zimatravels

     This has been a sobering day.  As my retirement money swirled down and away into the abyss, and my mood went with it, the image of Scarlet from Gone with the Wind poked its way into my mind.  I once again saw her surrounded by the debris of her plantation home with tears in her eyes.  In Hollywood style, hopelessness turned into defiance and hope as she pulled the heavy drapes off the windows and dressed herself elegantly in them.  Ah, that felt good.  But then I remembered that I’m not 20 years old anymore.  I’m not beautiful.  And I have vertical blinds on my windows.

     I married young and had a few years of working, mostly as a social worker, before I devoted myself to ten years of raising a son and being an active volunteer.  In middle-age, my strong desire to travel and live outside the United States catapulted me outside the cozy confines of being a wife and mother.  After returning to school for a Master’s in Social Work, I emigrated to Israel in 1983 at the age of 40.  Because of subsidized housing and benefits for new immigrants, plus working, my years in Israel were not very expensive although I was still dipping into my divorce settlement - basically the value of half the house my former husband bought from me.

     In 1988, I turned out all my pockets and realized that I only had $15,000 left.  What to do?  I did what made sense to me.  I decided to travel the world before I ran out of money.

     My traveling evolved into a way of life for more than 16 years.  After 6 years in Israel, China, Taiwan, Macau, Bali, and Korea became “home,” while Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Turkey, Vietnam, Russia, and Iceland, among others, beckoned briefly.  My nomadic years were undoubtedly the best years of my life.

     While in China in 1988,  I discovered my true niche was being a teacher.  My Chinese students were the most highly motivated students I ever had, but the low pay - at the lowest simply room and board in exchange for teaching and at the highest $125 a month at Nanjing University - pushed me to sometimes leave China to work in somewhat more highly paid teaching jobs in other parts of Asia.  I was a freelance teacher unconnected to any organization and found my jobs in an unusual variety of ways wherever I decided I wanted to live and explore the culture.

     Some people asked me how I financially managed to keep traveling.  Many people simply assumed I must have been rather rich to keep circling the globe as I did.  And some of my parents’ friends thought they were supporting me.  In truth, I really can’t answer how I managed financially to keep traveling.  I just did.

     “But what will happen to you in retirement?” my parents asked more than once as I slipped into my 50’s.  I hadn’t a clue, nor did I spend much time and worry thinking about it.  Neither in my married years, nor in my traveling years, did I ever really think about money.  I made it.  I spent it.  I kept expenses as low as possible, never staying in anything but inexpensive hotels and hostels.  It worked out okay.  I never felt deprived.  And I even managed to be quite generous to my Chinese students who became my friends.  I didn’t have much money, but they had none at all during those early years.  And prices were cheap.

     Was I foolish not to prepare better for my old age?  A day like today in the stock market tells me I was.  Contrary to my Chinese friends who had the mistaken notion that the U.S. takes care of its old people, I have no real security, no real pension to back me up.  I didn’t spend all those hours and years in the U.S. required for racking up Social Security credits or pensions that make retirement at least somewhat secure.  What eventually provided for me were a couple of small inheritances and part of a long-ago pension plan from my former husband.  After my mother’s death, my father and I moved together to a retirement community in southern California where I remained after my father’s death.

     Yes, now that I’m a senior citizen, it’s scary to think about my financial future when the headlines scream about present and impending economic disaster and my nest egg lays cracked, broken, and ravaged.

     Bali was the closest to paradise I ever found.  Years ago, when I saw how far money could go in Bali, I thought maybe I could financially survive there when I was old and poor.  That time seems to be coming very quickly.  Hmm! I wonder how much Bali has changed financially since I was last there in 1995.

    

    I once had a porch overlooking terraced rice paddies, waving palm trees, thatched huts, and high sloping mountains in Ubud, Bali.  This is a place where everything seems interconnected — nature, people, community spirit, and art - incredible art.  The art here is everywhere, from nature to the beautiful Balinese, to the small trays of offerings to the gods three times a day that appear everywhere — on shrines, on sidewalks, on the bus, in a telephone booth, on the table on my porch.

