Bali and The Legend of Chuck the Gecko

Ahhh procrastination, that beautiful double-edged sword, offering the sweet, sweet satisfaction of avoiding the dreary task of doing something productive while simultaneously doing something decidedly unproductive and significantly more entertaining. It’s truly a beautiful thing. Most of the time…until that useful thing, you know, really needs to be done. At that point, shockingly, it seems like watching Netflix until it asks you, “hey, are you seriously still watching?” was maybe, possibly not the best idea. Sometimes though, waiting to do something can allow for a different perspective or approach to develop, which leads to seeing and doing things in new ways. And, although it’s pretty clear at this point that I’m just trying to justify my own procrastination of writing about a trip we took over 3 months ago, I think there’s some truth to it; thinking about our trip now, what’s stuck in our memories is different than what I would have written about the day after our trip, and they’re likely the things we’ll remember a long time from now.

3am, rooster, gigantic gecko, and a monkey on a child’s head. Stream of consciousness, those are the first memories that came back to me. Why? Maybe it’s because the MOTHER OF ALL GECKOS (and at least one of her sisters) was chilling on the ceiling of our AirBnB in Ubud, hiding in the rafters, shifting about, watching our every move while it clearly plotted to snuggle us in bed as we slept. The thing was HUGE! It was seriously at least 12 inches long, which, as I’m typing, I’m realizing doesn’t sound all that impressive, but you have to trust me on this. (I feel sort of like Tim in Monty Python describing the killer rabbit at this point…). Anyway, a particularly random fact about Mandi and I (and I promise, this is going somewhere) is that we occasionally give names to animals that we meet on our various adventures. For example, many years ago on a trip to Sayulita, Mexico (go there, it’s fantastic), Mandi started calling all geckos “Charlies.” There is no particular reason for this, but, forevermore, when we spot a gecko, one of us will shout, “charlie!” This gecko in Bali though, this gecko was no Charlie. This gecko, my friends, was a Chuck. A big, huge Chuck. Unfortunately, I had to keep this Chuck (apparently a Tokay Gecko) to myself until our last day in Ubud because Mandi definitely wouldn’t have slept knowing that our friend was hanging out up there, lurking about.

And as for the rooster, I had always assumed that roosters were nature’s alarm clock. Sun comes up, rooster automatically detects the sun with its special rooster senses, and the rooster cock-a-doodle-doos for the world to know it’s time to get up. This is what cartoons had taught me. I have shocking news for you all, but it seems that cartoons have lied. 3 am, pitch black outside, sun not coming up for another 3 hours, and this rooster is either broken or roosters are not alarm clocks because it continued its efforts to wake up humanity for the next several hours. It succeeded in its efforts. For the next 3 hours every 10 minutes like the world’s most annoying snooze button this rooster did a job no one wanted it to do. On the plus side, the early wake-up call led to a sunrise walk along a ridge outside of town as we made our way to a breakfast place overlooking rice paddies mirroring the sunlight and backed by mountains in the distance. So I guess we’ll call it even with Mr. Rooster?

More important than early wake up calls though, a monkey was on a child’s head. Hanging out. Not leaving. Content with his place in the world, as though he was born to sit atop this child’s noggin. And, perhaps, this monkey was correct because, somehow, this 10-year-old seemed perfectly relaxed with this monkey perched there, creating the strangest crown one has ever seen. It all happened when we were in the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud, and this grey monkey, with his lanky, strong arms attempted to snatch a water bottle from an unsuspecting man just a few feet away. Sneaky as he was, the monkey was not quick enough to get away with his thievery, so instead he turned his attention to a onto a nearby child and chose to assert his dominance by climbing him, as one does. He spotted this golden-haired boy and decided that was his home now. The kid didn’t flinch. He just let the monkey do his thing, and the kid’s mom, mildy freaked out, kind of awkwardly held hands with the monkey, perhaps as the first step toward accepting that your child will forever have a monkey hat now because this monkey is not moving. We left before this story of child and monkey friendship reached its conclusion, but I can only assume they will live happily ever after.

