World-Wide Frisbee Fam

Originally published April 2018.

Ultimate frisbee stole my heart in high school when I could barely throw the frisbee straight for ten feet, and now here I am 7 years later playing a full length competitive 7v7 game on a small island in Indonesia with people from all over the world. Frisbee is one of the best sports that I have found that encourages community and connection, because it is accessible enough that most people can learn how to play so long as they have basic hand-eye coordination, and as long as you have a frisbee, you can play a pick-up game anywhere as long as the ground is fairly flat. So far this trip, frisbee has allowed me to meet people that I never would have otherwise, starting with throwing with random people at campgrounds in New Zealand, like joining a group of Israeli’s to throw for a while and then ending the night next to their van drinking beers and laughing our heads off, all the way to now joining up with the thriving ultimate scene in Bali with dozens of people from all across the world.I got connected to the Bali ultimate community through Couchsurfing (shocker). Weeks before I came to Bali, a received a message on Couchsurfing from a guy named Rich in response to seeing my public trip posted that I was going to be in Bali during this time. (In the same way that travelers can search for hosts on the App, locals can also see what travelers are going to be coming through via their public trips). The message went something like “Hi Emily, I am an administrator in the ultimate community here in Bali. We play twice a week in Ubud and Canggu, and if it works out then you should come play with us!” And I was given the google maps locations of all of the fields they play at with an invite to the facebook group and the frisbee group chat on WhatsApp. Thanks Couchsurfing. Simple as that, and of course I was going to make that happen if at all possible.

When I first arrived in Bali I posted on the facebook page to see when the next game was, and in response I was invited to play on a team in the Annual Bali Ultimate Tournament, a tournament where people from all over the world come together and play a 7v7 tournament all weekend, and they even offered to pay for my entrance fee because they needed stronger female representatives. Sadly I already had booked my plans to hike the volcano so I couldn’t accept the invitation, but it was still a really cool opportunity, and they said they would miss me, but were going to play their normal pick-up game next week, and I could join then. And leaving Made’s family compound to go back to Ubud on a Friday was perfect timing because the weekly pick up game in Ubud was happening at 9am the following morning. So I went and crashed at Ryan’s again, woke up early, covered my body in sunscreen, and went off to see what this ultimate game was going to be like.

9am hit, and I saw a pack of people walking across the field holding a disc, and I knew I had found the people I was looking for. Very quickly I was running around laughing and warming up with people from Canada, the US, Bali, Romania, the UK, Venezuela, and Russia with skill levels ranging from “I have never played frisbee before” to  “I travel around the world to play in ultimate tournaments.”

And then we played for 2 hours straight in heat and humidity you almost have to swim through. I haven’t played a competitive game in a while so I was a little rusty, but I got back into the swing of things pretty quickly and had a blast. I finished and could literally ring sweat out of my shirt it was so soaked, and my hair looked like I just stepped out of the shower. I didn’t get heat stroke like I thought I might, but I hadn’t sprinted for two hours in a while, and I knew I was going to be sore.

We all grabbed lunch afterwards, and I was able to get to know people a little more beyond screaming across the field and talking at water breaks. I became fast friends with a middle-aged dad named Jonathan and his son named Tristan from London, as well as another guy my age named Tom, who also happened to be from London as well. Tristan abandoned the normal college thing and is a digital nomad, able to work from anywhere off of his phone through organizing big events, marketing, and selling tickets for companies, currently living in Sydney but met up with his dad to travel for a couple weeks in Bali. Jonathan, his dad, is on an 8-month adventure taking some space to process a hard season, and we connected through talking about my book in recognition of the power in sharing our stories, especially when we are vulnerable and open about times of darkness and depression, which is something that is such a common experience yet talked about relatively infrequently. Tom is one of the ones who is traveling by following frisbee tournaments. He has already played in a few others in southeast asia this year, and played in the Bali tournament last weekend. He didn’t even know about the pick up game this day; he just happened to conveniently be walking by the field and was able to join in. Tom is also writing a book, and I ended up staying at the hostel he was staying at that night, so we were able to have a long talk about how healing the writing process can be, even when taking on writing a book can be so intimidating and scary.

