From the Morning of the World
A Brief Foray to Bali
November 2004
As a sort of spontaneous decision, I responded to an Internet special from Cathay Pacific Airways last April and persuaded David to go along with it – so we booked ourselves on a flight to Bali via Hong Kong for October. One of the side benefits, which we had not thought through at the time, was that it got us a way from the ugliness that American election campaigns have turned into. We were gone from October 12 to November 1. We did cheat a few times though by peeking at the occasional International Herald Tribune or Jakarta Post for a quick update on how the race was going. (We did watch the final debate in the lobby of a Day’s Inn near Los Angeles’ Union Station just before heading out to LAX for our flight to Hong Kong!)
One of David’s “terms” for consenting to go on this unplanned trip – one of the ways I wanted to celebrate being retired – was that this would be more low key than our usual style of boundless energy to explore wherever it is we are visiting. Although that began as a “compromise” on my part, in fact, it turned out to be what I needed also. For one thing, we had a series of very frustrating months prior to leaving, and we needed to just get away. There was a major house plumbing disaster, I had a very bad accident the week before the trip which led to also getting sick (to the point that we were not sure, up to the last minute, if we’d actually be able to go), and once we got to Bali, the heat and humidity was such that we simply could not be on the go all through the day. The heat was all the harder to deal with initially because for the first 5 or 6 days of the trip, I was still suffering from whatever I had picked up in the last week at home. Finally, getting older, something we tend not to think about very much, has undoubtedly tempered our style of travel a bit.
Our trip began (and ended) by train – Amtrak from Santa Fe to Los Angeles. I must say, when one has the time, taking the train is an absolute delight. Amtrak staff went out of their way to be friendly and pleasant, and the experience of having meals in the dining car – with white linens and fresh flowers on the table as the world passes by – is unbeatable. Leg room was twice what it is on an airplane, and the ability to just take it easy and relax felt so utterly civilized.
We did stop off, on the way over, for two days in Hong Kong, a place we had never been to before – as the stopover was “free” we figured, “why not?” While our negative reaction was not nearly as strong as it was to Singapore, we did come away with the sense of another very large Asian city where the modern age has wiped out most of the character of the past. I am sure there is much that is very interesting about Hong Kong, and we managed to do quite a bit in two days, but all the same, it was a huge city of endless tall buildings. In Hong Kong’s case, unlike Singapore’s, there is a magnificent harbor and mountain setting, but it has been rather wiped out by the profusion of tall, modern buildings. The night time skyline was lovely, and the bus ride up to “The Peak” (begun in late afternoon, so that we saw the views in sunlight, then at dusk and finally in darkness) was quite fine.
What I was impressed with – as I often am in Europe – is how well the public infrastructure is handled, compared to the U.S. My case in point was the Hong Kong subway system, which is magnificently functional, clean, and efficient. By way of comparison, we had just gotten introduced to Los Angeles’ relatively new Metro. (We had one day to spend on arrival by train to Los Angeles, and another day at the tail end of the trip) and we decided to rely exclusively on L.A.’s public transportation system, primarily the Metro. The difference between Hong Kong and L.A. was striking. In Hong Kong, spotlessly clean floor to ceiling glass barriers separate passengers from the tracks until the train arrives, and then glass doors, perfectly timed, slide open so you can get into the cars. (Hundreds of yards of these glass walls, in every station we got off at, were spotless.) Announcements are made on a high quality public address system in both Cantonese and English. Signs tell you exactly how many minutes until the next train will be coming into the station. The subway map in each car progressively lights the stations so you know exactly what station you are about to come into, etc., etc., etc. None of this was part of the L.A. Metro system, where signage was abysmal at best. My point is as follows – in the U.S. we spend money to have a fine infrastructure to meet private needs – e.g., highways for cars, but for shared public needs, we tend to do an extremely poor job. In much of the rest of the world, the public sector gets much more care and attention.
We did eat well in Hong Kong, as one might expect, and the city puts out a very good booklet of walking tours, which turned out to be the perfect way to get acquainted with a few key areas of the city.
And then it was on to Bali. One sign of aging is that while we did not travel much around the island, it was virtually always by taxi or private driver. One thing about the big plumbing disaster at home was that the bills were so stupendous (about equivalent to a bottom-end new car) that we realized worrying about taking a taxi (by U.S. standards very cheap) versus public transportation (bus or jitney vans called bemos) just made no sense. So, right from the airport, we took a taxi, for all of $13, to Ubud in the interior of the island, which was our base for most of our stay.
Ubud, interestingly, is to Bali, what, in many ways, Santa Fe is in the U.S. It’s kind of an artsy-fartsy sort of city that has become a very comfortable place to hang out. It has the right mix of tourist comforts with a taste of the old Bali, but one should not fool oneself for a minute that this is the “real” Bali. Ubud has had enough decades of making Western travelers comfortable to not be some little unknown discovery place.
