South East Asia on a Hamstring – January 17

Ubud, Bali – January 17, 2000

There was a new pile of peanuts on our terrace this morning.

I managed to pack everything into my small pack for a noon departure and then went off in search of banana pancakes.

Ubud opens late, I discovered, and my banana pancake dreams were thwarted by the fact that no restaurants open until 9 a.m. Restaurant staffs, young girls in sarongs, were still lazily taking chairs off tables at 8:45 and I realized I’d have to take what I could get.

What I got was Casa Luna, just past the intersection of Ubud Main Road and Monkey Forest Road. It was the restaurant I’d eaten at on the first night, when I was in my jetlag stupor. The restaurant tables overlooked a deep, green ravine. I got some fresh-squeezed orange juice and something resembling cafe americano, and sat and enjoyed the whirr of the cicadas and forest sounds until the Casa Luna staff turned on the stereo and I was forced to eat French toast with palm syrup to the sound of U2.

We left Ubud, Bali, promptly at noon, stuffed into a minivan with the seven of us and a driver. Our drive was down small paved roads through tiny villages and rice paddies. After about an hour, we stopped and toured Gunung Kawi, an 11th century temple carved into rock. It reminded me that people come to Bali for the climate and the culture, not for the tourist attractions. It is Bali’s foremost attraction, but doesn’t really stand out in my mind as too terribly astonishing.

After our photo sessions at Gunung Kawi, we zipped down the road, passing small cement houses and family compounds on the way. The homes have ceramic tile roofs and I have hardly seen any that are more than one or two stories, possibly because the ground is soft due to the humid climate. The window frames are made of fine teak, and often the windows are large and open.

We visited the site of a former sultan’s palace en route to our final destination of Tirta Gangga. Our minivan went on ahead with our bags and this enabled us to take local transit to our hotel, in the rain.

The “bemo” is the transit of choice in Bali. It’s essentially an orange or burgundy minivan with benches lining the three walls. It has set stops, like a bus, and costs 1,000 rupiahs (14¢). More people than you can imagine can fit into a bemo. We had a total of 18 on our bemo by the time we got to Tirta Gangga. Four of them were hanging out of the side. Many were schoolchildren, all little girls in uniforms of white shirts and blue skirts. All of the little girls wore tennis shoes with their skirts, and they all stared at us wide-eyed as we talked in English.

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