Bali - Day 4 - Monkey Forest

Today's main adventure was to see the monkeys. Monkey Forest, not far from the center of Ubud was quite a surprise. Even as we were driving up, a few stray monkeys were wandering the road. And once we payed the $1.50 entrance fee, we were all but swarmed by them. The preserve is home to 3 types of long tail monkeys, though they all looked about the same to me. Just a few paces into the park we had to drop all our bananas because we were being hounded by the aggressive monkeys...they could smell the bananas and they could smell the fear on us.

Even after giving up the food, Max got into a couple of teasing matches with the monkeys and Buz had a water bottle swiped from his hand. But for the most part, we just wandered among the thousands of monkeys amazed by their playfulness, closeness and quantity. If you're ever in Ubud, this should be a must see experience.

Another interesting thing happened while we were at the preserve when meme was swarmed not by monkeys, but by a class of 14 year old students who were wanted to practice their English with her. With their teacher's prodding, the shy students began asking questions in English like, "Where are you from?" or "What is you favorite Bali souvenir?" Meme was glad to oblige and spoke with them for 20 minutes and seemed to get a kick out of it, though the smiles on the students faces seemed to show that they probably got even more pleasure out of it.

Besides two more excellent meals in Ubud, most of the rest of the day was spent back at the Villa, swimming, reading and relaxing. However we were interrupted by planned rolling blackouts and spent a short time in the peaceful dark listening to the frogs in the rice paddies with their noisy, nightly cacophony.

Bali - Day 3 - Trekking

Today was a shopping day. In the center of Ubud, in a multi-leveled shopping "mall", sarongs were bought, spices were haggled for, precocious small baskets were accrued. But I am only relaying what I was told, because I went trekking.
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After breakfast, I decided I had to have another massage so I again broke my frugal ways and forfeited the 100,000 Rupiah for the hour long massage. Fortunately, 100K Rupiah is only 10 bucks US. I'd say the Balinese massage is just a bit lighter than a deep tissue massage one would get in Las Vegas or Hot Springs NP. Apparently this massage is what the rice paddy toilers get after a hard day of turning the soil, or planting or reaping the crop. And it is worth every Rupiah and then some.

After that, we had a new driver/guide for the day, but we were leaving our paddies just for a short trip and drop off at the market place of Ubud. While 5 of the clan were heading for shopping, I was following the advice of one of our Bali travel books and taking a trek off the beaten path.

The trek started out from Cafe Lotus in the center of the city. It was diagrammed as a 4 or 5 mile hike North on one side of the river and returning south on the other side. I wasn't exactly able to follow it as planned, but it was thrilling none the less.

The "trail" started out on a small street probably only used by the locals. After a few football fields in distance, the road bent left and disappeared. I wove through a few "back yards" and eventually found a semi-well trod path that actually turned out to be the trail. For a long stretch the trail followed a narrow tree line that divided the rice paddies. Constantly sloping upward, I dipped in and out of the large paddies and the jungle that surrounded the river and water source that nourished them.

Blazing humidity caused sweat to drench the upper portion of my T-shirt and wiping the sweat out of my eyes with the lower portion quickly turned me into a puddle. While I had passed many farmers toiling along the way, about a mile into the hike I was startled to have one of them propose retrieving and opening a coconut for me. Perhaps he saw me excreting so much liquid from my pores that he wanted to help or save me, or perhaps he was hoping for a tip...I can't be sure because I declined. I should have accepted, and told myself if I got another coconut offer I would accept.

The trail was not clear. I followed a few aqueducts, I walked along some farms, I crossed a "bridge". I popped back out of the jungle and for a while I was on a path that skirted the connection of the paddies and the jungle. I wasn't sure if I was lost. There certainly weren't any other trekkers, but there were plenty of friendly locals. Nearly every interaction with these locals (farmers) went the same way. I would startle them with both my white face and dripping sweat; they would burst forth with an ear to ear grin and a hearty "Hallo!"; I would replicate the grin and respond with "Hello!"; we'd pass each other and I'd continue on, chewing up the beautiful scenery that makes up their every day lives.

