You can listen to a condensed and musically scored version of this post on my TRAVEL PODCAST HERE.

 _________________________________________________

when i travel i like to clown.

like wearing a 3-foot-wide sombrero my first time I crossed the US-mexican border in tijuana.

or like jumping into the giant stone central plaza in guadalajahara with the white faced, black and white stripe-shirted mime & improvising a duet with him in front of 200 gaping guadelajarans – sans makeup.

yeah, like that….

or like on another continent altogether, where i threw together a brand new klown company in kota kinabalu, east borneo, when i was on a fulbright grant to teach a reluctant class of muslim college kids who’d never been far off the kampong, how to use their bodies and faces in ray bolger-esque ways, and who with white max factor pancake, all transformed themselves into magical, chaplin-begnini-like kostumed klowns in 2 just weeks… and appeared in public… as white-faced public fools… in a sterile commercial shopping mall for the first time in the history of east borneo!

true dat! it was culture-bending, near breaking, when this conservative group of islamic and malay college kids & young adults “went totally cumeezi”, and klowned amongst shocked and amazed shopping mall pedestrians with tv cameras rolling, improvising laughter and all-out, break-the-rules beautiful komic khaos!

contagious!

once a klown always a klown.

but now it’s may 2012, and i get off the plane in denpasar, bali, and I’m looking for my wife at the denpasar airport.

she’s supposed to pick me up and bring me to the hotel.

I met her here in bali in june, 2000, in front of the BCA ATM, when i asked 2 random local girls for directions to the matahari, and one of them offered to “so” (show) me the way, and…

…12 years later…

she’s still my wife in LA….

after marrying me on valentine’s day, 2003. 

anyway, i’m at the airport in denpasar in 2012,

and i don’t see surya, my wife.

i walk up and back the length of the passenger arrival greeting area, and… no wife. i wait. no… wife.

i suddenly flash back to when just 4 months after she arrived in america, august 3, 2001, we went to kota kinabalu on the fulbright grant, you remember? december, 2001.

oh, i forgot, it’s christmas time and my new wife-to-be isn’t with me, she’s gone home to sumatra, to visit her batak tribe, and she’s supposed to fly into the kota kinabalu airport ‚ this evening , new year’s eve, 2001. 

and i have my 2 new malay fulbright friends, umdika and his 2nd wife, kasia, with me for physical & moral support… and my new indonesian “wife” (that’s what I had to write in the application paperwork to get past the islamic gatekeepers) … is… nowhere to be seen.

we wait until the last of the passengers de-plane…. and still, no “wife”.

i look at my new fulbright friends, umdika and kasia, and i’m… embarrassed. no, not embarrassed… i’m…. humiliated. the new american fulbright scholar, has not only brought his unmarried indonesian girlfriend with him to strict, islamic borneo for 4 months, but now he’s been left high and dry at the kk airport, without his self-professed claim of a wife.

“oh yeah, uhhh, sorry i wasted your time & money, umdika & kasia, and in the process, lost all your personal respect for me in one quick, cumeezi-like blow of buffoonery. but please disregard my complete floutation of your cultural mores; my ‚ ‘wife’, although both christian and unmarried, is really… a good person. i promise, i’ll make it up to you, tomorrow night, when she’ll fly in again, it turns out, because, ooops, i simply had the wrong night, tonight, and when ooops, she’s actually getting in tomorrow.”

once a klown, always a klown.

______________________________

denpasar, 2012. i’m still waiting for… da wife… at de airport.

i flash back to august, 2005;

this time i’m getting back from a solo dolo trip to andalusia, southern spain, and from chefchaouen, morocco, the wild weed capital of north africa.

i’m waiting at LAX for da wife, at the passenger pickup area out front,

and don’tcha know,she’s…. not… there.

“c’mon, wife, you’ve been in america for 4 years now, we’re not on indonesian time anymore. i’ve been waiting at arrivals a f-ing hour and”

… the LA cell rings. it’s CJ, the bartender at the hotel fig downtown, my wife’s best friend. she’s had an accident on the 405 on the way to the airport. totaled the blue ford escort (which she never liked). called him, CJ, for help. they’ve just finished making the police report and they’re on the way to pick me up in his gray volkswagon jetta.

CJ puts da wife on the cell.

