There’s a sign around the corner from my father’s. By the side of the Mornington Tyabb Road in a loose, spray-painted script, the sign promises ‘stable manure’ for just a few dollars per bag. What is left unsaid is whether the manure has always been stable or has achieved this through a combination of clean living and therapy. Perhaps it’s best not to ask. To tell you the truth, I’d prefer not to know the going rate for a bag of ‘unstable manure’. This is because I have a substantial fear of the stuff and will do almost anything to avoid it. This makes our decision to holiday in Bali – home of the infamous Bali belly – even more perplexing.
There’s a sign around the corner from my father’s. By the side of the Mornington Tyabb Road in a loose, spray-painted script, the sign promises ‘stable manure’ for just a few dollars per bag. What is left unsaid is whether the manure has always been stable or has achieved this through a combination of clean living and therapy. Perhaps it’s best not to ask. To tell you the truth, I’d prefer not to know the going rate for a bag of ‘unstable manure’. This is because I have a substantial fear of the stuff and will do almost anything to avoid it. This makes our decision to holiday in Bali – home of the infamous Bali belly – even more perplexing.
We were told there were two golden rules for any trip to the Indonesian holiday island. The first was ‘do not drink the water’. There is, so we were told, no quicker path to illness than to drink from the tap. We were advised to be cautious even when showering. The second rule was simple: don’t eat after midnight. Actually, on second thought, the second rule might not be so much from the travel guide as it is from the movie ‘Gremlins’. Still, it’s not a bad rule. As for the water, my sister in law pointed out that in trying to avoid drinking the water, we should avoid ice at all costs.
Truth is, I dislike ice intensely. It is because of this deep-seated hatred that I cannot sit through an entire screening of the film ‘Frozen’. Although such enmity might seem totally illogical to most people, I can simply say that I grew up in the 1990s. The nineties weren’t just about flannel shirts and grunge millionaires whining about their parents – people often forget there was a dark side too. To this day, I carry the scars of Vanilla Ice’s deep-chilled slap to the head, ‘Ice, Ice Baby’. When you consider the kind of damage wreaked by that hideous assault on the ears, it’s little wonder that I have a lasting fear of the stuff. So when my sister in law suggested I avoid it, I readily agreed.
We have been in Ubud for all of three minutes when our hosts return with two glasses of ice tea. To be frank, if it were a competition between ‘ice’ and ‘tea’ for ultimate supremacy, the ice would have the tea pinned to the mat, it’s limbs splayed like a chicken, and begging for mercy. I can hear it clinking against the glass as our beverages are set before us. Our hosts are smiling. Either I can insult them by sending it back, or I can risk unstable manure and the seven kinds of hell that gastroenteritis can bring. I don’t want to risk making a scene. I drink up and hope for the best.
Luckily for us, neither my wife and I start melting like the Wicked Witch at the end of The Wizard of Oz. It seems like a small miracle. To endure ice, ice baby and survive feels like an act of defiance. Perhaps all that Vanilla Ice has built up my tolerance levels. Having flown six hours to get here and having travelled a further hour by road, we are both exhausted. We go to bed at an unreasonably early hour.
It’s our first full day in Bali and the mission is simple: relax. It’s easier said than down. Truth is, I find it a little difficult to unwind. That’s because I grew up in the 1980s where, for about six months, a group of Liverpudlians who called themselves Frankie Goes to Hollywood urged the world to ‘Relax’. For me at least, it was a message that would fall on deaf ears. Just as Vanilla Ice would all but destroy the nineties, Frankie Goes to Hollywood pretty much ruined the eighties for me. Well, them and Haysi Fantayzee.
But we weren’t about to leave something as important as ‘relaxation’ merely to chance. No sir. My wife had booked me a massage. This, she assured me, would assist me to unwind. Let me be clear: I’ve had massages before. I don’t mind a little poking, prodding, kneading and knotting. But when the moment comes and I step into the specially segregated massage area, I feel I might be in trouble.
It starts with the music. For anyone who might work in the massage industry, I think I speak for everyone when I say that the music you use is horrible. That floating, airy-fairy nothingness doesn’t take anyone’s mind off their troubles, it makes them wonder how they can get to the stereo without being noticed. Even Vanilla Ice and Frankie Goes to Hollywood would be a welcome relief. Then there’s the matter of my masseuse.
He is exactly half my size. And bony. Over the next three hours he wedges his knuckles into every nook and cranny. I feel like he’s using me as a human Rubik’s cube. Suddenly, I realize that the music isn’t meant to make me feel clam; it’s meant to stifle the sound of my screaming. When I’m released, I feel like a Picasso painting, with various pieces of my anatomy having now been relocated. I attempt to scratch my ear only to find that it’s now midway down my lower back. In fact, I’m in so much agony that I must swallow my pride along with a fist full of paracetamol and ask for the one thing that I have sworn never to ask for: ice. It comes in a bag and I place it strategically across my various limbs, wherever I find them.