After the Russian pirates it was time for the Dutch jazz musicians. All morning long the teenagers played buccaneers fighting off costumed pirates storming the good ship Katherina. With their foes-for-hire vanquished, it was now time for Willem, Hans and Ferry to come aboard with their keyboards and bass flown in all the way from Holland.
That early May morning we drove along the dock in Serangan and boarded the converted pinisi sailing schooner right behind the musician’s instruments. The stately Katherina has plied the waters of the archipelago for 12 years. Her cabins are small, reminiscent of a high-class train cabin, with an emphasis of style over space, but we were here to live the destination and not the space. My first order of business was to show Fajar, my four-year-old son, the smelly and noisy engine room which I thought would delight him, but it turned out to be disappointingly clean and quiet. Before long we pulled away from the dock and motored out into the Badung Strait for the six hour passage to Lombok, following the shore at first, then entering the deeper waters along Bali’s east coast. I could make out the long white strip of Sanur Beach and the boxlike Sukarno-era Bali Beach Hotel and to the west the island of Nusa Penida to the east before opening the throttle as we headed into the choppy open sea.
Cool sea air and spray soon enveloped the ship. We were crossing the Lombok Strait, an unpredictable four-kilometers-deep sea trench that for millennia stopped dead the natural migration of hundreds of species of plants and animals. The strait marks the legendary Wallace Line, the divide between Asia and Australia. As the Balinese say, looking across this windy, swirling and dangerous body of water towards the southeastern isles: “Here the tigers end.” If this strait had been shallower or less subject to ship-swallowing sea changes, there could’ve been elephants in Australia. Seabirds skimmed the water as the sun set, as mellow as a Cole Porter song. An orange moon, enfolded by dark clouds, rose up as we dropped anchor down the coast from Lembar, Lombok’s main harbor. The evening air changed from hot to balmy. After a delicious communal dinner with wine on top of the hatch, Willem, Hans and Ferry struck up A Lady Be Good as Indonesian crew looked on incredulously. In our cabin we could hear dancing and merriment above, the Dutch chattering like sparrows, as we fell asleep around 11 pm to the tune of How Deep The Ocean. I got up in the middle of the morning and all the wine glasses and ashtrays had vanished. Two Indonesian crew members were taking in the evening air, pointing out the lights of Lembar in the distance under the stars.
Our next port of call that morning was Gili Trawangan, the largest and most populated of three tiny resort islands off Lombok’s northwest coast. We boarded a dinghy until we got close enough to jump out into the waves and waded ashore. The atmosphere was relaxed with only a seaside path lined with small hotels, open-air cafes and pizza joints. It suddenly occurred to me that the island possessed no dogs, sputtering motorbikes or pushy vendors. In fact, the only sounds heard were of bicycle wheels, the clip-clop of horse carts and the soft steps of pedestrians. As only an island can do, the place stirred quiet reflection. From an outdoor café I contemplated the Katherina sitting peacefully at anchor through the trees.
Bali’s Premier Offshore Playground
We didn’t bother with breakfast. They would feed us when we got there. The important thing was to get the kid up and make sure we’re at the Bali Hai terminal by 8:30 a.m. We parked the car, breezed through a security inspection, checked in and joined the teeming dockside reception hall just as the crowd began streaming down the gangplank between two Balinese legong dancers to the waiting ship. Onboard the crew gave my son Fajar a coloring book and crayons while the band played Have I told you Lately that I Love You. In the enclosed air-conditioned seating area I glanced around at the passengers - Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, an atypical extended family of 11 Indians, Russians and a few token Australians and Americans - reflecting the new face of Bali tourism. So many nationalities that the taped safety message took a five minutes to play in five languages.
Cutting through the water, we crossed the Badung Strait in under an hour. Our destination was Nusa Lembongan, a small low dry island inhabited by fishermen and seaweed farmers located 12 kilometers from Bali’s eastern coast. Ringed by palms and sugary sand beaches, it offers excellent surfing, beachcombing, sunbathing, diving and snorkeling in its many shallow bays, channels and coral reefs. Bali Hai Cruises, established in 1990, are old hands at maritime tourism and popular with families, couples and small groups of friends. We had signed up for the all-day “Island Beach Club Cruise,” an unreservedly kid-friendly soft adventure. The pride of the fleet is a giant 3-deck catamaran, Bali Hai II which looks like a cross between a luxurious private yacht and a modern love boat.
A scenic white sand beach curving around a lagoon came into view. Spread out under coconut palms, the Bali Hai’s Beach Club complex is totally dedicated to the fabulously non-extreme pursuits of seaside recreation: ping-pong, volley ball, massage and manicure pavilions, and distinctive rice-barn shaped bungalows for those who want to stay over. The life-guard fetched a life-jacket and Fajar started splashing about the amoeba-shaped swimming pool and waterfalls. Most of the day-trippers choose to nap, relax, drift off with a book or perfect their tan. At around noon the bamboo kulkul sounded and people started making their way to the open-air restaurant for the freshly prepared grilled lunch buffet while a live trio played Western slow-rock. A young woman sang a haunting melody in Mandarin while the Indonesian musicians obligingly strummed along.
