How to have a “perfect” trip

I had the pleasure of having one of the best trips of my life.

This piece isn’t really about what I learned about Balinese Theatre and Dance. Instead, it’s a reflection of one aspect of my trip to Bali: how I accidentally stumbled upon designing a great vacation experience as a JOURNEY.

When it comes to travel, I have a problem. When I go on a trip, I love to learn about the history, art, and philosophy of another culture. However, I am always faced with what (to me) may be the most insufferable obstacle in allowing me to get exposed to these facets of the culture: I hate, hate, HATE, the actual “trip” part of the trip.

Travel is a slog. I know many backpackers and people with wanderlust will gasp at my assertion, but it’s cold reality for me: While places, people, and practice may be great, the actual logistics, sequencing, and execution of travel downright, awful, slog. People may say that it’s the journey that matters, but all I found is that the journey sucks; most of the times, it is redeemed only by the great and memorable pieces that pepper within it.

This was cold reality for me, until I accidentally organized my best trip yet.

See, when I planned for my trip in Bali in early September, I did not have a solid plan. I initially knew where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do, but I still felt like the trip was going to be mostly a bunch of moving between point to point, spending an hour or two there for the actual experience, before moving on to the next experience checkpoint. I was adopting the methodology of most tourists and travelers: Focus on the individual incidents, and pay with time and money spent ferrying between the incidents.

When I shared my travel plans to my friends YL and E, E mentioned that, “Hey! My class and I will be going to Bali during the week you’re going!“

You see, E is a third-year university student taking a major in theatre studies. For the past three years, he’s been working with Professor J in learning about South East Asian Theatre and Dance, specifically Balinese Theatre and Dance. Prof. J was bringing the class there for an immersion trip, where they would train under local Balinese dancers and experience Bali through the lens of a Balinese Artist.

So, being the bold-faced nerd I am, I immediately asked if I could piggy-back to join the class. E said yes.

I had to change my plans on the spot. They were planning to stay in Ubud, which was in central Bali. I changed hotels and flight timings, and planned my trip around one simple goal: To learn about Balinese’s cultural stories through theatre and dance.

My arrival in Bali was unremarkable. I landed very late at night, and met with the driver of the taxi I booked when I got my hotel stay confirmed. The driver’s name was Agung (literally “Lord King”), and he was a friendly dude who chatted with me as we drove down from Denpasar to Ubud for an hour. I reached my hotel at 1.30am in the morning, and had 4 hours left before the start of my first day in Bali.

The real welcome came on Sunday morning. I met up with the Theatre Studies class, and Prof. J was very kind. He had no issues with me joining the trip, and had already planned for me to learn to dance the Topeng Keras (Hard Mask). But first, we had to have a day at the beach.

Collecting trash.

We met up with the Trash Heroes, a local group of volunteers who goes to the local beach every other day to collect the trash and litter that gets left behind or wash up on the shores. They gave us sticks and bags, and we set off to work on picking up trash and clearing the beach.

I loved it. It was a reasonably-paced, quiet moment where I did a small part in helping to clean up the place, and I got to learn a bit more about the beach and its properties (e.g. the sand is dark and fine because a lot of it came from volcanoes). I also got a chance to make friends with the group, though I stuck mostly stuck with E, his girlfriend S, and their friend B.

Oh, and when we were done with one section of the beach, we got to release turtles into the ocean.

10/10 first day. I thought it was a great welcome event for the trip.

After the cleanup, we then went to Batuan, where we met with the masters who would be training the class. Master Made Cat was assigned to teach me Topeng Keras, and I was partnered with D.

For the next three days, the dance was the focal point of my travels in Bali. All my exposures, destinations, and experiences were laser-pointed to the dance, its origins, history, and inspirations, as well as the culture that surrounds and enjoys it.

The dance is not easy to perform. Dancers had to hold a certain posture and perform movements that mimic the wayang puppets that inspired them. That meant locking your body into positions that most people are unused to. There was also choreography, as well as lines that you had to learn. This was especially difficult, since the lines were in the original Majapahit tongue that I did not understand.

But there was a challenge, and I wanted to meet it.

The next three days was a combination of morning practices, followed by a brief break in the afternoon, then attending performances by the masters during the night. We watched the masters at work, doing a casual, improvised version of the story the dance was based on. We also went to watch a Wayang performance, where the masters used intricately designed flat puppets to depict a story, using shadows that were projected onto a stretched leather film.

• 

• 

• 

• 

My leg of the trip ended with a excursion to Balikang, the mountainous region where the old king of Bali was told to have brought his then-wife to establish a new kingdom in her name (literally, her name was Kang). The long van-ride was punctured by the climb uphill, where we eventually got to see the active volcano Mt. Agung from afar.

I made my way back to the airport at 4am, my trip ending earlier than intended as I had to come back home to settle immigration issues. But I will always remember this trip as the vacation where I stumbled upon a great way to make your trip memorable and an actual Journey (with a capital J).

Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky once shared in a podcast about how they broke down the ingredients for a “perfect” trip. In essence, a good vacation should mirror that of the Hero’s Journey so often seen in popular stories around the world:

1. The person begins at home in their daily routine in their ordinary world.
2. The person then gets a call to action for an adventure.
3. At first, the hero/ine might refuse this request, but later accepts it after meeting a wizened mentor to assist them.
4. They then cross the threshold into a special world of some sort where they must test the relationships of both their friends and enemies.
5. At some point thereafter, the hero/ine ventures alone into a dark and foreboding place in search of a special treasure. They tend to arise from this part of the journey as changed for the better in some way with new knowledge, hope, or sense of purpose.
6. Next, the hero/ine seizes the treasure and returns home to their ordinary world changed for the better.

Underpinning your trip should be a core conceit: a treasure that you will learn about over the course of your adventure, and want to bring home. For me this trip, that was learning (however rudimentarily) the Topeng Keras Dance.

The daily routine must also transition to the adventure through a Welcome Event: a significant experience in the first or second day of your trip that cleanses your usual sense of time and place. For me, that was the morning in the beach, a place where I would normally not want to go.

Mentors and friends help a lot, and it’s important to find good ones who can bring you around and help you navigate the places and get you where you need to be. Spend more time, effort, or money when planning to make sure you get a good Mentor. I lucked out by having not one (E), not three (E, Prof. J, and Made Cat), but a whole class of mentors plus one master who helped me in my quest to learn a bit more about Balinese Theatre and Dance.

I have loved my short time in Bali, and I hope I’ll have the time and money to do what I did again very soon.