It can be lonely to be on your own in a crowd, especially when everyone else is partying.
With New Year’s Eve approaching, I decided to leave the busyness of Ubud and instead see in the new year on the coast of Bali. I imagined watching the sun set on the year before sleeping in a beach hut and waking to a new chapter of my life: 2016.
Why not? Christmas had been unconventional. I’d booked a room online and after flying from Manchester to Indonesia, I stayed as a house guest of a Moslem family in Jakarta. I was tired and jet-lagged when I arrived late on Christmas Eve, so I spent half of Christmas Day sleeping before going out to get something to eat in a small family-run restaurant. Christmas Day had been pretty much a non-event. Would New Year be different?
I had no idea what would happen in the days ahead.
At the end of a difficult year, this was my first time backpacking alone for a long time. I wanted to get away for three weeks over the holiday period, escape the British winter for a while, and travel to some new places. Beyond that, I didn’t have a plan.
I had been to Indonesia once before for a work trip, flying into the capital Jakarta then travelling by train to Bandung, Indonesia’s ‘Creative City’, to deliver a business workshop for creative entrepreneurs.
So I’d only experienced Java, just one of Indonesia’s 17,508 islands and the most populated island on earth, with 150 million people.
After a couple of days in the capital city’s noise, traffic and crowds, I was ready to move on. Bali was famous as a holiday destination, popular with Australians who take a relatively short flight to the island, in a similar way that British tourists escape to Spain’s Costa del Sol. I’d heard that some places in Bali were also popular with backpackers and ‘Digital Nomads’, working online with their laptops as journalists, computer programmers or founders of the next ‘killer app’ or online startup.
I’d flown from Jakarta into Bali’s airport in Denpasar which is close to the beaches and holiday hotels. The town of Ubud, in the centre of the island, was my destination so I soon went directly there. Ubud is a cultural centre and has a different atmosphere. Instead of beaches it has craft shops, temples, traditional Balinese dance shows, museums, the Elephant Cave, foot massage parlours, and the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary.
The town also had Hubud, Ubud’s hub for co-working, full of digital nomads who were busy networking, using the fast wifi, pursuing their laptop-based endeavours.
Hubud had opened in 2013 as one of Southeast Asia’s first co-working spaces. When I went there is was in its prime. I remember the conversations with enterprising travellers, the coffee, the networking events, and the feeling in the air underneath its bamboo structure that anything was possible online. I also remember that it had a vending machine selling Bitcoin.
Bali is a small island, especially compared to Indonesia’s huge islands: Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and New Guinea. In the complex network of islands that makes up the nation of Indonesia, Bali is a minor piece of land (5,780 km2) lying in the string of Greater Sunda Islands, in Indonesia’s south, sweeping east, becoming the Lesser Sunda Islands chain, that eventually connects to Timor Leste, north of the Australian continent.
Indonesia is the globe’s most populous Moslem-majority country: 87% of its 277 million people are Sunni Moslems.
Bali is different. The vast majority of its population of 4.3 million people follow Balinese Hinduism. This means there are stunning cultural differences compared to the rest of Indonesia.
One of the first things I noticed is the abundance of small religious offerings outside most buildings, often placed simply on the pavement. These are called ‘canang sari’ and are made daily by Balinese Hindus to honour the gods, ancestors and spirits, as well as to maintain harmony in the world.
Typically they are a small hand-sized woven palm leaf basket, containing colourful flower petals such as jasmine or marigold, which are considered sacred. They often also contain rice and other small items such as coins or sweets. A small stick of incense usually lies alongside the basket’s offerings.
I wandered through Ubud’s busy streets, taking in the atmosphere, visiting various places of interest, and sampling local foods.
Durian is a spiky-shelled fruit, a bit bigger than a coconut. It’s sold at roadside stalls and small shops, where people eat its creamy flesh, usually wearing plastic gloves. That’s because despite its sweet thick taste, the shell has a pungent odour which can cling to fingers long after eating the fruit. Many hotels display signs forbidding durian!
A noticeable feature of Indonesia’s big cities is that half the traffic is motorbikes, mainly small mopeds. In Bali there are lots of these too, but the most popular bikes are automatic scooters, mainly Hondas and Yamahas. Many are ridden by tanned tourists in t-shirts and shorts. It’s easy to hire one, but I preferred to walk around the town. In any case the town centre roads were conjested, so it didn’t look like much fun.
After enjoying a few days staying in a small guest house in the town, tasting lots of different foods, drinking coffee and walking miles, I started to think about what to do on New Year’s Eve.
I enquired about hiring a motor scooter and it seemed easy and cheap enough. Most foreigners hired them just for getting around town or riding to and from their accommodation outside Ubud’s centre. I wasn’t sure if it was allowed to travel all around the island on them. Nobody told me it wasn’t allowed so I didn’t ask.
