Couchfish Stuart McDonald

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
My piece on finding a beach house thanks to my dog wasn’t so much a humble brag, and today’s post explains why. Much as I wrote, our little garden was a (very messy) canvas for the landscaper, and the beach house would be a canvas of my own. One not so much to try my hand at art—think yourself lucky—but rather a sustainability one. I’ve been writing for years on sustainable tourism, and here was an opportunity to put my words into action. Grand plans and all that.
In case you’re new to the couch, sustainable tourism (in theory) rests on three foundations—the environment, the economy, and the social. While I have no intentions in turning the beach shack into a rental, how can I de-shackify it with these principles in mind? As it turns out, few things come easy.
Inventiveness through necessity. The builders’ entire tool set. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
As with the foundations of a real house, sustainable tourism’s three bases intertwine and rely upon one another. Viewed in a holistic manner, it’s all well and good to source local labour, but if they’re building eleventy million private pool villas in a water-stressed locale, the end result is not ideal.
In my case, there is much to do. The house has a bathroom my kids won’t touch with a bargepole, the “garden” is like a set out of Apocalypse Now, and the electrics, well, as an Australian electrician once said of our flat in Bangkok, “it’s a death trap.”
I’m a travel writer—not an architect. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
With Agung’s help—and at my instruction—we source a local building team. From two villages very close at hand, these guys know how to mix concrete, and at that they excel. While I need that talent, I also want a staggered and curving bamboo wall for a far larger bathroom. One of the team has worked with bamboo before, though never a curving, multi-section wall. He reckons it won’t be too much more complicated and I agree. We are both wrong.
While Agung “searches in the jungle for bamboo he likes,” the team busy themselves on the wall base and piping. I want to move the toilet and have two showers, one at either end. At the prompt of another, I asked after P-traps. P whats you ask? Yeah, same—it is to be one of many terms I learn that I wish I never needed to. After I sketch one out (thanks Google) the builders confess to having no idea, nor any idea where to buy them. Not for the last time, they improvise, building them out of pipe joins to make the same. Over and over their inventiveness impresses—as does their willingness to do things over as needed. In general, three times is a charm.
Is this the second or third try? I forget. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
In the end though, we get there. It takes twice as long, and my costs blow out a little—thanks in part to someone helping themselves to some bamboo—but the end product is great. The tub, one day to be used far in the future when I have hot water, is Bali-made.
The tub is a nice pivot point to water. As with much of Bali, there’s no mains, and instead out back I have a ten-metre deep well. Back in the day they’d hoisted it by bucket, but now a pump gives a much appreciated assist. It isn’t drinking water though, which leaves me needing to buy aqua gallons. Sure they’re refillable and all, but treated water would be great. We have a filtration system at our house in the south, but that cost close to what the shack is costing me per year, so I stick with the refills.
The kids’ names, ok, but cats and the dog? Crazy bule. Photo: Stuart McDon

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
I’ve always wanted a beach house, but little did I know my route to one would be a puppy. A few years ago I got one of the latter, an accidental one. Fostered upon us by a pair of Sam’s yoga students who’d rescued her abandoned on a Bali building site, she was a family dog, but in no short time she became mine—or me hers, or whatever. Today, we’re pretty much inseparable. Her name is Skye Govinda—no, don’t ask.
Where we live in South Bali, we have a small garden area beside the pool. It is one of those super compact gardens, but the soil is so fertile even a gardener as inept as me can develop a thriving jungle. Controlling it, well that’s another question, and when Skye arrives, she sees the muddy mess as a perfect canvas to build her scale model of the Somme. Long story short, we get a landscaper in to swap out the Somme for a Batuan.
Not quite a Batuan, but it will do. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
The landscaper’s name is Agung. He’s Balinese, and midway through the de-Somming of the garden, we’re chatting, and Medewi in West Bali comes up. Best known for its surfing, it’s roughly halfway between our house and Bali’s western ferry port at Gilimanuk.
Chatting with Agung about the area, he mentions he has a beach house there, “oh that must be nice,” I say. A moment later he asks if I’d like to buy it. I laugh, do I look like I could afford a beach house? He grabs his phone, and after flicking through a bazillion plant snaps, hands it to me.
Garden needs work. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
The house is a joglo, a Javanese wooden house which he purchased in Java, dismantled, and shipped to Bali. He plonked it on some of his land and listed it on Airbnb, expecting to hit paydirt. Things didn’t quite work out, and in the two years since, he’s had one guest. He’s keen to offload it.
Joglos come in all shapes and sizes. Traditionally they’re associated with Java’s aristocratic class, but they need not be so grand. Boiled down they’re a square house with four inner columns holding up the roof with everything else hanging off it. For years they’ve been popularised as an “authentic” slice of holidaying, much like what you see with the wooden houses in Cambodia and Thailand.
Plenty of rice out back. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
On the fancy to not-grand-at-all time-space-continuum, Agung’s joglo falls off the end of the not-grand-at-all side of things. Think barn. The photos though, don’t illustrate how close to the beach it actually is. For that, he has a brief and bouncy walk-through video. It seems like the beach is right out front, and by that I mean Right Out Front—it is an absolute beachfront house. Despite this, he’s had one live body in it. What’s the catch? An abattoir or sheet metal factory next door? I ask more questions.
I ask where exactly the house is. He’s vague, but confirms he has a clear title for the land. I pour over Google Maps and find somewhere that may be it, the beach out front, farmland for hundreds of metres on the other sides. I ask if this is it, but he’s unsure, the satellite view confuses him. He rattles off directions related to a temple and some warungs, but this doesn’t make much sense to me. He’s talking about a location further west of Medewi than I expect and I’m unfamiliar with the area.
Like the garden, the bathroom needed some work. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
We give up on maps and Agung shows me the listing on Airbnb. To be fair, the photos do not show it in its best light. The solitary guest has given Agung a long letter of

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
By the time the earliest hint of first light appears overhead, I’ve been swinging in my hammock at the Sun & Surf Stay for an hour or so. The stillness and silence of pre-dawn is a welcome reward for my insomnia, even if with the steady rumble of Bingin’s break, it isn’t silent at all. In the distance, a fat moon sinks towards Java, edging golden as somewhere behind me, the sun breaks the horizon.
Views from the hammock are better. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
On the sand below me, two of the first of the day’s surfers are prepping. Boards on the sand, they limber up, rub down their boards, then attach leg ropes. They cast their boards over a shore wave washing in, and never letting go, they’re paddling as they hit the water. By the time the wave sucks back they’re already a half dozen metres behind it—with plenty of paddling to go.
It’s a couple of hundred metres out to the back, and this time of day, with no breeze at all, inside the reef is as smooth as glass. The two surfers break the smooth, left right left right they paddle without pause, two trails in the glass behind them. They’re headed to Bingin’s famous left hander—a near perfect barrel that runs 24/7 and that wouldn’t look out of place in a wave pool. The perfection comes thanks to the volcanic reef below which shapes each and every swell into a work of art—one painted to be carved.
Pain me a picture. Photo: Sally Arnold.
With dawn now on the scene, I can make out a couple of even keener surfers who must have paddled out in the darkness. For their early morning efforts they have Bingin’s wave pool to themselves. I watch one after the other effortlessly launch onto a wave, plummeting down its drop, bottoming out in a long arc then launching themselves at the lip. At the summit, they snap back, spray launching into the sky, then race down and across the face, as the wave curls over and above, closing into the barrel the break is famous for. If they pull it off, seconds later they shoot out of the barrel’s end, careening along the unbroken remainder of the wave. It’s at this moment they ease, standing taller, looking back along the wave, before rolling over the rim, and falling back on to the board. It’s over, and the paddling begins again. Rinse and repeat.
Like many sports, those who are apt at it make it look effortless. Having been out there myself ... once ... it is far from it. Knowing this though, makes it all the more pleasurable to watch from my hammock.
Just keep walking. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
By breakfast there’s a dozen or so out there, a number that will double, then perhaps triple through the morning—depending on conditions. The beach itself though doesn’t pick up with day-trippers till a little later, so once caffeinated, I get my morning walk in before they arrive.
My mornings are always west (right when facing the ocean), and when the tide is out I can get almost to the base of clifftop El Kabron before it gets too tricky. It’s a pretty stretch, swinging between narrow and non-existent stretches of sand—depending on the tide. Along the way I can see the mess of the next beach along—one you’ll never read about on Travelfish—and after that the golf course headland before Balangan, another of my favourite Bukit beaches. A low tide walk there and back, allowing for fossicking and faffing around, easily eats up a few hours.
Long shadows at Lucky Fish. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
By the time I’m back, the sun is right overhead and I decamp to one of the many beach cafes built into Bingin’s c

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
After spending New Years of 1941 in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, 75 crew boarded the Kaidai-class cruiser submarine I-66 and left port. Along with the crew, were six torpedo tubes, a deck gun, and an anti-aircraft gun. On her second war patrol of World War Two, she was bound for the Bay of Bengal via the Lombok Strait and the Andaman Sea.
