Bali in its Middle Ages

Bali, island of many gods,

and long unspoiled by modern obsessions.

For a hundred years the magnet for hermit artists,

for revelling hippie surfers,

for wide-eyed boomer travellers in their thousands,

and then for the smartly-dressed being served

a promise of a cheap luxury holiday.

This is not the story of the Bali people

-that's for the Bali people to be telling.

This is the journal of a foreigner,

an occasional visitor, a "bule",

but a lover of so many chapters in the story of Bali,

that island of romance,

that island with a special place in greater Indonesia.

It is a story that morphs on every journey.

It's a record. Defending a history.

Because time and progress march on.

But everything in this visitor's log is untrue.

All these stories and vignettes and snippets.

All the characters, all the facts, all the events.

None of it happened.

Except for those items, perhaps many, that might be true.

Some of the things in that island's Middle Ages.