Chasing Amy-Lou

Canggu, Bali, Indonesia;

I awoke today with every intention of pushing the past few days’ unfortunate weather events and dog escapades behind me. I was ready to tackle whatever was thrown in my direction and I was hoping that Karma would finally send me some good fortune.

As if reading my mind (she must’ve heard my desperate plea bargaining) and deciding to toy with me some more, today Karma sent me some of the worst luck I’ve had so far on this trip.

Now, the day didn’t start out too badly, I hired a bicycle from Gusti and planned a route that would take me to the sacred Hindu pilgrimage temple at Tanah Lot, around 12kms west of where I was staying. Accepting the fact that it was going to rain (the skies were doing angry retching sounds above my head) I donned my attractive yellow poncho and set off on my cycle. Of course though, true to the form of the last few days, as I got about three kilometres into my ride the heavens opened and I got absolutely drenched (attractive yellow poncho definitely not waterproof).

Powering on, determined not to let a little bit of water halt my plans, I slogged my way up hills, past rice fields, and over bridges, all the while trying my best not to let the rain get further into my eyes than it already had done – I could feel the sunscreen sliding across my eyeballs, stinging my irises; rain and sweat dripping from my nose and slipping down my chin.

And then just like that, the rain stopped. I was almost at Tanah Lot, the bloody rain stopped and the sun burst through the clouds. Thinking my soggy clothes and drowned rat appearance would look just a little out of place among the bone dry tourists I’d seen driving past me in nice, air-conditioned buses, I made a pit-stop at Starbucks (don’t judge me – it was the only place I knew for sure would have decent toilets and sanitation facilities). Drying off the best I could, wiping away the panda-like mascara from under my eyes and trying to regain some form of dignity and composure, I bought an overpriced flat white, flattened down my frizzing hair and peddled on to continue the final leg of the journey.

Tanah Lot was busy. Heaving in fact. I thought I’d managed to escape the hoards of selfie-stick wielding Chinese tourists when I’d left mainland South East Asia. No such luck. However, I cast my indifferences aside, took a deep breath, and proceeded to the site of the famous temple. Resting on a rock just off the coast, the Pura Tanah Lot temple stands silent and still as the waves crash and swirl around it. At low tide you can walk across the bay and up to the rock, but today the waves were too strong and the tide flowed closely to the shore preventing all but two dedicated and very brave pilgrims from crossing.

Legend has it that upon discovering the rock, the Hindu traveller, Niratha, told the fishermen in the area to build a shrine on it as he felt it was a holy place from which to worship the sea gods. It has been a part of Balinese mythology for centuries and is one of the seven sea temples situated around the Balinese coast (perhaps the most famous being the Uluwatu temple situated at the extreme south west of the island). At the base of the rock, venomous sea snakes were said to have guarded the temple from evil spirits.

As I gallantly made an effort to distance myself from the gaggle of tourists, traversing the slippery rocks and evading the waves of the high tide, I scrambled across the bay to where I assumed the walk to the base of the temple would start once the tide had gone out. It was there that I found a sign directing me to the ‘holy snake’. “This should be interesting”, I thought. The ‘holy snake’ turned out not to be a ‘holy snake’…not really anyway. What I found was a little Balinese man who was taking donations so he could shine a torch onto two snakes he was keeping guard over and tell tourists that they were the ‘holy sea snakes’ who protected the temple; these same two snakes I guessed, were not left free to frolic and swim in the shores of Tanah Lot (hissing if they spotted any enemies trying to invade) once the site closed, but would get taken back to the snake farm near the entrance. “Clever ploy”, I thought. Very clever ploy.

Nevertheless, despite the blatant tourist trap, I found the snakes, the little Balinese man, and the whole of Tanah Lot to be very endearing. And with the sun on my back I took a few photos, wandered around the site for another 30 minutes then jumped back on my bike and cycled the 12kms back to Gusti’s.

Along the way I made another pit-stop; this time not at a Starbucks but at a beach – Pererenen beach. With the sun still high in the sky and the ocean looking extremely inviting I made the most of the glorious weather, purchased a Bintang from one of the beach bars, plonked myself down on the sand and watched the world pass me buy for an hour.

