Couchfish

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you. My piece on finding a beach house thanks to my dog wasn’t so much a humble brag, and today’s post explains why. Much as I wrote, our little garden was a (very messy) canvas for the landscaper, and the beach house would be a canvas of my own. One not so much to try my hand at art—think yourself lucky—but rather a sustainability one. I’ve been writing for years on sustainable tourism, and here was an opportunity to put my words into action. Grand plans and all that. In case you’re new to the couch, sustainable tourism (in theory) rests on three foundations—the environment, the economy, and the social. While I have no intentions in turning the beach shack into a rental, how can I de-shackify it with these principles in mind? As it turns out, few things come easy. Inventiveness through necessity. The builders’ entire tool set. Photo: Stuart McDonald. As with the foundations of a real house, sustainable tourism’s three bases intertwine and rely upon one another. Viewed in a holistic manner, it’s all well and good to source local labour, but if they’re building eleventy million private pool villas in a water-stressed locale, the end result is not ideal. In my case, there is much to do. The house has a bathroom my kids won’t touch with a bargepole, the “garden” is like a set out of Apocalypse Now, and the electrics, well, as an Australian electrician once said of our flat in Bangkok, “it’s a death trap.” I’m a travel writer—not an architect. Photo: Stuart McDonald. With Agung’s help—and at my instruction—we source a local building team. From two villages very close at hand, these guys know how to mix concrete, and at that they excel. While I need that talent, I also want a staggered and curving bamboo wall for a far larger bathroom. One of the team has worked with bamboo before, though never a curving, multi-section wall. He reckons it won’t be too much more complicated and I agree. We are both wrong. While Agung “searches in the jungle for bamboo he likes,” the team busy themselves on the wall base and piping. I want to move the toilet and have two showers, one at either end. At the prompt of another, I asked after P-traps. P whats you ask? Yeah, same—it is to be one of many terms I learn that I wish I never needed to. After I sketch one out (thanks Google) the builders confess to having no idea, nor any idea where to buy them. Not for the last time, they improvise, building them out of pipe joins to make the same. Over and over their inventiveness impresses—as does their willingness to do things over as needed. In general, three times is a charm. Is this the second or third try? I forget. Photo: Stuart McDonald. In the end though, we get there. It takes twice as long, and my costs blow out a little—thanks in part to someone helping themselves to some bamboo—but the end product is great. The tub, one day to be used far in the future when I have hot water, is Bali-made. The tub is a nice pivot point to water. As with much of Bali, there’s no mains, and instead out back I have a ten-metre deep well. Back in the day they’d hoisted it by bucket, but now a pump gives a much appreciated assist. It isn’t drinking water though, which leaves me needing to buy aqua gallons. Sure they’re refillable and all, but treated water would be great. We have a filtration system at our house in the south, but that cost close to what the shack is costing me per year, so I stick with the refills. The kids’ names, ok, but cats and the dog? Crazy bule. Photo: Stuart McDonald. What about hot water? Youtube tells me to lay black hose all over the back off the roof, use the pump to fill it, and let the sun heat it through the day. A cheap man’s solar I guess. This seems simple and something even I could manage, only then another alerts me to the risks of Legionnaires’ disease through such an approach. The risks are, it seems, low, but given how accident-prone I tend to be, I figure this is tempting fate. I stick with cold water—perhaps one day I’ll invest in solar to warm it up. Solar brings me to power, and researching this, I talk to a solar set-up in South Bali. They ask what fittings I have, and I say one pump, nine lightbulbs, and some plugs for my laptop. They reply saying they need the information for the whole house—not one room. When I say this is the whole house, they suggest a car battery, explaining solar will take longer than my lease to pay itself off. End result, a future discussion with Agung to extend the lease by twenty years or so. I do however, rewire the entire house—the sparky conveniently lives just up the road—and yes, I have him on speed dial. Looks solid. Photo: Stuart McDonald. On the social side of things, there are two strands—work and food. Aside from the builders, who could I invest in my shack? The farmer who keeps an eye on the place now continues to do so, but is paid for his efforts. I even get him to stop setting my compost on fire. Another guy from a neighbouring village drops by every Friday to take to the garden with a machete—he heads to prayers afterwards, no doubt asking for forgiveness. The farmer’s wife both washes the sheets when I’m away and comes to make the offerings at the shack temple. These are all little things, and, save the offerings, things I could do myself, but this seems the least I can do. Food wise, as I mentioned the other day, the shack kitchen is good for nothing but boiling water for coffee. Near all my meals come from a local babi guling warung or a line of nasi warungs up at the temple. The food is, I think without exception, all sourced locally. About as pan-Asian as my meals get. Photo: Stuart McDonald. There’s also a side story to the warungs. One morning I’m at one, and another customer asks me where I’m staying. Before I can answer, the owner replies on my behalf, telling her “He’s Australian, but he lives in Kerobokan. He comes up here a lot, but his wife and kids don’t come much.” This is the thing—I keep to myself. Some days I chat to the fishermen on early morning walks, farmers drop by to sit on my porch, drink my coffee, and correct my Indonesian. I don’t go to the frequent cremations, though I do make a donation whenever the temple asks. Somehow all this filters up to a warung owner a kilometre away by the temple. No photos of the magic helicopter, so here’s a magic pineapple. Photo: Stuart McDonald. One morning chatting, a farmer tells me the house is haunted. “Babies in the well,” they say, “bad teenagers,” says another during a different session. This is, unsettling, and I do dream unweildy dreams while there. I’d put them down to the sea breeze and the sound of the surf, but perhaps there is something more at play. There’s a huge fragipani in the back corner overhanging the temple, and every month local villagers visit to make offerings at its base. I think this is for the babies or the teens, but instead it’s for good luck in some local numbers competition. Very pre-dawn one morning I watch a helicopter offshore in darkness. Hovering, lights ablaze, I wonder if there is a search and rescue underway, as the fishers’ boats sink with disturbing regularity. But then it simply flies off. When I later ask Agung about it, he nods pensively, saying it is the “magic helicopter.” I’m still not quite sure what to make of that. The cover is there for a reason. Photo: Stuart McDonald. I don’t know quite what ghost stories have to do with sustainable tourism’s social pillar, but these conversations, at least for me, are useful. They help me understand—or not—in the smallest of ways, the cycle of life the local people follow. It is a very different cycle to mine, and they’re just as curious about mine—though nothing is off limits when they’re asking me stuff! Grievances and inter-religious resentments surface fast, as does a sometimes sense of helplessness. Farmers keep cows in simple shelters on a few spots on the beach out front, and during the foot and mouth outbreak this is a big problem. Cows are sick, and some die, and as they tell me about it, as with rice cultivation, the brutal economics behind beef surface. The government is of some help, but as indicated by the collapsed retaining wall down the beach, not always in the most appropriate manner. Seasonal squatter. Photo: Stuart McDonald. For the first year, a local twenty-something guy drops by most days to chat. Smart and a tourism worker in the South but now mostly jobless thanks to the pandemic, he tells me about the trade. Miserly pay rates, exploitation, long commutes, then much of the wage lost paying for accommodation and food. He left some time ago, like many offshored young Balinese as an employee in the cruise industry. I remember talking to him not long before he left, his eyes bright with the expectation of seeing the world. He queries better-travelled me endlessly on what to see where. The debrief upon his return will be interesting to say the least. So shaking it out, I managed to hire locally and use mostly local goods. The math on power and water changes, at least for the moment, don’t add up. I eat locally and contribute where I can to local undertakings. Still it’s a superficial affair, and yet, there is a far higher impact approach I could have taken—if I’d had the money. I could have knocked down the joglo, built an inward-looking expat ice cream cake with a big wall, a pool hidden behind, and an Ubud-sourced chef and attached staff. The first of many visitors, though I didn’t mention the ghost helicopter. Photo: Putu. I don’t want any of these things though, and truth be told, while I haven’t specifically asked them, I get the feeling the local people don’t either. To them, I think I’m a bit of a curiosity, the bule who listens to Led Zeppelin, who sweeps the leaves in a sarong every morning, and who pointlessly moves piles of dirt around. Most importantly though, we all know I’m a guest. Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend. Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit couchfish.substack.com

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you. I’ve always wanted a beach house, but little did I know my route to one would be a puppy. A few years ago I got one of the latter, an accidental one. Fostered upon us by a pair of Sam’s yoga students who’d rescued her abandoned on a Bali building site, she was a family dog, but in no short time she became mine—or me hers, or whatever. Today, we’re pretty much inseparable. Her name is Skye Govinda—no, don’t ask. Where we live in South Bali, we have a small garden area beside the pool. It is one of those super compact gardens, but the soil is so fertile even a gardener as inept as me can develop a thriving jungle. Controlling it, well that’s another question, and when Skye arrives, she sees the muddy mess as a perfect canvas to build her scale model of the Somme. Long story short, we get a landscaper in to swap out the Somme for a Batuan. Not quite a Batuan, but it will do. Photo: Stuart McDonald. The landscaper’s name is Agung. He’s Balinese, and midway through the de-Somming of the garden, we’re chatting, and Medewi in West Bali comes up. Best known for its surfing, it’s roughly halfway between our house and Bali’s western ferry port at Gilimanuk. Chatting with Agung about the area, he mentions he has a beach house there, “oh that must be nice,” I say. A moment later he asks if I’d like to buy it. I laugh, do I look like I could afford a beach house? He grabs his phone, and after flicking through a bazillion plant snaps, hands it to me. Garden needs work. Photo: Stuart McDonald. The house is a joglo, a Javanese wooden house which he purchased in Java, dismantled, and shipped to Bali. He plonked it on some of his land and listed it on Airbnb, expecting to hit paydirt. Things didn’t quite work out, and in the two years since, he’s had one guest. He’s keen to offload it. Joglos come in all shapes and sizes. Traditionally they’re associated with Java’s aristocratic class, but they need not be so grand. Boiled down they’re a square house with four inner columns holding up the roof with everything else hanging off it. For years they’ve been popularised as an “authentic” slice of holidaying, much like what you see with the wooden houses in Cambodia and Thailand. Plenty of rice out back. Photo: Stuart McDonald. On the fancy to not-grand-at-all time-space-continuum, Agung’s joglo falls off the end of the not-grand-at-all side of things. Think barn. The photos though, don’t illustrate how close to the beach it actually is. For that, he has a brief and bouncy walk-through video. It seems like the beach is right out front, and by that I mean Right Out Front—it is an absolute beachfront house. Despite this, he’s had one live body in it. What’s the catch? An abattoir or sheet metal factory next door? I ask more questions. I ask where exactly the house is. He’s vague, but confirms he has a clear title for the land. I pour over Google Maps and find somewhere that may be it, the beach out front, farmland for hundreds of metres on the other sides. I ask if this is it, but he’s unsure, the satellite view confuses him. He rattles off directions related to a temple and some warungs, but this doesn’t make much sense to me. He’s talking about a location further west of Medewi than I expect and I’m unfamiliar with the area. Like the garden, the bathroom needed some work. Photo: Stuart McDonald. We give up on maps and Agung shows me the listing on Airbnb. To be fair, the photos do not show it in its best light. The solitary guest has given Agung a long letter of recommendation, so I read it. She pulls her punches a bit, noting that the house is “still being built,” but later mentions how quiet it is, that during her month-long stay (she’s a writer apparently), she never sees another foreigner on the beach. The locals in the closest village stare a lot, she writes, but are friendly. Starry nights and blissful silence—save the surf, get a mention. Yes, the shack is a shack, but putting aside its absolute shackery, everything else sounds perfect. I’m one of simple pleasures—and I know shacks can be unshacked. I love it and, as I wrote up top, have always wanted a beach house, but again I tell Agung I’ve not the means to buy one. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been down the track towards beach house living—first in Thailand, and then Cambodia—is this to be a case of third time lucky? The tub in the new bathroom will be more useful once I get hot water. Photo: Stuart McDonald. “Just lease it then,” he says, “one year, two years, twenty, I don’t care, up to you.” I’ve not even considered this option, and as soon as I ask for a number, his eyes glint, he knows he has me. He throws out an opening gambit, “nego of course,” he laughs. We agree to meet up at the house the next day. Not 24 hours later we’re sitting on the back steps, looking over rice fields that run out for miles towards the western tail of Bali’s mountains. Behind us, thirty footsteps from the front stairs, the surf crashes in. The gardens are wild and overgrown, with bougainvillea covering much of the front of the house and ready to leap onto the roof. It’s hard to tell how big the block is for the garden. Dawn, with Mount Batukaru in the distance. Photo: Stuart McDonald. Agung introduces me to a local farmer who keeps an eye on the place for him. Then comes his offsider, and the offsider’s offsider. We drink coffee and eat watermelon. There’s chit chat, but also a lot of just sitting. For me I’m soaking it up, but for the locals, they live it, and they’re baffled why I’m even interested. There’s no air-con nor fan, no hot water, and just a few light bulbs. One asks, why would you want to live in this? I want to tell him it’s my antidote to the south—an area of the island I’ve drown to dislike with a passion—but I don’t know the Indonesian word for antidote. Instead I tell them I like simple stuff. They nod, but they clearly think I’m mad. To a point they’re on the money as the shack is in a right state. The bamboo bathroom walls have collapsed, replaced by a wall of ferns and palms. The roof has some leaks. The water pump looks like it came from the Titanic. The “kitchen” is anything but. You get the idea, but it is obvious the bones are solid—at least to my utterly un-expert eyes. Skye gets her reward every afternoon as well. Photo: Stuart McDonald. The others drift off and Agung and I haggle a little bit over the price, but not much to be honest. He tells me I can stay there for a month for free to decide, but we both know I’ve already made my mind up. It takes me a month to hack back the boggainvillea—and I’ve got ten years to clean up the rest. Third time lucky indeed. Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend. Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit couchfish.substack.com

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you. By the time the earliest hint of first light appears overhead, I’ve been swinging in my hammock at the Sun & Surf Stay for an hour or so. The stillness and silence of pre-dawn is a welcome reward for my insomnia, even if with the steady rumble of Bingin’s break, it isn’t silent at all. In the distance, a fat moon sinks towards Java, edging golden as somewhere behind me, the sun breaks the horizon. Views from the hammock are better. Photo: Stuart McDonald. On the sand below me, two of the first of the day’s surfers are prepping. Boards on the sand, they limber up, rub down their boards, then attach leg ropes. They cast their boards over a shore wave washing in, and never letting go, they’re paddling as they hit the water. By the time the wave sucks back they’re already a half dozen metres behind it—with plenty of paddling to go. It’s a couple of hundred metres out to the back, and this time of day, with no breeze at all, inside the reef is as smooth as glass. The two surfers break the smooth, left right left right they paddle without pause, two trails in the glass behind them. They’re headed to Bingin’s famous left hander—a near perfect barrel that runs 24/7 and that wouldn’t look out of place in a wave pool. The perfection comes thanks to the volcanic reef below which shapes each and every swell into a work of art—one painted to be carved. Pain me a picture. Photo: Sally Arnold. With dawn now on the scene, I can make out a couple of even keener surfers who must have paddled out in the darkness. For their early morning efforts they have Bingin’s wave pool to themselves. I watch one after the other effortlessly launch onto a wave, plummeting down its drop, bottoming out in a long arc then launching themselves at the lip. At the summit, they snap back, spray launching into the sky, then race down and across the face, as the wave curls over and above, closing into the barrel the break is famous for. If they pull it off, seconds later they shoot out of the barrel’s end, careening along the unbroken remainder of the wave. It’s at this moment they ease, standing taller, looking back along the wave, before rolling over the rim, and falling back on to the board. It’s over, and the paddling begins again. Rinse and repeat. Like many sports, those who are apt at it make it look effortless. Having been out there myself ... once ... it is far from it. Knowing this though, makes it all the more pleasurable to watch from my hammock. Just keep walking. Photo: Stuart McDonald. By breakfast there’s a dozen or so out there, a number that will double, then perhaps triple through the morning—depending on conditions. The beach itself though doesn’t pick up with day-trippers till a little later, so once caffeinated, I get my morning walk in before they arrive. My mornings are always west (right when facing the ocean), and when the tide is out I can get almost to the base of clifftop El Kabron before it gets too tricky. It’s a pretty stretch, swinging between narrow and non-existent stretches of sand—depending on the tide. Along the way I can see the mess of the next beach along—one you’ll never read about on Travelfish—and after that the golf course headland before Balangan, another of my favourite Bukit beaches. A low tide walk there and back, allowing for fossicking and faffing around, easily eats up a few hours. Long shadows at Lucky Fish. Photo: Stuart McDonald. By the time I’m back, the sun is right overhead and I decamp to one of the many beach cafes built into Bingin’s cliff. Lucky Fish is my preferred option thanks to the long deck and great staff. If the deck is full though, nearby Bingin Ombak is my close second, with the trendier Kelly’s a distant third. Regardless of where I put my feet up, there’s a solid few hours to lose before getting them sandy again. If the skies are clear, it is time to start wandering again around four in the afternoon. It’s that magic light time of the day, when the touch of the sun’s rays feels more like a warm massage than an angle grinder. Walking east (left when facing the ocean), the sand vanishes quick smart and you’re left to rock hop and cliff lip dodge—do watch your head. Also, keep an eye out for the famous Instagram spot near the start of the walk—you’ll know it when you see it. East is best. Photo: Stuart McDonald. If the tide is out, this is a magnificent wander and you can get all the way to Padang Padang and beyond. You’re walking atop the same formation that builds the surf, and when the tide is really low you can get a long way out towards the surfers. Do watch the tide though, as it comes in fast over the platform and walking back with the tide rushing in is not fun. This is a longer walk than the morning one, but with a few hours there’s time to get back to Lucky Fish for sunset. If I’m feeling energetic, it’s a breathless five minutes or so back to the top of the cliff for sunset cocktails at Temple Lodge or perhaps Mû. Sunsets are ok. Photo: Stuart McDonald. Light show over, back down to the sand for a beachside seafood barbecue. Perhaps a couple of iced drinks afterwards to round out yet another day on Bingin Time. Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend. Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit couchfish.substack.com

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you. After spending New Years of 1941 in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, 75 crew boarded the Kaidai-class cruiser submarine I-66 and left port. Along with the crew, were six torpedo tubes, a deck gun, and an anti-aircraft gun. On her second war patrol of World War Two, she was bound for the Bay of Bengal via the Lombok Strait and the Andaman Sea. As the I-66 made her way southeast, through the South China Sea, the USAT Liberty, a US-flagged freighter, was heading north. Laden with rubber and railway parts—or explosives, depending on the source—the Liberty was enroute from Australia to the Philippines—or Batavia (Jakarta), again depending on the source. With a displacement of over 13,000 tons and 70 crew, the vessel had but two small deck guns. The I-65, the same class of submarine as the I-66. Photo: 日本海軍艦艇写真集 潜水艦・潜水母艦p70, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. You know where this is going right? Before dawn on her sixth day at sea, around 15 km due south of Nusa Penida’s Kelingking Beach, the I-66 sighted the Liberty. She torpedoed it at 04:15, leaving the Liberty dead in the water, then made her escape. Two Allied destroyers—the USS Paul Jones and the Dutch Van Ghent—took the Liberty under tow and steamed for Singaraja on Bali’s northern coast—the primary port of the Dutch colonialists. With the Liberty crippled, even after they’d cleared the fast moving waters of the Lombok Strait, she continued to take on water—Singaraja was to be a nautical mile too far. Deciding to cut their losses, and hoping to salvage as much of the cargo as possible, they beached the Liberty, and she capsized on Tulamben’s pebble beach on January 14. For the Liberty, the war was over, and once relieved of her cargo, she became yet another coastal rusting skeleton. The USAT Liberty in better days. Photo: U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Some twenty and a bit years later, in 1963, Bali’s Mount Agung erupted. Windsor P. Booth of National Geographic was on Bali enroute to Sangeh Forest at the time, and later wrote in the September 1963 edition: “There was a gentle tapping, as of rain, on the roof of our car. Oddly, no drops appeared on the windshield. Then the sky suddenly darkened. I stepped out of the car to find that the “rain” was volcanic ash mixed with cinders. No longer was the landscape a joyous rhapsody in green. Now all was bathed in an unearthly saffron light, because ash and clouds had blotted out the sun. Familiar objects, like trees and houses, took on grotesque shapes.” When colleagues returned two weeks later, they wrote of the devastation, noting: “By far the worst havoc struck a group of villages due east of Besakih. So sudden and complete was their destruction that even two weeks later officials could not be sure what happened. Many places, cut off by avalanches and lahar flows, were still too hot to be entered. Bodies were buried—or eaten by dogs—where they fell.” The eruption took place around the greatest of all Balinese rituals, the Ekadasa Rudra. In the very readable Bali A Paradise Created, Adrian Vickers describes it as “the centennial rite of exorcism of the eleven forms of the terrible god.” An exorcism the eruption was, with thousands of lives lost, and vast tracts of land reduced to stony moonscapes. “Acrid muck, 30 feet deep in spots, buried much of nearby Selat.” Photo: Robert F. Sisson, National Geographic. While the Nat Geo correspondents kicked around Bali’s south and east, to the lesser-populated reaches along the island’s northeast coast, torrential rain and lava flowed. From Agung’s northern lip a blanket of lava gushed down to the sea, destroying all in its path. At the coast it tumbled over the black round pebbles that give Tulamben its name, and there, with an assist from earthquakes, it cradled the long-forgotten Liberty, and pushed it back out and into the depths one last time. The wreck lay there, only a couple of dozen metres from the shore, out of sight and out of mind for another fifteen years. Through these years, Bali’s tourism scene grew, and while diving was a thing, its focus was the east coast out from Candi Dasa. It wasn’t till 1978 that an enterprising tourist agent in Denpasar started offering dive packages to visit the wreck. It would be another eight years before a dive centre opened in Tulamben—at the Paradise Hotel. Baskets before bottles. Photo: Stuart McDonald. By 2005, Tulamben was on the map, but while attracting almost 8,500 foreign visitors and over 2,000 locals wasn’t nothing, it wasn’t a lot—for Bali. Fast forward another decade though, and the numbers increased to over 65,000 and 7,000 foreigners and locals respectively. As tourist numbers—and revenue—exploded, tensions rose, but community leaders enacted a customary law that decreed that “every person will have an equal chance to serve visitors.” Through working with and empowering the local community, local people became well-represented in the trade. Training programmes were enacted, and all manner of tasks, wherever possible, drew from local labour sources. Me and some chunk of the Liberty. Photo: Intrinity Divers. Unlike some other areas of Bali where foreign divemasters are common, not so much in Tulamben. Indeed some locals, such as the women who carry the oxygen tanks on their head to the dive entry point, became almost an attraction in their own right. Alongside this, steps were taken to protect the viability of the wreck—essential if divers were to continue to visit—and the undersea environment has thrived. Aside from the wreck itself, artificial reefs have been set up and coral restoration work continues both in and around Tulamben and elsewhere along the coast. It isn’t perfect by any measure—in season there are too many divers—and too many do touch and damage the coral, but compared to some other diving spots, Tulamben is quite well run. Most importantly, the community management of the site has strengthened the sense of both pride and ownership, and those vested in it understand the potential it holds for future generations. Nat Geo’s 1963 spread. Back to the eruption for a moment, Vickers suggests the eruption may have marked the success of the ritual, noting: “Great state rituals such as this are meant to bring about an age of harmony in the world, but the way they can bring it about is by harnessing and even accelerating the forces of chaos and destruction which precede the renewal of a golden age. In the eyes of many Balinese, the eruption was a manifestation of great change which could bring good results as well as bad.” It might be a bit of silver linings and all that, but I don’t think Tulamben would be the place it is today, lives changes and all, if the wrecked carcass of the Liberty was still laying on the pebbles. Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend. Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit couchfish.substack.com

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you. While it has resort in its name, the place we are staying at is more a private property with a couple of extra houses than a resort. Set right by the sea in a secluded area of Bali, down an un-signposted dirt trail, behind an un-signposted front gate, the effort involved in finding it makes it feel like a worthy prize. Our accommodation comes in the form of a large two-floor wooden house. Airy bedrooms and cool-on-the-feet wooden floors are upstairs, while below, lazy chairs and fresh air beckon. Bags dropped, the kids make a beeline for the freeform pool by the sea, while we put our feet up. A grassy expanse runs almost to the ocean, where fast waves peel in, their foam rolling up onto a loose black pebble base. Roar rattle, roar rattle, roar rattle—the noise reverberates like a sack of marbles in my head, massaging by brain. Time for a brain massage. Photo: Stuart McDonald. Between the grass and the wave orchestra, pavers trace a curve around the property’s extremity, a small promontory of sorts. Beyond the pavers, enormous charcoal-coloured smooth boulders slope down to the water. With the afternoon sea breeze and a high tide, the spray rains into the pool—delighting the kids. The landscaper—not so much. When the waves later withdraw on the falling tide, I can see the bed of black sand the pebbles rattle over. The remnants of the original beach. Bali is famous for its beaches, but like many things here, you need to work a bit to find the good ones. On our first few visits, hanging out in Seminyak and Sanur, we couldn’t understand what the big deal was. Sure there’s surf—a nice change from most of mainland Southeast Asia—but the strips of sand themselves, not so much. Oh Nyang Nyang. Photo: Stuart McDonald. It wasn’t until we got off our backsides and headed west—for the squid-ink black beaches that seem to stretch forever—or south to the Bukit, that we understood. The first time I saw Nyang Nyang from a Bukit cliff top I thought “holy crap, now that is a beach I could happily die on.” I should note this was back when there was nothing on Nyang Nyang, no road had disfigured the cliff, and no wrecked plane blighted the cliff-top. There’s a metaphor in that bloody plane I’m sure of it. When we check in a staffer tells us the owner wants us to join him for dinner. They’d like to meet us, and have friends staying, so think it would be good for us all to meet and get to know one another. Drinks before sunset with dinner afterwards, we’re told. The retaining wall protecting the manicured lawn from the surging waters of the Lombok Strait is far from an anomaly. Bali has decades of experience in losing its beaches. Candi Dasa, much of whose sand went awol after the innards of the reef were dug up to use the coral to make cement—ironically to build accommodation for tourists—is arguably the dumbest example, but it is far from the only one. Sand way-station at Candi Dasa. Photo: Stuart McDonald. Sanur Beach relies of Japanese-funded groynes to grab and hang onto what sand it can. This one I’ve been told was caused by dredging at Serangan for an ill-considered and profoundly stupid development plan, but I’ve never found any concrete coverage of it, so file that one under “A guy in a bar told me.” Regardless of the reason, Sanur’s once glorious beaches are long gone. Resort enclave Nusa Dua also relies on groynes, and the sickness continues around the south coast of the Bukit, where uber lux resorts have crucified surf breaks in trying to protect “their” beach. The owner’s friends are also Bali residents, living elsewhere on the island over Ketewel to Kerambas way. Both wearing weathered tans and that somewhat withered premature ageing Southeast Asia living can deliver, they’re all about the good life. Fat consulting work for enormous environmental acronyms can be funny like that. Still, they’re far from corporates, and are great for ideas on where to go, as they seem to have been everywhere. Or, as they put it, everywhere that is still worth going to. Making the best of a bad situation at Sanur. Photo: Stuart McDonald. We gather at a long wooden table near the pool for drinks. Over small talk, I ask about the wall, what is the story? They say the property had once been beach-fronted, but, when erosion got out of control down the beach a ways, the powers that be said a wall needed to go in. The owner though, not liking how they’d done it down the beach, paid for the wall out of their own pocket. They wanted it “done right,” with its curving structure better withstanding the waves—in theory. Their main gripe is even with their fancy wall, the surfing suffered. Thank god for consulting gigs I guess. The thing with retaining walls is while they may “fix” the problem out front, they tend to also shift it elsewhere. Sand has a habit of moving up and down the beach, and interrupt the natural process at your peril. Around Bali, more and more retaining walls are appearing, each with its own flow-on impact. As an example, I’m writing this from my beach shack in West Bali, and it forms a handy microcosm. My land certificate includes a metre and a half of land that no longer exists. Farmers tell me that decades ago, when the tide was out you could walk “forever” before reaching the water. Today, not so much. Back in the day, doggo would have had far more real estate to run on. Photo: Stuart McDonald. A river empties out about a kilometre to the west of me, and its banks inland were corralled by stone years ago. This protects the village from houses falling into the river I guess, but now when the rain comes, it overflows the walls instead, submerging whatever lies on the other side. Last year I was cut off from the highway for a day, as the road was so deep in floodwaters even I wouldn’t ride through it. Village residents having a choice between their houses being washed away or submerged seems like a rough deal. The river’s walls curve around onto the beach, but that section collapsed—perhaps our host building his own wall wasn’t so decadent after all. Drinks and retaining walls done, with dinner being laid out we wander over to the table. As we sit, one of the owner’s friends raises his hands, asks for a pause, and gestures for us all to hold hands. I remember thinking oh no, are we praying? Jeez please God don’t ask me to say Grace. Back at my shack out west, nearly all the land around it is farm land. The farmers rotate through rice, watermelon, corn, then give the land a rest before rinsing and repeating. The farmers want the wall at the river head fixed then extended all the way along the beach. Why? With a king tide, the Indian Ocean is sloshing about five metres from their fields, and they know that once salt water gets into those fields they’ll have a whole new world of problems they don’t need. Arms stretched—the table is far bigger than our group—we all hold hands. When everyone else closes their eyes and dips their head, I do the same. I can’t hear anyone speaking, so not wanting to be the twit sitting there with head dipped and still holding hands long after everyone else has stopped, I concentrate on my hands. I figure, when I feel the grip loosen, it will all be over and I can start eating. Years earlier, when I was living in Bangkok, a Thai friend dragged me along to see an “eastern man with electric hands.” Me, willing to try anything, went along. Sure enough, after much hocus-pocus—and a thousand baht—the man touched me, and he did have electricity running through his veins. My arm and leg kicked out involuntarily at his touch—and I left a convert. That was until a few months later, when the local press ran a story about the police chasing down an “electric monk.” It turned out he’d somehow connected himself to a car battery. Eyes closed, the roar rattle, roar rattle, roar rattle comes back to the foreground of my mind. It’s amazing how much your other senses turn on when you turn one off. I listen to the percussion, I smell the food and the wine, I feel the sea breeze. But then I feel something else. It’s like a tingling in my finger tips, and then, almost mad-monk-style, there is a clear and unmistakeable strong pulse of energy. It takes me so much by surprise that I open my eyes, but everyone’s hands are already falling as their heads rise. There’s a smile, nothing said, and we start to eat. These won’t keep the sea at bay either. Photo: Stuart McDonald. It is ... odd—and, need I say, there isn’t a car battery in sight. As nobody mentions what just happened, I don’t say anything either. The next day though, I see the owner, and I ask perhaps I was imagining things, but what was that last night? The friend, they tell me, has a special energy they like to share. Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend. Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit couchfish.substack.com