Bali – a Wanderlust Interview

On connection, togetherness and how the island became 'home'

Oct 01, 2024

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Dear NE-One

Bali is different things to different people. To me, it’s a place of quiet, and connection. It’s a place that has captured my heart and my imagination – and it is also one of the places I call home.

How did you end up in Bali, asked

Samantha Childress

when she interviewed me last week for Wanderlust Interviews on Caravanserai (her captivating newsletter that at first glance appears to be all about travel, but that offers so much more beneath its surface). You’ll find my response below, and you can read the full interview piece here… we chatted about overtourism, Bali’s food and culture – and there’s also a dream itinerary designed for those who want to escape the island’s crowds.

Mark and me, in a sacred forest beside a caldera lake. For an itinerary that includes a visit to this special place, take a look here.

Samantha: Tell us about your personal connection to Indonesia – how much time have you spent in the country, and what brought you there?

Narina: Indonesia has been home – in as much as a home can be to someone who’s almost constantly roaming – since around 2013. It was an organic transition, not a deliberate decision to Put Roots Down. My partner (Mark) and I are both travel writers and for about a year after he and I became ‘we’, we didn’t live anywhere in particular; we were picking up a lot of work around South East Asia, and found ourselves gravitating to Bali in between assignments. Over time we’ve ended up with a small, simple bamboo place that we call home. We’re almost always on the move for work; before the pandemic we might have spent a total of around six months a year on the island; lately it’s been only three, maybe four months a year.

Samantha: Did you arrive in Bali with an existing community? If not, how have you built one?

Narina: About 22 years ago Mark visited Bali for the first time. He’d looked through Lonely Planet’s Bali guidebook and then headed straight for the area it didn’t cover: the (largely rural) western section of the island. It’s how Mark always travelled – which is quite ironic, seeing as lately we’ve both written a number of chapters for various Lonely Planet guides. Mark ended up living almost a year in West Bali with a Balinese family; he’d always stayed in close contact with them, so we naturally gravitated to their village and The Family, as we call them (because Balinese people don’t have surnames), is our community. Aside from two sons who work in other parts of the island, no one else spoke any English at the time and so I learned to speak Indonesian through listening to their conversations with Mark. It’s been a privilege and an incredibly beautiful gift, to be welcomed and accepted and absorbed into their life.