local beaches a little bit, and a good time is had by all.

Well, apart from the heat, that is. My poor dad isn’t a fan of the tropics anyway. That lovely contemporary glazed-in living area with its elevated ceiling fan, and shady upstairs terrace were designed long before the hotel was built, and, aesthetic as it is, now that the breezes are blocked, our home has similar thermo-insulation properties to a greenhouse.

South Bali is considerably hotter than Ubud and, catching the garlicky whiff from my armpits, I conclude that wherever we end up should probably have a pool. I add “daytime and night-time temperatures” and “ventilation” to my house-hunting checklist.

And then… Item two on my run of bad luck occurs. Yes, in the ultimate new-to-Bali cliché, we are burgled.

I add “not in a development full of tourist villas many of which are holiday lets and therefore a bloody magnet for thieves” to my list of things I’m looking for in our permanent abode.

I’m awoken at 3am from a Negroni-induced sofa sleep by my mother yelling from upstairs to find the French window, which I’d hooked shut rather than locked shut, open, and my camera bag missing.

A rush of utter despair is followed by pure joy when I realise they’ve left our passports neatly on the table, and stripped my purse of cash, not cards.

Zac’s computer and iPhone are with him; my phone, my mother’s tablet and Zac’s Kindle apparently aren’t worth taking; and, thank god, my MacBook is still there.

I am, however, down an underwater camera (though I still have the case), plus hundreds of pounds worth of camera lenses (the body, thank the lord, is in the shop). I need both an underwater camera and a land camera with lenses for the jobs I’m headed off to do. Bugger.

I add “not in a development full of tourist villas many of which are holiday lets and therefore a bloody magnet for thieves” to my list of things I’m looking for in our permanent abode.

On the other hand, it is an absolute stonking pain in the arse, not least because I feel the need to lock all our electronics into one of the lockable bedrooms every time I leave the house.

I’d like to say I feel violated. I don’t. I’m a Londoner. I’ve been burgled plenty of times before, and no one would have had the courtesy to leave behind perfectly good passports and bank cards in that city.

Nor am I living in fear. Like most burglars, the guys were not intent on rape/violation/child-murder. They wanted to take my stuff. They took it; they went away; end of story.

Nor do I feel especially surprised that, in a nation where many live below the global poverty line and a laptop can cost more than a year’s work at minimum wage, a few bad apples have taken to nicking said goldmines when you leave the door open, just like they do in nations with higher income equality.

On the other hand, it is an absolute stonking pain in the arse, not least because I feel the need to lock all our electronics into one of the lockable bedrooms every time I leave the house.

I’ve been haemhorraging money since we got to Bali, I want to upgrade my camera to a pro-level one, and it will cost me at least the price of a pro-level camera to get back to where I was. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

Image: Burglars Burgle Elsewhere by Hobvias Sudoneighm on Flickr’s Creative Commons.