The charm of Bali was what showed between the cracks of tourist Bali, and I cannot pretend to be very knowledgeable about it. What helped me quite a bit was reading a two-volume book on the customs, religion, and outlook of the Balinese by an American who moved to Bali and became a Hindu. If you are not aware of it, Indonesia is a Muslim country – all 3,000 islands of it, with one significant exception – Bali, which is Hindu. But the Hinduism on Bali is a very different sort from that of India. A much softer, gentler kind of Hinduism and one that for me, having spent time in India, had nothing of the “in your face” quality of Indian Hinduism.
What most appealed to me about the Balinese was the live and let live attitude that emanated from them. I don’t want to go overboard on this – this was not some kind of California touchy-feely thing. The Balinese have very clear, very firmly rooted religious practices and traditions – but somehow, as a visitor, one’s sense was of toleration. Small example – Balinese wear flip-flops by and large, and slip them off before ever stepping onto the floor of their residential compound (or anyone else’s for that matter) and typically when going into stores. But most Westerners do not pick up on this practice, or don’t wear sandals that slip off easily. I never saw a Balinese hassle anyone about not taking off their shoes. Most notable was the pervasiveness of warm smiles and gentle laughs, one of the most endearing elements of our whole experience.
The day-to-day esthetic sense was one of the high points for me. Men, and especially women, move with grace, with an ease of bodies comfortably in motion, that is almost unknown in the West. This became painfully obvious towards the end of our trip – we spent our last few days in Sanur, a beach town (a very large one) not too far from the airport, loaded with Australian, German, Swedish, and Japanese tourists in particular (we saw hardly any Americans in Bali). Watching the non-Balinese walk was a harsh sight next to the Balinese’s innate gracefulness in motion. The Westerners, of course, were frequently overweight, but it was the total lack of awareness of their bodies that was so obvious.
Bali is a tropical isle, a few degrees south of the Equator, and every kind of blooming tropical plant and tree is on the island. The esthetic sense was brought out almost immediately upon landing at the airport – I went to the men’s room and the sink had beautiful flower arrangements, flowers floating in small bowls. Right away, I felt welcome. And this was repeated countless times – frangipani blossoms placed on the treads of the concrete stairs up to a lovely garden restaurant in Ubud, or the placement of brilliant red hibiscus flowers in the ears of god / goddess statuary everywhere. The use of flowers to enhance one’s quotidian existence was a small but touching aspect of our visit.
I had read about the widespread use of offerings to placate spirits, gods, and demons, but to actually see it was something else again. Little square baskets (most commonly), made of split coconut palmleaf fronds, joined together with small pins of bamboo, were then filled with a few grains of rice and then covered with various flowers and placed on the sidewalk before a house, at a small shrine, on the dashboard of the taxi – everywhere, in short. And these were replaced every single day. Offerings everywhere – even this nonbeliever had to be taken on a small spiritual journey by bearing witness to this way of interacting with the world – visible and invisible.
Another element in the “magic” was often hearing gamelan orchestral music coming from somewhere – a group practicing, for example, that filled the air with gentle sounds of peaceful vibrations. Ubud had multiple traditional music and dance performances going on every evening, seven days a week, and we caught four of them. Each was in a different venue, and three of the four locations were magical –several in temple settings, another at the Ubud Palace, a 19th century structure built to resemble temple grounds and now a hotel. The performances were at night, and except for purchasing an entrance ticket, quite informally conducted. The outdoor settings were beautifully illuminated, and while these performances were strictly for tourists (a local, if he or she entered, would never be expected to buy a ticket), they also added to a Westerner’s sense of a created magical paradise, even knowing that created was the operative term, here, as with so much else we experienced.
One day I did sign up for a market and cooking class that proved to be totally enjoyable and extremely informative. The morning began with a two-hour visit to the main market in central Ubud, where I learned about all the foodstuffs – everything from the various tropical fruits and many vegetables in use, to food stands selling typical breakfast foods, spice and herb stalls, sellers of palm sugar bars and shrimp paste, in short, a rather comprehensive introduction to what a daily shopper purchases. We then went back to a guest house with a lovely pavilion set in a garden, where we sampled all kinds of refreshing drinks and fruits, and got involved in preparing a multi-course lunch. This involved chopping and grinding, and pounding mixtures into the various pastes that are the heart of Balinese cooking. By the time we were done, we had ourselves a 10-course lunch of amazing diversity. Since markets and eating go to the heart, in my view, of a society, I found this an immensely rewarding experience.
