there is always a downside to every cherished holiday taken. the post effect of it all and that depressing melancholic air of miss we feel after a re-adaptation to our daily life. sometimes it comes in an instance, the second we touch down back in familiar grounds or for others, perhaps a little while longer. that self pitying aura seeps deep into the inner cores of our dejected hearts and our imagination goes lucid with hallucinations of the past, a past unnoticed when it happened but causes a dull ache the moment we start to remember.
bali earlier this month had been one of these tugging heart holidays. it was not a holiday i had anticipated it to be neither had i loved it as much as the previous times i had fallen in love with the slow peaceful pace of the place. it is neither slow nor peaceful now. over run by throngs of tourist and westernised everything has taken shaped and popped up like wild mushrooms along the streets. locals that werent working became a rare sight and local cuisine almost impossible to find. even the streets of ubud, once quiet and quaint had become another busy town with foreign bodies like ourselves talking loudly and rudely while mindlessly elbowing our ways past each other. it was almost a nightmare for me, low season and yet the mess was just irreparable. how then is it during high season? would i hate the place then? the one paradise i had imprinted as perfect in my eyes a time now long forgotten.
3 weeks later, back home in the stuffy dirty air of KL, i start to miss my balinese secret. take away the disastrous walk in ubud town and the horrible food catered to a more neutral palette of tourist, and i am reminded of the clean air and strangly perfect weather of my runaway place. the calm serenity of my mornings and nights and the smiling hospitality of the locals that served us all that while. the strongest memory being a scent of frangipanies that both me and the boy had originally found much too overwhelming.
3 weeks later, and i long to place my feet in the soft sands of the beach, a beach no longer as beautiful and clean as it had once been. still, the loving sounds of crashing waves and the magical feeling of powder like sand warm in between the toes and the cold salty water sticky against the skin is something i want very much of right now. or even the random walks around the city; aimless and pointless but causes a sense of belonging still as we walk hand in hand silent along the narrow streets.
so many more things i had wanted him to see; sights, sounds and smells of places and freedom that could have been found if not for the lack of time that constrained us into a tight bundle of edgy air. so many more hidden wonders that we never got to feel. still, i wish i was back there now, back on that island that still keeps the keys of my heart stored somewhere in their grounds.