“how are you? what happened? are you alright?”

“yeah, i’m….”

she drifts off into PTSO (post traumatic something or other). CJ gets back on the horn;

“she’s ok. we’ll be there in a minute.”

and they are. and the car will soon be replaced with a blue toyota matrix (which she likes much better), and most importantly, she’s not hurt, and the klown and his indonesian princess are able to gratefully chalk off 1 more of their collective 18 lives….

but now it’s 2012 at the denpasar, bali airport. and once again, no wife!

suddenly there’s her youngest sister, ana.

“are you trrru-les?”

at the denpasar airport. 2012.

“yes, i am. where’s your sister?”

“she’s in hos-pi-tal.”

“what?”

“yes, hos-pi-tal, with dengue fever.”

“what?”

no. can’t be! dengue fever! that’s the worst mosquito-borne virus in asia. it has no preventative inoculation or pill, and it’s untreatable once you get it. “bone crusher’s disease”… fatal in young children and old folks like me. and sometimes in …

“when did she go to the hospital?”

“today. 12 o’clock.”

damn. damn. damn. it’s 4 pm now, and i just arrived at the bali airport with my wife’s in the hospital.

i remember, i almost didn’t even go to asia the 1st time because of the dengue plague, and now my wife has gone to sibolga, to visit her batak family in the rural village without mosquito repellant and she been eaten alive by dengue-bearing sibolgan mosquitoes!

i jump into a taxi with ana and we crawl our way through the suffocating kuta traffic to the kasih ibu (loving mother) hospital in denpasar. it’s sweltering in the streets, and the hospital’s 1st floor isn’t any cooler. no air con. how can anyone recover in this sweltering humidity?

it feels like a british colonial hospital circa 1904, tanned wood, the smell of quinine, people dying of malaria. we get up to room 335 and there she is, da wife… looking like… she’s sick in the hospital… lying in bed with a brown hospital gown next to her brown skin surrounded by white walls & wood brown furniture. she’s on an intravenous drip and… she’s seriously sick with dengue fever.

over the next 7 days, she falls in and out of night sweats, painful fevers, bone-crushing headaches, recurring nausea, and a little vomiting thrown in for color. i watch her go through it, sleeping on a 4-foot vinyl visitor’s couch every night, and some nights we don’t think she’s going to make it. but dr. aman is one of the 2 specialists on infectious disease in all of bali, and he assures us, the dengue is running its course.

“just waaaiit,” he chirps at us every day. “her thrombocyte very low, 26; must back to 100 before we release her.”

i immediately google “thrombocyte”… platelets… about 150-200 being normal. the dengue-bearing mosquitoes have fucked with da wife’s vascular system, eliminating her blood’s ability to clot, risking brain bleeding, or only blindness if it’s behind the eyes. oy!

finally….. after 5 days… the fever breaks…., and after 2 more days on thrombocyte watch, da wife’s count rises to 115. hallelujah! she can go, “but take it easy. some patient full re-cover right away, some, 2 months. take it easy.”

thanks, doc. we’re out.

another of our 18 collective lives left on the hospital floor.

---

as per doc aman’s advice, we lounge around agung’s bungalows and pool for the next 2 days. i even stretch my shylock, and splurge for agung’s priciest bungalow. 

finally, after 3 day rest, surya insists we head north for the beautiful and relaxing east coast of bali. i’ve sussed out  this paradisiacal hideaway in amed called “good karma”, a cozy haven of beachfront bungalows run by the infamous indo-proprietor happily named “babba”.

babba’s good karma doesn’t disappoint. we get the “townhouse”, a 2 floor “luxury” hut, although babba has warned us to

“take look first because my bungalow vedy primitive.”

so we do… and what can i say? decide for yourself:

 

thatched bamboo wall & roofs. 3 mosquito nets hand-hung immediately upon arrival over each bed (even better, no mosquitoes). a cold water shower running out of the rear, plant-bestrewn bathroom’s wall like an in-house personal waterfall (of course, it’s not at all cold because the lombok straight’s sea temperature is about 98.6 degrees!).

 

after 36 hours of chillin’ and snorkeling, we stupidly decide to take of leave of paradise and go to a hindu-bali “ceremony highly recommended by babba”, perhaps because… babba will be beating a large conga-looking drum right in the middle of it.

we head out, walking north along the balinese coast.

