10/6 – Friday
5:19 AM (a late start) Elisa has, naturally, been awake long before my own pre-dawn post-dormancy. Rubbing my eyes against the sweet saline humidity of Benoa’s daybreak I see she’s taking color shots of the sunrise. Reaching for my camera on the nightstand I take B/W snaps of her in her white cotton panties and tank. Bali is a photographic wonderland.
We had our last breakfast at the Aston. Like the other one it was crazy huge, likely stupid in excess, and wicked good spread. It affords one to eat Western/Australian, South East Asian, and Japanese stuff. I’ve been digging my breakfasts of noodles, dumplings and tropical fruits. Almost seems healthy except I simply cannot help but finishing these meals with bacon & butter sandwiches. Good thing we’re switching hotels.
After switching residences the better part of the morning was spent kicking around the Matahari grounds, walking up and down the main road, pool swimming, etc. We reconvened w/ the couple for lunch as they’d been doing similar but separate activities. The Matahari offers a whole lot less on their menu than the Aston, but when they set you up with an ultra-fresh red snapper and a monkey dish of chopped chiles one could care less. Spiced by a kaleidoscope and grilled with white voodoo it is exactly what I’d hoped to be eating everyday in Bali. That this island’s local, tiny chiles can melt your eyeballs made lunch all the more fun. Three days into the vacation and the adventure had finally begun.
With the electric ripples of hot pepper pain still running through our gums we were picked up by some water-sport folks to go snorkeling and visit Turtle Island on a glass-bottom boat. Didn’t know what Turtle Island was all about except it was maybe where the snorkeling was at. Maybe we’d swim with sea reptiles. Perhaps we’d wrestle them or be enslaved to some scaled, carapaced overlords with Kaiser helmets and ninja gear. Anyhow, the snorkeling was what everybody wanted. Mostly everybody as I wasn’t so hyped up about it. Historically, I could never quite get the hang of the process, usually giving up within four lung-floods of seawater. But once we were out in the brine I did much better than usual. Even though that was still pretty lousy I managed to see some very cool stuff. There were black & white-banded sea kraits (snakes, among Earth’s deadliest) and my little disposable Fuji underwater cam was busily snapping away whenever I wasn’t surfacing to barf out reef water. The constant battles with a leaky mask and the tidal surge in my chest did me in soon enough. Drifting away from the boat and towards Australia provided me with distance swimming joy to keep busy… I made my way to give Elisa the camera then crawled, or dog-paddled or limped or whatever the fuck it is you do when you’re beaten up and trying to move through water, back to the boat. The crew, all two of ‘em, seemed entertained by my handicapped progress. E, T, & S had their fun while my waterlogged ass slumped on the boat for cigarette smoking and chatting with the guides. Most of the conversations were between me and “Marty” (Mahdi) who had the hook on English. The other guy just played with the engine and made occasional interjections like “YES!!! SURF!” emphasizing his points with surfing gestures. I was all over his rap for the moment. I may snorkel like a clam but I used to know how to surf. Would have to find a board somewhere soon. When the others rejoined, to talk of their marvelous marine encounters and tease me, we hit the motors and sped off to Turtle Island.
The onshore signs of the Island declared it a Green Turtle Sanctuary. The grounds, if anything, argued with the signage to insist it was actually more a two-bit zoo. Absolutely goddamned depressing. There were twenty big turtles crammed together, wishing for moisture, in a shallow mud puddle. The “caretakers” insisted they were fine since the tide filled the enclosure now and then and no one seemed co
ncerned about the giggling Japanese tourists clambering on the backs of larger turtles.
There were water monitors scraping their lizard snouts raw against waterless, chicken wire prisons. There were huge, Bornean brown bats upside down and catatonic in tight cages. There was a big mongoose with nothing to live for in its barren jail. And there were two monkeys neck-chained to trees.
Those two little macaques, a juvenile female and male, were chained to separate trees. They were well fed and watered by the tourists who paid to toss food at them. But it was hot. And they were chained. And the full tragedy of this shit could be read in the irony of a sweet scene between Elisa & the female monkey. After it had climbed into her arms E began to pet it. The gentle strokes and ear scratches actually put the animal to sleep. Out cold in her arms. E held her for at least 20 minutes & even after waking up she clutched tight to E, refusing to let go. I was having a similar encounter with the male who chomped peanuts and corn kernels on my lap. This was pretty good considering the rocky start to our relationship – he’d gotten all pissy when I wouldn’t share my camera with him. But now he was stretching and rolling on my legs as I scratched his back and belly.
There it was, the big stupidity. The profound wrongness. The monkeys’ affectionate actions made the problem clear with adorably rotten irony. Macaques, like many primates, are highly social. They have family and community sensibilities which are characterized by complex interactions among individuals. And by contact. These two monkeys were psychologically starving for the tactile communities from which they’d been removed. Though wonderful to watch the connection between simian and human it was sad to realize these two could no longer count on the social contact deep within the heart of their biological make-up. The chains even kept them just out of reach of each other. In terms of their lives I’m not sure this is any better than starving the animals to death.
Starving is a crap deal, no matter what specie you call family. Since I didn’t have the balls to open all the cages and liberate the animals, I stuffed some rupiah in the donation box. As long as the zookeepers made enough to feed themselves, they probably wouldn’t forget to feed the prisoners. I won’t be back here and hope to pass the word on to anybody headed here. But thanks to the Japanese, and their appetite for kneeling on unhappy reptiles, Turtle Island will probably stay in business. Should I get into the turtle shell crafts they sell just meters from the landlocked sea animals? No, let’s skip it, as I’m as pissed off at people as can be.
* Views on the Japanese: currently unpleasant. I have a hearty appetite for the books of Kenzaburo Oe but there are times when his people prime the hatred in me something awful. It’s not an innate distaste for Asians or some atavistic loathing seeded from a grandpa’s experiences in the Pacific Theater of WWII. The disgust is cultural as many Japanese seem to behave as though the globe is their chow line, or playground, that somebody else is responsible for cleaning. 
