Letter to Bali.

Hi you,

I'm writing to you from a space of time between two journeys. The one that will bring me to you and the real journey, the one that will share with you.

It's June 9, 2025. The countdown has begun. In a month, I'm taking off for Asia again. After a few years of desertion. There was COVID, and then there was life.

I heard somewhere recently that this feeling of time speeding up with the passing years is justified by the proportion that a year represents, each year on the scale of our lives. Each year its proportion decreases and the feeling of time slipping away from us increases proportionally.

I'm talking to you, who will accompany my journey, or I imagine a part of it better. You are already part of the story and I can't wait to take off to join you.

I don't know anything about you even though we're already connected. I don't know if you live there or if you're planning a trip too. I have a feeling you'll be alone and have the space to welcome me. I know we'll laugh, maybe even cry. There may be silences, I like them; for me, it's a sign of trust. When I can pour out my heart in silence with a friend by my side. Savor the moment.

I already appreciate your presence and I know we will stay connected. We never lose the memories we make, and you are special.

I know someone is waiting for me there. Maybe me, maybe you.

When I travel, it's often to deliberately take myself out of my comfort zone where the extraordinary awaits me. Something out of the ordinary, out of the everyday. Feeling that adrenaline rush, the excitement first, the apprehension, then the big leap, the wow.

This feeling is as familiar to me as the well-being I get from a sports session after sustained effort.

I travel to gain distance and perspective from my daily life. What surrounds me, my environment and what inhabits me, my thoughts. The torments, the burden.

I escape. And from afar everything seems so small. So tiny. Banal.

I like to look at life through the prism of men and women who live on the same planet but in paradoxically similar and different ways.

I like to confront my reality with elsewhere. To look at my daily life, my lot, my cross with the eyes of others. I have the feeling of seeing more clearly, more accurately.

There's something else that struck me a few years ago. While working in a youth hostel, I often sympathized and bonded with guests. One of them, Flavio, an Italian legionary who didn't mince his words and had taught me the crudest aspects of the Italian language, told me very frankly:

You need someone with whom you don't speak French. That way there's no misunderstanding. When it's not your mother tongue, you simply speak with the right words. You get straight to the point.

And I observe that there is a part of truth in my experience of his words until now.

I speak English fluently; it's my passport and the language I use everywhere I go. However, since English isn't my mother tongue, I don't use all the subtleties I might have in French. Indeed, I speak without embellishment, without detours. And the connections that result from this are perhaps more spontaneous and authentic at first. Devoid of the trappings intrinsic to fluency.

I'm leaving for Bali in a month. I'm stopping in Abu Dhabi. Ethiad offered me a 24- or 48-hour stopover, with a hotel included. I thought, 24 hours, why not? I'll go visit the mosque that no one talks about but that everyone advertises, and I'll probably do the same.

It wasn't planned, but when an experience presents itself to me, I tell myself that something awaits me. So I go for it, with an open heart.

I digress, that's just me.

I am writing to you to thank you. From where I am, I know that I will be enriched by the lessons of this journey and even more so by the encounters that will follow one another or intertwine on my path. We are never truly the same person when other souls come to cross our path and share. We may remake the world, we may spend a night or several talking. The night inspires me, animates me. Carries me. I love the depth of confessions in the moonlight. Going to bed early in the morning, in the cool.

Look at the stars. Imagine you're above the void. Feel dizzy.

Maybe we'll make plans for tomorrow. Maybe we'll share a room, a cabin, a midnight swim. I really like swimming at night, I like swimming in the moonlight. Throwing the towel and the swimsuit away and no one cares because there's no one to see it. Maybe we'll write a song, maybe I'll make you read what I write. We'll take pictures, how would it be otherwise, you'll be on film. For how many years will I scroll and see your smile and these moments that will exist.

And this question comes up again: how long can we say that we have our whole life ahead of us?

You'll have understood that I have no idea where I'm going. Bali inspires and attracts me, so I'm going there. I know I'm landing in Denpasar. I've heard about the Gili Islands. That's all. I haven't booked or planned anything yet. Everything is possible. I'm not trying to plan the trip; I don't need to, and I don't know how to do it; it's not in my DNA. I like to go with the flow, and that way I feel like I'm living. I like to cultivate this feeling of all possibilities. I don't consult any sites, I avoid photos, posts. I want to let myself be surprised, to discover first with my eyes, my perspective on the world as devoid as possible of projections that are not mine.

I'm writing to you, it's dark. Two candles. I'm being eaten alive by mosquitoes, and no amount of wax can do anything about it. The toads are screaming, they're on time like every night. My son is sleeping in my bed. There are crickets. The air is mild, it's nice.

I only booked my plane tickets. Since yesterday I've been scrolling on Airbnb, I'm telling myself that I have to book at least my first three nights. It will be in Ubud. It makes me want to reread Gounelle, the first one I read that takes place there. I started reading it by the water, during my first trip alone and it was in Phueket, jetlagged. I'm getting sprayed by mosquitoes and I'm back.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I already love you. It may seem crude. I love the people I truly love, simply as they say so well in Italian, I wish them well. Ti volglio bene . I hope you are happy, happy, and I send you sunshine.

I can't wait to meet you, to cross your path, to bump into you. I'm kind of forbidding myself from thinking about you because I don't want to plan anything and let life take me where I need to be.

With love and kindness,

Your new friend.

Audrey