5-14-11 Denpasar/Legian

My mother's friend Rima would be joining us later that day due to her missing a connecting flight, so we were by ourselves to explore the resort, and I must say it was super swanky. The resort was beautiful, and the staff was super polite, but once again the thing that got me was the amount of westerners that was there. Now this was a resort built for western families, and various other tourists. It was an odd feeling being surrounded by westerners again, as for the past week I've been surrounded by Indonesians, and Denpasar/Legian was PACKED with western tourists, the majority of which was Australians. 

 I felt even more out of place since I was trying to get more in touch with my “indo”side this past break, so being immersed amongst western tourists made me self-conscious of how out of place I was in Indonesia, but I trudged through the awkwardness as my mother's friend finally arrived, and we got a bite to eat and sat by the beach as my mom and Rima caught up. 

Rima currently works for an Australian coal mining corporation which is trying to open up an operation in Kalimantan, or Borneo as it's known in the west. She is recently widowed and her husband used to work in the business of furnishing hotels and worked with Indonesian suppliers to put Indonesian furniture in locations such as Dubai, and Ho Chi Min City, so in comparison to my Indonesian family, she is relatively westernized and still keeps relatively Western tendencies, versus her daughter, though born multi-ethnic decided to choose to live a more Indonesian lifestyle. I could sort of relate being caught between two cultures, and having to choose identities, though it seems I have already made my choice of living a more European lifestyle, though I like injecting some Indo every so often.

The rest of the night was a blur as we moved form place to place, we tried to catch the sunset in Tanah Lot, but due to horrible traffic, we decided against it and Rima suggested a local hang out called Ku De Ta (pronounced like coup d'etat), it turned out to be an ex-pat/tourist hang out, which was defended by multiple guards. We later moved back to the resort as one of my Mom's cousins who lived in Bali asked to meet up with my mom, as it turned out to be another family gathering as my mom caught up with cousins she hasn't seen in nearly 25 years.

 It ended up being another awkward encounter as I had to converse with my extended cousins, but we eventually found common ground as my cousin went to an international school, he english was impeccable, much better than my “Bahasa”, so the evening ended relatively well.  

We got stuck in traffic on the way back as we passed the location of the famous Bali bombing that occurred in the early 2000s, and as we passed the memorial to the victims, I got extremely apprehensive. My paranoia kicked in and I sat wishing the traffic would move faster, instead it moved a crawl's pace. We eventually moved pass the block of clubs, and we retired back to the Hotel, where my mom continued talking to Rima, and we got ready to move hotels from Legian to Ubud the next day.