Today I hired a car in Bali and drove with my wife from Seminyak to Ubud. I think the greatest protests about us driving were from friends at home who said we were mad.

Well that is true to a certain extent.

The madness is driving back in Australia, where the vehicles are fuelled by testosterone and anger. Where the need of the individual, far out weighs the transport of the many.

Well in Bali (and Thailand where I have driven before) it is not the will of the few that rules the road, it is that there are many and the few are many!

The motorbikes are like insistent flies on a summer BBQ except they move faster. A car is not close unless you can feel the wax on your duco bending with the proximity! Eye contact, hand gestures or indicators for that matter are not necessary as it is not about the driving it is about the dance.

You decided to drive in Asia so you decide that you are going to the dance. Your partners are everybody. The music is the rhythm of many moving to a different destination without haste but without restraint.

I like to drive in Asia because it teaches me that to wait, is to be waited for, to move in a direction is to be allowed, and waited for, to move in that direction, to be angry is to grind in your own tempest that effects nothing…

I suppose the reason that I love to drive in Asian is like a lot of things in Asia, it is not about me. The journey is about traveling, but the traveling is about discovery, the discovery is that you are not the most important person on the most important trip.

Drive in Asia and find that you can become a better driver in a world where it appears that everyone is driving in chaos and mayhem…. Then you discover that the chaos and mayhem really only exist inside your car.

I am a better man, and a better driver for driving in Bali.

I love the dance.

I am sitting here in a lovely Villa in Bali relaxing and my wife is out shopping. We have had a mellow time of it since arriving.

The tourists (like us!) are everywhere although you never think you look like the rest of them.

The store holders go from happy and welcoming to insistent to dismissive at various stages of negotiation depending on prices and no doubt attitude… on both sides.

All the time we are going about our tourist life, there is another life going on in the background, often glanced at, but quickly dismissed as another shiny object takes our notice.

Yesterday I noticed. And today I saw.

Motorbikes everywhere but often this is the place of business for the small street vendor selling or dangerously transporting their wares to the locals and tourists. Buildings being pulled down or put up by swarms of men and women doing it in small pieces. The streets cleaned by the lone street sweepers and their small broom and bag. Garbage removed and sorted by hand, noticed only by the passing smell of the worker stirring up the garbage while sifting out the 1000 plastic bags that once would have been naturally compostable bags and plates and every container. Locals in small dark shops with unknown wares on display never entered. Trucks filled with tired and solum workers traveling down busy tourist streets at dusk packed in the back of tip trucks and utilities: their gazes go to the restaurants and bars just starting for the evening that they will never enter.

I saw a lot today and it didn’t make me sad, I just noticed it.

I suppose thinking now, so much of the life of the people here is reliant on the tourists coming. And really what can the tourist do. I think we can at least care. I think we can be polite. I think we can be respectful. I think we can behave like any visitor in someone else’s home.

I know that is what I did today.

I know me being a better man is not only about saying it, but it is also in what I do.

I tipped my taxi driver (The fare was $1.90 and I gave a $1.00 for himself)
I gave the old, old lady in the dark store where I bought eggs this morning twice what she wanted (I bought my dozen eggs for $2.00).
I eat their food (not a hamburger and chips, or branded take away – although today I did have a lunch in a small local restaurant that should have had a Hazchem warning!)
I look at them, not through them.
I smile at them.
I say hello, excuse me, no thank you, thank you, in their language.

I appreciate that I am a visitor in their home. And as a guest we know, back home at least, you should respect the host or leave.

Bali is a wonderful place, with a vibe that is not unlike the tentative hug of a friend just met: you have to know when it is okay to squeeze a bit tighter, become more familiar and form a long friendship. But, I think that comes by having many visits in all forms, and not just being the ‘plus one’ at a 10 day party.

Here’s to me having a new friend and being a good guest.

Today we all received the news that the great comedian Robin Williams died.  I have read a lot of posts on Facebook where people have said his death has effected them as he was such a part of their childhood and good memories in their lives.

I have never been one for worshipping celebrities or even a great fan of any particular celebrity.  But, even for me the death of Robin Williams plucked some cords
in my heart.  I think it hurt a little more as the reports at this time are that he suicided.

I have written before the inevitability of death, but, it just seems that is something that takes us at our time not something that we seek because living is a worse alternative.

Robin Williams was the person that I didn’t know, the celebrity that I didn’t worship, or really think about much other than he made me laugh, cry in some of his movies and I thought appeared to be a pretty good bloke.

Maybe he knew us more than we knew him.  He knew how to make us laugh.  He came into our lives and made us feel.  He was a better person that I didn’t know was such a part of my life until he was gone.  He was the celebrity who I didn’t think of as a real man, with real pain, that he felt so much of in the end.  All the joy he gave us we couldn’t repay because he was the better person we didn’t know.