Summer 1980Bali
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2024-07-03
Summer 1980–Bali
by Ken Homer
I was approaching the end of my four years in The United States Coast Guard. Despite the common misconception that us Coasties were a stateside lot, the USCG had bases in far flung ports. I was stationed on Saipan from ’78 to ’80.
I was a young man seeking adventure. My original plan was a trip with the Overland Tour Company—which was an outfit that used 4-wheel-drive school buses to complete a journey from Katmandu across Asia to London. You could do the other direction too.
My housemate had done this trip and it looked so amazing I decided that rather than take military transport back to the states that I would take the long way home… following the Silk Road through Asia. I got a copy of Lonely Planet’s Across Asia On the Cheap—a slim volume in 1980—and I put down my deposit for the journey. I was stoked!
But three months later some fellow called the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran scuttling my plans by closing that route off to me and all other travelers. I needed an alternative plan.
I swapped Across Asia on the Cheap for Southeast Asia On a Shoestring, where I planned to spend the bulk of my time with stops in India and Nepal and England before finally heading home.
I obtained my discharge on Guam. Got a little circuitous travel pay. Then, I added that to my lifetime savings which brought the total to $4,200 – some $16,000 in 2024 dollars. I bought an open-ended plane ticket from Guam to Manila to Hong Kong to Bangkok to New Delhi to London then back to New York. The cost was a mere $649.00.
My savings saw me through ten months. I ran low and sold my camera in Nepal, which gave me two months of expenses.
In my final months on Saipan, I read James Michener’s The Drifters. That book conjured such visions in my mind that I knew I needed to set a course for the magical isle of Bali. I arrived there in June.
Bali was indeed a most magical place. You could order magic mushroom and sea turtle soup at any restaurant on Kuta Beach. Then, you could sit on the beach and trip out on the psychedelic sunsets. Mushrooms were a fave of mine but you need to allow a few days between trips.
I got the first massage of my life on Kuta Beach from a tiny old woman whose fingers were like spring steel. I’d never experienced anything like it. Between the heat of the sun and her technique, my body melted into the sand like the waves lapping the shore.
There are temples everywhere on Bali. My understanding is that the Balinese have no word for “art” in their language. Yet the entire island is an art project. There are carved figures and gorgeous arrays of food and flower offerings to the Gods nearly everywhere you look.
The people were warm and hospitable. Slow to anger and quick to smile. They have a profound reverence for nature. It’s a culture where the world is alive. Rocks, trees, water, mountains, air, and fire all are infused with the sacred.
Great food was abundant and cheap. Each meal I ate looked like a work of art. All the day-to-day details of ordinary life seemed to be ritualized and beautified I stayed for a month in this wonderland. But there was trouble in paradise for me. I traveled to the north shore which was rural—Bali has undergone staggering amounts of development since 1980—I got to see paradise before it was paved!
I was in a tiny village the name of which is lost to me or maybe I never knew it. I stayed in a losman—a simple hut—one of five owned by a villager who rented them out for $5.00/night. Each was modest yet artfully built. There was a communal toilet a few yards away.
I’d gone hiking in the interior one day, marveling at the fecundity of life in the rainforest. Little did I know that I’d been bitten by a mosquito carrying a terrible tropical disease that would lay me low.
I went to dinner at one of the two restaurants in the village center. I ordered my meal and by the time it arrived I had gone from feeling well to being sicker than I’d ever been. I apologized to the waiter. Somehow, I managed to stagger back to my hut where I collapsed in the worst fever I’ve ever experienced.
In the hut next to mine were two German women. They were angels, looking in on me each day, and bringing me bottles of fresh water that was safe to drink. They had a thermometer which is how I know that my temperature surged to 104.7ºF—dangerously high! My brain was literally cooking inside my cranium, but I could do nothing as I was too weak to move.
There was no medical help to be had. At least there were no western doctors. Had I known then what I know now, I would have asked for a local healer—but at that time I was too ignorant.
The fever made me delirious. There were alternating hours of laying on top of the sheets and sweating profusely, followed by hours of laying under the sheets with all of my clothes and anything else I could find to warm me as my teeth chattered and my body shook violently.
In my moments of lucidity, I fell into despair. I was 10,000 miles from home. I was all alone—no one knew me. I wished with all my being to be home. I was sore afraid that I was going to die.
In my moments of delirium, I thought I heard my mother calling to me even though she’d been dead for 14 years. That’s how I knew I was hallucinating.
It took eleven days for my fever to break. I awoke at some point on the eleventh day and realized the worst had passed. But I was so weak that when I walked to the toilet, I collapsed on the way back. I laid in the dust until another lodger came by and was kind enough to help me stagger back to my hut. I had lost 20 pounds and likely countless neurons perished during that fire in my brain.
A month later while in Singapore, I got a horrid sore throat. I went to the hospital where a beautiful young doctor peered into my mouth. She frowned and put her hand on my shoulder and said “Aw” with such genuine empathy that I instantly started to feel better. But it’s possible that I was just falling in love a little, dazzled as I was by her pulchritude and her caring.
I recounted my illness on Bali and asked if she had any idea what it might be. She speculated it was one of two things. Either I’d had dengue fever or malaria. How can I know what it was? She said if it was dengue fever it’s over and done with. If it comes back, then it’s malaria. I’m grateful that It never came back.
Ken Homer • March 2024
Related: