It was my first year in Bali, back in 2002, when I still had that sucky corporate job.
I was staying in our rent room with my girlfriend enjoying lazy weekend. We thought it was just another weekend in Kuta-Bali. Laid back, warm and accompany by Bintang beer (local cheap but super awesome beer). The weekends that supposedly awesome after a week spent with morons.
It was just about 1 hour before 12 o’clock that we heard a super huge blast that shakes the ground. The world went dark soon after. Mind you we live about 4 blocks away from Legian St. I went out of the room and saw a huge fire blasts from the north. I thought, "isn’t it come from Legian?"
We were curious on what happened and ride our bike following hundred of others who all went to the same way, to the heart of Legian Street. The closer we got there, the more we saw panic situation. Then we were starting to see some people walking the opposite way with blood in their bodies walking and crying. Our curiosity slowly changed into fears and when I heard this voice, I suddenly turn the bike and went to the opposite way.
Ada bom bli! Ada bom!
Means there was a bom, brother! (bli is local accent just like calling people ‘brother’).
I was panic and didn’t know where to go, I was so freaking scared. Then we decided to go to our friends’ housing where dozen of our other friends live. We felt it’s safer to go there. Our friends were all there and we know nothing about what happened on details. What we saw was the fire were just getting bigger. Then we tuned in to local radio hearing the most scary news we’ve ever heard. It was a live coverage of the Bali Bombing, that killed hundreds of people that night. What I remember on the rest of the night was hearing endless Ambulance sirene broke the silence of the night and live radio report counting how much bodies was found at the ground zero. Scary. Terrorized.
The next morning we went to the scene and hell it was totally wrecked. The most scary thing was we smell burnt bodies, well, I won’t get into details here.
Weeks after, we didn’t know what to do. We were thinking of going back home to Bandung because we simply so scared. However, finally we all decided to extent our stay in Bali, but this attack has surely changed Bali forever.
6 years had passed, still there are no safe place on earth anymore from those perpetrators, whom yet been executed. They’re still alive and manage to liven their idiotic ‘sacred war’. If God is really full of angry, I will stop praising Him. Even morons understand, that those are personal causes, and others die because of it. How on earth these murderers live and breathe on this earth while other people suffer because of their beliefs?
It’s a disease that i’m afraid is living here at the country I live. The longer it lives, the harder it can be cured. Or is it cureless? Don’t blame us if me and whomever felt not into this ‘war’ are afraid.
