thePlace

Back to the air-conditioned world, hot shower and great cheap food.  The purchase of the Place seems a little surreal in the comfort of KL.  My constant reminder is the ingestion of  the Shinseh’s prescription of soaked herb alcohol that I brought from Bali, twice a day. It is meant to invigorate and replenish my energy.  Still resting and dimly chewing over the hurriedly bought land last week; unable to grapple with the idea of owning almost a hector of land.  The idea of what to do with it escapes me further.  Only images entwine and churn in my head when I lie in bed.  Green, healing, organic, nature, medicinal plants and herbs, self-sustainability, permaculture, view of the sea, sunsets, sublime colorful tropical flowers, ubiquitous sensual water…
           
            A road has taken, a journey has begun, the rest is a mystery.

            The only thing I’m sure of - the starting of everything from ground zero.  And so I spend most of my days and nights, surfing the net, getting info, ideas, and every other junks.  With only a vague hazy dream at the back of my mind all kinds of thoughts ebb and flow through me.  

            I’ll have a small beautiful effortless house on the hill, maybe an infinity pool looking over the horizon where the sun sets over the Bali Sea and Java mountains, definitely an octagonal wide-open meditation hall, plus a few simple cottages.  Of course an awesome vegetarian restaurant with inspiring views everywhere.  Why not a spa with all the great healing massages, Reiki treatments, a Shinseh to give acupuncture and herbs concoctions when needed, free healing sessions for everyone who needs it every Sunday, free organic gardening classes and medicinal plants for the villages, volunteers that help around, oh yes, Dharma teachers giving teachings from different schools as long as they lead all to enlightenment or the true-self, or whatever other names it is called.                            

            And yes - run a local grass root non-profit NGO for the environment and the children. Set up recycling program with the villagers – no more plastic and horrific garbage lying around, composting, eating organic, no MSG and saving the endangered sea horse in Seririt, saving the overly exploited ocean, etc. 

            Last but not least, paying guests that keep the Place operating - yoga classes, meditation or any other wholesome retreats or dharmas practice….

            The dream goes on eternally- it’s nameless. I am to unfold it stage by stage.  It’s not the end that is electrifying, it’s the unraveling! 

            Presently, I must learn to create, starting with the most needed - the design and building of my house and the landscape.  I have never even done any ordinary gardening work before, have never own a piece of land before, absolutely no designing or building experience whatsoever.  Half understanding them, I pour through and save tons of web materials daily, hoping for a wiser, more knowledgeable me. I have only 3 weeks here in KL to get ready the battle ground in Bali. 

            My next step is to get practical experiences however briefly.  Most web materials are on growing in temperate climates. Tried to book a volunteer stay in an organic farm - full because of the school holiday, the how-to organic class in KL is surprisingly expensive. No money to indulge in it.  I must begin with getting out of the house, calling people, asking friends that might have a link and visiting organic farms that can give me valuable tropical organic growing skills.

            First thing in Bali, deal with the legal issues of buying the land as a foreigner!

Still dog-tired from the scratchy transaction and the flurry to close the deal in 4 days, I’m now at the airport leaving for KL for a month or so – till the 16 of June.

SK came to the rescue, the catalyst that consummated the deal – a trusted friend in whom I can always count on. He wired the money from Kuala Lumpur and was received on the 17th. A loan from him.

The deal is done yesterday. Paid in Rupiah, the exchange rate sucked! A contract with compromised agreed terms in Bahasa is drawn quite unclearly. Everything was negotiated on the day of paying after proving I have the money in the Bank. A long drawn half a day of back and forth – in English and in Bahasa. Then the insane drive to Kuta to pay the seller, right before the bank’s closing minutes!

Everything went with a rush, and with such blurriness but matter-of-factly that I remember hardly any details. Except that Ruli signed for everything and my name is not in any of the documents….

Such is the reality of raw trust – I have just met them a year ago. And before this time around, Ruli and I had not talked more than an hour in total!

Oh well, now that the land is “mine”, I must now concentrate in creating the Place . For now, after weeks of cold mandi, the thought of hot shower in abundance, great delicious Malaysian food and nursing my bite marks give me a blissful smile….in a few hours, all these would be a history – if only for a few weeks.