The next morning I set off on my roadtrip adventure with a full tank of petrol, my backpack strapped to the back seat. I wore a scarf around my face like a bandit, partly to protect me from the traffic pollution but mainly because I heard that police at road blocks were more likely to stop foreigners than locals. Since I was wearing a helmit and a scarf I had a better chance of avoiding being recognised as an outsider. I didn’t want to be stopped for some obscure minor fault or other, either with the bike or my driving, and instantly fined (cash only, sir!)
It was hot sunny weather and I was enjoying the breeze. I was driving towards the unknown, feeling excited and adventurous. The north east coast was my destination, through the highlands of Bali, passing near Mount Batur, one of Bali’s most famous volcanoes.
My route took me towards Kintamani, a highland area offering breathtaking views of Mount Batur and Lake Batur. through Tegallalang, known for its stunning rice terraces. At Kintamani, I was on the edge of the massive Batur Caldera, formed by an ancient volcanic eruption. Mount Batur (Gunung Batur) is an active volcano (1,717 meters high) that last erupted in 2000. It’s located inside the caldera, with Lake Batur next to it.
As I drove into those higher altitudes, the air became cooler, then chilly. The sky became cloudy then overcast. And then it started to rain a gentle shower that developed into a storm. I was getting wet, and worse, so was all my clothing and other stuff in my rucsac. I stopped in a small village to shelter from the rain. I bought a waterproof poncho-style cape for riding and a plastic covering to strap over my luggage. I drank a coffee and waited, but the rain wasn’t going to stop any time soon, so I drove on into the dark storm guided by the beam of my headlight.
I was soaking wet and very cold. I had a thought that if I were with a girlfriend or travel companion, there might have been one of those “Whose crazy ideas was this anyway?!” arguments. But travelling alone I had nobody to blame but myself. I’d made my bed and I had to lie in it. I just had to get on with the journey.
By the time I had descended to the coastal road hours later at Tianjar, I’d left the volcano and storm far behind. The sun came out and soon I was feeling warm again. I stopped for a break and to take off my waterproofs. My clothes were still wet but they would soon dry off in the sun and breeze. As I warmed up, the cold and rain were soon forgotten and I enjoyed the sun’s heat again.
Everything was OK now. Life was good. I was even happy that I hadn’t used as much petrol as I thought I would. In fact I was surprised that the fuel gauge still showed one third full.
Then the motor scooter just stopped.
There aren’t many petrol stations outside the big towns, but I’d noticed that some of the roadside shack shops, family-run ‘warungs’ that sell snacks and soft drinks also had old 1-litre bottles full of a yellow liquid that looked like urine. It was more likely to be fuel, I figured. So I pushed my scooter with its faulty fuel gauge for a few hundred meters to the next top-up shop. The bike needed petrol and I needed a drink. Refuelled with ‘bensin’ and refreshed with cold water, I continued along the coast road towards Kubu with the ocean to my left and the unknown ahead.
I paid for a room to stay for a couple of nights at the coast next to a small scuba-diving centre which advertised equipment hire and diving expeditions to a nearby shipwreck.
It was late in the afternoon by now so I took a shower, hung out my clothes and waterproofs to dry properly and sorted out my kit. Then after eating a local dish of rice and spectacularly spicy chicken curry, I fell into bed, exhausted.
I’m not a diver and had only once before been scuba diving, in Australia on a holiday many years previously, at the Great Barrier Reef. My main memories were of being seasick on the trip out to the Reef, snorkelling in the warm clear waters amongst tropical fish, before strapping on heavy oxygen tanks and plunging into the dark depths with an instructor and a few other visitors. It was freaky to be able to breathe underwater and move independently in all directions, diving into the depths.
So I had ticked off scuba diving from my bucket list and had no plans to do it again. But here, the scuba-diving offer was literally staring me in the face. So it had to be done. The following morning, now the last day of the year, I arranged to go on a dive to explore the shipwreck.
The Liberty is a U.S. Army cargo ship that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942 during World War II. It lies off the coast of Tulamben, near Kubu. After being torpedoed, the ship was beached on the shore. In 1963, the eruption of Mount Agung caused the wreck to slide into the sea, where it remains underneath the waves in a depth from 5 to 30 meters, making it accessible to both beginner and advanced divers. With generally calm waters with good visibility, I had stumbled into what is regarded as one of the best wreck dives in the world. The wreck is now an artificial reef, home to a variety of marine species like bumphead parrotfish, barracudas and pygmy seahorses.
