Nature! I Need Nature!

A Month In the Balinese Jungle

Photo by Geio Tischler on Unsplash

Living in Seoul feels like living in a computer program. Like SimCity. More and more people look like factory-made dolls, more and more buildings look like vertical jails, and more and more conversations become meaningless and programmed. It is as if the news announced one day: “this month, the topic of interest will be cats in hats!” And suddenly, all anyone talks about for a month is how good or bad or cute or ugly cats in hats are until a new topic is released. In reality, conversations revolve around Netflix shows, plastic surgery, AI. But it doesn’t really matter what the actual topic is because after a while, the meaninglessness of it all induces the same kind of numbingness of the mind. “But SimCity is the best city to live in. It has the best skincare and everything is delivered so fast!” is a popular opinion. But what I see mostly around me are people’s faces glued to their phones, drinking more alcohol, getting more hypnotized, becoming more restless, more divorced and more discontent with society and their lives.

So in mid-January, around the time when the air in SimCity became unbreathably polluted, thanks to the factories on the coastlines of China, when a friend texted that she was spending time in Bali, I decided then and there, as time permitted, to go to Bali. “Nature! I need nature!” I had been screaming inside my head for months. Only nature could offer a panacea for my wilted soul and resurrect my spirit. And my friend’s text felt like the nature’s call to pack up and leave.

All I knew about Bali was that it was an island in South East Asia with lots of green forests, as I remembered seeing on Instagram. And that was all I cared about. Usually, when I travel to places that I know nothing about, I stay in brand-name accommodations because of their familiarity and predictability. But this time, I did not want any reminders of SimCity. I wanted to experience unpolished nature. Alone. So I found a wooden cabin on Airbnb. “Reset in the Jungle. 10 minutes Away from Ubud Center” the listing said. The immersion in greenery seemed like a dream. So I messaged the host and booked a non-refundable, one-bedroom cabin in the middle of the Ubud jungle for a month, for a fraction of an equivalent apartment rent in SimCity.

“Why don’t you book for a week first and see if the place suits you?” the Airbnb host asked me.

“As long as roaches and snakes don’t crawl up my bed while I sleep, this looks exactly like the place I need,” I replied confidently.

The thing about this cabin is that it is really in the jungle. It is built on a cliff, and aside from a few other houses hidden in the woods, there is nothing around it except for trees, plants and a river at the bottom of the hill. I have been here for a week now. And the seclusion of this place makes me feel like life in SimCity happened in a very distant past.

The cabin itself is built entirely of teak. The house is small but the details are not overlooked. The interior is furnished with wooden furnitures and sparsely, but thoughtfully, decorated with wood carvings, statues, artisanal tapestries and brightly-colored cushions. The understated charm of this place is quite special. The bathroom and kitchen are located outdoors, covered with canopies to provide shelter from rain. So I shower, brush my teeth and cook in the open air.

But because everything is made of natural wood, nooks are filled with crannies, and there are large holes on the floors and walls that provide entryways for all sorts of creatures to sneak into the cabin. Especially because it is the rainy season now. So in a matter of a week, I have become covered with an uncountable number of mosquito bites on my body. I have also developed a liking for spiders for trapping the flying bugs with their webs. And one of my morning routines now includes clearing ants’ and lizards’ poops off the table and chairs because a few of these creatures have made their homes inside the cabin.

I have adapted surprisingly well to co-living with the bugs. Nonetheless, there were a couple of incidents in the past week that made me question whether I could really weather through the rest of my sojourn in this jungle. One morning, upon waking at 4am, I decided to get out of bed and advance in my reading of The Brothers Karamazov. (I do not usually wake up this early but life in nature has synched me to its rhythms). In order to wash my face first, I opened the cabin door to go to the bathroom. Something flew out of the darkness into the lighted house. A cockroach.

Describing my fear, repugnance, revulsion towards cockroaches could fill an entire page. It is a vermin that I will never have mercy for and that I’ll never be able to handle with ease. They are God damned pests in my opinion, the ugliest, the most vile, the lowest of the lowly crawling creatures that scare and disgust me more than any other living thing on earth.

At the sight of this odious thing, I started to have cold sweats. What do I do? WHAT do I do?? I mean WHAT DO I DO!!! There was no one around to cry for help. No front desk to call, no housekeeping to send an SOS to. And the damned thing flew.

The first thought that crossed my mind was to not allow the creature to land on my skin. I browsed around the living area. I saw my bathrobe flung on a chair. I quickly put it on. My arms and legs were now protected. I also saw a large bath towel. I wrapped it around my head like a niqab, leaving no body surface above my neck exposed, except my eyes. What else? A 200ml spray bottle of organic mosquito repellent. Next to it, a 250ml spray bottle of natural ant repellent. I grabbed the bottles in each hand like handguns. But my feet! The only closed-toe shoes I had were a pair of brand new Arc'teryx hiking boots with labels still attached. I quickly slid my feet into them. And I jumped on the lounging chaise to begin my battle with this 10cm flying roach, armed with my expensive, tiny, organic, all-natural bug repellents.

I tested my weapons by pulling the spray triggers. A fuzzy stream of mist came out of each bottle… I didn’t stand a chance. I was livid. I could feel the cold sweats dripping down my spine again. I needed to do something but I couldn’t move. I was too frightened. My feet felt glued to the chaise. So I stood there on the furniture, looking like Lawrence of Arabia - no, Lawrence of Bed, Bath and Beyond - for what seemed at least like 30 minutes, doing nothing but staring at the bug.

