You Can't Engineer Serendipity

First days.

I forgot how the first few days in a new country can be. It's been particularly easy in the most recent places, with Gemmy and in Georgetown. And Thailand, whatever else you accuse it if, it is very, very easy.

Actually the first few days in a new country, at least in my experience, are hard. Not life on the streets hard, admittedly, it is undoubtedly a middle class problem - and we are lucky to have it all. But still.

You tend to arrive with expectations. You try not to have then but you do. We expected Bali to be a green, arty heaven, full of colour and legend and crafts. And certainly our lodgings echo that. Wood cabins made from antique wood in a leafy shady garden and an enormous sense of peace. The cabins are half open to the elements and modelled on a style of Balinese house, furnished with wooden furniture and coloured glass windows which, somehow, remind me of the seaside. 

But when we venture outside the gate, its a different story. Cars and motorbikes scream past at speed. There is no pavement so if you walk it's on the road, and the whizzing vehicles are millimetres from you. If you walk at night, which we did yesterday, you also get dazzled by headlights. Green, it is not. Colourful it is not, because everything seems to be a car, a motorcycle, or the dust from a car or motorcycle. Arty it might be, but as we have chosen to be near local people rather than tourist areas, it's hard to penetrate. People have very little English so it's hard to have a chat, there is a temple every few steps which is lovely but it's difficult to find out what's going on in them.

We are taken on our first night round the corner to the supermarket by our host, where we stock up. Having done that, we decide to go out for dinner and explore the locality. We spend our first night walking with our life in our hands on the side of crazy roads looking for a Wareong (street restaurant) which we could not find despite every help possible from the internet. Eventually, and after a long but unenjoyable walk, we give up and go to the nearest place with any chance of vegetarian food. It happens to be really nice food, so the apparent determination of Bali to be the opposite of all our hopes, is a little assuaged. And we make it back without being run over and smeared messily over the street even once. We go to bed. At eleven there is a knock on our door. Our host has brought us a meal from a vendor, because they were selling a jackfruit curry which was naturally vegetarian and M had been asking him about it. We are pleased though confused because our host knew we were going out for dinner so we thank him delightedly and put it in the fridge for tomorrow. In the morning he asks us how it was. Perhaps we were supposed to have eaten it then and there? We are confused. 

The confusion trend continues. The next morning we spend the day researching what to do and where to go in Bali. We discover some bits and pieces, but internet research is always frustrating so we go out to find a place nearby which the internet tells us is a nice place to have a drink. The roads are even busier. The traffic noise is too loud to talk over. We are confused. Bali is not meant to be like this.  We have trusted friends who really love it. Are we getting it wrong? Has it changed drastically?

We find the place and it's closed. It doesn't open until the evening. Trip Advisor and Four Square are uninformed, it seems about Bali. We have been struggling all day with out of date information and places which have closed down or are listed in the wrong location. We are getting a bit grumpy. We return home.

Early evening, our host cones to see us. He says he thinks there might be something going on at the   temple down the road for full moon. We ask for further details and he says he isn't sure. He asks his friend. We are confused. It seems there will be dancing and puppetry at the temple. There are many temples. It's the one, he says, at the cross roads and it will start at six thirty.

We go out again, dodge the traffic and walk to the temple. It is deserted. We are walk to other temples. They are also deserted. We are confused.

"Maybe it starts later?" suggests M.

We go back, remove our curry from the fridge, find a way to heat it up with the usual basic cooking supplies, and eat it. It's delicious.

We go back out, dodge the traffic and try the temple again. There area handful of people there, praying and, every so often, being blessed with incense or holy water. It's nice to see but not something you can watch for hours without someone to explain the ceremony to you. There is no indication that there will be anything else happening. We may have been too local in our choice of local place. We hang around for a long time outside the temple. No one speaks English or seems to know what's going on. There are certainly no 'flocks of people' coming to see the dancing. At around nine, we give up. We dodge the traffic. On the way we pass another temple. There is a smiley man outside with good English. He tells us that the ceremony goes on from 7am until 2am. We are confused. We ask about the ceremony. He says they pray and give offerings. It's nice to see and we have googled it whilst hanging around uncertainly outside the temple so we know the ceremony involves holy water, incense and offerings and is intended to spread a sense of calm and cool hot tempers. It does look calming. But we are confused.

We return home. I write this blog.

The fact is this is not unfamiliar on switching countries. In Vietnam I struggled with the traffic on first arrival. In Thailand things seemed to open only at odd, unpredictable hours so we had no idea if we were missing something. In Cambodia we struggled with the traffic. Seeing a theme? (Traffic is a tragedy in these countries. They don't have the infrastructure to support the volume so not only does it create a polluted noisy big city feel even to what should be small, beautiful places but it literally starts to tear the place apart. Tourists don't feel safe walking so they hire motorbikes and the congestion just grows. The culture gets swallowed up by it).

Langkawi and Georgetown were both lovely. (Though the traffic issue is true also for them) Perhaps that has made us forget.

You always spend your first few days confused. You don't have the information. No amount of research can get you to understand the inner workings of your locality and you have probably for tourist brochure imbued images which it just doesn't match up to. You feel stupid and as though you must be missing something. Everyone else seems so self assured. Are they pretending? Or are they just pinging around between the beach and the nightclubs? Because that, at least, is fairly easy. Places are set up for that. Even in the 'local' places, they know where to send you out of town. Say you want a local life experience, arts or culture and you get a much dimmer answer. We are doing it the hard way.

"I thought this would make it better" I say despondently on the way back from the second temple attempt, "I thought we would happen on a brilliant festival and it would make the traffic and the fact that you can't find anything anywhere and are constantly trying not to die on the roadside less disappointing."

"I know," says M wisely, quickly pulling my arm so I jump out of the way of a motorbike, "but you can't engineer serendipity."

This is so poetic I instantly decide I will steal it for my blog title. But he's right. Sometimes something wonderful happens. Sometimes it doesn't. Maybe we did miss an unmissable festival tonight. Or maybe it took place in another locality. Maybe what we saw, the quiet offerings, were more deeply meant and more authentic.

And you do have false starts in new countries. If you ever travel remember that. It will feel like you made a terrible mistake and, as the Dalai Lama will tell you, the higher your expectations, the harder your fall.

We loved Penang. But M was watching the tourist film shown between short films at the Tropfest just a few days ago. 

"It was really sanitised," he told me when I got back from queuing for the loo. "I mean, it is beautiful here but the tourist couple in it were unfeasibly good looking, the birds flew and monkeys jumped from tree to tree in slow motion and the roads were empty except for Trishaws."

We loved Penang. But that's not what it's like. We talk about the more truthful film they could have made. The tourists would be sweaty and running between patches of shade. They would watch their footing as they strolled through the street to avoid falling into the open drains. The roads would be full of cars and motorbikes plus the odd trishaw. The birds would fly so fast you would catch just the briefest, though stunning, glimpse of them. And the monkeys would intimidate you so they could run off with your picnic.

And it would still be compelling. It would still seem, and is, an amazing place to visit.

I have a headache and a certain disinclination for Bali tonight. My tourist film for it would involve the tourist couple being run over and killed. But ask me again in a week or two. I'll probably love it.