Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

Finnegan and Bryan next traveled to Bali, Indonesia, where Bryan hated what he saw as the arrogant and neocolonial attitude of tourists and expat surfers. While Finnegan felt that the “collision of mass tourism and Indonesian poverty was grotesque,” he liked staying in Bali, where he enjoyed the food and surfing and worked on his latest novel (237). He often surfed at Uluwatu, a beach that featured sea caves, reefs, rock ridges, and massive waves and was near an 11th-century Hindu temple. Finnegan remembers making rushed decisions without fully understanding his new surf spot, feeling “miserable with fear,” and surviving by “pure dumb luck” (239). Bali was full of surfers, mainly from Australia, who connected over their shared obsession with surfing and often used pot and hash. Finnegan and Bryan were unusual in the surf community because they didn’t partake.

Finnegan tried to develop his travel writing and wrote an article for a Hong Kong magazine about Bali massage, which helped him manage his pain from an old work injury. He recalls coming down with an illness, which a German doctor diagnosed as paratyphoid. As he slowly recovered, Finnegan “sank into a fretful derangement, sweating, listless, self-despising” (241) and regretted not listening to his parents’ ideas about a career in law or journalism.