Hot Cup Of Coffee

Be Careful What You Ask For

For a time, I lived on the north side of Bali in a series of small villages collectively called Lovina. My wife and I had leased a small ten-room hotel on the west side of a three-kilometer-long crescent beach.

There were seasons there, but they were defined by the amount of rain they produced. The long (twelve and a half hours) days of the dry season meant that it was unlikely one would get rained on during a hike to the seven waterfalls.

In the rainy season, there were fewer sunny days and a guarantee of at least one day of flooding when the deluge would overwhelm the massive drainage system that ran under all the sidewalks.

Regardless of the precipitation, the temperature remained within a narrow range all year long, averaging eighty degrees. My uniform at the hotel was loose gym shorts, a festive t-shirt, and flip-flops.

I was seeing a Jungian therapist in the big village of Ubud. Ubud was over the foothills. I usually rode my mighty N-Max, 150cc scooter, on the back roads that go through the pass at Bedugal. I would usually wear pants and a coat as a safety precaution. They were only bearable when I was moving.

One fine day in the dry season, I decided to go through Kitamani, which has an additional 300 meters of elevation over Bedugal. It was an extraordinarily pleasant day. Sunny, eighty-five degrees, and a light breeze coming off the beach. Perfect in every way.

In an act of ignorant bravado, I forwent my usual coat and jeans, wearing a delightfully comfortable pair of cargo shorts and a polo shirt. All dressed up for a day in the big(?) city.

As I scooted down the coast, I experienced a blissful balance between my wardrobe and the weather. Six kilometers from Lovina, I arrived at the road that would take me through Kintamani and started to make my way up the pass. Approximately two-thirds of the way up, a light fog enveloped me, and I had an inkling that I might not be appropriately dressed.

As I continued to ascend the mountain, the fog became heavy, and I started to become chilled. Most likely, the temperature had dropped to 70, but when 85 is the norm, one is able to tell the difference.

The temperature continued to drop as I neared Kintamani, and by the time I got to the village, I was shivering. It now made sense to me that children would be dressed in little bear outfits with hoods that had small bear ears.

I pulled into the first restaurant that I saw with hopes of getting some hot coffee. They weren’t open yet, but I was obviously in distress, in that way only a recent expat can be.

In my eight years, the Balinese whom I met were all kind and generous, and the staff at the restaurant were no exception. They invited me in and gave me a seat overlooking the village.

Alright… I was learning to speak Indonesian, and the staff knew less than a smattering of English. After we had spent some time in conversation and gesturing, the waitress left me with the promise of mercy, disguised as a hot cup of coffee.

We have arrived at the point in the story where I will describe the strangest thing I have ever eaten. Pardon me if I stretch eating to include drinking.

My smiling waitress returned with a coffee cup. I proudly said thank you in Indonesian, and she returned it, and we used up half of my Indonesian vocabulary.

I doctored the coffee with milk and sugar, and, reveling in the heat that was coming into my hands from the cup, I took a sip.

I had used the full width and breadth of my language skills to make sure I would get a cup of HOT coffee. And that’s what I had in my hands. Coffee laced with Cayenne pepper. This went against my moral code, which is laced through and through with the principle of never, ever, eating or drinking anything spicy.

On any other occasion, I would have gone to the trouble of trying to reorder, or I would have abandoned the idea of coffee altogether.

But the chill this silly expat was suffering went down into my bones. I slowly sipped the coffee and reluctantly came to appreciate what the cayenne was contributing.

On this particular morning, under these very specific conditions, it may have been the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.

That being said, I have been extremely vigilant to make sure I never have to have another serving of HOT coffee.