‘Alexa you need to turn your lights on’ Ania is shouting back.
I look through my mirror to see what she’s on about it. Alexa’s coming behind me and she has no lights on.
‘Oh fuck’ I call back ‘Alexa turn your lights on’.
‘What?’ she’s saying ‘Oh shit’ and I can see her fiddling with the buttons on her handlebars.
Ania pulls in and I pull in and Alexa pulls in. Ania and I are both looking back at Alexa but her lights still aren’t coming on. I get off my bike and go back to her.
‘Where are the fucking lights?’ she’s going.
I switch them on for her, they are in the same place as they are on mine, and we get going again. We’re on the way to a bar on Batu Bolong beach called Old Man’s. I met Ania on Saturday, my second day in Bali, and Alexa arrived today, Tuesday. We’re all staying at the same hostel, Riviera House, and after getting chatting earlier, we decided to head for a drink together tonight. It’s Ania’s last night, she’s been here for four weeks already and she leaves tomorrow.
That’s the funny thing with travelling; you can make friends really quickly. Or the opposite, you know straight away when you’re not going to become friends with someone. You usually know fairly soon if you click with someone or not. When you’re not feeling it with someone, just don’t bother, it can be painful if someone is persisting on trying to be friends for the sake of it, and it’s just not working. There was this one guy I met in the last hostel I was in in Malaysia and God did he talk some shite. Occasionally we’d have a great chat, I mean when you talk as much as he does, some of it has to be at least decent patter, but mostly I couldn’t listen to him. I’d come down for breakfast in the morning and he’d be there.
‘What you gona do today?’ he’d ask me.
Oh God I’d be thinking, let me have my coffee first man before you start. We’d chat away in the hostel but I would never have left to go anywhere or do anything with him. There’d be no escape then if say we were sitting together in a café, or on a bus somewhere, I’d go out of my mind if I got stuck with him. Lovely fella, just doesn’t know when to give it a rest.
But it was clear from the start that Ania, Alexa and I we were going to get on. I first met Ania outside the hostel. I was trying pathetically to get the hang of how to ride my scooter, just practicing in and around the hostel grounds, and I kept falling off. Ania came walking down the side street towards the hostel, she was asking me if I was ok in her Polish accent, big smile across her face, trying not to laugh. I must have looked a sight. She assured me then that she was the same when she first arrived and now she’s scooting around like a good thing. This was encouraging and I was grateful, though I was thinking she’s just being nice, no one could be as useless as me at this, especially at that point. I couldn’t turn a corner without falling off. She gave me a few tips like lean into the corner when you’re turning, which helped, and told me to keep trying, that I would get it. She was right of course and now I am also scooting around like a good thing.
Which is just as well, because if I wasn’t then I wouldn’t be able to go on this night out to Old Man’s pub as an independent woman of the world, mistress of my own scooter, like we three are right now, tearing up the road like bosses.
It was me who met Alexa first too, and I liked her straight away when she wasn’t saying very much, just taking things easy and not in a race to find out everything about me in one go, like so many people you meet in hostels. What’s your name, where are you from, how long are you staying, what have you seen so far, it’s so exhausting having this same conversation over and over again. Alexa didn’t do that to me and I didn’t do it to her. We just chatted about yoga and I don’t know, I think I was telling her about my scooter mission and I asked her if she wanted a cup of tea, which she did. It was cool seeing her and Ania meet as well, I knew they were clicking by their facial expressions and body language towards each other. Ania’s face was lit up like Christmas. She is quite a smiley person, but it’s a genuine smile, she just has a lust for life and sees the good in things. And Alexa was sitting comfortably just chatting and shooting out a few jokes. She has a sort of dry, subtle sense of humour that only comes out when she is comfortable with someone.
So we arrive to Old Man’s, which is pretty much right on the beach and Ania gets us sorted with a bottle opener to get our beers opened. We’ve brought a beer each with us to get us going, and save a bit of dough on the first drink. This was Ania’s idea; she’s the old pro, having been here a few weeks already. They’re a bit cheaper from the shops, not much, but every little helps and it just saves you having to queue at the bar first thing. It fast tracks you into the vibe.
We decide to do a lap of the place first to get our bearings, see what we’re up against. All you can see are long, tanned, toned limbs, gyrating in the music. The mean age is about 25 we reckon, all gorgeous young things out to score. Everybody’s sweating and dancing, there’s a game of beer pong going on in one part of the bar, which looks like a bit of craic. We stop and watch for a bit; all three of us agree that the guy in the white teeshirt straight across from us is hot, a unanimous verdict. He’s also watching the beer pong. He’s about 5.11’’ I’d say, tanned and toned (obviously) has brown hair and a beard. He’s drinking a beer and what I most like about him is he’s not looking around trying to eye talent, he’s just casually watching the beer pong, unselfconsciously.
We find a spot under a fan and get into the dancing, A couple of guys and a girl have gotten up onto a table in the middle of the bar and are strutting their stuff, having a bit of a dance off. This is getting us going. It’s like everyone’s energy is just vibrating through the bar as one single pulse, we’re all just here to have a good time. We’re in the moment. The girl, who I think is European, is beautiful I say and she is giving the local Balinese guys as much as she is getting, she is holding her own no problem. She does the slut drop and slides back up provocatively.