            After 2 days of negotiating through the sale agent via telephone. I agreed on the price of 5.75 jutas/are.  The asking price is 6 jutas/are.

            Met the seller in the Notaris office today.  He is a Javanese half-hippy business man that has been married and divorced three times, all foreign wives; lived in Australia with one of the wives for a long time and coincidently aspired to have a meditation place when he first bought the Place in 1993.  An absentee landlord that collects a percentage of the income from cloves sold in the orchard. He still has about 1½ hectare of orchard left across the Place.  It was odd meeting him for the first time in the Notaris office. He looked vaguely familiar, seems like a mild natured man and a chatter box that tells you his story in the first meeting.  

            No negotiations of terms unless I have ready cash to pay for the land.  I manage to convince them that I would pay but the money must be wired from California.  I also agreed to pay a goodwill earnest money as deposit and if I can’t come up with the money, the seller,  Pak Totok can have it.  In half an hour, I was out of the office running around town and finding ATMs that only allow only meager cash out.  I used every one of them found in the entire town of Singaraja and managed to collect only 5 jutas even though I agreed to pay 6!  

            I left the Notaris office more confused. No land contract stating all the contingencies is drawn, only a simple price agreement is made between the seller and Ruli, who is the Indonesian front I need to purchase the Place.  Nothing is upfront and stated clearly what the paying conditions are – not even orally!  It seems that the contract will only be done when I got all the money, almost $60,000 which I don’t have right now.

            Who on earth would have so much cash in hand, not knowing if anything will be purchased or not? 

            More questions churn in my mind: what if the terms of the sale break down – like the unconditional provision of water in  the Place, the covering up of the spring water source which remains in his possession, the land tax must be cleared, the exact size of the land (which the seller insisted is more than what the independent surveyor we both paid for),  the checking of quality of the spring water, the clearing of the land, the exit of the orchard guardian family, the numerous incessantly barking strayed dogs that sleep in the property, etc. 

            Why can’t the Balinese put everything down black and white, stating the paying terms and conditions like most other countries?  ‘Tak usa/no need until the money is brought to the office’ that was what everyone involved said convincingly even though I repeatedly pressed the issue with my half-broken Bahasa.           

            What about the authenticity of the ownership certificate? The most critical paramount issue – after reading and hearing all the nightmares stories from foreigners that have their thousands of dollars cheated in real estate deal here. Well, not the Notaris, who acts as an escrow officer (customarily get paid ½ percent of the sale price by the purchaser), but me, the purchaser who is the one to check it out!  More surprises to come -  it turned out that the Singaraja Land office is burnt a few years ago and all the old official land documents turned into smoke and ash with no backups or other records.  The next level of authority is the affirmation of the Dusun Kepala. A scurfy skinny man that said without blinking “yes, Pak Totok is the owner of the land…”  Only oral confirmation is given, no written statement, no looking up of records!  

            There, that was all that is needed to authenticate ownership certificate.  The certificate wasn’t even shown to him!  Made and Ruli are happy with it.   My questioning attitude (just based on his memory- the land was bought more than 15 years ago?  Pak Totok doesn’t even live here and have never lived around here, what if there are other owners? What if he is only the front man for the real owner?!!! Etc.) and wanting everything in writing won’t help – unless of course I don’t buy the Place!  

            Oh well, just do it….the small town Balinese way.   I’m strictly going through this with guts feelings and trusting the energy. Neither my usual business sense nor ordinary common sense would have allowed it. 

            Now that the authenticity of the certificate is ‘cleared’, I must scramble for the money minus 5 jutas in order to close the deal.  And quickly – I’m to fly out of Bali on the 20^th which is only few days away. My 30-day tourist visa is due next week and the plane ticket is bought 2 weeks ago without expecting to buy anything so soon.  Called Monroe- she can transfer the money from the resent sale of my condo in San Francisco to here.  As it happened, she has left for Houston for a conference and a wedding, my money is in a fixed deposit which will  incur a penalty if I withdrew it before the term is due.  Don’t really care about the penalty, but Monroe can’t do it until she returns to California which is in a few days. And then there are the issues of at least 3-day is needed for wiring – can’t wait.  Additional issues- in dollars or in Rupiah, exchange rate losses, finding a bank that allow foreigner to open dollar account without Kitas (working permit or residency)….

