trampling half-naked horde of pasty sunburned flesh causing the natives undue strain upon pure eyes. When people get a whiff of a few bank notes on the breeze more often than not the first ones to throw homegrown customs and traditions on the fire to send up a smoke signal for almighty investment are the locals themselves.
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ili Air is eating itself alive in an orgy of unchecked waterfront construction. An army of shiny silver hammers swinging atop bamboo lattices in the impossibly sweltering daylight hours. Land prices up 700 percent in two years, according to some. A few guest houses near the harbor in 2010 have metastasized into a growth that has spread nearly around the entire circumference. That sand path around the outside plied by the horse-drawn cidimols, taking tourists around for five times the local price, slowly being dug up. Bricked here, paved there. Richard, a Taiwanese, has lived here for 13 years. Opened up his own guest house long before the rush. He used to rise early, 5 a.m., go for a run along the sand, or sea kayaking. Now, the thrill is gone for him. Just a business, another day at the office. If there was once something special about Gili Air, something new and exciting, it’s gone now. Just another stop on the banana pancake trail. They don’t get it, he says. “They don’t understand that people come here because there is no road.” “You want shrooms, braddah?” The harvest starts early every morning. The push, too. Psylocibinrich mushrooms grow wild all over Gili Air. Stooped old men and women head for the few patches of cow pasture as the sun comes up to pluck the foultasting spores fresh off the cow pies. Come evening they’ll be blended into strong shakes and thrown atop magic pizzas. Every waiter, hanger on, and beach bum now a part-time
pusher and tour guide to the center of the mind. It’s only nature, though. I mean, a product of nature. Weed, mushrooms—harmless, really, the latter only harmful if you take too much and start envisioning your significant other or travel mate as some insidious spawn of Satan and become obsessed by a sudden compulsion to tear his or her still-beating heart from their chest and fry it up with some shallots. The marijuana isn’t homegrown, though. It gets shipped in from Sumatra. The money for investment, largely Javanese. Outsiders taking their piece. Disinterested in the cost. The locals, some too poor to have an interest or opinion, others too busy tearing down ramshackle hovels and building modest but new houses. That nefarious other, is it? Yes, and infuriatingly no. Speaking of which, a new outside force has reared its ugly head on G.A. Tiny little pills of merriment and electric skin vibrations—ecstasy. That too comes in from Java, by boat, and has birthed a new species on the island, walking dead droolers, brains burnt to oblivion. Souls sucked out by little miracles of modern pharmacopoeia. Teenagers of no mind, personality or thought save the want of more. Buy, buy, buy and be merry. A red-bearded tourist emerges from the trees, eyes bloodshot. T-shirt emblazoned with a Technicolor astronaut riding a unicorn across the stars.
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he shallow blue water. Escape. Beautiful crystal ignorance of the blight in an alien world. Dive in. Sea urchin clusters in bizzare formations. One like an upside down cross. Swaying carpet of green sea grass. Glass bottom boats cart around disinterested sunbathers killing time before the big beach party down at Lucky’s. On the bottom, a carpet of bones. Bright white coral corpses