South East Asia on a Hamstring – January 16

Ubud, Bali – January 16, 2000

We had a visitor last night.

I woke up alarmed to the sound of scratching at our terrace door. I watched for movement, spotted none, and chalked it up to my own paranoia and the upstairs tenants, who seemed to move furniture at odd hours.

In the morning, I found a small pile of peanuts outside our terrace door. I’m pretty sure cats and geckos don’t eat peanuts. Maybe the monkeys travel uptown at night.

Our 9 a.m. group meeting was a case of too many people asking too many questions, but it came with breakfast. I attempted to substitute banana pancakes for fried egg on toast but was informed that banana pancakes only happened the “day after tomorrow.” I pleaded with the staff, “but I won’t be here the day after tomorrow.” They all laughed at me and shrugged.

The morning was free so I planned to shop and exchange my now-read “Black Dahlia” James Ellroy book for a new book. I walked up to the main road, accidently kicking an offering off of the sidewalk. The shops in Bali all make these small offerings of banana leaves, rice, and incense and they place them on the sidewalk right outside their shops. No doubt I’m not the first ignorant tourist to kick one into the street. I quickly walked away, my head down, reminding myself to not walk up that street again.

I went from shop to shop and was quickly discouraged. The Bali goods on the streets of New York were higher quality and had cheaper starting prices. I’m looking forward to getting out of the tourist-town and into the countryside of Bali.

I visited a museum where I saw a lot of folk art and a modern art exhibit. Through their paintings, the modern Balinese artists were all expressing rage that there was no support for their type of art. Everyone paints traditional Balinese art to sell to the tourists and fine artists are just out of luck.

I wandered down Monkey Forest Road, buying a sarong and a string of hand-carved wooden monkeys along the way. Small newspaper boys approached me constantly, trying to sell me copies of “The Jakarta Post.” Two headlines, side by side, read “E-Commerce” and “E Timor.”

At noon, familiar music started coming out of all the shops. I walked into a few to see what it was…all the women in town were glued to their televisions, watching “Xena: Warrior Princess.”

I went to a local “library” and managed to exchange my James Ellroy book for another James Ellroy book. If one judged by the books available in Ubud, one would conclude that all tourists read are cheap romance novels, so I was very lucky to score a crime book.

At 2:30, our group met at the hotel for a bike ride through the countryside. Off we went into the hills surrounding Ubud. Souvenir shops gave way to rice paddies and steep inclines. The views were spectacular, the heat and humidity extraordinary. Pumping our way up the hills left me red-faced and

sweaty and very thirsty.

A local farmer came to our rescue with an offer of coconut milk. For 5000 rupiahs per coconut (75 cents), he shimmed up a tree and sliced off two coconuts. They thudded on the grass below. He attempted to change the price but Andy, our guide, was having none of that. The farmer sliced open the coconuts and we drank the juice straight out of the shells, and then snacked on the meat inside.

On we biked to a village inundated with white herons. No one knows why the herons nest here, but no one is complaining because they bring in tourists (and ample bird doo-doo).

Later, we attended a Balinese dance recital. It was some convoluted Hindi story about various gods and kidnappings. A chorus of 100 men chanted and made throaty noises, while women played the parts of all the characters. I fell asleep, tired from the day’s activities, but woke up when a man in a horse outfit started walking through fiery coals.

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