We spent the day on the beach, reading, enjoying the sunshine, and swimming in the clear turquoise sea. We were on the quietest side of Gili Meno and there was nobody around.
In fact, we didn’t see anyone until the late afternoon, when a young local guy approached us. ‘Have you got a plan for dinner tonight? Would you like to come to my restaurant?’ He indicated the direction. ‘It’s just over there on the beach.’
We’d already explored the length of the beach and we hadn’t seen any restaurants, only a tumbledown building.
‘What’s on the menu?’ I asked.
‘There’s no menu,’ the boy replied, ‘but if you’d like some fresh fish, I can prepare a romantic dinner for you both.’
He was really keen to have our custom, but I felt bad because I knew I was about to burst his bubble.
‘We haven’t got any money,’ I announced, knowing that he wouldn’t believe me because undoubtedly, anyone who looks like a tourist is bound to have money, right!
He must have thought I was trying to negotiate a price, ‘How much do you want to pay?’
I was now in danger of offending, or even worse, insulting him. ‘Look, we’ve almost run out of money, I explained, ‘we’ve only got Rp 100,000 (ten dollars) between us.’
We actually had Rp 160,000 but I didn’t want to tell him that, because I’d mentally set aside Rp 60,000 to cover the cost of a couple of Bintang beers each.
‘I can do it for that,’ he replied eagerly, and pointing to a dilapidated open-sided structure with the fractured remains of a thatched roof, he added, ‘I want to give you a really special experience so that you’ll tell all of your friends to come to my restaurant when it opens.’
Introducing himself as Irfan, he then went on to tell us that his family owned the piece of land adjacent to the beach which had once been home to ‘The Beach Café’ but no one had had the skill or the ambition to put in the hard graft to make a success of it. He said he’d learnt to speak English from talking to visitors and watching subtitled Hollywood movies, he loved to cook, and he had a dream of someday opening a seafood restaurant and a bar, and maybe even a small hotel.
‘But you’ve still got to rebuild your restaurant,’ I mentioned casually.
‘I’ve already got a kitchen,’ he replied, ‘my plan is to start by just setting up some tables and chairs on the beach, and when I have enough money, I’ll build a terrace and make a new roof.’
He couldn’t have been more than about eighteen years old; he was opening his heart to us, and I was already loving his sense of purpose and ambition.
Irfan asked if he could have a deposit in advance so that he could go and buy the ingredients. I didn’t doubt his sincerity for one moment, so I handed over a fifty percent deposit plus an extra sixty thousand and sheepishly asked him if he could buy us four bottles of cold beer as well. His face lit up with a beautiful smile, ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said. He then jumped on a bicycle and was gone.
Fifteen minutes later, Irfan returned with a huge snapper and our cold Bintangs. He told us to stay where we were, while he prepared our table. Table? we wondered; we hadn’t seen any tables or chairs.
On clear days, folks on the Gili Islands are treated to glorious west-facing views of the sun dropping behind Gunung Agung, way across the Lombok Strait in Bali’s Karangasem Regency. And this was the scene when Irfan summoned us to our table. A tatty old bamboo coffee table, positioned between a pair of sun-bleached driftwood tree trunks – our seats. The table was covered with a plastic cloth and adorned with a jam jar of red hibiscus flowers and another jar containing a candle. Our cold beer had been poured into two glasses and the two remaining unopened bottles were sitting in a plastic bucket of ice. More driftwood had been hastily gathered and Irfan was in the process of lighting a bonfire right next to us on the beach.
‘I’m going to start cooking now,’ he announced, leaving us to enjoy the deepening red and orange hues of the sunset sky.
When the food arrived, Michael and I looked at each other, astonished. Irfan delivered an oval plate containing the whole grilled snapper, served with a fresh barbecue sauce filled with sliced onions and slivers of red capsicum, along with two plates of mixed salad and fried potatoes. We dined by candle-light and told stories beside the dancing warmth of the fire. It was exceptionally romantic.
Bali’s most exclusive boutique hotels offer some extraordinarily romantic toes-in-the-sand dining packages to couples and honeymooners at mega dollar prices − which we’ve since been fortunate enough to experience on occasions when we’ve been writing stories or reviews for magazines. Yet, to this day, this young man’s random, uncontrived, spontaneous act of open heartedness continues to exceed them all.
When we paid the measly balance of Rp 50,000, we apologised for our lack of funds. I so wished we had enough money to give Irfan a big tip. Yet the whole encounter had gone way beyond that.
‘Please,’ he said smiling and shaking his head, ‘it’s okay, we negotiated the price in advance. I’ve still made a profit and most of all I just wanted to show you what’s possible. I hope you’ll come back when my restaurant is fully open, and please bring your friends.’
An excerpt from Chapter 33, “Lovelocity: Tales of Travel & Tropical Island Life”
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