oh, how i'm going to come off like a cliche.
talking about how i fell in love with bali.
with the brilliant emerald rice fields.
open and friendly people.
fragrant food.
ancient temples.
soaring mountains and black sand beaches.
but.
it
did,
in fact,
happen.
here are some thoughts.
and
(so uncharacteristically)
just a few pictures.
i left the Sony at home.
yes, i was truly travelling solo.
Sunday.
Music is drifting from across the road. Barking dogs and
clucking chickens in the back yard. Tiled roofs jumble among deep green
trees.
Mawar homestay is lovely – simple, it’s true. But I have a
fan and hot water, and that’s all I really need. Various family members come
and go, sweeping and hanging laundry and cleaning the small temple on the
compound. And my room is cool even
in the afternoon…. Perfect for afternoon naps
A breakfast chat with Mawar this morning, eating fresh fruit
while he puffs a cigarette and gazes pensively down at the street, where the
occasional motorbike zooms past. Across the street a skirted lady takes a
feather-duster to the altar.
Eager for adventure, I headed off on a walk. Up the ridge,
rivers running on both sides, buildings clinging to the hillsides. Rice fields
brilliant emerald as pure puffy clouds float through a tropical blue sky…
Street wanderings, art museum on beautiful grounds…. It’s
hot, but the clouds loiter, giving relief and even threatening rain. Monkey
Forest Road has shops and cafes and massage parlors and art stores…
Even from the first moment (in the airport) I was struck by
the open and friendly attitude of the Balinese people – in Japan things are
quite reserved. And I’ve noticed that entering into conversations with locals
here does not leave me with feeling pressured as it can in other places… sure
at the root of it, they are often eager to tell me that they are available to
drive me somewhere, but it starts with a friendly conversation that leads to a
gentle inquiry, not a pushy hard sell… and a gracious acceptance of my refusal.
(No, kind sir. I do not want a taxi, transport, or motor bike. I am walking,
and enjoying it!).
Evening breeze, a rum-based beverage, and clothes that
aren’t in the Winter Collection, a street-side perch to watch the motorbikes
and sun-burnt tourists go by, as across the street the vendors in the market
take down their wares. Not a terrible way to end the day before heading off to
a kechuk dance, where the men sit in circles around the fire, chanting, as
women act out the tale in elaborate costumes.
(The picture is terrible, but here you can hear what it
sounds like…)
Monday in reverse.
Boats rock
Flags wave
Breeze lifts and falls and
Finds its new direction.
I’m safe in the shade
Iced coffee and kindle at hand
After an hour spent
With my back against a white-painted pole
Ants crawling around my feet
Just
Being
Watching the boat hulls
And the divers returning
And the water shifting
From turquoise to navy.
*****
Life doesn’t suck right now.
Roosters do their thing.
Locals lounge and chat,
Rows of bottled water
Ruby red soda
Dark and dangerous
Coca cola
Gleam
Boats ride the tide in the harbor
Tourists drag suitcases
Relcutantly
In the afternoon heat
Coming and going from the
(large, ugly)
ferry.
Bad pop music on the radio
Unfortunate tunes
I’m sure I’ll catch myself humming
Under my breath
As I wander Ubud tonight.
****
Pantai Klotek temple. ****
Sea breeze
Tempting
With a hint of coolness
That never arrives.
Sun sears.
White clouds billow on the horizon.
Black sand sparkles.
And hurts like hell.
Surf pounds
Churning into a dark froth
Where it slams the shore.
Slowly I become aware
That things are stirring in the temple.
Red and yellow umbrellas
Shade piles of offerings
Behind the beach-blackened walls
Men and boys dressed in white –
Shirts, pants, headscarves.
Ladies and girls in their best.
Music plays from the rigged-up stereo,
Picnics spring up everywhere,
As one family kneels on the sand
To make their dedication, supplication
Or appreciation.
Meanwhile
Young men hold mesh bags
And brace against
the retreating surf
Collecting slick black stones
In heavy loads
Again and again.
*********
Temple stop.
All the touristy shops are shuttered
Save one.
