Travel Book Review ~ Bali Blues by Jeremy Allan

Bali Blues by Jeremy Allan. Published 2005 by Media Makara, Depansar, Bali. 255 pages. Currently out of print. We have a copy at the time of writing, click here to check.

Both Alison & I read this book and enjoyed it immensely. The author is a Canadian expat writer/journo based in Jakarta since 1980 who comes to Kuta, Bali to cover the aftermath of the Bali Bomb, and to help a film crew with a documentary. He has been visiting Kuta for over 20 years, speaks fluent Indonesian and knows many of the locals. The book gives an insight into the affect of the bombings on Kuta residents, with the personal stories of many Kuta locals. I particularly enjoyed reading about the lives the folks you have may have met or seen in Kuta: the massage ladies; the beach drink guys; hotel staff; the surfboard hire dudes; the hookers; the Javanese rich kids whose parents buy them businesses to keep them out of Jakarta; and those dudes that just seem to hang around all the time waiting for something to come their way, the “Kuta Cowboys”. The author also delves into some history, spiritualism and culture.

The book is structured around the goings-on of his visit and his platonic, fatherly relationship with a Javanese prostitute, which was a bit odd. I must admit I skipped through the last couple of chapters detailing some mystery to do with an Aussie surfer who disappeared after the bomb and his relationship with two prostitutes, a vehicle to tell a much bigger story. This is the first book I have read on Bali, perhaps there are more detailed and scholarly books on Bali, but this one I found interesting and entertaining, with great insights into everyday life in Kuta, I just couldn’t put it down.

I really enjoyed the bits and pieces about everyday life which are easy to overlook. I enjoyed this little piece about a local arak drinking club that gathered next to Paddy's nightclub and managed to escape injury on the night of the blast::

"Aaron took advantage of the new face in the audience to launch into a potted history of the "Misbar", the sardonic term they give to their open-air drinking venue. Misbar is an acronym of the Indonesian words gerimis bubar, when it rains, everyone scatters. Aaron claimed that the Misbar, established in 1998, hosts the longest-running arak-drinking club in Kuta. Membership regulations are simple: anyone can join, but at the first sign of trouble, you are out, never to be invited back. Aaron maintained that this zero-tolerance policy for disrespect and violence was the secret to the group's exceptional longetivity. He illustrated the Misbar's eclectic membership by pointing to each patron in turn: Java, neighbouring Lombok and islands to the east, Kalimanta, and Sumatra. There were several Balinese as well, including a native of Kuta. Professions include tour guide, handicraft factory workers, even a low-ranking solider. The usual venue for the Misbar was the parking lot of the hotel adjacent to Paddy's. However since the area was now filled with police and pecalang, Kuta's sarong clad community milita, the Misbar was relocated temporarily to Jalan Mataram." 

I also really enjoyed his passage about Kuta before mainstream tourism hit, this was as late as early 1980s...

"I will never forget my first sight of Kuta Beach. Soon after dawn, I walked along a footpatch leading from the "homestay" - the backpackers' lodging where I has spent my first night in Bali - following the sound of the breakers until I emerged from a stand of coconut palms to see a sweeping panorama of golden-gray sand sloping down to the sea. The beach was almost deserted at that hour. Balinese men in ragged shorts and conical straw hats stood knee-deep in the waves, fishing with wooden poles and casting two-meter-long nets with practiced grace. A few surfers, mostly western with a sprinkling of Balinese, rode the breaking swells. I walked along the sands until I reached a thatch-roofed hut, open on three sides, with a battered wooden sign announcing "Brekfast". ...Two decades later, I was enjoying a cup of fine cappuccino near the spot where once I had sat in blissful rapture picking coffee grounds from my teeth. "

Bali Blues by Jeremy Allan. Published 2005 by Media Makara, Depansar, Bali. 255 pages. Currently out of print. We have a copy at the time of writing, click here to check.