Heaven and Hell in Bali

People happily spend the equivalent of two month’s wages of the staff on a night out, or one month’s wages on a admission or a round of drinks, and yet will most likely be haggling over the price of of $5 dress the next day or a $2 tip for cab driver. A bit odd.

Cocoon

Another right we met up with some friends at Seminyak restaurant and bar Cocoon. This is a different scene altogether.

Set 50 metres from the beach, this looks more like a fabulous beachclub for the rich and famous or those who just wanna enjoy the vibe.

It is near another nightclub, Seminyak bar and nightclub La Vida Loca, and on a busy road on the beach, so it has a bit of frenetic energy to wade through before you can relax in the sublime beauty.

A large azure lagoon-shaped pool with white couches scattered around greets you as soon as you climb the steps.

There are day beds scattered all over, with a small dancefloor. Great music that makes you want to groove all night which I did.

Seminyak restaurant and bar Cocoon is much smaller than Ku De ta, more intimate, so you can easily see who is there.

If you want to have a private daybed (kingsize with curtains if you want privacy) you have to buy a bottle of wine, not cheap at $90 for an average Aussie bottle of plonk, otherwise drinks were moderately priced.

Beer is always cheap in Bali, but spirits and wine are expensive.

There is a very different crowd at Cocoon to Ku De Ta.

There was a smattering of beautiful Javanese prostitutes plus an angelic looking girl of about 18 in a stunning dress (with an older man) who we later found out was Russian, the dress bought in Paris the week before.

My first guess was she was a trophy of the guy who seemed to be a Russian – they love luxury and have very expensive tastes.

(I recently read of a nightclub in Moscow that caters purely for billionaire men and pretty girls, such is the level of sheer wealth that some Russians have accumulated over the last 20 years.)

Sky Garden

Then it was 3 am, Cocoon closed, and one of the women I was there with wanted to go to Kuta, to the Kuta nightclub Skygarden.

Firstly the traffic was moving so slowly it was better to get out and walk, and then it got really grubby.

Just past the scene of the bombed out Sari club, now a shrine to the dead.

The beggars were out in force (Javanese women and babies, plus some young girls of 7 and 8, apparently imported by gangs who send them out to beg all night long, plus whatever else they get them to do to make money) as were the touts offering a plethora of goods, legal and illegal.

There are many other clubs in the vicinity, so Skygarden, while the biggest club, is not totally responsible for the mayhem outside its doors. And then there were the young Aussie drunks.

We followed our friend, a 38-year-old mother of three, into the building. Dirty concrete steps with dirty and dark walls, up some flights of stairs, amazed at how the boys felt nothing of grabbing at our friend’s breasts as they went past, asking for sex at first glance.

She was pretty out of it, and dressed to kill so she did not mind and enjoyed the sexual rush, but I was appalled.

We climbed up two levels each one with different hard core techno music playing, the spaces simply concrete with flashing lights, with nothing to break or smash or fall over, or sit on.

This photo is of the rooftop bar at Skygarden

The pawing of our friend by the boys, pretty much every boy who noticed her coming through, on her breasts, between her legs, was embarrassing and disgusting and I felt ashamed for them.

There were very few Aussie girls around, and this who were looked decidedly worse for wear, though that is maybe par for the course for a nightclub at 4am where drinks are cheap and relating is rude and abusive.

At 4 am in nightclubs anywhere, the patrons are generally pretty soused, and as the time for any connected encounter with the opposite (or same) sex is long past.

How the Balinese must be shocked at the outrageousness of Australian youth.

The fact this was taking place just across the road from the scene of the manifested Indonesian Muslim disgust at the apparent depravity of Western culture must offend their sense of history and spirituality and the respect for the dead.

Or maybe not. Most likely they are just happy to make money!

We then made our way to a quiet place, empty, and sat and watched the working girls playing with the young Aussie boys.

I felt so sorry for this generation of Aussie kids and the total absence of respect, for self and others, their alcoholism and the sense of lostness that pervades them.

I heard that there was quite a lot of Bali AIDS among the prostitutes so I hope these boys woke up with no more than a hangover and an empty wallet.

I start feeling old as I write this, like my parents talking about me! I sound like a boring and jealous old man! But I do feel a qualitative difference between what I saw there and what I have learned in my life about relating.

After and hour or so of feeling old and out of place we left, again in pursuit of our friend who we were feeling responsible for and who seemed to be on a mission to get dirty and out of it.

We followed her down the street where a sordid scene, as much as anything at 5am can be called a scene, more a gathering of people unwilling to go home and face their spiritual squalor.

A young guy who I’d briefly chatted to earlier appeared by my side, feeling some safety around me, or some grounding.

His friend had gone off with a girl earlier so he was just going to drink himself stupid. He told me he was a failure because he was not good at picking up chicks.

In retrospect I feel I should have been more present with him, as he was clearly lost and reaching out, but by then I was feeling a bit trashed myself, only thinking of getting the hell out of there and getting home.

We finally left our friend in the company of some tawdry people she wanted to be around and went home, still in some shock at the sheer awfulness of what we had just witnessed.

So what a night. The sheer beauty and sophistication of Cocoon, and the utter squalor of the Sky Garden scene.

I was left questioning whether I was just getting old, and like every other 50 year old in history decrying ‘the youth of today’ or whether my concerns were more reasonable.

It made me wonder though about the influence of internet porn on how kids relate sexually to each other and to their world.

I wondered at the lack of solid parenting this indicated, but then I realised that parents, even with the best and clearest attention, have no hope of keeping track of what their kids are being exposed to and how that is impacting on their lives.

See also, A night to remember in Skygarden as well as a more recent review of Sky Garden.

See balifoodandfun.com for more reviews of many more restaurants, clubs, warungs, bars and organic food outlets. See also Drink spiking alive and well in Bali

See Older women on Scrapheap?? for a report on the difficulties of older Aussie women in our youth obsessed culture.

By Mark O’Brien 2011, updated in April 2015

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