Amazingly, we didn’t take a photo of the monkey on the child’s head. This baby monkey is pretty cute though, so it will have to do.

Beach, food, and a woman selling bracelets were the things that came to Mandi’s mind when I asked for the 3 things that she remembered most quickly from our trip in Bali. It’s funny that they’re completely different than mine, but her memories probably represent the totality of our trip more accurately than mine.

Lounging in some bright, neon-colored bean bag chairs at sunset on Double Six beach, drinks in hand, listening to live music on a small stage in front of us, an older woman with a wooden box full of clattering, swaying bracelets approached Mandi, who happens to be a prime target for this sort of item. She and Mandi exchanged some polite conversation back and forth for a bit, with the woman repeatedly commenting on how Mandi looked very young, and Mandi ultimately bought a gold-beaded bracelet before the woman moved further along the beach. Mandi tied the bracelet around her ankle, and we listened to the waves crash as the sun drifted slowly lower until it settled below the horizon, at which point we made our way to a restaurant where we met one of my best friends from high school and his wife (who happened to also be in Bali at the same time?!) for dinner on one of our last nights in Bali. It might have been our best night in Bali, although there were certainly some good ones to choose from.

Normally, it does not take me this long to talk about food in a post, but holy moly, Mandi is right. The food was so good. I don’t say this lightly, but Bali might have had the best food we’ve eaten on our travels so far. I don’t think we could have found a bad meal even if we looked for one (spoiler alert: we did not look for one). Mangos, dragonfruit, and mangosteen with coffee and eggs for breakfast was followed by grabbing lunch or dinner at whatever nearby warung (basically a small, local restaurant) we could find, where we promptly devoured curry, gado gado, nasi campur, nasi goreng, mie goreng, and about a million other things until we were full to bursting. I think I could eat gado-gado, with its pile of fresh veggies and tofu topped with a sweet, crunchy peanut-sauce, every single day (I certainly tried). The food was truly fantastic.

All in all, Bali was more of a relaxing vacation than our other trips before. We didn’t end up hiking up an icy mountain, sleeping next to a nightclub, or pushing our way through mobs of fellow tourists at sightseeing destinations. Most days were spent with slow mornings at our AirBnB, drinking coffee and making breakfast before we made our way to one of several beaches to read, lay, and swim until our bellies told us it was time for some additional snacking to occur. Good chunks of time were spent with drinks in the pool at our AirBnB, and we bopped around the various shops in town, searching out trinkets to take home. Fun drinks were had at interesting bars (one drink included the waitress literally pouring smoke into my whiskey, which was wiiiiiild), and nearly every night concluded with sunset at the beach, with the exception of the few days we spent in the more jungly Ubud, where we saw the monkey shenanigans, watched traditional Balinese dancers perform, and tasted coffee while viewing the much-instagrammed rice terraces. Oh, and there was the day spent snorkeling in crystal-clear water before making our way to a secluded beach where we grabbed some food at a beach-side shack and went for a swim. Life was not too rough.

Even with all of those fantastic, relaxing, fun things that I just listed, it was still rooster, giant gecko, and monkey on a kid’s head that came to mind first. Obviously, I still remember the beach and the (drool) food and hanging out in the water. Those memories are also really great and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. And I don’t really know what it means that only animal-related memories came back to me first. Maybe I saw a particularly cute dog on the street in someone’s doggy bubble backpack (yeah, those exist) that primed my brain for animal-related memories, or maybe these experiences had a little extra excitement and emotion attached to them; watching a monkey assert his dominance on a small child probably tends to do that. The point is, whatever the reason for these memories, taking some time after the trip to reflect and think about our experiences was an interesting exercise that helped me to think about what random things, no matter how big or small, made a lasting impact in my memory. I’m not naturally a particularly reflective person, so in this case procrastination was able to force my hand and remind me of the value of reflection, which seems to suggest that procrastination is, indeed, a wonderful thing.

Check out some more of our pics from Bali below!