And then, on this path that could only be walked or perhaps biked, I came to a gallery. And then another and another. And at the next gallery, I could take it no more and had to connect with the owner/artist who I awoke as I passed his shop. "Hallo!" And I responded, "Hello!". My conversations at the 3 previous galleries had proceeded as follows:

The owner, or the owner and his wife, said, "My name is undecipherable, what is yours?"

I would respond, "Hi! (smiling broadly) I am Scott."

They would say, "Where are you from?"

This question has been puzzling me since I got here. I don't know if in their broken English they want to know what country I am from or where I had come from today. Invariably I reply either with either America, New Jersey or to make it simpler I say New York City. The reason I don't know if this is the reply they are looking for is that after some pleasantries about America, they ask more specifically the following questions:

1. Your first trip to Bali?

2. How long you here?

3. Where you staying?

My responses are: "Yes, it is beautiful here.", "I am here 8 days. Today is day 3.", and "Villa You won't understand what I say (Villa Agung Khali)."

These rural artists are soft sellers and I found it easy to say that I was just trekking through and move on. Though until I produced one of my water bottles, I think they wanted to save me from withering away and offered me shade.

At the 4th gallery I met Wayeng, who I had woken up from behind his "counter" in his shack/gallery. Wayeng popped to life and while I was downing another bottle of water, we went into detail about his process for creating the art. He showed me the charcoal he burnt. He scraped some of it into a little dish, he added some water and pulled out his sketching tool which was a sharp metal point at the end of some wood. Before entering his "gallery", I pulled out my camera to take a picture of this desk and his implements, and he pulled out an unfinished sketch he had been working on and posed for a picture pretending to be at work.

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I then entered his gallery. I took one step to the left and looked at his pictures there. Then I retraced that step and took one to the right to complete the tour. In the process I saw about 50 pieces of art he had produced and was really tempted to shell out the $11 for one of them, but I had no way of carrying it with me without either damaging it or sweating on it. (The picture of the white shack to the right I took after exiting the "gallery" and walking a few paces down the trail...the pic should make you understand why I have used the quotes around gallery each time.)

Following that, and being reassured by Wayleng that I was on the trekker's trail, I rounded the bend at the northern most point of the trail and got totally lost. I thought I was on the right path until the trail went from somewhat paved to dirt to grass to dead end. I heard cars for the first time since entering rice paddies, and made my way to the road. I tried again after a half mile on the road to cross paddies and find the elusive trail but was stymied at every turn. I gave up and popped out of the paddies to return to the road. A local saw me sloppily come out of jungle and into his paddy. I was embarrassed as he directed me toward the larger paths that would take me back to the road. From across the paddy he yelled "Coconut?! You want?!". Though my face could get no redder than what the sun had already done, I blushed and stupidly declined. This time I believe the offer was to save my life. I followed his kind signals to the road, finished what water I had left, and made my way back to my starting point of Cafe Lotus.

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Cascading off my body were all the rivulets of liquid sweat that remained in my body; I entered Cafe Lotus and requested a large Bintang. Bintang is the local beer we have been drinking since we arrived in Bali. It is a pretty tasty beer that I would compare to a heavy Miller Lite or a light Sam Adams. It went excellent with the lunch I ordered and in little over an hour I had stopped sweating. I hired a cab back to the Villa and after an intentionally icy cold shower I felt a full 25% better.

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We had an excellent early dinner at the Dirty Duck restaurant, but again, I really need to go into detail about the food here and I have written far too much already. I can't wait to see what day 4 here in Bali brings!

Bali - Day 2

Perhaps I was a bit overly enthralled yesterday in my blog. Perhaps not...I still love it here.
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We decided to hire a guide for the day who would take us wherever we wanted to go and also recommend some sights to experience around Bali. Our guide, Made (pronounce ma-day) picked us up after breakfast and first took us into Ubud to see a short program/play of Balinesian dancing that told one of the two Hindu epic religious stories. Even with a sheet of paper that described what was going on, we still had to use our imagination to guess at what was happening. The show featured perhaps 25 actors/dancers and was accompanied by a fantastic 22 piece orchestra. It was quite entertaining, and the performers seemed to do a lot of detailed hand wriggling and finger splaying while decked out in highly ornate costumes and face paints. But I still had no idea what the story was all about. Afterwards, Made told us what it was about, but I still didn't get it.