We walked together that night through back roads and rice fields in the dark away from the hustle of the center of Ubud, and eventually made it to DragonFly Cafe where we met the rest of the frisbee clan from earlier at this sauna/pool/spa/campfire/restaurant combination that was super cool. Tom and I didn’t partake in sauna festivities because I had already excreted enough sweat that day, but we sat around the campfire getting to know more about our new friends from the day while stuffing our faces with the best tempeh burgers I’ve ever had. I met a girl from Seattle named Jessie, another kindred spirit with whom I would be best friends if we lived in the same place. She has done the Thakhek Loop that we are doing in Laos, and I was able to get some travel beta from her.

I ended the night with one last night walk around Ubud, since I had decided to leave to go to Canggu the next day, mainly to follow the next frisbee game happening, but also because I needed to take some introvert time before I left Bali to recharge, so I booked a guest house for three days. I tried to stop by the wood carving shop to say goodbye to my Balinese spiritual healer/psychic reader friend named Blacky I met on the street the night before because mistook me for a german girl he met a couple days before (forever getting mistaken for a German), but sadly it didn’t work out. I met him the previous night and chilled with him and his friends, starting off with Blacky doing magic tricks for some Balinese children who stopped by, and then ended with us talking about God and hearing what Spirituality means to him. Then Blacky tells me he is also a psychic reader, which obviously led to him asking if he could read my fortune and I said why not, as you do. It was hard to understand what he was saying with the language barrier, but all I remember is that apparently something big is supposed to happen when I am 31, I should only have one child because if I have two it will make me get a divorce, and that I shouldn’t let my emotions run so wild and I shouldn’t try to plan very much in my life. So we’ll see how all of that manifests. He was super sweet and offered to let me stay at his villa with him and his mother, and gave me his brother’s contact information who lives in Chiang Ma Thailand, and said that anything I need in Bali just let him know, but I told him I had a place to stay and then I was headed to Canggu. People are so kind.

I woke up and went to a small coffee shop away from the main part of the city near the monkey forest, and was planning on getting some writing done, but within minutes was talking to the guy next to me and didn’t look back at my laptop for two hours. This seriously happens everywhere you go here. Zac, yet another immediate soul friend from London who keeps finding his way back to Bali because he can’t make himself leave, is also a writer (so many creatives here), and we talked about God outside of traditional fundamentalist religion, and how exciting it is to be alive in the world today despite all of the darkness and brokenness. It feels like everyone is waking up to the fact that the old system is not working anymore and is slowly dying, and something new is trying to be birthed, in us as individuals and in society as a whole. It feels like humanity is going somewhere, and we want to believe that it is somewhere good. I would have talked to him for hours more, but I had to check out of my hostel and get on my way to Canggu so I wouldn’t be late to ultimate. Yet another hug goodbye of a new dear friend, laughing when we say “well, hope I see you some point in the next ten years, but if not, keep changing the world.”

I said goodbye to Wayan, the Balinese guy that was running the hostel who was all smiles every time I taled to him, and then Tom and I split a taxi to Canggu to go play frisbee. Our driver on the way was from Java, Jakarta to be exact, and he was a lively guy that was excited to talk about a lot of things. At some point in the conversation Indonesian food came up, and then eventually we started talking about durian, a large, heavy spikey fruit ball that has a smell so terrible that it is nauseating which grows in tropical climates.