‘She is a great dancer’ Ania says ‘but I wish I didn’t have to see her thong, and she is full of herself’.
She’s wearing a long, loose, sheer dress and you can see her underwear.
‘True’ I say ‘but still, fair fucks’.
When she gets down I wink at her and touch my index finger to my thumb to say ‘perfect’, she does it back to me. Justin Bieber’s Sorry is on. And this is one of the good songs; the music is mostly shit.
‘I’m going to head to the ladies’ I say. Alexa says she has to go too so we go together. The queue is about ten people deep and pouring out into the bar. A middle-aged Ozzie women rocks up behind us.
‘Aw wow, look at this queue’ she drawls, she’s beaming from ear to ear and still dancing, Billie Jean is on now, she’s having a good time.
‘I know, when are we going to evolve to have penises?’ Alexa says.
‘You want a penis love?’ the Ozzie goes.
‘I’d take one for like a day’ Alexa says ‘and piss on everything’ she says still straight-faced. Me and the Ozzie woman break out laughing.
There’s no toilet roll in the toilets so we just have to use the spray hose thingy to wash, I’m actually getting kind of used to it. When I first encountered this system in India, my main concern was how do you dry off. But you just do and it’s fine.
Alexa heads back to Ania and I say I’m going to scope things out a bit more on my own. I shimmy through the dancefloor and I’m just shaking it by myself on the edge, where people are smoking and chatting when I hear a voice go,
‘Hey Evelyn, is that you?’
I pretend I don’t know who it is, but I do. It’s the guy who stuck his boner into the back of me a couple of days ago, while giving me a ‘scooting lesson’. I put the quote marks because it was really just an excuse to perv. He stayed on the scooter and stretched around me so he also had his hands on the handlebars. I had no room to move and when I felt his hard-on I said thanks but I have to go now. He gave me his number but I was never going to call him after that stunt. Eventually I admit I recognise him, his name is Arno. But I don’t give him much and after a bit he gives up and goes away.
I head back to the girls and find them engrossed watching a couple sitting a few feet away having what looks like a lover’s tiff. We’re all sucking on I think beer number three by now. They fill me in on the story they have imagined about this couple. She has cheated on him and is trying desperately to apologise and get him back, but he’s having none of it. He’s sitting on top of a bench with his arms folded and his feet on the seat part. She is standing in front of him trying to break him down, trying to get in there, she’s hammered.
‘There is obviously something between them’ Ania goes ‘otherwise he would just walk away’.
‘Yea’ Alexa agrees ‘where are her friends man, someone needs to tell her to get it together’.
The guy is holding an unlit cigarette.
‘Will I go over and light his cigarette?’ Ania asks us.
‘Do it girl, that dude needs to be saved’ Alexa goes, she’s from NYC.
Ania struts over with her lighter in hand. We’re watching her, laughing. She offers the guy her lighter. He laughs, surprised, and takes it. The girl ignores her. He lights his cigarette and just gives it back. He doesn’t take the bait and Ania comes back, grinning.
‘What more can I do?’ she’s shrugging, ‘he must be a glutton for punishment’.
We get another beer and dance some more. We’re giving it but the music is not getting any better so about midnight we decide to hit the road. Ania wants to get up about 7 in the morning for an early surf.
There’s a moment of panic when we get to our scooters when Ania says she can’t find her key. She’s rooting in her bag cursing in Polish. But then she finds it in her pocket and we get going. Ania’s out in front eating up the road, then me, then Alexa; the same positions as before. My view is of the back of Ania, her shoulders back and straight, sitting like a queen on a throne, leaning into the corners, her short blond curls peeking out under her helmet, blowing in the breeze.
We stop for food at a roadside stall and end up gate-crashing a group of locals having a little party. They’re passing around a bottle of the local brew Arak and ask us to join them. The owner of the stall serves us up a plate of Nasi Goreng each, we get a snifter of the Arak, and sing a couple of songs with them, the usual numbers; Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Imagine, Hotel California.
The following afternoon Ania leaves for Thailand. It’s not an emotional goodbye, she’s just moving on, it’s the nature of the beast. We hug, exchange Whatsapp and Facebook details and wave her goodbye. When she’s out of sight I turn to Alexa and ask her does she fancy going a yoga class. She does.
Another one bites the dust.
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I’ve worked in Man in the Moon, Irish pub in Kyoto since October 2016, about a year and a half now, and its such a fun job. We have fun while we work and of course end up drinking…a lot. So I drink a lot of beer, the occasional red wine, I’m known to be partial to the odd gin and tonic, in the wee hours one for the road often turns into a whiskey. I suppose I knock back a jaeger bomb or baby guinness now and then too when the craic is good. Okay so I’ve tried a good few things. But I feel like I always just drink beer. And when customers ask me to recommend something, Id like to be more fluent in talking about our menu. I have always been one to value personal experience so Ive set myself the challenge of personally trying everything on the menu, in order that I can give my own opinion when people ask about stuff. Orrrr its just an excuse to drink and pretend Im doing important research for my job!
