Take it from me, anyone who says they have no regrets are either lying or haven't lived. Pretty much all regrets are matters of commission and omission. Of the two, I would rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done, because the latter are far more painful.
One of the things I regret not having done is not to have visited Bali sooner. Bali is the sort of place that mends broken hearts and broken dreams which, by the time I discovered it in 1999, I had already tried to mend with too much work and too much drink. How much easier it could've been, had I simply dropped out in Bali long before then! (which raises the question: can an accountant ever simply drop out? or, as Ronnie Barker put it, "squash all the éclairs" - click here)
Still. since that first - and oh so belated - visit in 1999, I have been back to Bali several times, and each time I felt more drawn to it. Padma tells me I should go again with her when she leaves for Indonesia. She said she'd drop me off at my favourite place in the north of Bali before she travels on to Kalimantan, and she'd pick me up again on her way back, but just looking at the cost of my travel insurance tells me that my travelling days are well and truly over.
These days I am a mental traveller who reads books, and there's no better book about the booming tourist mecca of Bali than Phil Jarratt's "Bali - Heaven and Hell - Chaos and corruption, free love, great surf and high times from the rajas to Jokowoi", which looks behind the smiling face that Bali has presented to generations of tourists and expats. Read it at your own peril! Disillusionment awaits!
Go and visit Bali but stay away from the Australian couple who brags how it only took them half an afternoon of their one-week holiday to bargain down their bechak driver from fifty cents to a mere ten cents.
P.S. And while you are waiting for your next Bali holiday, listen to any one of the five different radio stations on the island - click here - by simply tapping on any of the green spots.