Now, you’re probably wondering why at the beginning of this post I wrote that today Karma had dealt me some of the worst luck I’d had on this trip. And you’d be right to wonder why, because today, aside from the rain, it was so far so good, correct? Well, forgive me for speaking too soon and expecting too much of my old friend Karma, for what happened next, on my way to dinner, made me think that Karma really didn’t care at all.

Last night I’d witnessed a dog being run over by a scooter. This morning on my way to Tanah Lot I checked back to see if the dog was still in its resting place. It wasn’t so I assumed it had been rescued by its owner or it had recovered enough to pick itself up and move on. My conscience therefore became clear – I was no longer responsible for the dog and all was good with the world. Well well well, turns out that my foray with dogs wasn’t quite over, and that night, Karma (because I’m blaming her for a lot of things), hoping to get me back for not contacting the vet about the canine hit and run, decided to bring another dog to me. Although this time instead of it being a cute little black thing who wanted to follow me around, it was a vicious, fang-baring, ugly, mangey looking horror who, without provocation decided to bite me. Yep, that’s right – tonight ladies and gentlemen, I got bitten by a dog.

Dogs are rife in Bali; some are docile and leave tourists well alone, some roam the streets (in packs) barking and terrorising innocent passers-by like me; some have owners, some are strays. A while after the biting incident, Gusti told me that most dogs on Bali had been injected for rabies – a government initiative to protect the people, the tourists and of course the dogs themselves. At the time of sharp-toothed contact though, I was blissfully unaware of this. And naturally, I panicked.

Feeling severely shocked and wanting to cry but not knowing whether to run or kick the dog in the face, I stood still, trembling and on the verge of a total meltdown. As I mentioned yesterday, I hadn’t had a rabies vaccination; I’d decided against it before setting off on my travels last year, saying to the nurse, “No, I won’t be going near any rabid, mangey dogs, I’ll be alright, I don’t need a rabies shot.” Hahaha! More fool me.

Trying to calm my breathing and trying not to make any sudden movements that might cause the dog to pounce again, I was relieved when a gorgeous young Balinese man came to see if I was ok. Telling him I was in shock (which he could probably see already) and that I wanted to speak to the owner, he shouted out until a middle-aged woman appeared from an alley. “Is this your dog?”, he asked her in Balinese. She nodded. I then frantically asked him to tell the lady that if the dog wasn’t taken inside and kept there, and if I saw it again then I would be calling the police to have it taken away. Gorgeous Balinese man relayed this information to the lady. Whether she cared or not I don’t know, but she did boot the dog in the ribs and tell it to get down the alley.

Satisfied that I hopefully wouldn’t see the dog again that night, I took a look at my leg. Expecting to see streams and streams of blood, and flaps of flesh hanging around my shin, I was quite relieved to find there was no blood and the dog hadn’t even broken the skin. “You should go to the hospital you know”, said gorgeous Balinese man, “we don’t know about the dogs here, you need to protect yourself, we don’t know if the dog has disease or not.”

Feeling slightly relieved that I wasn’t going to be scarred, but also fearing for my life a little (I did not want to be leaving Bali and returning to England in a coffin, foam still emanating from my mouth, brain shrivelled to a cerebral mess) and despite there being no puncture, I decided it was better to be safe than face certain and sudden death, so I took gorgeous Balinese man’s advice, thanked him profusely,and scurried off to the hospital.

Karma has been a right bitch these last few days, and I was beginning to give up all hope of anything good ever happening on this trip. I wouldn’t have been surprised if tomorrow there was an earthquake followed by a tsunami just as I decided to do some innocent sunbathing at the beach. Bali seemed to be dealing me a shit hand – it was a far cry from the experience I’d had two years ago – but…it was only four days in, and not being one to fall at the first hurdle, I reluctantly and begrudgingly (cursing the damn dog) handed my card over to the hospital admin team and payed for the post-exposure rabies vaccination, all the while, praying with determined grit, emitting as many positive thoughts as I could and thinking to myself, “tomorrow would definitely be a better day. It had to be.”