As luck would have it, my brother's wife, Sumena, is both Indonesian (born in Sumatra) and an ardent traveler. Granted, even Hollywood couldn't spoil a place as enchanting as Bali, but still, I was ready to move on. I remember reading, with a sinking heart, that Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat, Pray, Love doubled the number of visitors to the island, and that was before Julia Roberts arrived on the scene.
Years earlier, I had fallen hard for Bali but later discovered I wasn't the only woman in its life. Why not keep it to myself a little while longer.īy that point in the trip, having already hop-scotched around six Indonesian islands, I was feeling quite pleased with myself.
In between swims, I'd sit under the bamboo roof of Kanawa's only restaurant, facing an empty beach of sparkling golden sands, play chess on a battered wooden board with one of the local guides, and seriously consider not writing about this island. There's an obvious metaphor or two in that-the futility of expectations, the power of beauty over the beast-but I'm easily distracted, and at the time, while snorkeling just a few strokes off tiny Kanawa island, I'd become too preoccupied by the parade of neon fish gliding past my mask to give those frightful dragons (overfed lizards, really) any thought at all. It wasn't just a few, mind you, but a constellation nesting in a translucent bay within Indonesia's Komodo National Park. I went in search of dragons and found sapphire-blue starfish instead.
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