It’s pretty crazy. You can be walking down the street and get a whiff of durian 30 meters away and it is the least appetizing smell ever, but a lot of people love it. Tom was one of those durian lover people. I told our driver I had never tried it, so his response was that we should stop at a stand on the way to Canggu and he could bargain and get one for me at the local price. And he did

And he was kind enough to let its stench fill every air particle in that car for the rest of our 30 minutes of driving. It was pretty terrible being trapped with that smell, so potent that we eventually had to just ride with the windows down because we were all getting headaches. But we made it, durian and all, thanked and paid the driver, dropped my stuff off at my guest house, and walked 30 minutes down a busy street where the sidewalk was crumbling and had 5 foot gaping holes in it to Finn’s Recreation Club, the location of where everyone was meeting to play frisbee.

This game was way more competitive. Around 30 people subbing in and out constantly in a 7v7 game on a normal giant field. It was so fun, so tiring, and again, so sweaty.

We played for around 2 hours, and then threw for an hour after it got dark under the field lights, getting eaten by bugs, and still sweating. We cracked open the durian, and I couldn’t decide at first if it was appetizing or repulsive, but after a few bites of the weird squishy flesh I decided that though I could make myself swallow it, it was not something that I would seek out to eat again. It was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever tasted and I don’t even know how to begin to describe what it tastes like.

One of the women who had been part of the community for a long time had a going away dinner part at the restaurant associated with the recreation club afterward, and everyone was invited, so Tom, Tristan, Jonathan, and I joined in at a table of around 20 of us as we ate yum spring rolls, calamari, tuna lettuce wraps, chicken sate, beef things I couldn’t eat, and the best chocolate cake I’ve had in ages. This food would have been great regardless, but after 3 hours of frisbee, it was heaven. More friends from all over, more stories, more laughs, more people I hope to see again in one day, but most likely will not.

Such is traveling though, connecting and intertwining spirits with people for a moment, giving and receiving a gift that is not meant to be for any time but that exact time, leading each other into the next step in the growth that you need. It eventually was time to go. I hugged the necks of Tom, Tristan, and Jonathan, telling them that now I have to make a trip to London one day to see them, and then we laughed because it would be more likely that we would be able to meet up in some other obscure country with the infrequency of them all actually being home and not off playing frisbee somewhere. Maybe we’ll just have to all plan on playing in the same tournament in some other country in the next couple years.

And then they left, and I hopped on the back of a motorbike taxi to be driven back to my guest house, and I don’t know when I will see these dear friends of mine again. I’ve learned to sit with the sadness in it though, knowing that the gift of vulnerability and connecting with people is so much more important than the pain wrapped up in having to leave them. If nothing else, meeting all of these beautiful humans the past two weeks in Bali and watching myself and those I have met come more alive because of it, makes me feel sad for the thousands of people who travel in a way where they just take their bubble they wear at home into a new place and isolate themselves all the same. Travel so often looks like staying in a hotel room by yourself where you don’t interact with anyone else staying there, or traveling to a place to take the selfies in all the cool places without talking to those who actually live there, or traveling to somewhere so you can get drunk for cheap and maybe you have a good time out dancing at a party but then you come back and wake up the next day not remembering anyone’s names and feeling like crap.

So many people travel as an excuse to escape instead of an invitation to engage and grow.

Bali has reinforced my belief that the point of travel is the connection and relationship, the being around the table talking about hard times and how you got through, the story telling of that one time a stranger did something kind for you when you didn’t know where you were sleeping that night, the orientation around those different than you so that you might learn something, instead of doing the cool thing and taking the cool picture, instead of spending all of your money on weed and alcohol, instead of staying on the surface of conversation because anything beyond is too scary.

I did do some of the touristy things in Bali like the volcano and the rice fields, and they were awesome, but those are not the moments that have touched my soul, those are not the stories I will tell to my children. The stories that matter are of the people I have met and the gifts they have brought me in their conversation, their hospitality, their vulnerability, and their love, and these two days, those people were randos from around the world who all started with one commonality of playing this random amazing sport, and that one common ground led to more and more, and now we are family.

Couchsurfing is the best.

Ultimate is the best.

Being vulnerable with humans is the best.

You should try all three.

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Cheers to the Journey, and may your Spirit always reside in a state of Wonder.