Saya mao jalan-jalan (I go walking)

I work at a small warung while Anni smokes cigarettes. When I first arrived, I waved her smoking aside. In the open-air villa kitchen it was easy enough to avoid. Now, as she lights up her third cigarette in the last hour, I’m getting annoyed.

But it’s more than the cigarette, I'm starting to realize it’s the constant company (that feels akin to chaperone, at times). I feeling the need for some time alone, to sort things out, to watch things move, to just be quiet and listen to what’s going on in this world around me. But every time I start to make a move, I’m pulled backwards as Anni and Oka insist on accompanying me. I try to explain that part of the joy of traveling for me is the exploring, getting lost, fumbling with new words with unfamiliar people. That I want/need to do this intentionally isn’t something they understand. So finally, I tell Anni she must take the rest of the day off. She’s not sure what to do with herself. I tell her to go visit a friend or maybe watch a good movie, or take a long walk.

She looks at me – you come home after work here? I shrug my shoulders and laugh. Tidak saya tao. Nanti nanti. (I don’t know. Later, Later..)

With you it’s always Nanti Nanti! She mimics me. I realize she won’t leave me alone until I take her extra cell phone and nod when she tells me to call her if I plan on doing anything after working: She’ll come and meet me.

I’m simultaneously touched and completely annoyed by the suffocating levels of caring. As I watch her leave, and I feel like a kid skipping school as I wrap up work and duck out of the restaurant on my solo jalan-jalan (walk).

My head and heart feel calmer already, just moving with the world without a making a sound. Armies of scooters and delapidated trucks race around narrow streets emitting a constant stream of gassy emissions that makes me feel like I'm in a perpetual drag race. I snap shots on a whim. I buzz down rows of streets with pretty shops. I greet Indonesians and the few white tourists I spy with a smile. Only the Indonesians smile back. I eventually give up smiling at the other (obvious) tourists -- they seem to busy with their own goings-on to notice anything more than themselves-- and I just wander and watch. School kids in matching blue uniforms tease eachother and clog the sidewalks, busy markets with things of all shapes and sizes, Aussie tourists haggling over prices of some trinket or another, offerings being prepared and prayed for by devoted women in sarongs, fashionable tourist men with spiky hair holding the hands of women in tiny beach dresses and high heels--picking their way, uncomfortably, through mud puddles and third-world construction chaos. I have no idea where to go next and am looking forward to it – I convinced my friend Christine to fly in and join the tail end of the trip and she arrives tomorrow. I decided it was easy enough to stay at the villa another 5 days and then move on to something new, just sorta make it up as I go along I tell myself. (It’s worked great so far!)

I pause at the street to let traffic pass. She’s on the other side of the street, also pausing to let the traffic pass. Gold-brown hair and sunshine-yellow shirt, and a friendly face you can’t help but smile at. Instead of passing on the street, we stop to talk. She’s lost, first day in Bali, traveling alone, looking for the organic, raw foods café—she’s from New Zealand and talks with an awesome accent. I meet Jo two weeks after the first day I arrived alone, in Bali.

I offer to walk her to the store, try to find it together. I know that overwhelming feeling of arriving in a strange place; alone. How great it is to have someone to just share these experiences: good and challenging. She completely agrees; she’s grateful and sweet, she says she’s so happy she could hug me. So she does. It’s awesome.

There’s something about her. The way she speaks honestly and openly about her excitement and disappointments on her journey so far, with a depth that's decades beyond her 20 years. She was feeling alone and wanted to share this with someone--I nod--and then she saw me and had a feeling about this, about me. I laugh, not because it's funny, but because I've been so focused on careers and number-crunching these past years, that I'm only now finding my courage to write about feelings--let alone trust them, talk about them to those I know or random strangers. But right then, in that moment, I feel strongly -- to the point of just knowing -- that this is going to lead to unequivocally good things. As we walk, it’s like talking to an old friend. I’m a little in shock, it’s my first real conversation in English in two weeks…She’s been trying to pick up Indonesian too, and I give her some of my most helpful words, when she tells me she has a hard time with Thank you! I laugh. I then tell her the trick my friend Ben told me: Tear my car seats! She peels out a laugh just as golden and sunny as her complexion and from that point on has no problems with Thank you. I thoroughly enjoy her company in those shared five minutes at an Ubud street corner and am thinking it would be fun to keep in touch with this one. Then, her story comes out and I find out her lodgings aren’t working out. I have an extra room at the villa until Christine arrives and after that, we’d figure something out. It would just be awesome to share what I've found with another traveler. She knows what I mean. She hugs me again. I know that I love this woman, instantly.

I walk through Ubud and back to the villa in the dark, smiling widly. Now I know why I had to go for that walk today. Now I know why I had to go on that walk alone. I think if I’d been walking with Anni, we would have been practicing Indonesian, and probably too busy to notice, too closed off to the company of others. I’m less sure what my last two weeks will hold, but am excited with the addition of Jo’s company and laugh as I write the email to Christine giving her the advanced warning that I’ve now spontaneously adopted a stray New Zealander, but already know she’s going to love Jo. Being just as cool-natured as Jo, Christine responds immediately and equally excited to meet Jo and share the adventure.

Solo men on scooters slow to offer me a ride, over and over again. Head-lamps glaring as they slow to ride alongside my walk, until I shoo them away in Indonesian and determined looks. I set out to walk and have no intention of stopping now. I pull out my hiking headlamp (a last minute packing addition) and trek on. It's been a whirlwind, the last two weeks. Caught up in the moment, it's not until this afternoon, talking with Jo and recognizing in her exactly just where and how I started here in Indonesia, that I appreciate how far I've come. I can't wait to see what will come.

Anni’s cell phone rings belligerently in my bag as I walk through the rice padi to the light of the villa, saying good evening to all the animals in the fields whose names I know in Indonesian. They flow from my brain and roll off my tongue, most naturally: Salamet Malam Bebek, Salamet Malam Cudok, Salamet Malam Cuching, Salamet Malam Sapi….