“vedy short walk; impossible to miss temple.”

babba’s words of wisdom, neglecting to tell us that it’s wickedly hot along the road. i forgot, exactly why did we leave the sea?

 

now if there’s 1 thing to know about traveling with me, it’s that i actively dislike walking uphill. not only in balmy california’s elysian park right near my home, but especially on “hikes” with my eddie bauer-patagonia, outdoorsy camper friends.

and especially today, where it’s at least 32 degrees celsius (104 farhenheit) and after just about 100 meters, my body is doing a full-on drip. i decide, despite da wife’s profuse objection, to abandon ship… go back to good karma… and rent a motor bike.

now if there’s another thing you need to know about traveling with me, it’s that i absolutely love renting a motor bike in a third world country, and being “out in it” – along the banks of the mekong in viet nam, or amidst the s-curves of the high tea plantations of kerala in southern india, or… along the sweltering east coast of equatorial bali in amed!

who wants to walk uphill into the dripping midday heat, when you can simply bareback a bike and ride the wind to your heart’s content? certainly not me!

so i shuffle my way back to good karma, my dad’s former right rubber walking shoe flapping like a klown’s with every step. when i get there, dripping from equatorial humidity… there are… no more bikes to rent. all the bules (indonesian gringos) have rented them & lined them up like hells angels hogs in paradise. i flap my way to the 1st warung i can find, along the way, managing to completely lose the entire sole of my right rubber shoe. i’m limping like alan mandel in his cosmic, komic portrayal of didi (or was it gogo?) in “waiting for godot” at LA’s mark taper forum. once a klown always a klown.

the sleepy warung owner dusts off an ancient bike from her musty-smelling open air garage. it looks like it hasn’t run in years, but clearly, it’s the only horse in town. i rent it for 5 bucks. she gives me the key, no helmet, with a few throwaway comments, in indonesian, and i take off, completely confident in my seasoned bike skills.

i head back up the hill and i’m gassed.

i’m “out in it” again and i turn the throttle up as i climb the same hill i just flapped my way up 20 minutes ago. i’m supposed to find my wife and her sister eating somewhere along the side of the road, although from the wife’s pejorative warning (“dont rent a bike, you hear me?”), i kind of expect they’re enjoying lunch somewhere set back off the road, with a breathtaking view of the lombok sea, entirely invisible to a passing motor biker.

but hey, no problema. i gas the throttle and lean into a curve.

about 90 seconds after my first hill climb and descent, i confront my 1st fellow motor biker, a brown-skinned local dude puttering uphill with a fellow passenger on back.

i’m heading down, he’s coming up,

and i pull over to the right.

so does he. that is, he swerves to his left, my right.

what the hell?

we’re heading right at each other!

we simultaneously swerve to avoid one another.

but in the mili-seconds before impact, my life doesn’t flash before me. i think something like,

“what the fuck, man… you idiot, you’re gonna run right into me. don’t you know the rules of the road? it’s your country, you boneheaded yokel, what the…?”

crash! bang. head-on!!!!!!

i go down.

he goes down.

the next thing i know, i’m on the ground next to my bike. my left groin hurts, so does my left hand. my glasses are gone… but i can see both boys are up on they’re feet. they’re yelling something at me in indonesian, and they’re pointing frenetically, fingers going everywhere at once. international sign language…

i get it. the reason the dude was swerving left & me right (the same direction) is that bali, indonesia is a drive-on-the-left country. fuck me!

not only was i driving on the wrong side of the road, but when i pulled over suddenly to the RIGHT, to avoid impact, it was the WRONG fucking way! simply put, klown cumeezi completely caused the goddam friggin’ accident.

then, before i know it, there’s a crowd of at least 30 brown-skinned locals surrounding us, all buzzing like mosquitoes around fresh meat. mamas and papas and aunties and school children. oh, man, now what? naturally, one of the brave ones approaches me in broken english.

“you drive right, yes?”

