Abandoned Bali

THE DIARIES: INDONESIA

Taman Festival : Part I

Stuck on the island of Bali for a few days till we could depart, my cousin Abhi and I found things to do around town, and when we had done them all, found ourselves to be a little antsy. An afternoon of lazing around by the pool was so counterintuitive to both of us. We both stared at our phones for what seemed like hours, editing pictures and trying to keep the boredom at bay. One can only edit pictures so much, and after all was said and done, our eyes were on our phones but our minds were not even on the same planet.

“Dude, have you ever heard of Urban Exploration?” He asked me.

Indeed I had.

We both looked at each other with a sheepish smile and I could see the adventure in his eyes as bright as I was sure he could in mine. He did not wait for a response from me, he did not need one. He immediately grabbed his tablet and showed me a list of “non-mainstream things to do in Bali”, as if he was trying to sell the concept to me. He explained that most of these places were run down, abandoned or straight up bizzare. I will be honest, he had me at bizzare. I had always looked at things and places in the terms of what made a good picture, being a photographer does that to you. Bizzare meant different. And different, to me, always has meant beautiful.

We were off to Taman Festival.

I was a little excited for this, but not going to lie, also a little apprehensive. Our taxi driver that we hired for the day, who seemed to be excited at the very prospect of the easy money that came with showing a couple foreigners around, was soon very frustrated. Not only did he seem to have no idea what we were talking about, his friends who he made phone calls to, laughed at the luck he was having with us as his passengers. A little bit (okay a lot) of Google searching and confusion later, Abhi was able to locate GPS coordinates of a nearby village and off we went. “We’ll just ask the locals when we get to the village”, we had thought. If only it was as simple as that. The locals seemed to be puzzled by what an “amusement park” was, or maybe it was just a language barrier that made the Google Translate version of our Bahasa incomprehensible, but either way, Taman Festival made us work to find her. A little before noon, and a lot of crankiness on part of the driver, later, we had arrived.

We were greeted by overgrown bushes at what would have once been the entrance to this majestic park. “OMG this is it..” I thought to myself, combined with a mixture of “This is epic” and “WTF have I got myself into..”’s. We walked through the entrance gates, and within a matter of a few seconds, the whole energy of the place changed. Sounds fainted away, and the ground slowly turned into something that nature had tried to reclaim, and successfully so. Bush and wild shrub had somehow erupted through tile and even the side of buildings made of concrete. A heavy jungle of sorts had grown and overtaken what was once constructed to be a place of joy. The dense tree cover made it a lot darker, and despite it being high noon, an atmosphere of fear engulfed this place. By the time we were merely about a couple hundred feet into the park, we knew we were somewhere that had been abandoned.

“Do you hear that..?” Abhi said.

“What?” I replied, realizing that I heard absolutely nothing.

“Listen closely..” He said, and I soon realised that I could not hear even a single bird chirpring.

It was quiet, eerily so. The only faint sound I could hear was the distant crashing of the ocean waves somewhere at some point. At this point, I realised we were absolutely alone.

Graffiti, broken glass and stagnant water was everywhere amongst the ruins of what would have once been children’s rides. The content of the graffiti was varied, ranging from pagan stars to portals leading to other worlds. One thing was for sure, all this added to the ambience of Taman Festival, an abandoned amusement park.

We walked into what looked like it would have been an arcade of some sorts at one point. Creeped out and mesmerized by red hand marks and (a lot of) what I can only describe as a red paint-like substance, I walked towards the one wall. Dodging shards of glass from the ceiling and windows that was everywhere, I accidentally stepped into a puddle where I was greeted by mosquitos. These mosquitos, unlike no other I have encountered anywhere else, were big. They immediately made themselves at home on my arms and my legs which were uncovered. I went to swat them, and not a single one of them moved. This was strange to me. Every single being on this planet has the inherent will to live and a corresponding reflex action to prevent any harm to themselves, which is why a mosquito always flies away when you try to swat it. Not these ones. I took a swing at my arm and in one go, I killed over 10 of these bugs, not a single one of them moved. I wondered to myself when the last time was that these insects had seen a human being or tasted blood.