Day 259: Pererenan — Surf Film Festival
We started the day at Monsieur Spoon, a breezy French bistro on the main road from Noah’s house.
We’ve been in hotels for basically all of Asia, which means two months’ worth of buffets. We laughed when we realized that when you actually order the amount of food you eat at a breakfast buffet, it’s a ginormous amount of food and costs a gazillion dollars.
What are we going to do when we get home and have water and cheerios for breakfast every day?
This place had amazing croissants. Owned by a French guy, obviously!
They were playing Cocoon’s On My Way and James, always tuned into the tunes, flagged it and wanted us to find out who it was so we could play later. This song too: Polo & Pan’s Canopee. Done.
As Josh described, their house and this bakery are at the edge of exploding Pererenan. Today they are isolated and far from the fray. Tomorrow they will be surrounded by condos and restaurants and chains. It’s growing so fast. Glad we saw it before all that.
We made our way back to the house for school and hanging out. Willa’s been working on a “chapter book” as I mentioned a few days ago and continues to make progress. Today she added a lot of “descriptive detail” and some dialogue. It’s the first time she’s been really fired up about a writing assignment, so fingers crossed it sticks…
For lunch? We went back to Monsieur Spoon!! We are all about re-racking — to use a Teddy term — places that worked for us.
Around 5 pm we set out on foot about a mile and a half down the beach toward a club in Canggu called The Lawn, which was hosting the Ombak Bali Surf Film Festival tonight and tomorrow night.
More on this below 
We posted up on the, well, lawn, and ordered some food while the kids swam. By the time the sun had set, the crowd was large and we were ready to tune in.
We stayed for a bunch of shorts — like one based on this photography book about surfing in Cuba and another about plastic trash in Bali — and then watched this fun feature doc — White Rhino — about big-wave surfers and three epic “swells.”
Halfway through the feature, James was asleep on the mat, which was just fine. Willa stayed awake, transfixed.
It was a really fun, random night.
We cabbed it home at the intermission around 9 pm.
MISC
Josh told us to watch Netflix’s “Given.” Will do. Makes our year look very doo-dee-doo-dee-doo, if the trailer’s any indication.
Today was a good one — the kind that you look back on and realize only came together out of sheer serendipity. In this case: Someone who follows us on Instagram reminded us Noah had moved there and was in town > We connected with his parents which led to us spending a day with his family > They invited us to stay at their house this weekend in a part of Bali we weren’t planning to see > They left us a flyer for a free surf film festival > We went and had a great time. Boom.
None of this would have happened if we hadn’t been open and said “yes” to a bunch of different opportunities that presented themselves unexpectedly.
To me, this is what makes the year — and, wait a second, maybe life???? — worth it. Just get off your butt! Say yes! Did I just realize something deep here??
This might be harsh/unfair, but for all its beauty and rich history/culture, Bali also appears to be a magnet for posers and poseurs alike. I’m talking about the foreigners of course. 1) Posers — because there is such a ridiculously high volume of white chicks literally posing…for Instagram. It’s a thing all over the world, of course, and it’s not new, but it is just so, so much more prevalent here. All the familiar, tired, cliche’d poses (flowing dress on swing over rice terrace, tip toe walkin on sand in sunset while holding straw hat on head, bikini body draped on rocks while surf crashes behind, from-behind shot of chick contemplating life from edge of infinity pool, yoga poses on a hilltop, hair flip coming up out of the ocean, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc). It’s all happening here.
Poseurs too. Plenty of overlap of course. But there’s definitely a brand of I’m-so-spiritual and/or surf-for-life and/or artist types that look more like costumed wannabes than the real deal. As with anywhere in life, you can pretty easily spot the fake and the authentic… Bali seems to attract both…?
A funny phenomenon has emerged among the Sullivan foursome — we’ve been regularly calling each other out for:
- Saying “like” too much (this is usually Willa calling out Teddy or James)
- Bad posture