“yes”, i admit, while rapidly thinking, “no, asshole, don’t admit guilt. get the fuck out of dodge ASAP. call your insurance company.” and then simultaneously,

“oh c’mon, it was completely your fault, schmuck. how much is this gonna cost you?”

i obstinately tell them to follow me back to good karma to discuss the matter further, but i can’t pick my strewn bike off the ground. the smart, broken english-speaking dude helps me pick up the 2-wheel carcass and we inspect it for damages. it looks… ok; i can’t see a scratch on it, but then… i walk over to the other bike. it, on the other hand is… completely mangled. the new plastic front wheel protector is split down the middle. it won’t even move forward a foot. the front wheel fender is crushed into the tire. the gear shift is jammed frozen. it looks… expensive.

i finally relent to the communal buzzing and resignedly get back on my bike, perching myself behind my english-speaking helper dude, holding on pathetically, as a passenger on my own friggin’ bike.

one of the kids hands me my glasses which he’s mercifully picked up from the side of the road, and i’m driven back to good karma like the hapless klown i am.

what the fuck just happened? in less than 4 minutes, i just had a violent, head-on motor bike collision in a 3rd world country, the same country where my wife’s father lost his life in a similar head-on-er. no helmet, no rules of the road, just my bule hubris-western arrogance, being too hot in the sweltering heat and wanting desperately to be “out in it” on my local steed. fuck me again.

there’s no wife in site, nor either of the two other princesses, just me, the crowd, and the good karma receptionist. at least i’m ok. somehow all 3 of us have miraculously survived the accident with only a few scrapes and bruises. maybe the balinese roads are made of rubber.

the two bikers and their entire entourage want me to go to the local “bengkel“.

sounds like “bank”, right?.

they must want me to go to the nearest ATM machine and pay them millions of rupiah in damages.

“no, no, no… bengkel, mister… we go me-chan-ic.”

oh, i see… they want to get an estimate from the local shyster mechanic… the highest one possible… then go to the nearest ATM and pay them millions of rupiah (100,000 rupiah equals about 10 bucks U.S.)

“no, no, no,” i protest.

“i need to wait for my wife. she’s indonesian. she can translate for me.”

they have no idea what i’m talking about. what the hell am i gonna to do?

they keep repeating,

“you come bengkel, mister.”

i keep thinking they want me to come to the bank. do they know i’m jewish?

“no, no, no,” i insist. “i wait for wife. wife, paham?”

it’s one of the 2 indonesian words i know after 10 years of marriage! “paham?” = “understand?”

“bengkel, mistuh. you come.”

“no, no bengkel!”

oy, what to do?

“ok, ok, listen… you come here… good karma… at 5 o’clock.”

i do the necessary miming:

“here”, 2 fingers down several times. “5 o’clock”, 5 fingers, point to watch.

fuck, at least klowning is good for something.

“good karma. 5 o’clock.” they repeat like diligent students. we agree. “ok. good karma, 5 o’clock.”

now what? why the hell did i fess up, admit guilt? i could have hit and run; i know how to do that. it’s happened to me in LA several times. unfortunately, i wasn’t the hitter or runner. i walk back to good karma’s fresh juice/restaurant bar. babba’s not there; he’s banging his drum at the hindu-bali ceremony which i never made it to. fortunately, his japanese wife, ako, is there. i don’t really want to tell her what just happened, but she ekes it out of me.

“sit down, mr. eric,” she says calmly. “don’t worry, we fix problem.” 

right….. “we” go to the ATM 50 miles back to denpasar and clean out my bengkel account to pay for this wreck of a motorbike, because i know, they know, we know… it’s completely my fault.

“sit down, mr. eric. don’t stress vedy much. we fix.”

ako leads me to a home stay table and gets me a bottle of cold water. i open it and take a sip. and suddenly… i get it. “just relax, man. you’re still on vacation. in bali. your wife’s survived dengue fever. you’re still married. the 3 princesses are still off somewhere, hopefully at the babba-banging ceremony at this point.

what am i gonna do? it’s only money, man. just pay it and be done with this whole fiasco. the less da wife knows about the whole affair the better.”

i go back to my room with a cold bintang (the local indo beer), climb into the hammock on the front porch and order a massage. 5 bucks. i spend a most pleasant afternoon.

i’m proud of myself.

“don’t worry, be happy. i’m still in paradise…”

then comes the sledgehammer news, the bill from the bengkel, about 2 hours early. mr. bengkel wants 1 million, 7 hundred thousand, 2 hundred and 15 rupiah to fix the motor bike. the bill’s itemized. i don’t paham a fucking word.

