Crawling Out of My Shell - Bali, Part 2

After crawling to my sunny spot in east Bali, I crawl out of my shell to mingle with the higher-consciousness community of Ubud and explore its rampant yoga and health food scene.

In Ubud, everyone’s on their way to a yoga class, or to have a massage in a spa, or they are just about to start a raw food retreat, or spiritual enlightenment course.

My accommodation is south of Monkey Forest, in a newly-built compound with cottages containing a fair amount of wood and marble. As the existence of this place is not yet common knowledge to accommodation seekers in Bali, I have the whole compound to myself. I miss my little pristine beach in Manggis, so I plunge into the pool at 6 a.m. I’m planning to go to a yoga class to start socialising, but the regal circumstances of having a whole Elysian compound with a dense mass of tropical copse and a warm turquoise pool solely at my disposal makes me change my mind: I think I can postpone starting a new life as a bubbly extrovert for one more day. So I stay and waver all day between the pool, my room and the exuberant rooftop garden, unable to decide which one is the best spot to hang out in. My senses just can’t get enough of all the good things: the green and the blue and the sunlight and my private miniature tropical rainforest. This is like ancient Arcadia, where it’s serenity that creeps up on you.

On my second day, I finally manage to get away from the compound to wade into exploring Ubud’s social life, which centres around pursuing all sorts of healthy activities, mainly yoga. The epicentre of Ubud’s yoga life is the Yoga Barn. Made of Javanese teakwood with a grass-thatched roof, the Yoga Barn functions as a community centre: you can get a massage, go to a yoga, meditation or dance class, watch documentaries on topical issues, stuff yourself with extremely healthy food for only 100,000 IDR (£3–5) at its stylish café, or just idle around on its premises and chat with other people. I sit down to have a fresh coconut. In Bali I could just live off coconut water all day, while in London I usually have a constant craving for a big fatty steak. What strikes me is the bevy of beautiful women with toned bodies occupying all the tables, while there’s no man on the horizon. Ubud must be the ultimate paradise for single men, and the ultimate nightmare for single women.

Cuddling with strangers

I am heading to an acro yoga class to meet new people. It starts with a cuddle-puddle, the very thing I always try to avoid. I am not very big on hugging strangers as I’m not convinced that’s completely honest, but I have promised myself to push those boundaries. It seems I can survive cuddling with strangers, and I can also quite easily comply with the demands of the group and participate in all the fun games. I probably won’t do this too often but, temporarily at least, I manage to override my urge to be a hermit for the rest of my life. After the class, the girl, Anna, who was my partner most of the time suggests we go for dinner together. She is in her forties, also living in London. ‘I’d been working ten to twelve hours a day before I quit my job in December. It took its toll on my health, so I needed a long break. I’m staying here for four months or maybe more. I am not rushing back to find a new job. Now it is more important what I am than what I am doing.’

Seekers of change

Ubud is so communal that you can just walk up to anyone at any time and ask them out for lunch or dinner, as you can be 100% sure that you will have something in common: you are spiritually-inclined, and you are here because you need a change. You might not know what sort of change, but you seem to have at least a slight disappointment with the culture or the circumstances you have come from. During my ten-day stay in Ubud, I meet another five people who have left their jobs and hope that Ubud will facilitate a sea change in their lives.

Not meeting new people every single day in Ubud is impossible. Most of the expats I speak with have a job which doesn’t require them to be in a specific place: they are artists, start-up owners or entrepreneurs. I sit with Samantha and Oksana – two yoga teachers, originally from Australia – in one of the best organic raw food restaurants in the village. The service is painfully slow, but it’s worth it. I have the best raw coconut curry and Pad Thai I have ever had for only £5. Being preoccupied with leading a healthy lifestyle all day is hardly how I spend my days in London, but in Ubud that’s the main focus for everyone. Samantha and Oksana run The Art of Life yoga-cum-raw-food retreats four times a year. I wonder why Ubud is the best place to do that and what they like about the village. ‘The environment, the people, and all that is in between resonate with our own sense of peace, contentment, balance and connection. Aside from the natural beauty, we also have an abundance of fresh, local produce, as well as an amazing assortment of artists, healers, yogis and people who are generally interested in working with and for a greater community that expands beyond self-interest,’ Samantha says, beaming.

Fighting off the beasts

We round off the evening with a raw dadar gulung – traditional Balinese sweet snack: a pancake filled with grated coconut and palm sugar – and then I take off to walk back to my cottage. As I’m scuttling down Monkey Forest road a gang of battered dogs decide to follow me. Bali dogs are a heart-breaking spectacle in Ubud: they are scrawny, covered with festering wounds, and so neglected that they have degenerated into a feral state. The ghost dogs keep trailing me, snarling and growling, while I try to ooze an air of confidence and invincibility to outpsyche them, in vain. One of them is only a few feet away and seems ready to tear at me any second. I grab a stone and a large stick, struggling to maintain my composure as I slow down my stride. Finally, they stay behind me for some reason I’ll never know. And just when I think that I am safe for the rest of the way home, I notice a troop of macaques – almost as big as the dogs – fixating on me from the side of the road. As there’s no sidewalk and scooters whizzing past me, I have to keep close to the side. I can’t even turn around and go back: monkeys ahead, dogs behind. I still have the stick and the stone, but I doubt I dare use them on any animal. My strategy is: just don’t look them in the eye.

Finally I make it back to my cottage without any wild animal latching onto any of my body parts, and I throw myself into the heated pool to calm down. I float and stare at the clear dark sky. It twinkles occasionally, maybe a plane or a star, but I’m motionless and safe now. I waft on my back recalling the image of how I almost had to ‘fight off’ the beasts in the dark. I turn to face down and splay out like a corpse, still afloat. I want to hear the underwater silence so I push my head down and I can hear the deep, hypnotic rolling sound. I deliberately sink myself and keep pondering the vagaries of travel and the exploration of new terrains which I don’t want to end anytime soon. I enjoy meeting new people every night and listening to their stories, which reveal how similar we are beyond the official categories of position and class.