Beautiful Bali

Saturday, June 23, 2007--Ubud, Bali (Continued)

Spent the afternoon walking. I took a loop road that went out west of town. It went through small villages and along rice terraces. Then it came back into town on a major roadway. People were so friendly. I stopped several times to visit with local people along the way. It was nice being out of the city, and it was nice to visit with people who weren't wanting business from me. I talked to one young painter who was not working and was taking care of his nephew. He explained to me that the men in Bali get tattoos usually get them in places that will not show because it is considered lower-class to get them. Then he raised up the legs of his shorts to show me a tattoo he had on his upper leg that he liked but was normally hidden. I stopped at a nice exhibition space that had a beautiful printed program of the art on display and telling about the artists. The route back into town was lined with fancy homes and hotels and a museum. Bali is beautiful when out in the countryside or in the nicer parts of town--as beautiful as all the pictures make it look. I was tired when I returned. It must have been about a 15 km (9 mile) walk I took.

In the evening, I returned to Roda Restaurant for dinner. It has such a nice atmosphere. It is a rooftop (which also means treetop) restaurant that is open-air with a high thatched roof. I ordered mixed rice with meat and a bowl of vegetable soup. The mixed rice actually was a variety of forms of rice--boiled, in rice cakes, in rice chips, etc. It was interesting, but it wasn't what I had expected. I thought it would be mixed with vegetables in a stir-fry. The soup was so thick with vegetables--spinach, carrots, and others--that there was little broth. It was delicious.

Sunday, June 24, 2007--Ubud, Bali

I had a spicy breakfast this morning. It came wrapped in a paper cone. It was a mixture of rice, noodles, cooked papaya, chicken, pork, frog sausage (yes, sausage made from frogs), and strips of some kind of green vegetable. There was a fruit plate with papaya, watermelon, pineapple, bananas, and shredded coconut. It was a feast and quite interesting.

Wednesday will be a big festival day here. Unfortunately, I won't still be here. I am flying out tomorrow. But they have this festival only two times a year. They are making preparations for it all over the island. They use long bamboo poles which are arched and have grain hanging from them. They make special foods. All the temples are being prepared. The husbands do the cooking for the festival, and my landlord was busy this morning making the first of several dishes he will make over the next few days. He gave me a bit of taste of the spicy vegetable mixture and the sambal (hot paste) that he had already made when I took my breakfast dishes back over to the kitchen.

I took another walk today. Each walk just gets better and better. Today, I took one along the Campuan Ridge. It is a ridge between two valleys formed by rivers. It goes through small villages and through rice fields. The scenery is fantastic. And across the river to one side are the backs of huge estates where people live in Bali-style mansions. I stopped many times along the way to talk to local people. Some were artists who showed me their work. One was a man doing volunteer work cleaning the temple in preparation for Wednesday. One was the owner of a local food shop (very small). All were so friendly and nice. I really enjoyed visiting with them. It makes a trip so much nicer to have contact with other people, especially locals who can teach about their culture.

When I returned to the room, I took a nap and read. My landlady then arrived about 15:00 with a plate of food that has been prepared for the festival. It had pieces of pork, rice, a spicy vegetable, and a very spicy thick, dark paste she said was made from coconut and chile peppers. It was wonderful and left my lips tingling!

Just a little while later, a woman was brought by her landlord to see my room. She will take it when I leave. She stayed and the two of us visited about two hours. Her name is Anna and she is from the U.S., too. She is staying here for several weeks. (She just walked in the door of the cybercafe as I am typing right now!) Anyway, she has been traveling outside of the U.S. for a year now and plans to remain outside the U.S. for another couple of years. She is making extended stays in various places in Southeast Asia and is now in Indonesia for several months. I gave her my Bali guidebook and two novels I had finished so that she could read and enjoy them. She said she would pass them on to others when she finishes, which is what I like people to do.

While Anna and I visited, my landlords brought us two fresh coconuts off the tree with straws in them for us to drink the juice. Then they brought us bananas off their tree for us to eat. Anna had some cashew-ginger-cinnamon cookies we shared, so it was a nice treat and an interesting visit. It's possible we may be in the same place at the same time again sometime in the future. She is planning to go stay about a year in India when she tires of Indonesia.

Tomorrow, I will fly to Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. There are supposed to be good cybercafes there, so maybe I can do a better and more frequent job of posting from there.