The man the legend has finally made it here. Yes Barrie returns to Bali after an absense of 10 years.
I got a call this morning and I was in Seminyak. Jamming down the bypass on my new bike I swooped in Kuta and parked outside.
Barrie was visible with his wife Changrika and as he had described was sporting a shaved head.
We talked, or rather I learned about Barrie……( Barrie I enjoyed it and learned a lot! ). No really, we talked about how Bali had changed, I had also been here in 1993, the cool places and what a weird thing this internet is where yuou can get ot know someone without ever meeting them.
We left Internet Outpost and moved on to the Bamboo Corner on Poppies I. Nyoman my favourite waitress was working and Barrie made sure he used his extensive Indonesian to get her totally confused.
Barrie is an expert on Indonesia and should be the one writing a guide book. He used to live in Yogakarta and told some wild stories of when thre radicals from the local religious university would swoop through town ( 300 of them ) wild west style, dressed all in black on motorbikes and chuck molotov cocktails at the local police and army and then ride home.
Chandrika’s English is about as good as my Indonesian so Barrie hogged most of the airtime and translated for us. He told us bout their wedding, she is ethnic Chinese and they had a Buddhist ceremony. Only problem is the Indonesian government doesn’t recognise Buddhist weddings so they had to have a traditional Javanese one. This lasted hours in 90 degree temperatures where Barrie had to nod and say yes to many questions. The ceremony in Javanese mean’t his friend had to nudge him at the appropriate time with signal of what to do. After all this they showed him and her the marriage documents forcing another long drawn out session of questions and nodding. The wedding document was then passed round again to another who did it again.
Quite an effort to marry someone you are already married to.
Barrie has a ton of stories and one that stuck out in my mind was his narrow escape with a tiger shark. I’ve finally met an Aussie who has had a shark incident and not just recounted mate’s tales. Barrie was diving at about 65 ft near Exmouth WA when he saw a silver flash. He then saw it again going the other way and knew what was coming. He spun his single tank out in front of him, released the bindings an held it out, pressing his back to the reef. He said the impact was like getting hit by a fast motorcycle. The reef tore his back and arms open and he was in hospital for 2 weeks with coral poisioning and a slight case of the bends. Fortunately he made it thanks to his quick thinking.
Barrie sported me my lunch which I will repay sometime soon.
Chris you’ll get to meet Barrie when you’re here. He’s going to be around for a while.
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So amazing to see that someone who’s been commenting on here so much, you can now meet in the flesh. Maybe Barrie can nip back over for a while in December and we can all say hey?
The immortal words Ant….I SHALL RETURN!. But I am still here (He, he…!)
Seriously though I will be back around December to annoy Nick!
welcome back to bali barry.
Will see ya there when i get back myself
cheers Mick
Next Saturday night we’ll be cracking open the Bintangs. Can’t wait to hang out with you guys, even if it’s only for an hour before jetlag claims me.
Just went to Warung 96 with Josh Grillo and bumped into Barrie and Chandrika. We chatted about surfing, diving , oceans, Bali, and all kinds of other stuff. Chandrika is the most patient person and sat politely not understanding most of what we said.
Josh spotted 2 girls next to us and asked where we thought they were from. I said Italy, Josh said his dreams and Barrie said judging by the bone structure northerm France.
They were from Spain and it took Josh about 30 minutes of continous effort to get their phone number.
Barrie and Chandrika both agreed that durian ice cream was superb and I still have to try it.
Warung 96 was busy as usual and Josh and I ordered the 96 pizza. Was okay and makes a change from nasi goreng. Josh has been hitting Bamboo Corner twice a day, myself once a day.