I’m in Ubud, Bali,&nbsp;reading the world’s refugee reports.It can’t compete, but I just got booted out of Australia&nbsp;after 35 hours’ detention in Perth. <img width="300" alt="syrian-refugees" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/syrian-refugees-300x183.jpg" height="183" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/syrian-refugees-300x183.jpg"> I’d been living in Australia since March 1st.&nbsp;I say “living,” but I was gone a lot. I was in and out. Home in Oz for 5 weeks, gone teaching in the US and Asia for 5 weeks, back again, etc.And I was teaching a small bit of yoga illegally on my tourist visa when in-country.After some gigs in the US and Bali, I flew back to Perth October 14. <img width="300" alt="australia population" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/australia-population-300x243.jpg" height="243" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/australia-population-300x243.jpg"> I always love the immigration procedure in Oz.&nbsp; You stick your passport in a kiosk. It gives you a green light. You walk through a saloon-door retina scanner, and an Aussie guard on the other side gives you a big smile and a quick glance at your customs form before he waves you through. Easiest border crossing on Earth. But . . . not this time. The kiosk directed me to the usual desks. The desk lady directed me to the offices. The office lady interrogated me with inexplicable warmth. (No, I’m not being sarcastic.&nbsp; The Ozzie immigration folk are stunningly kind and fair). They carefully laid out their case for the violations of my tourist visa with emails and internet advertisements, showing the trail of my yoga labors littered around the web.&nbsp; They offered me cups of tea and gave me formal opportunities to supply contradictions. In the end, they had me cold, and I stopped my momentary lies <img width="300" alt="Aussie Immigration 1" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Aussie-Immigration-1-300x91.jpg" height="91" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Aussie-Immigration-1-300x91.jpg"> They then collected me and some other “prisoners,” put bright yellow vests on us and stacked us in a van. We were shuttled to a nearby locked facility with men and women from Chad, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Korea and other places–treating us like honored guests the whole way. Here was the skinny: They gave me the opportunity to return to Bali or America. I chose the former. I knew I was going to Shanghai in 3 weeks, and I’ve got no drive to return to America any time soon (but who knows what the future will hold!). <div><img width="300" alt="Cricket I dont get it" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cricket-300x185.gif" height="185" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cricket-300x185.gif"> </div>They told me a flight would come available in 1-3 days, so I accommodated myself to my digs.&nbsp;&nbsp;I got a heap of study done, notified the people in Western Australia that I&nbsp;wasn’t&nbsp;on the way, and wept over the temporary loss of contact with an Aussie woman I can’t seem to forget and the dream to be an Aussie citizen.&nbsp; In my grief, I watched movies, played volleyball, poker, and cricket (yes,&nbsp;cricket) with the boys.&nbsp; I traded stories with the infinitely decent guards and my somewhat neurotic fellow prisoners. Some of them had been living in detention 10 years. Most—even the German couple who were collected from my same Jetstar flight and who departed home before me–busied themselves with bitter complaints.&nbsp;&nbsp;But I’ve dealt with immigration officials in lots of places and seen how evil they can be (and, until this experience, always were).&nbsp; So, I just chilled and enjoyed myself. I knew I’d landed in a golden cage. <img width="300" alt="Visa Passport Picture Duo" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Visa-Passport-Picture-Duo-300x134.png" height="134" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Visa-Passport-Picture-Duo-300x134.png"> They woke me at 4am after the second day and told me they had a flight. Doing the paperwork for my exit took 20 minutes. They grabbed my bags from lock-up; I changed underwear, showered and all systems were go. Two guards chaperoned me to the airport, picked up my ticket and checked my bags while I sat in their car.&nbsp;&nbsp;They then drove me across the tarmac to my gate.&nbsp; They bought me a pineapple juice and sat me down.