Day 5… Or 6?

The Morning After…

By 8:15 a.m., the hotel pool looked like it had hosted a diplomatic summit between inflatable animals and poor life choices. A lone flamingo floated past with the weary dignity of someone who’d seen too much. A pineapple‑shaped drink cup bobbed nearby, still wearing its tiny paper umbrella like a hat it regretted buying.

The FIFO King was already stationed at his usual post — pool edge, legs dangling, Bintang in hand. He claimed he woke early because of “body clock stuff,” but everyone knew it was because he couldn’t sleep in a bed that wasn’t vibrating like an offshore rig. He nodded at me with the solemnity of a man who had survived both cyclones and Kuta karaoke.

Across the pool, the Two ‘Aunties’ – as I’d come to think of them – were in crisis mode. Their Bali Boy — who’d once been a waiter, a surf instructor, then a DJ, then a “creative consultant,” all within the same week — had stayed over again. He lay on a sunbed like a Roman emperor while one Aunty applied sunscreen to his shoulders with the reverence of someone polishing a Stradivarius. The other Aunty was Googling “how to tell if someone loves you or just wants your air‑conditioned room.”

Then came the Three Tanning Students, already arranged in a perfect row like solar panels. They had two settings:

Face down, frying
Face up, frying

They flipped every 12 minutes with military precision, using an iPhone timer and the kind of discipline they never applied to their university assignments. They refused sunscreen on principle — except the $90 Korean one they dabbed on their noses “for aesthetics.”

Madame Eatalot and Sir Drinkalot arrived next, moving slowly and majestically, like two cruise ships attempting to dock without scraping the pier. She carried a plate stacked with pastries in a way that suggested she’d personally liberated them from the buffet. He carried a Bloody Mary and a Mojito so aggressively garnished it looked like a salad bar had exploded.

“Morning,” he said, though it sounded more like a man confessing to tax fraud.

I slid into the pool — warm, slightly cloudy, and with a suspicious fizz in one corner that no one had the courage to investigate. The water tasted faintly of coconut sunscreen and the collective denial of everyone present.

This, I thought, was the real Bali.
Not the temples.
Not the rice terraces.
Not the influencers doing yoga on cliffs at sunrise.

No. Bali was this:
A collection of strangers, all running from something — jobs, marriages, winter, themselves — all sweating, all pretending they weren’t hungover, all united by the quiet hope that today would be slightly less chaotic than yesterday.

My good mood evaporated instantly when a staff member approached me with a clipboard.

“Sir,” he said, with the gentle tone of someone about to ruin your morning.
“About your room… we need to talk.”

Behind him, the flamingo bumped into the pool ladder and sighed.

And just like that, the day began. Then I was forced to remember…

The Night Before

I should have known the night was going downhill the moment the hotel bar’s singer announced he’d be taking requests “from the heart.” Nothing good ever comes from that phrase. It’s the same tone doctors use before telling you to sit down.

The FIFO King was already 5 Bintangs deep, explaining to anyone who’d listen — and several who wouldn’t — that he could “totally sing Elvis if he wanted to.” He didn’t want to, he said. Then he immediately wanted to. Then he tried. The result was less Elvis and more a forklift reversing with a flat battery.

The Two Aunties arrived next, floating in like a pair of tropical storm fronts. They were dressed in matching kaftans that could have doubled as emergency shelters. Their Bali Boy trailed behind them, smiling the smile of a man who had mastered the ancient art of letting other people pay for things.

“Isn’t he gorgeous,” one Aunty whispered to me, as if he were a rescue puppy she’d smuggled out of a shelter.

“He’s very… symmetrical,” I said, which was the safest thing I could think of.

Then the Three Tanning Students appeared, sunburnt orange despite it being night. They ordered cocktails with names like Pink Tsunami and Bali Belly Buster, drinks so neon they could probably be used to guide aircraft.

Madame Eatalot and Sir Drinkalot made their entrance last, as always. She carried a plate of something — I never figured out where she’d got it — and he carried a drink that looked like it had been assembled by a botanist with unresolved trauma.

The bar staff, bless them, tried to maintain order. But Bali nightlife has its own gravitational pull… and we were all circling the drain.

The chaos began with karaoke.

FIFO King insisted on singing Suspicious Minds, which was ironic because everyone was suspicious of his mind by that point. He dedicated it to “the boys offshore,” though I’m fairly sure none of them would have claimed him as one of them.

The Tanning Students filmed him, giggling, then demanded the mic to perform a TikTok mashup of songs that should never be mashed. Their choreography involved a lot of pointing, hair flipping, and nearly falling off stage, all accompanied by laughter and giggles befitting a class of 5 year-olds.

The Aunties slow‑danced with Bali Boy, who looked like he was calculating the exact moment he could slip away without losing access to their minibar.

Madame Eatalot kept shouting “ENCORE” at random intervals, even when no one was singing.

Sir Drinkalot tried to order another Bloody Mary but the bartender gently suggested water. Sir Drinkalot took this as a personal attack and ordered a virgin mary instead. I’m pretty sure he’d stowed a bottle of Arak somewhere about his person.

The incident with the flamingo.

Someone — I won’t name names, but it rhymes with FIFO King — decided the inflatable flamingo from the pool would “add production value” to the karaoke. He dragged it into the bar, knocking over two chairs, a decorative vase, and one of the Tanning Students, who shrieked like she’d been shot.

The flamingo, once majestic, now sagged sadly in the corner like a deflated ego.

The room key disaster.

My room key had vanished. Not misplaced. Vanished. At least till I spotted it again. One moment it was in my pocket; the next, it was being used by Bali Boy as a prop in a magic trick he absolutely did not know how to perform.

“Is this your card?” he asked, holding up my room key.
“That’s not a card,” I said.
“Ta‑da,” he replied, and dropped it into a cocktail.

By the time I fished it out, it no longer worked. The staff told me to come back in the morning… The morning! As if I’d survive that long.

The night ended the way all Bali nights end:

With me sitting on a sunbed at 2 a.m., listening to the distant thump of beach‑club bass, holding a towel like a blanket, and wondering how my life had gone so wrong so quickly.

The flamingo drifted past in the pool, bumping gently against the tiles like it was trying to comfort me.

And that, unfortunately, is how day 5 or 6, or whatever it was, began.