The Great Barrier Reef is spectacular in the shallow bright waters above the coral where the colourful fish swim, but in the deeper water there is not much to see except the glow of other divers’ torches in the gloom. Here, there was a shipwreck to explore. It was eerie to approach the rusted metal structure as the instructors guided us. Breathing from an air tank on my back, I was super-conscious of every in-breath and out-breath. Unlike the easy breathing of a meditation practice, I was mindful that this was deliberate inhaling and exhaling. It made me appreciate the unreal ability to breathe underwater. It also made me aware of how we take for granted being able to breathe without even thinking about it as we go about our land-based lives.
Ableh was one of the guys who worked at the dive centre. He lived in a nearby village and his brother offered fishing trips further along the coast. Together with an Australian backpacker, Steve, I went sea fishing that afternoon. We didn’t catch anything but it was fun to go out onto the ocean in a small narrow wooden fishing boat, commanded expertly by a local captain.
There was going to be a party at a bar near the dive centre to see in the new year, so Steve was keen to get back for drinks and celebrations with a group of Australians. I didn’t really fancy it but after all it was New Year’s Eve and so it was the default thing to do. And in any case I had no better offers!
Then Ableh invited me to his home, to join his family and some relatives who were coming round for drinks. I was welcome to stay over too, if I wanted. Why not? I thought. The offer was genuine and straightforward. I could politely decline, of course, but why would I do that? I was travelling. For me, that means exploring new cultures, meeting new people, rather than trying to live as normal a life as possible but with sunshine. I graciously accepted Ableh’s kind offer.
Only a few miles away, in that bar, the holidaymakers were having a western celebration, which I’d done many times before, drinking the type of beer I’d drunk most of my adult life. This was different. We drank a home-brewed beer, which tasted new to me. It was cloudy and less bitter than the home brew beer I once used to make. I learned that I was drinking ‘tuak’, a traditional Balinese beverage made from the sap of coconut or palm trees. It’s alcoholic but much weaker than the locally distilled ‘brem’ or ‘arak’.
I relaxed into drinking and chatting with the family. When the new year arrived, hours earlier than back home in Europe, we raised our glasses to each other and watched distant fireworks explode in the sky above the black ocean.
The next thing I remember is waking up on a makeshift mattress on the floor of the family’s living room.
I have a photo of myself with Ableh, his wife and daughter, sitting on the front step of their wooden house in Bali.
For me it was a different new year’s eve party, low key, down to earth and authentic. Certainly not the most spectacular, fancy or extravagant of my life. Nevertheless it was a priceless experience given by the simple kindness of strangers, to a lone foreigner. That night was a perfect and gentle way for me to slide smoothly into a new year and a new chapter of life.
After Bali I travelled to Malaysia and from there to Cambodia and Laos.
That trip was a turning point in my life. I now had a renewed confidence in travelling alone again. It confirmed my ambition that as a self-employed person I could travel more yet keep my business alive online. Yes, I could be a kind-of digital nomad. Furthermore, I could create my own lifestyle, flying south like the birds when the winter comes. In fact I could travel at any time of the year, anywhere on earth, combining my work and travel, integrating rather than ‘balancing’ work and life.
It was clear to me now that I had the opportunity, the good health and the spirit of adventure to explore the world beyond my own country, as I had started to do aged 17 on a hiking trip to Galicia in north west Spain. That first trip had given me the travel bug.
Many years later I could feel that same travel bug still inside me. And now was a perfect time to turn the page and start my next chapter as a traveller.
EPILOGUE
In the following years until the COVID-19 Pandemic I would leave the cold dark European winter for several weeks at the end of each year, travelling with only vague plans, to more tropical and exotic lands.
And throughout the year my travels would see me heading overseas with a backpack to places as varied as the Solomon Islands, Japan, Albania, Tonga, Honduras, Cape Verde, Beirut, Macedonia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and Indonesia again (Sumatra).
I am fortunate to be invited overseas to work in many countries, sometimes speaking at conferences, delivering training workshops, or advising creative businesses. I often add a few weeks of independent travelling to a work trip. With my laptop in my backpack I can keep my business running. So I take opportunities to travel whenever I can.
For example, as a side trip to a work project in Colombia I went with my backpack to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, leaving a suitcase full of work clothes and books in Bogotá to collect later. And one summer I left the drizzle of England to do some laptop-based work in Cyprus for a while, then decided to keep moving east, for seven weeks, in an unexpected trip around the world, until I flew the last leg back to Manchester from Vancouver.
So that New Year in Bali was a turning point for me. An awakening and the dawn of a different lifestyle, combining work and travel, devising my lifestyle business and a way of life that suits me, according to my own personal definition of success.
Copyright © David Parrish 2025.
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“The best way to travel abroad is to live with the locals.”
Zach Braff
“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.”
James Michener
“Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”
John Steinbeck
“When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.”
Mohsin Hamid
Read more travel quotes.