All sorts of thoughts crossed my mind. ‘Should I crush it with the Dostoyevsky? No. The weight of the literature would explode the bug inside out, it’s too gross. Should I step on it with my boots? No. The shoes are brand new, it’s too gross. Should I whiplash it with a towel? Hell no. If I miss, I would send it flying all over the place, it’s too gross’… Completely devoid of any viable plan, I suddenly became very aware of how ridiculous I looked. If anyone had barged in through the front door at that instant, they would have been on the floor, bursting in laughter. The situation seemed farcical, even to myself, even in that moment of hyper-anxiety.

Then! I remembered the Raid mosquito spray by the entrance!! The mightiest weapon at my disposal was just outside that door. So without thinking, I dashed across the cabin, snagged the aerosol bottle, and came back inside. I scanned the room and located the bug on the white curtain. THIS WAS MY CHANCE! I sprayed a Raid hell onto that creature. The mosquito poison was not potent enough to kill roaches, so my plan was to drown that vermin in a sea of Raid liquid. I sprayed until the bottle was empty. The cabin was hazy with toxic chemicals but I didn’t care. I was just relieved that a lonesome victory was claimed against a flying cockroach, in a small wooden cabin, in the darkest hours of the jungle…

Will this SimCitizen make it through the 4 weeks here?…

The nights here are something else too. Without any cars passing, lampposts, shops or restaurants nearby, the nights are pitch dark. The moon may shine some light but black is the only color left after the sun sets. And animating this darkness are all sorts of noises. Hissing, shrieking, screeching, thumping, crying… The only source of sound is the wilderness, which sets an extraordinary stage for my fear and imagination to run rampant.

One night, while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, I was startled by a loud BANG on the roof, followed by an ear-tearing cry of a swine, followed by the sounds of large animals scurrying around the deck. I instantly froze. What the hell was that??? Did something try to kill a wild hog? To make matters worse, the crying was now so loud that it seemed to come from the corner of my bedroom… I was terrified and petrified ad infinitum. The crying kept getting louder. Then, I could hear a group of SOMETHINGS, like ants or roaches, rushing and scuffling on the floor. This time, I was not capable of handling the situation by myself. Not making a single noise, I tapped on my phone that I kept next to me. The screen displayed 10:07pm. Was it too late to text the Airbnb host? I debated for a few minutes. And I figured that it was better to disturb him than to be killed by a wild swine and eaten alive by mega ants. So at 10:12pm I texted:

Me: “Sorry for the late night message but there is an animal in the cabin. I’m not sure what to do.”

Host: “Hi Jisoo. Is it like a lizard?”

Me: “It’s too loud to be a gecko. There was a loud bang, then this thing started to cry right beside my bed. Something has been making a lot of noise on the roof in the past few nights, whatever it is, I think it came inside the cabin.”

Host: “Are you able to see it?”

Me: “I’m not brave enough to turn the lights on because I can hear it move around.”

Host: “A loud bang like a branch falling on the roof?”

Me: “Ah….. maybe…….”

Host: “Did you see any monkeys since you arrived? The moving could be our cat or a monkey looking for food in trees.”

(...Ahhh……… that makes a lot more sense than a swine on the roof, I thought.)

Me: “Ah I see. No I have not seen any monkeys.”

Host: “The crying could be a type of cricket, it cries when it can’t fly. But it’s completely harmless. When it cries, it means that it’s close to the end of its life.”

(…Ahhh……… that makes a lot more sense than giant ants killing a hog, I thought again. And I started to feel sorry for the cricket because by that time, the crying had already ceased).

Host: “In the night there is a monkey that often comes and sleeps on the roofs. The loud noise is often the coconut leaves. Because it’s the rainy season, when they fall, it can be quite noisy. Hope you can rest soon. Good night.”

I was relieved. I felt like a complete idiot but relieved. But also… secretly disappointed that reality was so counter-climactic to the wilderness of my imagination…

When morning came and sunlight filled the cabin, I did not see any tropical wild hog or any monster cricket in my bedroom. The terrors of cats, monkeys and coconut leaves had vanished like a hallucination. With the light of dawn, roosters were crowing, birds were chirping, and the tropical morning breeze felt as velvety as the Mediterranean Sea on a scorching summer day. Did I dream it all? No. The same coconut-monkey business happened again that night. But it felt less threatening. With mornings this serene, nights could not possibly be as terrorizing as I imagined them to be. Things were untamed here but they remained mostly beautiful.

There is especially a time during the day when the jungle shows off its full glory. Rainy season here consists of short and heavy downpours mainly in late afternoons and nights, like a remedy against the sun that burns through the day. And in the hours between the end of the downpour and the beginning of the sunset, the flaunting of nature begins.

When the wind clears the rain clouds, the trees start to move slowly with the breeze. The leaves are dressed in rain droplets, slightly weighty, and they ruffle and flutter like albatross wings. Revived by the rain, the entire forest undulates like the ocean. Then, when the sun reappears in the sky, it is without its midday flame. The light is gentle like a mother caressing her children. As if to show gratitude for the sun, the rain beads sparkle like diamonds. Cicadas lower their pitch and birds tweet together with the crickets buzzing, adding a soprano and an alto to the rustling of the leaves. Here and there, butterflies fly like staccato notes. Every living creature seems to relish this moment of hydration, warmth and freshness in unison with each other. The jungle dazzles with its performance. I cannot be mistaken, this is nature’s happy hour.

What a creation this is.

I’m still not certain whether I can make it through the 4 weeks here. Cockroaches return for occasional visits, and they are too traumatic for me. But bearing witness to this exhibition of Life, as is, from a front row seat, makes me feel more alive than I ever felt in SimCity.