            I’m running out of time, I’ll loose the 5 jutas and not end up buying the Place.  Think, think, think, not my family who thinks I’m totally out of my mind, anyway none of them except Ivan, my little brother in NY who doesn’t have any money that knows about my intention to buy a place in Bali.   Monroe is out, most other friends have not such an amount sitting in the bank ready to be borrowed by me.  Who else to call that can lend me the money in such a short notice…..

            Maybe it’s just not meant to be.

Woke up with puffy eyes and a day of blankness – unsure of what my next step should be.  The morning sky was the Singaraja’s typical whitish blue, patches of clouds hung about. The sun was only one quarter high but demonstrating his might shamelessly. The day started heavily hot. I stared into the paddy field meditating.  Vaguely distracted, I felt dense and a little weary.

            The humid hot air added a tinge of listlessness to my fatigue. This afternoon I have to return to Sanur for a promise to be the photographer for Ibu Wayang and her music troupe in a big temple upacara.  Reluctant to be once again mixed up in the rumba of motorbikes and cars in the ever-growing traffic jam of Kuta area, where there is no apparent order of the movement of things.  The memory of the night with corked-up ears and grotesquely loud music jarring in the background still gives me an objectionable taste. 

            Appreciation comes when one finds harmony in the chaos of Bali – that’s what I told myself repeatedly in the discomfort of fume and noises when I first returned from a 2-month of driving, hiking and camping trip in the backcountry of NZ.  Still missing the sublime colors of the sky and the sparseness of the Kiwiland.

            After all, Bali is my first stop for the search of a Place in realizing a hazily beautiful dream – I must give it time. 

            It’s been 2 ½ weeks now, the days have been filled with endless driving around small and overly-congested roads, looking to find a piece of land where my dream could be fulfilled.  I have given myself one last month to actively seek for the Place in Bali before deeming it unworkable.  If I have made the efforts, no time to wait around and struggle for something that is not meant to be….

            I have already decided on the next probable island to explore – Cuba.

            Meditating and unable to stop my wandering mind, shafts of sunlight penetrated through some whimsy clouds over the paddy field, radiating the space with splendor; a strange feeling of affirmation that today is the day for finding the Place engulfed me. It filled me with aspiration again.

            The day was almost ending, Ruli and Made made no signs of stirring from the sweltering agitated heat. I packed in silence.  We have all been quite exhausted, looking for the Place.  I told them I’m tired of looking.  Ruli suggested that I should give it a rest and think about all the beachfront properties and the hill area in Tabanan & Ubud I have seen.  I agreed-although I was not taken in with a particular one, all of them were not too bad and anyone could be the Place.  Just have to consider price, area….

            While on the way back to Sanur from Singaraja, Made said that he managed to arrange to meet an agent to show me a piece of land - the last attempt. This time, up on a hill instead of the usual beachfront properties around Singaraja. 

            A down-sloped clove orchard, 4 KM from Lovina beach, on a hill overlooking the calm Bali Sea and distant Java.  The land is fed by spring water up the hill a kilometer away.  Except for some clove and fruit trees, a broken house where the guardian family of the orchard lives in, two long-forgotten broken ponds, the almost a hectare of land is quite stripped of vegetation.  It was the big boulders that ruggedly jugged out around the sloppy land that attracted my attention. 

            The sun hovered over the horizon, this time, sheepishly, lost his earlier mightiness.  I looked at the sun-drenched countryside on the east and west, at the long lines of trees, sloping up toward the skyline and the hills, the hot brown soil dappled with vivid green, and here and there a lonely house sharply outlined against the light.  I watched the silent sea.  So different when one is right next to the it – the salty wind, the crying waves…. It was then I saw the light playing with the water,  painting it, molding it, reflecting her changing mood as the sun caress the earth in a long drawn goodbye.  The surreal brilliance dark water shimmered under the sun, the texture, the shapes, the expressions of the glittering water transformed from one moment to the next -  deeper, calmer, meaner, stronger, lonelier, colder, more vulnerable, restless, bursting forth, so alive.  The perfect potentiality of nature……. 

            A thought came – “this is it, this is the Place.”