 

i try to bargain. hey, it’s what’s done all over the 3rd world. my tribe does it well.

“i’ll give mr. bengkel a million rupiah.”

a hundred bucks. da wife’s told me that a brand new bike in sumatra costs 200 bucks.

“no, no, no, mistuh. you pay dis one.”

they slap the bengkel’s bill furiously.

“no, no, no… 1 million. my last price.”

they confer. they seem to catch my drift. they slap the bill again and scowl.

“no, mistuh, dis one.”

we’re at an impasse. what to do? think, trules?

what would gino cumeezi do?

probably just tear up the bill and run down the street flapping in his size 34, fur-lined klondike boots into the horizon.

but sometimes, perhaps after a head-on motor bike collision in the 3rd world, it’s not the time for klowning.

“i’m waiting for my wife. she speaks indonesian. she can go to the bengkel with me.”

“you, bengkel? pay now.”

they know that word, “pay”.

“no, no bengkel. wife. 5 o’clock.”

i do my mime act again. five fingers, pointing to my watch. i walk back to my hut, hoping i’m not clubbed from behind.

twenty minutes later, the 3 princesses show up. they’re hot and sweaty; lunch wasn’t very good.

“ok, you better sit down…”

and i proceed to tell them the whole death-defying tale. she doesn’t say it aloud, but if looks could kill, clearly da wife’s face is saying,

“i told you so. another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, bozo.”

but she actually says, “are you ok?”

a little water in the desert of calamity.

“yes, i’m fine. i didn’t want to tell you, but i need your help. with the bengkel.”

“they want you to go to the bank?”

she didn’t actually say that, but it’s a good line, right?

in fact, she doesn’t say anything. it’s the indonesian batak way. sit on your anger and fume. she used to be able to do it for days at a time. the absolute cold shoulder as punishment for stupidity or lucidity or… just about anything at all. now it takes just about an hour, after which she says something like,

“don’t pay the money. they’re just taking advantage of you cause you’re a bule.”

“how can i not pay? it was my fault and i just about totaled his bike.”

“we go to the bengkel.”

“but i don’t understand 1 word on the bill.”

“let me see it,” she says belligerently, grabbing the bill.

i know she won’t paham anything either. we’re going to get into a huge fight. it’ll take hours and be absolutely deadly.

“look, i changed my mind. i’ll just pay what they want.”

“how much in U.S money?” she asks, still not being able to translate her rupiah into dollars.”

“less than 2 hundred U.S.”

“that’s a lot of money.”

“no, it’s not. i totaled his bike.”

“i just don’t like them taking advantage of you. they think they can get whatever they want because you’re a bule.”

probably completely true, but still, that’s one of the nicest things she’s ever said. da wife coming to the aid of her komically-challenged husband.

“let’s just forget about it. it’s not worth all the time and aggravation it’s gonna take.”

“are you sure?”

“absolutely.

i can see the steam already coming out of your ears. you’re gonna get in a big fight and they’re gonna call the police and then there’ll be a fine and then we’ll have to pay them off and we’ll still have to pay for the bike.”

i see her batak lioness soften for a moment… it’s knowing the truth about how fucking corrupt her entire country is… from government officials being paid for favors to the police taking bribes to postal workers opening any suspicious or inviting package and taking whatever the hell they want…

“let’s just cut our losses and enjoy the rest of the day.”

she looks at me incredulously, her tightwad jew of a husband who she knows only too well, and i use her hesitancy to make my totally uncharacteristic move. i get up and say,

“i’m just gonna pay the fucking money.”

… which i do. and just like that, the entire amed motor bike fiasco in paradise… is over. i pay the bengkel 1 million, 7 hundred thousand, and 2 hundred rupiah. we argue about the last 15 thousand ($1.50), but hey, i win that battle.

i figure… i’m lucky to be alive. i’ve left one more of our 18 kollective lives on the road. another komic koincidence with fate. along with surviving cancer and dengue fever, we’ve just dodged another metaphysical bullet. hey, i… we… must be doing something right.

let’s just call it… good karma.

Travel the world with “e-travels with e. trules” blog

Become a Subscriber of his Santa Fe Substack.

Listen to his travel PODCAST

Or go to his HOMEPAGE

Eric Trules’ Twitter (X)  handle: @etrules