     Art is in the color.  Art is in the movement of the swaying of the palm fronds, the easy grace of the people as they carry huge loads effortlessly on their heads.  The sounds are all a part of this melody with birds always chirping, the breeze swishing the lush plants and making the flowers bob on the trees, the crowing cocks.  The smells are of warmth, flowers, water, pure air, and delicate incense placed among the food and flower-bedecked trays of offerings.

     In Bali, nature reigns.  It is not beaten, subjugated, destroyed, and smothered into obscurity as it is in so many parts of the world.  Color is everywhere.  There are hundreds of shades of green in the plants and trees and terraced rice paddies.  Flowers contribute happy bursts of color both on the trees and bushes, and I think most handsomely behind the right ear of the young men.  The traditional batik sarongs wrapped around both men and women transform the people themselves into exotic flowers.  The sky is multi-colored too, with an infinite variety of gray and white clouds patterning the shades of blue sky.  And around sunset, all is suffused with soft, yet vivid oranges and yellows.

     The Balinese seem to have found what eludes most countries.  They are truly happy people.  They are relaxed, and speak oh so gently to one another.  There is a twinkle in everyone’s eye, a lightness in everyone’s step, a ready smile, and an easy laughter.  I’m sure there is the gamut of human emotions here too, but there is an unstressed, un-tense interaction among people.  A sense of peace, a sense of calm pervades.

     Unlike the western world, Balinese do not segment life into roles.  They combine work, recreation, business, religion, home life, and community spirit.  They are hard workers, but without the intensity and ulcers of the western world.  To me, they are more totally integrated than any other people I have seen.  Their beliefs are complex and yet simple — the world is composed of good and evil forces always in battle.  Both the good and evil spirits must be respected and given attention.  Their religion, basically Hindu, is a daily part of each person’s life, but there is no emphasis on sin, repentance, and self-sacrifice.

     The Balinese have tightly-knit communities in which they are taught, and required to show, social responsibility.  Individualism is not high on the priority list here.  Each receives help when needed, and is expected to give help when needed.  There is a strong moral code of right and wrong.  Those who break it are punished severely by the community s/he has offended.  The only real “social problem” I have heard of so far is that offenders who are sent out of their villages are never really accepted elsewhere.

     But, the Balinese are not rigid.  They were ruled by the Dutch for many years, among other conquerors.  They are now part of Indonesia, but retain roots and customs distinct from other Indonesians.  They can adapt to new ideas, and yet they curiously interweave new ideas and concepts into their existing culture so that their culture bends and sways rather than breaks under the pressure.

     They like money, and tourism has brought them prosperity.  But they have not yet gone to great extremes in chasing after money.  They come after the tourist dollar with enthusiasm, but it is a good-natured banter and barter.  No hard feelings if the final answer is “no.”  It is the only developing country I have visited where most people do not crave traveling to the west.

     I’m sure there are some disadvantages in Bali.  I just haven’t found them yet — except perhaps that it is a bit too hot, chocolate loses something of its good taste in this heat, and it can take a couple of hours to make a long-distance phone call.  Prices are rising, but not ridiculously.  My room and view cost about $5 a day, including a hearty breakfast which includes the sweetest and prettiest two-colored bananas I’ve ever eaten. 

Probably I would never have visited Bali, and possibly never written my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, if I had not discovered that aging book about Bali on the dusty back of a library shelf in Israel in 1988.  If not for that author who bothered to write about Bali in such a way that inspired me to go there and see it for myself, I would have missed out on finding the closest I have found to paradise in natural beauty, culture, and spirit.  I first visited Bali in 1989 and later returned in 1995.  Magic That Is No Illusion comes from my travel journal in 1989.

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