Ceremonies, processions, religious celebrations are common and make up a big part of the Balinese cycle of daily life. Even in our short time there, we attended a cremation – a big event with parade, horseplay, and then, at the burial site – an outdoor grove - a complex ceremony that included placing the dead person’s white-wrapped body in an elaborately built wooden sarcophagus in the shape of a bull, which itself was raised high under a large canopy. Eventually, when all the ceremonies, offerings, and sprinklings of holy water were completed, it was set alight until it burned down. Another time, a wedding was taking place in a house near where we were staying. I did put on a sarong (standard dress) and decent shirt, but was able to join the wedding party and observe the way it unfolded within a large family compound. I was offered food and drink and was utterly fascinated – with the beautiful sarongs, the elaborate offerings, the singing, and most of all, that I, a total stranger, was not turned away (imagine trying to do something similar in our country!). Perhaps the most special experience along this line was one day, returning from an excursion, with driver, we passed through the outskirts of a village where a major ceremony was about to take place. We had to get over on the side of the road, as truck after open truck barreled towards town. Elaborate barongs (whole body fantastical animal masks), groups in a wide variety of beautiful outfits (in each truck, everyone wore the same), orchestral instruments – all we could wonder at was the stunningness of the ceremony that would shortly take place – and this, in a very small, rural location.
I suppose one aspect I liked very much about the trip was not Bali-specific per se, but on the other hand, Bali was the kind of place that encouraged it. It was a kind of simplification of life and getting back in touch with a more natural rhythm and a back to basics way of living. Our daily clock was much more closely attuned to daylight and darkness, for one thing. We woke at first light (by 4:00 a.m., roosters and other waking creatures were already letting us know that daylight was coming shortly!) and in Ubud went out for a stroll a few times, shortly after 6:00 a.m., into the rice paddies near by. (One practical reason was that it was still cool then). And often we went to bed after dinner, and relatively early. No air conditioning, TV or even radio. Most everything around us made of natural materials. And a very slow pace. Most days, we had a modest “program” on our schedule, with lots of easy-going time for much of the day.
We ate wonderful food, including a great array of tropical fruit, and for almost three weeks, we actually ate healthy food. I was so impressed with how rationally the Balinese eat – good, simple food honestly prepared and eaten in reasonable portions. Trips to the market each morning to buy the ingredients for the day’s cooking. The lack of packaging. A society not overwhelmed with endless variants of synthetic products. The way we ate there brought to mind our eating habits at home and highlighted our screwed up, in general, the American approach to food and eating is.
Simple accommodations were an utter delight. A friend who had visited Bali several times steered us to a wonderful warm family in Ubud. The rooms for rent were clean and had a veranda – hot water for tea was brought in a thermos each morning around 6:00 a.m. (it got light around 5:45) and shortly after, breakfast followed. In back, an outdoor bathroom – what a delight to take showers under the sky. All this for a daily rate of $7.50 for the two of us, and with a friendly family to explain all kinds of interesting things to us.
We discovered, particularly in Ubud, but elsewhere also, any number of hotel compounds (often called “bungalows” or “guest houses”) in a midprice range ($15 – 25/night with breakfast) that were set in utterly gorgeous gardens, with temples, statuary of gods and demons. They usually had a pool, a set of individual casitas (to mix languages) with large verandas where you could relax and look into the esthetically pleasing tropical world around you. So, even in Ubud, we apologized to our wonderful family and moved, for our last two days to the hotel we thought had the loveliest gardens. If for no other reason, I could be persuaded to return to Bali just to pass some days in these dreamily pleasing settings.
We inevitably talked about how this trip compared with others. The previous trip most comparable to this was our visit to Laos. I did like Bali immensely, but also found that tourist penetration has had a lot more impacts than when we were in Laos (albeit a few years ago). Laos was a gentle and peaceful feeling country when we were there. It was extraordinarily beautiful and what made it particularly attractive to us was that the tourist infrastructure was extremely undeveloped, so we had the sense that we were exploring a real place, that we had gotten there on the ground floor. Bali has been a destination for Western travelers for many decades now, and is the destination for Australians and other Westerners on inexpensive package tours. It makes a difference. I have no doubt there remain off-the-beaten track locations on Bali that retain most of the earlier sense of the culture, but for this trip, our somewhat laid-back approach meant we weren’t going to seek them out. (David discusses his impressions on this point further below.)
I have no doubt that the “real” Bali is still there, but one must be a bit intrepid to find it. Unlike Laos, Bali has lots of very luxurious hotels, spas, and retreats that fulfill a Westerner’s idea of a Pacific paradise, and fulfill it very well. In a sense, I would find Bali a wonderful place to go back to, for a retreat into a very beautiful setting, a comfortable, yet simple hotel where life slows down and some basic simplicities return. When I read about all those eco-resorts in the Caribbean where one can achieve simplicity for $300/night, I think that one can do a lot better going to the real thing in a place like Bali, for a fraction of the cost and without all the pretense.
