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.