Official University Business

Tales from the Write, Edit, Bali Tour 2019

In October 2019, seven students from RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing Associate Degree embarked on a nine-day study tour of Bali, together with two co-leaders. The tour encompassed a range of activities including collaborating with creative writing students from Ganesha University as well as attending the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.

They say travel is all about new experiences, and I can tell this trip is definitely going to be an ‘experience’. The afternoon Bali sun is unrelenting and we’re looking forward to some air-conditioned relief back at the hotel after our lunch with creative writing students from Ganesha University.

A battered van waits in the car park, flakes of royal-blue duco clinging precariously to its mostly exposed metallic body. A weathered man approaches us, insisting he’s our driver. His English is as good as my Balinese, and he’s agreeing with everything we’re asking him, but in a way that makes me think we’re being scammed. I exchange a knowing look with Astrid, one of my teachers and a co-leader of the tour, but he won’t back down, so Clare, the other co-leader, steps in.

Turns out that this is, in fact, our transportation — this van, patched together with blue-tac and optimism; this van, which I’m pretty sure featured in the RMIT safety video of what not to do while you’re overseas on official university business.

In what is quickly becoming a real-life sociological experiment, the desire not to offend trumps every modicum of common sense, and we dutifully clamber inside — Gerry in the front, and Clare, Astrid, Marise and me in the back.

I’m pretty sure this van has seen lots of things in its fifty-seven years — sweating bodies, spontaneous sing-alongs of ‘Kumbaya’ and the odd transportation of live chickens — and now it’s our turn to indelibly etch our DNA into the cracked seats as we make our way back to the hotel.

The van’s exterior turns out to be a harbinger of the interior — two vinyl bench seats running parallel down either side and a floor of raised metal, providing extra grip for the feet in the absence of seat beats or anything else to hold onto if we come to a sudden stop. The van’s side door is wedged open. Permanently. Undoubtedly its fate for years. Made of wood concertinaed in two, it looks like it’s been salvaged from a shipping yard and repurposed into a van door.

As we settle in, I look to my fellow passengers. Clare’s face suggests her carefree hippie-past is having a heated internal discussion with her responsible adult — and it’s hard to know who’s winning. Marise, bravely sitting next to the open door, exudes an aura of composed concentration. She appears to be embarking on a series of meditative breathing exercises to still her mind and steel her soul for what she is about to endure. Clare offers to swap seats, but Marise is ready to put her life on the line in the name of team solidarity. Meanwhile, Astrid is happily taking photos — undoubtedly to provide documentary evidence for our loved ones should everything turn to shit.

As the driver takes off and joins the perilous Bali traffic, we start to appreciate some of the hidden features our chariot affords us. The lack of air-conditioning requires the windows to be fully open. This in turn allows the sun to pour in unfiltered, causing a domino effect of increased sweat on the seat, which decreases friction and allows us to slip and slide more readily. What’s left of the seat padding is minimal, ensuring we’ll fully experience the van’s lack of suspension and dubious mechanics. And that permanently open door is more than just a quick escape hatch. It also acts as a funnel that sucks in all the passing exhaust fumes.

There could also be a smell in the van. I’m not exactly sure. I’m too busy holding my breath to tell you with certainty. In fact, between the breath holding and the bum clenching, this whole trip is turning out to be quite the aerobic workout.

I momentarily envy Gerry who seems to have snared the plum spot in the passenger seat, but then I notice that his knees are wedged into his chest in some sort elaborate yoga pose. I can’t work out whether this is a manifestation of abject fear or the realisation that there is no way that this vehicle has airbags — and trust me, if a vehicle ever needed airbags, this is it. I discover a short-while later that Gerry’s awkward pose is directly correlated with the presence of the spare tyre wedged in the foot-well.

And then I hear it — an unguarded gasp from Gerry — cultured, beautifully spoken Gerry; not the type of man given to involuntary gasping, but it’s the only option when you’re in the front seat of a hurtling blue van that misses a wayward elderly pedestrian by mere millimetres. Admittedly, the pedestrian was meandering down the road — a suboptimal approach given the local traffic conditions — but instead of adopting a corrective driving position, our driver has clearly seen this as an opportunity to hold his ground (or else to score the proverbial ten points). I’m not a woman given to religious chanting, but I find myself praying that we make it back in one piece.

Five knuckle-biting minutes later we stop at an ATM. I attempt an exit through the permanently open door, but the gap between the van’s ceiling and the top step has been engineered for going in, not out. Exiting requires me to sink into a deep, chicken-like squat and waddle down the steps. With all that bum-clenching that’s been going on, I’m not entirely confident my undignified waddling won’t be accompanied by a fart.

But there, on the side of the road, an oasis — a self-contained, air-conditioned ATM the size of a telephone booth. It feels safe in the ATM. It feels cool in the ATM. I want to stay in the ATM forever.

Unfortunately, Astrid and Clare are waiting outside to withdraw some money. I become acutely aware that they could be marking my work at some point in the future so continuing to monopolise the air-conditioned booth is probably not wise. Also, Astrid has mentioned a history of fainting in hot weather and I don’t want to sacrifice my precious remaining water-supply to revive a semi-conscious, post-faint Astrid. A collapsed Astrid could create the kind of moral dilemma where I may be disappointed with my decision-making in the moment.

We return to the van with a reluctant acceptance of the fate that awaits us. It’s the same sinking feeling I have when I’ve just finished doing twenty ‘burpees’ at the behest of my personal trainer. I hate burpees — that hideous combination of a thrusting push-up followed by a star-jump. Up and down. Up and down. It’s nauseating and exhausting. The worst thing about burpees is that my trainer only ever does exercises in sets of two or three, so once I’ve completed my first set, I always know there’s more pain to come. Getting back in the van elicits the same inescapable dread.

Before we take off, Marise announces that she’ll walk back to the hotel from here. The rest of us know that the hotel is another three kilometres away. Now Marise is a lot of wonderful things, but a walker in the midday sun is not one of them. Like a desperate castaway looking to escape their perilous entrapment and find refuge on an island home, she remains convinced that the mini-mart ahead is the mini-mart near our accommodation — the same style of mini-mart that appears every 200 to 300 metres along this road. It’s blind optimism, or abject desperation, but we’re able to talk her down and she remains part of the fearless five, bravely going where no RMIT student is meant to go.

Back on the road, we look out the back window where we have a bird’s eye view of all the nicer cars behind us and going in the other direction. Losers, I think, with your superfluous air-conditioning and redundant road-worthy certificates. What sort of cultural experience is that?

We survive the trip unscathed and alight the van, thankful to be alive and only slightly suspicious that the whole adventure may have been deliberately orchestrated by Clare as a future writing provocation.