And the woman wastes no time
Trying to convince me
I need a sarong.
Which I don’t, I explain
(Feeling so clever)
I brought my own.
Undeterred, she kindly offers
To wrap if for me
Around my waist.
Leaving my shoulders
Conveniently bare.
What to do with this dilemma?
Buy one of these!
So cheap!
My driver
Leans against the van
And smiles
As I give in to the $2 sash
And shake my head as the woman
Trots off to find change
For my bill.
The temple itself was beautiful,
Especially after
I find the banyan tree
Ancient and wise
Watching over the ancient stone carvings
Grown over with a patchwork of green moss
*******
Down stone steps past silent shops.
Rice paddies
unearthly green
in the morning light.
Farmers about their business
waterways carry
life.
Past the deserted ticket booth,
Choose a green sash,
Tucking my small donation under the stack.
A sprinkle of holy water on my head
Through a stone arch
River tumbles over jumbled boulders
Under the stone bridge
Ahead in the cliff face
Altars carved from the stone
Blackened and mossy with age
Set in arches
Across the river
Four more altars
Catch the sun
As green palms
Meet the brilliant blue
Sky above.
Around the river bend
Along the narrow path
Rice fields undulate.
The temple waits.
Cobwebs, dusty, deserted
I am the only human being
In sight.
Tuesday
Cooking class!
Arrive at Casa Luna, then off on a market tour…
Housed in a crumbling, rambling stone building…we encounter
the ‘daily drink’ – jelly made from green leaves, coconut milk, and pink rice
puffies; ladies making food to wrap in banana leaves and send away…the same
product and same spot for years and years…
Spices and balms.
Fruits both imported and local (snake-skin fruit! Limes for
cooking and for juicing, rambutan and deadly durian...)
Piles of vegetables both usual and novel – white eggplant,
greens whose names I won’t remember, bitter spiky cucumber.
At the beautiful open kitchen of the Honeymoon Guesthouse (#2),
we have morning tea – hibiscus tea and local dishes – gado gado, fresh juicy
fruit, honey-dripping sweets.
Chef Janet appears and we begin the ‘cooking’ process (Read:
taking turns helping). We touch and smell the ingredients as she explains why
combinations are always used together. I discover tempeh, and the fact that
Balinese cuisine is all about the fresh: Fresh garlic, ginger, chilies,
shallots, shrimp paste, lemongrass – all ground with a large, flat mortar and
pestle.
Fresh vegetables chopped for salads and curries and
stir-fries.
We taste-test the spicy salads with dollops on the heels of
our hands before the woks are heated to create fragrant scents, sometimes
sending clouds of cough-inducing spice into the air.
A delicious feast and inderesting conversations with the
others at the table.
Wednesday.
Bike trip!
Drive up the mountain. Temples festooned in yellow, homes
and rivers and people starting their day. Breakfast overlooking terraced rices
paddies leading to the slopes of a mountain.
Onto bikes! Adjust to leaning forward and this seemingly insubstantial
frame beneath me….and more than 3 gears. However, over the course of the day I
was grateful for the gears and the light frame.
We rode for about three hours, along roads, through villages
and along dirt tracks in the rice fields. The rice was in
various stages of ripeness, many fields sporting plastic bags waving in the breeze in
an attempt to keep the birds away. Mostly we pedaled easily on flat ground or
coasted downhill, past family compunds, shops, temples, dogs, roosters,
motorbikes… waving to kids and trying take it all in before whizzing past.
We rested our tired selves afterwards with a wonderful local
lunch, and that night I caught a sunset that surpised with a brilliant moment
of fuschia and gold.
Thursday
Walk in the rice fields in the morning.
Peaceful, beautiful
and shiny from the morning’s rain.
Read my book at the Yellow Flower Café.
Delicious stuffed pig at Warung Ibu Oka, before grudgingly
taking a shower and heading off to the airport.
And the afternoon thunderstorm I’d been hoping for all week arrived just in time to show me out.
I have a feeling I'll see Bali again in the future...
...how could I not at least hope for that?