Work’s taking me away to East Timor on an information gathering/report writing task. I’m supposed to investigate the post-emergency housing situation in East Timor – a topic on which I’m obviously an expert, yeh right. Anyway, it’s a trip away and a chance to see East Timor. Due to logistics I had to stop in Indonesia for a night either way – Bali on the way there, Jakarta on the way back.
We arrived in Jakarta first and had to get our visa. I presented my passport to the young looking official with spiked hair and bad facial hair. A Japanese tourist came back, pushed his passport back at the official and said “Why you give me 7 day, I paid for 30 day visa?” in a probably unitentially forceful tone.
The immigration guy flicked through passport, passed many visas. He slammed down the passport on the desk. “Can’t you read that visa Motherfucker!” he yelled. The Japanese guy picked up his passport, a short delay before he realised what he’d been called, and then he glared at the official. The young guy stood up, aggressively left the office ready to fight the Japanese. The other official jumped up, grabbed the young guy and told the Japanese to get going.
The young guy still had my passport on my desk, so I waited, not sure what to do. He came back, finished processing my visa and with hands shaking with anger stuck the visa label in, and I was off so quickly.
Arriving in the early evening my colleagues and I went for a walk around Bali/Denpasar city to get the lie of the land. We talked down the main strip, which is so heavily tourist-ised that it feels like every other tourist place on the planet, complete with the same brand name stores, same brand name knock-offs, and same tourist souveniour crap to buy.
We passed the monument commemorating the bombings where the Sari club used to be. I stopped, was quiet, and then moved on in the rain. I'd spoken to an Australian lady who had been living in Bali for 15 years on a plane the week before. We'd chatted nicely about lots of stuff, work, life in Bali, then touched on how things have changed. "I wish they'd kill all the terrorists" she said with seething vitriol. She'd been in the club when it was bombed. Everything had changed for her, she saw the world differently. I couldn't argue with her, and for her there was no room for mercy. I guess having met her brought the place to me stronger.
My colleague wanted to find a bar, TJ’s, that he’d been to on his last trip so we trudged around trying to locate it. Every few street corners we asked a local, and there were plenty of them sitting around, which way. After a dozen set of instructions, and by now winding through out third back alley, I asked my colleague when he’d been to the bar. “Sixteen years ago”. We eventually found it, and apparently it hadn’t changed a bit.
The waiter told a depressing story of a people still struggling to make ends meet after the bombing in 2002. Tourists hadn’t returned, and what we thought was a quiet night was actually the norm. People were losing their jobs or were having their shifts reduced, but there were no other jobs to move onto. They couldn’t leave, as “this is our home”, and besides no other country would let them move anyway. His wife had just lost her job, and they hoped to be able to keep their kids, aged 7 and 5, in school, but he wasn’t sure they’d be able to.
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