I am abandoning chronological day-reporting. We'll be here forever.
After chopping it up with a young Australian family at The Flow about our next location, I was feeling overly confident about my upcoming Bingin Beach destination choice. More surf, less hoards, group outdoor workouts, white sand beaches. I revisit the Airbnb listing to confirm my sneaking suspicious of absolutely nailing it and notice a call out to follow on Instagram. Curious and eager for continued endorsement wherever I can scrape it, I click the link and am met with what can best be described as soft core influencer porn. Many, many tan, gorgeous, tiny tiny girls, trying their hand at becoming famous - tangled wistfully in the sheets in the expanse of a bed that my mother and I will be sharing in two days. I bury the shame.
Our location is gorgeous. The town cascades down a sheer cliffside, tucked among trees and animals, funneling down into a small, clear, perfect Bingin Beach. It takes two porters half hour size scaling the cliffside like billygoats (in flip flops!) and trudging across scalding sand with our overpacked Away’s to get to our villa. The accommodation is isolated, carved out of the cliff edge with 180 degree views of the gold and blue, and sometimes pink and yellow coast. The view is breathtaking.
The catch? It’s an inferno of hot white heat and international pandemic hell. We are managing Coronavirus and the ever-changing landscape of international customs that comes with it, resulting in a flurry of canceled return flights (effectively nulling our travel insurance), rebooking, and subsequent next-day refresh of customs protocol. This means, you guessed it, another round of re-canceling and rebooking. This proves a challenge with the spotty internet and international phone service - but we pull it off, somehow. In between these scrambles we do our best to fold into the lackadaisical pace of Bingin Beach.
It's a surf town. Mornings are up with the sun, coming to your blue on blue surroundings behind the the steady current of a mosquito net and the sound of a fan. To your left is jungle canopy. Doors must stay closed or you will have monkeys with your Airpods in. After catching up with the other side of the world, a knock on the door brings in lazy breakfasts in bed - Balinese coffee with brown sugar and dragonfruit smoothie bowls. Tiny cream and tiny spoons.
Activity on some mornings consists of hiking the Santorini-like stairs to grab food at Cashew Tree and hitting the open gym at Bali Training Center, other days a refreshing morning swim with low tide clear waters suffice. On the last day I do this, I see a sting ray and decide it is a good time to leave.
Kelly’s Wahrung proves itself the cornerstone of Bingin and our general default, with pop music, cold beers, a rooftop bar, and no urgency to leave. I guzzle a vegan coconut milkshake within minutes of initially arriving to Bingin, which is too much for my overheated body to handle, and will attempt to dry heave it up later. Mom has nasi goreng and watches my stuff while I surf.
I do not know how to surf but this is what I gather when I try:
-Surfing, for novices, is an extension of a bar scene. People chatting, getting to know each other, showing off when they can. You get to bail from conversation if a wave is coming.
-Having a swimming background makes me appear to have some kind of idea what I’m doing
-I have no idea what I’m doing
-This thing happens where you don’t want to get in people’s way as you figure things out, so you start too far back, knowing you can probably muscle your way up front if you really have to, sort of catch a wave, back out of it because you really, honestly don’t think it will carry your body weight, and then the real waves start coming and you are absolutely fucked. It's all good practice, I guess.
I am satisfied with the 3 waves I catch on the first day. Thing's will improve.
Afternoons are spent on our wrap around patio. Josée is just easy this way and it's so relaxing to RELAX, sunning and drinking mixed cocktails that we've ordered to-go from the bar next door. I kept meaning to read my book but instead would just look out at the ocean. It's too pretty. Sundowners are a real thing for us, which is a surprise to no one - mostly gin and tonics. We don't miss a sunset.
Nights are a bit trickier. Most days we are so wiped from the heat and too scared to face the cliff at night that we skip dinner entirely and go to bed at 8:30 - that's the reality about how intense of a location this is and how badly I want to get skinny here. I also get annihilated by mosquitos once the sun goes down so I kind of veer on the side of keeping it DL. It's worth mentioning.
One fine day, with Emma's counsel, we decide to take a break from the outback and visit Bulgari Resort. Craft cocktails. A dip in the pool. VIEWS. LUXURY. When we arrive and mention this to them at the front desk (THE PLAN HAD BEEN VETTED! Albeit like 8 years ago) and we get the nicest, most courteous version possible of a "…..not so fast." We adjust and decide to instead have cocktails at the bar and spend every minute trying to change their minds (very similar to my master negotiation class in Canggu post). This is a game for my mom, which I know, because I know her, so the more we drink, the bolder we get, and even though there is no one in the pool or AT THIS HOTEL AT ALL, these little cuties stick to their damn guns and we do not ever go in the pool. I honestly can't believe it. We still love them. To be so nice to people who you know are trying to scam you takes a certain kind of wonderful.
The day is decadent. The views, the deep dark slate contrasting the azure blue, the heated Toto toilet seats. Perfect weather. Within a few minutes of being there you realize how accustomed to and absolutely at home you feel in Western accommodations, which is frightening because the privilege default in you runs that deep. This will never not be amazing to me, and I will always be appreciative of it, and not it. ALSO, Bulgari is ITALIAN???? I am thrilled to see prosciutto and melon, fresh pastas, breads. With the separate Indo / Italy menu offering - we stick with what we miss.
Back at home - it would behoove me to not mention the omnipresent influencer culture at stunningly gorgeous Bingin. This spans from our flat mates, whose name I begin into Instagram, serves her account AS THE TOP HIT for me - to the photoshoots happening in every corner of the parlor space ("Silks??” In this heat??" - Jos). This extends to the beach, and everyone whose sunset pictures I am in the background of from the evening of Tuesday, February 4th, starfished in the middle of the ocean, just happy to be there. I start to feel guilt about this crashing but retract it - maybe me, floating far out to sea in the background of some poor people’s photo, blissed out in my pink and orange sunset bathwater will serve as a gentle reminder that we have options.
Or I will be edited out in post-production to never have existed at all.
Which I am okay with too.