Almanac Travel: I’ve been to Bali too!

Bali in May 2025

 

 

 

The Abian Harmony Hotel is on the south-east coast of Bali, about half an hour from the airport at Denpasar. Intaran, Kesambi, and Lontar Palm trees line the street. The post-World War II architecture in central Sanur makes it feel like it’s back in the 1950s.

 

There are always conversations to be had. As Fox Footy blares out, you’ll find Australians nestling a beer in AFL bars.  The beach and market stalls are a ten-minute walk away. Traders don’t demand your attention. It’s more like a polite enquiry. With its western prices and modernity, the new shopping mall, Icon, looms on the beachfront like a giant flying saucer.

 

At the hotel, tourists lounge by the pool. Each morning, two silent young Japanese girls give petals to breakfast diners. Barbara, a 75-year-old yellow bikini-wearing Queenslander, bails me up. She lives at the hotel and is quick to tell me the horror story of her husband being hospitalised in Bali.

 

‘I had to pay $35,000 Australian so they’d operate on him to save his life’.

 

He made it through. The insurance payout was long, fraught, and under the odds. The next time I see Barbara, she’s eating a bowl of watermelon on a sun lounger, talking to two middle-aged Australian women who spend their days smoking and reading James Patterson books by the pool.

 

 

Things happen at a slow pace here, apart from the traffic, which is chaotic yet somehow ordered. I met a bloke called Ian at a coffee shop. He’s ginger-haired with a scrappy beard. Congenial. A talker from Queensland. Ex-RAF -‘a shit kicker’ he says, who’s been living here for a few years. He’s close to 70, but his age is hard to guess. He’s like that street-wise kid at school who attracts a crowd. Kind but crafty as a gutter rat. Ian talks in this circuitous manner that is almost mesmerising. Sometimes when he gets to the end of the story, I’d wonder what the fuck he was talking about. He’s the unofficial leader of a local group of about half a dozen older Aussie blokes. You know the type.  Disenfranchised with Australian life.  Had a gutful of the politics and the cost of living. They want to live in the 1970s. Or at least in an Australia under Bob Hawke. Shorts and singlets, taking shit and downing Bintangs.

 

Ian’s shacked up with a Javanese woman named Amy. She’s pretty and petite, and she’s also 25 years younger. Ian pays her a monthly stipend to run a mini-bar.

 

‘As long as it has a clean shitter and serves cold beer, it’ll run a profit,’ he says

 

He explains the intricacies of storing the beers in boxes, but I’d switched off by then.

 

The mini-bar is where the crew meets each night, where Ian holds court.  The pub itself is not much more than a gap in a wall. If you blinked, you’d miss it. It’s where I meet Dave, brain damaged (his words) with a Parkinsons-like tremor  – ‘I was necked at birth’  – referring to the umbilical cord that strangled him. Dave’s got a mad look in his eye, like someone fresh out of the jungles of Vietnam in the 1960s. He also has an unnerving habit of staring at you long after you think the conversation has ended, like he wants to ask you something but can’t quite get the words out. He talks a lot about his disability and tells me he has a girlfriend in Cambodia whom he’ll visit in a few weeks. She’s a cheap carer. Dave wanted to be a teacher, but only made it to year nine.

 

 

I also met Kevin. He’s married but has a local girlfriend in Sanur who accompanies him everywhere, treating him more like a child than a boyfriend. Kevin has a ZZ-Top beard and remains mute unless the topic of conversation turns to  Australian cars in the 1970s. Then he comes alive, and it’s like listening to Will Hagon’s descriptions of the Finke Desert race in Alice Springs all those years ago. Terry is a 77-year-old sandgroper who’s here on and off between stays in Australia and Thailand. He has the friendly demeanour of a real estate agent but without the schmooze.

 

One night, Amy tries to set me up with two women. They offer more than polite conversation. ‘Six hundred rupiah for one hour,’ the younger one, Feby, whispers in my ear with a mischievous smile.

 

I politely decline, joking that they are too old for me.  They cackle at the suggestion.

 

‘You need the aquarium,’ they say, referring to the brothel down the road where young women are seated in rows in a gold fish bowl, ready to be ‘selected.’

 

Feby skirts from place to place on her motorbike, which her  Australian paramour purchased. The transactional nature of her offer and the aquarium remind me of the grinding poverty in which just about everyone is on the take.

 

The next day, I found an Italian pub with thousands of books.

 

‘There used to be a lot more here,’ Terry explains after I bump into him on the street. Some days, I come here for a small Bintang and look at their rows of books.

 

One night, I heard the news of Adam Selwood’s death. I had to double-check my phone to see if it’s true. The commentators on TV are shaken. The devastation of the loss will be felt for years. The effect on the family is unimaginable. I’m taken back to Second Innings, a book I’d written on my own experiences of mental health struggles. The response to the book seemed almost mute at the time. It’s still a topic people don’t like talking about. The epidemic of suicide continues. I remember reading a psychologist’s advice to someone considering taking their own life.

 

‘Put it off until tomorrow.’

 

It’s the best advice I’ve ever heard. If you put it off long enough, the fog will lift, life will get better, and it will never happen.

 

‘Put it off until tomorrow.’

 

Such powerful words.

 

I’m soon back in Australia and wonder what my new Sanur-based mates are up to.

 

I’ve got a fair idea.

 

 

 

You can read more from Barry Nicholls Here

 

Barry Nicholls is a former A-grade district cricketer (for Kensington in Adelaide) who has written about the sport for three decades. He was a broadcaster on ABC Radio for nearly 20 years. Barry has written nine books, including You Only Get One Innings: Family, Mates and the Wisdom of Cricket and For Those Who Wait: The Barry Jarman Story and The Pocket History of the Ashes. He has contributed to Inside Sport, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac Australia and other publications. Wakefield Press is publishing his latest book on the 1972 Ashes series in 2024.

 

To return to the www.footyalmanac.com.au  home page click HERE

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?
And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help keep things ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

 

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE