See you soon, Bali. Part 1

The elusive final blog from Bali… here we are at last.

My lost/stolen blog is now a mere memory, once lost somewhere in cyberspace, it’s now (according to the local police) most likely in Jakarta or perhaps even as far as Kuala Lumpur. I will try my best to remember its content as I write this first installment of my final blog(s) from Bali. I’m currently in the air, en route to Singapore on our way to London where we will spend 5 days before leaving to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to spend 2 weeks in Simone’s new home on the coast. Before reaching London, there is a convenient 6-hour layover in Amsterdam- again. We plan to purchase a new camera at the Singapore Airport so that we can document our European adventure (part 2) as it begins, and share the pictures with you along the way.

Between acting in, performing stunts for, and directing a thriller movie, Simone also spent the past 3 weeks recovering from a parasite. With all this on her plate, she was not able to make it to the remote-island celebration of life with me. The deserted island psychedelic party that I attended with Sandesh was a combination of a celebration of life, and a birthday party for a guy named Osman.

Again, this is a "You had to be there" story, but I’ll do my best to paint the picture- sadly, without any of the pictures that I had taken during that trip.

The island is called Gili Nanggu, a 1.5 hour motorbike ride to the coast from our inland home, followed by a 5-6 hour ferry ride away from Bali, followed by a 1 hour outrigger ride from a cargo ship harbor. You arrive on the island soaking wet and with a very sore butt- courtesy of an underpowered wooden boat that was not designed for inter-island voyages, or carrying passengers- and a captain that has no intention of maneuvering away from the waves created by 150 meter long cargo ships. When you arrive on the shore of Gili Nanggu, you'll soon discover that there is no running water on the entire island. It's just sand and palm trees. But the party was built up to be quite a scene, so these were only minor discomforts that were accepted as part of the experience.

Somehow, Osman managed to arrange the delivery of a natural-gas generator to power his speaker system and DJ equipment- he even had strobe lights and a fog machine... This party was scheduled to last 4 days, although I had committed to only 1 night, as Simone had to stay in Bali for work and to nurse her parasite.

I show up at the island at 2pm, after a total of 9 hours of traveling, to find approximately 60 people on the beach who were in full-on party mode. By full-on party mode, I mean that they were already 24 hours into the celebration, and were in an entirely different dimension than myself. Along with the eco friendly generator and professional speaker system, a large shipment of LSD had managed to smuggle itself onboard and decided to join the party. I've been to raves before, and I’ve been to trance parties with over 20,000 people attending... I've NEVER seen people as far-out as these 60 people on Gili Nanggu. My word of the day became "Full-on" as there seemed to be no other way to describe what I was seeing. These people were just full-on celebrating.

I guarantee that this guy will lose his glasses before the party is over

I knew that these people were serious about psychedelic- But one guy really stood out… he was moving in a way that no sober human could, and he was wearing an outfit that glowed in the dark from head to toe. I called him Electron. Mostly because he could glow in the dark, but also because he appeared to be getting electrocuted from invisible currents of energy- it was his dance-move of choice for a solid 5 hours.  Also, his outfit had its own battery powered L.E.D lighting system. Sadly for me, the L.E.D lights had died hours ago before I arrived on the island, so I never got to see him in his full getup. It appears that the energy supply of the batteries for his L.E.D system couldn't compete with stamina from the LSD that was IN his system.

Over 18 hours after I first saw him, Electron was still going- but barely.

After a night of enjoying the events of this celebration of life as the only lucid human on Gili Nanggu, I awoke at 730am and exited my tent. At this time, there were over 100 party people; some ‘originals’ were still going at it full-on. Suddenly, boatloads of family vacationers began to arrive from surrounding islands. We discovered that Gili Nanggu was a popular place to day-camp for those who liked 'peace and quiet'... well, that was not to be found on this island today- or tomorrow. The party was now only 36 hours old, and had at least 24 more to go. It was really entertaining for me to watch as unsuspecting tourists were approached by members of the psychedelic celebration, and were offered to join our party with complimentary hits of acid or mushrooms.

It's now just before noon, and I was about to wave goodbye to the party people and head home to planet earth. But I noticed a man in snorkeling gear, wearing leopard print underwear... so I decided to stay a while. Although this site was far from the strangest I had witnessed in the past 24 hours, I was still very interested in what his intentions were, and I was planning on standing guard in case he decided to venture off into the ocean. Luckily for both of us, this was not his plan... and it became clear to me that he thought he was already IN the ocean. Well, I rushed to my bag and got out my camera, knowing that something document worthy was about to occur- and it did.

At one point, the man in snorkeling gear found himself in the middle of the dance-circle, where it appears that he thought he was underwater, surrounded by a large school of fish. He proceeded to laydown in the sand, and with a surprisingly effective breaststroke motion, he traveled about 6 yards and almost made it to the DJ booth- I knew this was his targeted destination, because the DJ booth was where the LSD supply was kept.

I wish I could have had this on film, and I intended to narrate the event that unfolded using the photos I took, but we all know what happened to those…

Looking back at the events from the island, I realize that I’ll really miss Gili Nanggu. Electron and dry-land scuba man, thank you for the entertainment. I’ll never forget you.

 I returned home from the island to find that Simone was feeling much better, and had found out that the local movie studio she worked with over a year ago here in Bali wanted to partner with her to film a short from the movie concept that she had created.

We had to postpone our voyage at sea with Captain Ignazzio, as he had arrived in Bali several days too late for us to complete our trip. He had spent over a week battling unfavorable winds while crossing the world’s deepest channel that separates Bali from Lombok Island, so with our trip no longer possible, our connection with him was a simple dinner where we discussed plans to sail to Papua sometime in the near future.

Simone and I performed the stunts and ‘acting’ for the film, and we were lucky to have eager and motivated friends who wanted to experience the opportunity to work for several days on a movie set. I personally loved the stunt work. Riding motorcycles off-road and in the complete absence of police is a passion of mine, as is jumping off high things and executing controlled ‘tuck-and roll’ landings. My role as ‘Bryce Dawson’ involved crashing stuff, jumping really high and really far, and carrying a small Asian woman through waist deep water in a jungle river- basically my idea of a perfect day. After having the filming completed in about a week, we were only left with 5 days to complete our Bali adventure.

The last 5 days for me were spent mostly with Sandesh and Stefano, as we worked together on several business ventures and completing a sightseeing tour of various notable elements, including local architectural structures that were built entirely accurate to sacred geometrical designs. Simone was completely dedicated to finalizing her filming and editing details to create her teaser. With this completed on our final night, we all went out to dinner at ‘The Five Elements Resort’ which is a built on holy grounds in Bali, and is architecturally stunning, with it’s concept is grand and beautiful in every way. Operated in conjunction with the enlightened teachings and practices of ‘Green School”, these are 2 establishments that are making massive forward steps in humanitarianism and equality progression, while providing holistic health education and permaculture techniques to benefit all living beings.

Currently, we are at the Amsterdam Intl. Airport- and have decided to stay here… there will be no express adventures and certainly no wandering into pubs or ‘Coffee Shops’ during this 6 hour layover. Not because it’s 8:05am, but mostly because during the goodbye dinner party for us last night, I inhaled something that our friend had recently hand-picked in the Himalayas… I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t want to break the flow of the rotation as it got passed around the dinner table, and my curious nature demanded that I experience this exotic herbal delight. The natural ‘remedy’ rendered my body completely useless for an hour or so, while my brain proceeded to function at full capacity in some other dimension. Good times…

So, we didn’t find a camera in Singapore. We hope that London’s electronic prices won’t be as outrageous as we have been told they are. We shall see…

As far as the home-invasion goes, there's not much to report other than Simone and I now probably fit into the class of 'Ultra-light backpackers' here in Europe. Thanks to our midnight visitor, we were saved the inconvenience of having to pay overweight luggage charges at the airline check-in counter. 

Now we are in our hotel In London. I'm excited to be able to see my mother in her mother country! The food here is as bad as I remember it, but luckily we found a grocery store up the street from our hotel, and the numerous Pret A Manger's here have decent vegetarian selections. 


I'll be posting more from Spain, and assuming that we don't get robbed and I don't lose the connector cable to our future camera, many pictures will be posted with the next blog.




Love & Light to all!