&nbsp; We began to shoot the breeze before boarding. <img width="237" alt="PhoneCallDonAdams" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PhoneCallDonAdams-237x300.jpg" height="300"> I looked around at the rash of travelers waiting for planes. Really, no-one here knew if these guys had a detainee or a diplomat on their hands.&nbsp; So I just played a game in my head that I was an international rockstar, spy, or secretly-gold-girded CEO. As one must do with this life’s unexpected predicaments, I just relaxed into it. The guards were sweet as heck. They told me stories about their families and their culture. (It seems almost every Aussie is an immigrant.) One was born in Pakistan.&nbsp; He said his Mom had died back home and that his time in Oz felt over. “There is food waiting for me there to eat,” he told me.&nbsp; I said, “Uh, what?”&nbsp; And he patiently explained that, in nomadic Muslim culture, people are said to travel only because fate draws them to eat the food where they arrive. Work stories came. They told me how they’d flown criminals to Nigeria and Myanmar, and Paris—where they always arranged to stay a few more days for French cuisine, and&nbsp;I gave them my stories of poking around Mongolia and Korea and north India. An hour passed with this sweet talk, and then a uniformed Maori tribesman, the size of both of them, bald, ear-ringed, tattoo-sheathed and sporting opinions like Archie Bunker, relieved them at the end of their 6:30am shift.<div><img width="300" alt="The Aussie Coat of Arms As weird and wonderful as the nation" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Australian_coat_of_arms_1912_edit-300x225.png" height="225" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Australian_coat_of_arms_1912_edit-300x225.png"> </div>They walked away. I looked forlornly after them. We’d bonded. I pushed past the Maori’s opinions to get to know him too, but time was short. A drop-dead gorgeous groundstaff girl was given my passport as we bussed out to the plane.&nbsp; I made conversation with her, but—paradoxically—she hated flying and travel.I couldn’t figure out what else to say. I climbed the wheeled stairway to the entry and my visa was passed off to the plane staff.&nbsp; I fist-pounded the Maori goodbye. Hullo Jestar! I walked happily to the very last row. <img width="300" alt="Jetstar" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Jetstar-300x170.jpg" height="170" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Jetstar-300x170.jpg"> The flight was the usual Aussie affair: everybody on board looks the picture of ill-health but happy as sin. The instant the seat-belt light’s off, they pop up from every row, talking garrulously, while generously purchasing pasta, sandwiches and beers (it’s JetStar!&nbsp; Nothing’s free!).&nbsp; I was feeling distant in my new criminal persona, and my free flight had landed me in a row with 3 vacant seats. I stretched out to sleep. Three-odd hours of flying dissolved in a doze.&nbsp;&nbsp; I woke to the steady tones of the cockpit captain gargling weather stats over the P.A. The landing was a bit rough and I wondered if my supercheap airline couldn’t filch for computers, and actually made this guy land the plane. <img width="252" alt="pink" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/pink-259x300.jpg" height="292" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/pink-259x300.jpg"> In Denpasar, the plane stewards handed me to a Balinese lady in a radiant pink company dress-suit accessorized with dashing black heels.&nbsp;&nbsp; Exhausted by my dreams of international romance, I had the overpowering urge to ask her to marry me, become a US citizen, and retire in matrimony to buttfuck-nowhere New Mexico.&nbsp; But I elbowed the thought away with a cognizance of the ominous logistical and cross-cultural details and, despite small talk, kept my thoughts close to my chest. Two bright-eyed and slightly puzzled young male attendants joined us. We paraded past the mass of Aussies and other eager visitors snaking in infinite lines toward their face-to-face with immigration. My passport was taken into a room, then brought out again. Then my buoyant bodyguards led me into the staggeringly-sky-lit international lobby. <img width="90" alt="us pass" src="http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/us-pass.jpg" height="125" title="Image: http://prasanayoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/us-pass.jpg"> The beauty in pink handed me my passport and phone. The boy attendants gave me one last confused smile. I called my go-to driver. I was free. <div><h3> </h3></div>

BAD AMERICAN! ERIC IS BOOTED BACK TO BALI

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