Bali life

I have not attained enlightenment here, in fact Ubud is nothing like the idyllic zenned-out retreat we expected.  It's still part of the tourist juggernaut of south Bali, so there are just as many shops, motorbikes, restaurants and people shouting out to you, "Taksi?  Massage?  Maybe tomorrow, yeah?"  Everyone seems to really love it a lot, but it feels like just another tourist town.  We are staying at a pretty sweet bungalow (rustic might be a good word for it) that's bordered by a lotus pond, rice fields, our own moat & bridge as well as birds, snakes, frogs, lizards, cicadas and a herd of resident ducks.  So while we're sheltered from the noise of the motorbikes and taksis, the incessant mating calls and chirps and trills and honks from all the creatures is quite frankly just as bad.  Not to mention that because I'm sleeping in the loft, and the walls don't exactly touch the roof, all my stuff gets pooped on by the geckos! 

The most fun has been walking through Monkey Forest, a sacred temple site home to 400 odd long-tailed macaques.  They are curious, naughty and shameless - my kindred spirits!  You can buy a bunch of bananas at the front gate to feed them which is really fun and cute.  They ran right over to get the bananas from me with their little human hands, and would tug on the bottom of my skirt and look up at me with their cute & innocent little monkey face if they wanted another.  All this close contact with humans has given them bad habits, blurring the line between monkey and human behaviour.  They will jump on you and steal anything interesting, and we saw monkeys playing with and/or eating candy, Gatorade, batteries, chips, even an aerosol can.

Ubud has offered a glimpse into the uniquely Balinese way of life.  The people here are unwaveringly committed to their family, community and religion.  The values and expectations here are clear and concrete, and not challenged, that is "just the way it is."  I find myself envying the sense of community, the knowing exactly where you belong in the world, and I can't help but think that if we shared some of those values in the West, everyone I know wouldn't be having an identity crisis (or maybe just me!).  That being said, a lot of Balinese never leave the village they were born in, let alone the island or the country.  When a baby is born, the placenta is collected, placed in a coconut shell, wrapped in a white cloth and buried in the family compound to ensure a connection to the place of birth, so the spirit will know where to return to when the person dies.  Identity crisis or not, I just can't imagine not having the choice to be, see or do what I want, and I certainly can't imagine giving up the experiences I've had, the places I've seen or the people I've met.

On a bike tour through the countryside, I rode through Balinese villages and stumbled upon what seems to be a universal truth, one that's held true for most places I've ever visited: women do ALL the work.  I'm not just referring to the standard stuff like raising, feeding, and clothing their families, shopping, cleaning and nurturing, I mean full-on, serious manual labour.  I've seen women harvesting rice, barefoot, under the scorching sun, walking in flip-flops with planks of wood on their head, hauling buckets of wet river dirt around and carrying a deflated Zodiak boat up 365 etched-into-the-side-of-a-mountain stairs (do you even know how much one of those things weighs?).  What are the men doing?  Sitting around gambling on cock fights and socializing (or the odd game of pool).  No thank you. 

Also on said bike tour, we made a little stop in the rice fields to see how rice is harvested (by hand! barefoot!).  Being my curious self, I walked right into the field, straight to the action where I was greeted by a woman indicating that she really liked my pants - tugging on her pant legs, motioning to mine, and giving me the universally positive thumbs up.  Thanks!  Same thing from another woman, and another!  Soon the whole group of them were flashing me their beaming grins, thumbs upping and speaking rapidly in Indonesian to each other and laughing.  These people were really excited, and my pants weren't that awesome.  I started to think maybe they meant they liked my big thighs, that they thought I was a hearty, strong woman.  I casually asked the guide what they were saying and as a worried look crossed his face, he reluctantly replied, "Oh they think your pants are sexy."  Ok, that's good.  "They like your pants cause they can see your thing."  Suddenly the puzzle pieces fall into place and I realize the commotion is over the tightness of my pants, especially in the crotch area.  I guess they were just a little too risque for the rice paddy!  (and just for your information, I didn't even have a camel toe!)

Bali hey

So I've arrived in Bali, which turns out to be Cancun for Ozzies.  Although they do pull off the "I'm just here to party" look much better with their surfboards and surfer bods and tans.  The people are friendly, the food is amazing, and there's an incredible infusion of spirituality and beauty in people's daily life.  Plus there's the ocean and the sun.  And cute surfers.  I'm not complaining.  There is also a really strange and difficult dichotomy in this part of Bali where foreigners come for their vacations of excess while local rice farmers live in mini shanty towns and struggle to hold onto their land.  The streets are lined with designer boutiques and swanky clubs and resort villas that cost more per night than my rent, as well as small, family temples wafting incense and overflowing with offerings to the gods.

Between the time difference and the jet lag and a 14 hour layover in Korea, I've settled comfortably into my parents' geriatric schedule: I'm asleep by 9pm and up in time for the sunrise at 4:30am (5 if I'm sleeping in).  My parents also like to operate at a little slower pace than I do, so we've spent quite a few days just "lounging around."  There are, however, some perks to traveling with ol' Daddy Warbucks, like having a private car & driver take us around the island to visit gorgeous seaside temples and terraced rice fields, not having to eat just street meat, and staying at way-out-of-my-budget places with really great pools and outdoor showers.


My first day here I indulged in "Fish Therapy."  You've seen it, women ankle deep in a mini-pool while hundreds of little fish nibble away at the dead skin on their feet.  No need to go to a fancy spa, here you can get it done right on the street corner while drinking a Bintang and watching all the motorbikes narrowly avoid crashing.  I must have provided a tasty buffet, because I had twice as many fish nibbling my feet as the girl beside me, and we were in the same tank!

We were lucky enough to be here for the most important Balinese holiday, Galungan, or "When the Dharma is winning."  Balinese spend much of their time giving offerings to gods and demons, and during the 10 days of Galungan, this practice goes into overdrive.  Every family has their own temple to make daily offerings of rice, crackers, flowers, eggs and cigarettes.  The traditional dish is lawar, which is made with jackfruit, spices, and sometimes raw pig blood, although ours had pig skin instead.  Normally this isn't something foreigners eat, but that's never stopped me before so Our driver brought some for us, and it was quite delicious, and I don't even like pork.

On a day trip to Lembongan Island, we stopped to do some snorkelling, which is always fun but I think I saw as many empty chip wrappers and plastic bags as I did fish.  (Unfortunate, and the same is true for the Bali beaches, at least on the west coast, they're covered in garbage and debris.  It must be the cumulative effort of irresponsible tourists and a lack of government response and education.)  People on the island subsist on seaweed farming, which can yield one family 500kilos/month and sells for 7000 Rupiah/kilo, so you do the math.  Or I can do it for you, that's 3,500,000Rp/month which is $350, so not a lot.  Especially considering that a traditional Indonesian cremation ceremony can cost 100 million Rp!! (that's $10,000)   

On Lembongan we saw a monkey, tethered to his perch, looking at himself in a shard of broken mirror while fondling his exposed junk.  Nice.  Although, I know some of his human relatives that are into that sort of thing, so it makes sense.  The monkey overlooked four caged roosters that once we discovered were for cockfighting, got brought out of their cages for a private demonstration.  Fun!  They didn't hurt each other as it was "just for fun," and their respective owners proudly posed for pics.

We're moving to Ubud today, the spiritual, artsy, yoga Bali that you know, so hopefully I find some enlightenment.