We spent the rest of the afternoon romping around the kid’s playground and playing in the pool and hammocks until the kulkul sounded again. At least three different types of watercraft then converged on the shore to pick up their respective guests for their return passage to Bali, suddenly leaving the environs and the beach almost totally to ourselves. As evening set in, we retired to our cozy hut. The night was deliciously quiet, the fresh air replacing the sultry day, the far off lights of Gianyar twinkling, and overhead - without any other competing lights - the clarity and beauty of the magnificent Southern Cross.
Dimana Ibu?
As we walked along the coral back lanes to our new hotel, every Balinese woman asked me where my four-year-old son’s mother was. They were puzzled to see a bule walking alone with a four-year-old Indonesian boy trailing behind lugging an oversized backpack. “Bringing in the rice harvest,” I told one woman, and the news carried like a flash. When I gave my son Fajar time out for pestering me about buying him an Upin dan Ipin t-shirt, they were even more astonished. One woman picked him up and told me “He’s crying.”
“I know he’s crying” I laughed, taking my son from her arms and climbing up the coral stairway into the expansive sandy property of the Waka Nusa resort sprawling under stately palms. Our tropical bungalow, given the exotic name lanai, was tucked away in back within its own enclosure through a narrow gateway. The hive-like structure reminded me of a fanciful children’s play house made of handcrafted alang-alang thatch roofs, polished wood fittings and rafters, smooth earth-colored contours, reminiscent of a building style found in the outlying islands of eastern Indonesia. For the rest of the day we could hear the sounds of a nearby village with its lowing cows, and roosters going off every two minutes. Perhaps that’s why this hospitality company calls itself the “Waka Experience,” a homey natural theme repeated creatively in different ways through all six of the its properties on land and sea. But Waka Nusa is different than the other Wakas in not having intercoms, radios, TVs or telephones in the rooms. In the evening I read Fajar his favorite books and we fell asleep lulled by the wind in the palms, the distant breaking of surf, the occasional pig squealing in the night. We awoke to the sound of birds.
We ate breakfast on a small table on the edge of the coral wall overlooking the beach. The resort’s cuisine was outrageously delicious and beautifully presented. In between courses, Fajar played in the sand while I just gazed out at the bobbing fishing boats, the row of rainbow-colored jukung and watched a woman place offerings in the nearby segara temple shaded by an old kapok tree. The mornings along the shore of this lagoon were blissfully quiet until around 11 am when the tourist launches start bringing in day visitors. Later that afternoon, after a thankfully overcast “village tour” to the seaweed gardens, we boarded the launch to take us to the Waka sailing catamaran for our return trip to Bali. Underway, we could see the Bali Hai II at a distance powering past us. At 36 knots, it takes the big ship only an hour to make the return passage to Bali while our 20-ton catamaran does the crossing at a more leisurely 15 knots in one and a half hours.
What little Fajar liked immediately about this handsome 18-m-long sailing vessel were its big nets stretched out over the water in the ship’s fore. He was at first hesitant, then became emboldened when I crept onto the net, until finally he was bouncing around and peering all the way under the ship to the stern. In the harbor we slowly cruised by motorboats, cabin cruisers, svelte sailboats, listing freighters, work-a-day fishing boats, and even passed an ocean-going yacht from Falmouth in my home state of Massachusetts. A long way from home. By this time Fajar was also starting to feel a long way from home. It was time to get him back to his mother.
Practicalities
P.T. Pinisi Duta Bahari (Seatrek), Jl. Bypass Ngurah Rai 245, Sanur, tel. 0361-283-358, fax: 0361-283-357; website: http://www.katharina.seatrekbali.com/; reservations: info@seatrekbali.com. The Katharina has four double cabins, two twin cabins and one family cabin, each with its own private toilet and hot and cold-water shower. Boarding is on Saturday mornings in Serangan for the weekend cruise to Lombok and the Gilis. Tours include visits to a monkey forest and pottery and weaving villages on Lombok. Price: USD820/person sharing a double or twin cabin, USD1435 per cabin single occupancy. During July and August these prices are USD 885 and 1550 respectively.
Bali Hai “Island Beach Club Cruise,” tel. 0361-720-331, booking: sales@balihaicruises.com, website: www.balihaicruises.com. Boarding at 8:45, departure 9:15 a.m., returns at 4:15 p.m. Prices: USD95 per person, children 4 to 14 years half fare, infants under 4 free, family USD256 (2 adults and up to 3 children 4-14 years). Price includes: a/c hotel transfers, continental breakfast, BBQ lunch, snorkeling equipment, village excursion, semi submarine, unlimited banana boat rides, sea kayaks, beach/pool games, children’s activities. Optional: scuba diving USD40 off the pontoon, one boat dive USD50 and USD70 for two, introductory scuba diving program USD50, parasailing USD20.
Waka Nusa Resort, Nusa Lembongan, tel. 0366-24477, fax 0366-24477, website: www.wakaexperience.com, email: reservation@wakaexperience.com. Each of the 10 a/c lanai is 8-sq.-m and costs USD140 per night including American breakfast. Internet rate is USD136 net. Lunch and dinner $12 to $24. Transfers from Benoa $35++ per person. Children under 5 free, children 6-11 charged 50%. All prices subject to 21% tax and service. Babysitting available. Activities include visits to inland villages, beach picnics, cooking classes, snorkeling, diving, boogie boarding, table tennis, badminton, volley ball, push bikes, spa center.