As the I-66 made her way southeast, through the South China Sea, the USAT Liberty, a US-flagged freighter, was heading north. Laden with rubber and railway parts—or explosives, depending on the source—the Liberty was enroute from Australia to the Philippines—or Batavia (Jakarta), again depending on the source. With a displacement of over 13,000 tons and 70 crew, the vessel had but two small deck guns.
The I-65, the same class of submarine as the I-66. Photo: 日本海軍艦艇写真集 潜水艦・潜水母艦p70, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
You know where this is going right?
Before dawn on her sixth day at sea, around 15 km due south of Nusa Penida’s Kelingking Beach, the I-66 sighted the Liberty. She torpedoed it at 04:15, leaving the Liberty dead in the water, then made her escape. Two Allied destroyers—the USS Paul Jones and the Dutch Van Ghent—took the Liberty under tow and steamed for Singaraja on Bali’s northern coast—the primary port of the Dutch colonialists.
With the Liberty crippled, even after they’d cleared the fast moving waters of the Lombok Strait, she continued to take on water—Singaraja was to be a nautical mile too far. Deciding to cut their losses, and hoping to salvage as much of the cargo as possible, they beached the Liberty, and she capsized on Tulamben’s pebble beach on January 14. For the Liberty, the war was over, and once relieved of her cargo, she became yet another coastal rusting skeleton.
The USAT Liberty in better days. Photo: U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Some twenty and a bit years later, in 1963, Bali’s Mount Agung erupted. Windsor P. Booth of National Geographic was on Bali enroute to Sangeh Forest at the time, and later wrote in the September 1963 edition:
“There was a gentle tapping, as of rain, on the roof of our car. Oddly, no drops appeared on the windshield. Then the sky suddenly darkened.
I stepped out of the car to find that the “rain” was volcanic ash mixed with cinders.
No longer was the landscape a joyous rhapsody in green. Now all was bathed in an unearthly saffron light, because ash and clouds had blotted out the sun. Familiar objects, like trees and houses, took on grotesque shapes.”
When colleagues returned two weeks later, they wrote of the devastation, noting:
“By far the worst havoc struck a group of villages due east of Besakih. So sudden and complete was their destruction that even two weeks later officials could not be sure what happened. Many places, cut off by avalanches and lahar flows, were still too hot to be entered. Bodies were buried—or eaten by dogs—where they fell.”
The eruption took place around the greatest of all Balinese rituals, the Ekadasa Rudra. In the very readable Bali A Paradise Created, Adrian Vickers describes it as “the centennial rite of exorcism of the eleven forms of the terrible god.” An exorcism the eruption was, with thousands of lives lost, and vast tracts of land reduced to stony moonscapes.
“Acrid muck, 30 feet deep in spots, buried much of nearby Selat.” Photo: Robert F. Sisson, National Geographic.
While the Nat Geo correspondents kicked around Bali’s south and east, to the lesse

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
While it has resort in its name, the place we are staying at is more a private property with a couple of extra houses than a resort. Set right by the sea in a secluded area of Bali, down an un-signposted dirt trail, behind an un-signposted front gate, the effort involved in finding it makes it feel like a worthy prize.
Our accommodation comes in the form of a large two-floor wooden house. Airy bedrooms and cool-on-the-feet wooden floors are upstairs, while below, lazy chairs and fresh air beckon. Bags dropped, the kids make a beeline for the freeform pool by the sea, while we put our feet up. A grassy expanse runs almost to the ocean, where fast waves peel in, their foam rolling up onto a loose black pebble base. Roar rattle, roar rattle, roar rattle—the noise reverberates like a sack of marbles in my head, massaging by brain.
Time for a brain massage. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
Between the grass and the wave orchestra, pavers trace a curve around the property’s extremity, a small promontory of sorts. Beyond the pavers, enormous charcoal-coloured smooth boulders slope down to the water. With the afternoon sea breeze and a high tide, the spray rains into the pool—delighting the kids. The landscaper—not so much. When the waves later withdraw on the falling tide, I can see the bed of black sand the pebbles rattle over. The remnants of the original beach.
Bali is famous for its beaches, but like many things here, you need to work a bit to find the good ones. On our first few visits, hanging out in Seminyak and Sanur, we couldn’t understand what the big deal was. Sure there’s surf—a nice change from most of mainland Southeast Asia—but the strips of sand themselves, not so much.
