On the Hunt

Kent and I have been married almost five years, together for six and have lived in five cities and three countries together. In the past, whenever we have looked for places to live, we have looked at no more than five places, and generally, it decreases by one in the latest city; in Denver we looked at five houses, in LA four, and Singapore, three. In Singapore, we congratulated ourselves on our intentionality, our focus, and our ability to utilize things we learned from watching The Secret.

Then we moved to Bali.

I have lost track of how many houses we have seen. The first one was beautiful, but was a ways out of town, and to get to it, you had to walk along a narrow dirt path along a rice field for the equivalent of five city blocks. It had no pool or Internet. Even if we were to remedy the Internet, the best we could do would be dial up. I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time going into why dial up just doesn’t work for us. The house had no pool of its own to use, but apparently, just across a rice field or two, there was a pool we could use. In case what I want to do in the heat of the mid-day Indonesian sun is to march my toddler over to somebody else’s pool along a narrow dirt path and then back again just before toddler’s nap. Or after I walk the five city blocks with the groceries along the back of a rice field, I then want to walk even further in the heat to the neighbor’s pool. Right.

It didn’t take long for me to get spoiled on the pool front. Not that I’m out to become an Olympic swimmer or even attempt to do a triathlon. Truth be told, I don’t even know how to do the crawl stroke. But I do know that for both my toddling son and me, when we’re on the brink of potential heat stroke, dunking us both in the pool is the fastest way to cool us off and put us in better spirits. And water play has become a way of life for a certain toddler who lives within ten degrees of the equator.

We seriously considered a cute small little house we could rent for the equivalent of about $400 USD a month. We’d have to furnish this house ourselves, which would be nothing but a joy in Bali, and it had a gated small yard Fyo could play in. The problem? It was a cute little house that could have been anywhere – it could have been in Portland, OR or Columbus, OH. Or it could have been in Bali. But I want the house we live in to feel like we’re in Bali, but not because the kitchen lacks a hot water faucet or you have to squat to pee in the bathroom.

So then we added a view to our priority list. Our house had to have Internet, a pool and a view.

We saw a beautiful house that hung over a river, but the kitchen was abysmal and the guest bathroom, you walked down a series of stone steps into a dungeon. One house we considered only because it had the fastest Internet on the island, yet it had no actual living space except for the front porch, which actually is fine in Bali. We love the idea of our space being an indoor/outdoor living space. But the dining table was glass topped (a physical and financial disaster waiting to happen with a toddler who loves to bang) and rather than couches in the “living” space were narrow little stools that even the most proper of Jane Austen’s characters wouldn’t have found comfortable. It was owned by a fellow American who I can only assume was a bachelor who never hung out in his own home unless he was also a trapeze artist who found teetering in his living room porch a relaxing meditative exercise.

The Balinese have a fascinating thing with their houses. On the one hand, they have beautiful and intricately carved doors that you can’t be bigger than your average teenage ballet-dancing girl to get through. You can have window shutters match your beautiful and intricate carved doors. But most Balinese avoid daylight at all costs. So most traditional Balinese houses don’t actually have windows. The interior then comes closer to resembling a Cuban prison with a lone fluorescent light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. This house we saw yesterday.

But after looking at a couple houses after this one, we can only guess that between the lack of windows and the one lone light bulb hanging in the middle of the room (bad for ambiance, bad for reading, bad for everything really), the Balinese don’t really like light of any kind. Or when they are indoors, they are always sleeping.

The other fascinating thing about all the houses we’ve seen is that none of them have ovens. I’ve asked why, and no one really knows. One woman says, it’s too hot here for ovens. But Singapore is even hotter, I say, and they have ovens. The woman then shrugs her shoulders. I asked another woman. She said the Balinese don’t bake, and maybe traditionally they don’t, but all our favorite restaurants in Ubud make their own breads, cookies and desserts.

I gave up hope of baking my son’s 2^nd birthday birthday cake.

But this week, oh this week, we found it. Of course, it has neither a pool nor Internet. Yet the house is perfect. The woman we are to rent it from is a French-Canadian-Balinese fairy godmother who looks a tad like Meryl Streep. We stopped by to see the house and stayed two and half hours just talking to her.

She did admit the lack of a pool has been a missing for her. She rents the house from an American who I think lives in California. We’re asking if maybe he could put one in?

As for the house, all I can really say is that it takes your breath away. Or that it’s pretty close to the house I wished I lived in when I was a little girl. It comes with full time cleaning woman who happens to be fabulous with children. She comes everyday from 9am to 5pm. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is about to be my son’s new best friend.

Not to mention, it has the first and only oven I have seen in Bali. It also has the only Kitchen-Aid food processor I’ve seen. Each week, along with the water delivery, a supply of coconuts is also delivered to your door.

My husband is figuring out the Internet. I said I’d put in the pool myself if I had to dig the hole with a kitchen spoon. At least, I can cool off with a coconut.