I caution again – our visit was not intended to probe Bali’s culture and religion in-depth. I think we had a wonderful exposure to it – with a minimum of awareness, a lot comes out. But for a trip that was dreamed up as a rather spontaneous reaction to an Internet special, the whole experience was an entirely positive one.
Ken
P.S. What follows on the next page is David’s take on Bali, a bit different from mine, but since we did the trip together, you might find a somewhat alternate perspective to be of interest.
David’s Brief Comments on Bali, November 2004
Ken’s travelogue is excellent, and eloquent. I don’t disagree with anything he said.
My perspective is and was slightly different. As follows:
1) As regards Hong Kong, my problem, in addition to Ken’s comments, was the horrible air pollution. Put simply, the level of pollution in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Madras – the only huge Asian cities I’ve been in – makes me sick. (Though Singapore was not that way.)
2) With regard to my over-all “take” on Bali, everything depends from the fact that I treated it as a fantasy trip: a place to get away to that would be beautiful and peaceful, and where I would do virtually nothing but read, amble around, write poetry, read some Buddhist texts (Bali is Hindu, of course, but in a form influenced by Buddhism), and eat healthily. In advance, I read just a few chapters of the scholarly book Ken mentions, plus a short book, privately printed, about the family we stayed with in Ubud. As they say, I wasn’t “invested” in the trip.
Reality is seldom as perfect as fantasy. I found the food marvelous and healthy indeed; the people sweet and simple, always friendly but not in a sycophantic way. I found the countryside, especially up in the hills, extremely beautiful, with the vibrant green of the terraced rice fields, some empty but well-cared-for temples with a pleasing design. One of the dance and gamelan evenings was, I thought, incredible and memorable; all were lovely, even when obviously foreigner-oriented. The stay, all too brief, at Amed was perfect: no noise (even the French tourists didn’t discourse continually), the simplest of accommodations, the sea and the fishing boats one hundred feet away … And I agree with Ken that the Balinese have kept their culture integral (for them), without pandering to tourism but without making tourists feel stupid either.
So, negatives.
1) Ken describes Sanur excellently. It was a complete zone-out in terms of creature comforts. But I hate this kind of tourist resort, anywhere, for aesthetic and social reasons that I need not explicate. I know that Thailand, for example, has some gorgeous, relatively un-frantic resorts of this sort – and I know I don’t want to go halfway round the world to be there.
2) Similar with Ubud, which I did not really care for much. Small reasons. This was the one place where, like India, the Balinese constantly approached you with pressure to step into their shop, or for transport, etc. I don’t blame them; but I don’t want it. Ubud had its share of ugly signage, broken concrete sidewalks, and – most discouraging to me – shops full of dreadful “art.” In all fairness, it had also shops that looked to offer excellent, beautifully designed jewelry and quite lovely simple (or sometimes expensive) clothes. But I am much more focused on art than jewelry and clothes. Again it should be obvious: I can’t put Ubud down for offering art that sells … but I don’t really want to attend to it. I expect kitschy, sometimes offensive, art in Santa Fe or Key West or Scottsdale; it’s just, why go to Bali for this? A small “crafts town” near Ubud was unspeakable in this regard. My point about sidewalks and signage is: in Laos, there was very little (in Vientiane) of this, none elsewhere. There were no sidewalks, and few or no strictly tourist-oriented arts and crafts stores, and what was on display was generally quite beautiful. And there was no touts either.
Obviously, I’ve reached a point in my life where I want as little of this kind of mixed-cultural stuff as possible. (I even disliked San Miguel de Allende for similar reasons.)
3) Visually, I found the temple yards in Ubud, and much of the humanly occupied terrain of towns in Bali not all that lovely. It’s odd: there is all this lavish plant life, obviously enormous fecundity, and yet it grows out of raked dusty dirt, a sort of tired grey in tone, with dead leaves on it and bits of paper and plastic. God knows, East Africa when I was there 30 years ago, had lots of raked dirt and dust – but no paper and plastic. South India was worse in this regard. Laos was a nearly complete contrast, because little paper and plastic. So were the Lakshadweep Islands (northern Maldives). The main point is that there is a fatigued, disheveled tone to much of Asia’s ground – its terrain -- that puts me off. All I can intuit is that it speaks to me of centuries of plant growth and the human footstep, combined in the same space, which somehow depresses
Yes, all this sounds condescending and arrogant: the world should stay perfectly pure and untouched until I visit it. People come to Santa Fe and say, it’s brown – and the shops on Canyon Road are junky. They’re right, but I privately put them down. So, go figure! I simply report that Bali wasn’t (except for the terraced rice fields and mountain slopes) the green paradise I hoped for. But it wasn’t bad, either!