Oh Nyang Nyang. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
It wasn’t until we got off our backsides and headed west—for the squid-ink black beaches that seem to stretch forever—or south to the Bukit, that we understood. The first time I saw Nyang Nyang from a Bukit cliff top I thought “holy crap, now that is a beach I could happily die on.” I should note this was back when there was nothing on Nyang Nyang, no road had disfigured the cliff, and no wrecked plane blighted the cliff-top. There’s a metaphor in that bloody plane I’m sure of it.
When we check in a staffer tells us the owner wants us to join him for dinner. They’d like to meet us, and have friends staying, so think it would be good for us all to meet and get to know one another. Drinks before sunset with dinner afterwards, we’re told.
The retaining wall protecting the manicured lawn from the surging waters of the Lombok Strait is far from an anomaly. Bali has decades of experience in losing its beaches. Candi Dasa, much of whose sand went awol after the innards of the reef were dug up to use the coral to make cement—ironically to build accommodation for tourists—is arguably the dumbest example, but it is far from the only one.
Sand way-station at Candi Dasa. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
Sanur Beach relies of Japanese-funded groynes to grab and hang onto what sand it can. This one I’ve been told was caused by dredging at Serangan for an ill-considered and profoundly stupid development plan, but I’ve never found any concrete coverage of it, so file that one under “A guy in a bar told me.” Regardless of the reason, Sanur’s once glorious beaches are long gone. Resort enclave Nusa Dua also relies on groynes, and the sickness continues around the south coast of the Bukit, where uber lux resorts have crucified surf breaks in trying to protect “their” beach.
The

A quick word of introduction. My name is Stuart McDonald and this is Couchfish—the perfect tub of ice-cream for the traveller stranded on the couch. The newsletter has both a paid edition which traces a fantasy itinerary through Southeast Asia, and a free one that covers, well, everything else. If you’d like to support me finding more tourism stuff to moan about, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
A couple of times a week my son has archery class over in Pererenan, a “village” a little to the west of central Canggu. Taking him there by motorbike grates—in part for the abysmal traffic but also because I loathe Canggu. Tourists riding sans-helmet has always annoyed me—despite it being a footnote as far as tourist idiocies here are concerned. There’s no shortage of such fools in Canggu, but the prevalence of “road is softer in Bali-ites” doesn’t explain why I dislike Canggu.
Where better to prepare for the apocalypse than near Canggu? Photo: Stuart McDonald.
Then the other day, I read the following:
“Having a lot of tourists around can be a nuisance for other place users, but the real challenges emerge when local shops are replaced by tourist outlets selling waffles and Nutella, when the prices of accommodation drive local residents out of city centres and when local culture is replaced by a caricature of itself. This is not just the fault of the tourists, but also depends on the functioning of property markets, local businesses and (the lack of) effective regulation. It is also important to realise that many of the processes linked to tourist gentrification can also operate in the absence of tourism. In many areas increasing property prices and local displacement preceded the arrival of tourists. Tourism has simply enhanced and intensified the process by bringing in more external capital.”
It’s from a far longer—and very interesting—interview with tourism academic Greg Richards over on Tourism’s Horizons. Go read it, I’ll wait.
Incessant development and loons on motorbikes aside, what Richards describes is what bugs me about Canggu. What in particular jumped out at me was this bit:
“...but the real challenges emerge when local shops are replaced by tourist outlets selling waffles and Nutella...”
What is local?
Not before time, there’s been a rash of advisory stories of late, all trying to help travellers spot greenwashing. Right across the travel industry this is a massive issue, and it is great that more awareness raising is underway. These are though, concentrating on only one aspect of the problem—the environmental. What about localwashing?
I have no Canggu short-cut pics hand, but rest assured it is far worse than this (also near Canggu). Photo: Lyla McDonald.
You can’t throw a satay stick without hitting some—often foreign owned—travel startup that is using some take on local as a part of their Unique Selling Point. You can travel with/like/by/through locals, you can eat with/like/by/through locals, you can do a tour with/like/by/through locals. The list is about as long as the—rapidly diminishing—availability of domain names. But what do they mean by local? Good question.
As I wrote a while back, when I questioned G Adventures on their dubious take on “local”, they never bothered to answer. More recently I asked travel planning start-up Elsewhere about what they meant by “local” with the following:
“Let’s call this system what it is - totally unfair. Our direct-to-local model allows 87% of your trip dollars to stay in the destination, empowering its communities with long-term, locally based income.”
For my efforts I got the KLM support treatment, so I have no idea what they do actually mean by this. (If you don’t know why I’m on about KLM, they’re notorious for dealing with legitimate gripes which could be dealt with publicly by diverting them to private messaging, often via Twitter DMs, where they then ignore you forever.)
“Pl