Following the show we set out on a road trip to the volcano. Normally, I'd say the name of the volcano, I'd say the city it was near, I might mention the road we travelled and perhaps use a bunch of other proper nouns. But the sparse road signage, the unusual combination of letters, and the somewhat cryptic "English" that Made used made it difficult to pinpoint where we were. So I can only say stuff like: we went on a two lane road through a bunch of villages toward a volcano near a big lake.

Yesterday, From the airport in Denpasar we came North to Ubud, and the entire terrain was predominantly flat. But as we struck out further North after the show, we began a 2 hour journey that had us rising in elevation nearly the whole way. About half way to the volcano, we pulled to the side of the road to view some of the beautiful tiered rice paddies that are seen in many of the postcards of Bali. They were quite striking, but it is difficult to conceive of the hard lifestyle the farmers have to raise their crops and eek out a living.

During this stop, we encountered for the first time the small crowds of villagers that surround you trying desperately to sell tourists their handmade wares. As soon as we stepped out of the car, small boys to elderly women confront you with items the most common of which were sarongs (delicate woven dyed fabrics), wooden teak baskets that could hold fruits, carved teak masks of their gods, and brilliant white carved things that we weren't sure what they were, but perhaps they were supposed to be made of elephant tusks. The sellers only words were the prices in dollars or rupiahs they wanted for them. We were in need of some sarongs for our next destination at a temple, so we picked up 8 of them for an average price around $5 (50,000 rupiah) each. After enjoying the scenery, and as we were opening the car doors to resume the trip, the prices plummeted and the vendors were offering the same objects for about 90% less than their first stated price. We would run into many of these hordes for the rest of the day and it becomes quickly tiresome to repeatedly turn them down...though I might pick up a teak fruit basket for a buck or two next time we are approached, and just before closing the car door.

Before we got to the temple, we stopped for a buffet lunch where the food was good, but the view was what we were paying for. The tourist trap eatery was perched on a mountain rim with an inspiring view of the volcano. The volcano is an active volcano (any volcano is deemed active if it erupted withing the last 15,000 years) and it had large eruption in 1918 and 1923, and most recently blew off steam in 1997. While I've spent some time around volcano calderas like Yellowstone and the one in Big Bend, this volcano has the shape that most would imagine a volcano to look like such as the one in Joe Verses the Volcano. In fact, we were told that Julia Roberts was recently here filming for an upcoming movie release.

The next stop was the aforementioned temple, the volcano's temple, which is the second largest temple in Bali. After donning our sarongs, pushing through the vendors, and paying our donation fee, we entered the temple. It was ok. A temple here consists of 3 concentric courtyards, separated by low walls with some worshiping altars in the innermost courtyard. It's primarily an outdoor place and we never had a roof over our heads. We took our photos, strolled around the grounds and exited into the same throng of vendors we had repeatedly rejected on the way in.

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Then we drove down to the base of the volcano. An hour and a half uphill hike would have had us peering into the volcano, and I surely would have done this if I were alone. But the younguns (ReMax) were a bit testy and we decided to begin the return journey back to Ubud.

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Besides enjoying the scenery, and it is all enjoyable because it is so different than anything in the U.S., we made only one stop at a Bali coffee plantation and shop. After sampling various strongly caffeinated beverages, the tastiest of which was the ginseng coffee, Dix pick up a stash of the Bali coffee that is now prized by the celebs in L.A. What makes this coffee unique and expensive is that the coffee beans have been ingested by a ferocious ferret like animal and pooped out whole. They are then washed and packaged for sale. I really can't think of another consumable product that has been pooped...though I'm not sure how the honey from bees is created.

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The day's road trip ended around 4PM, we sent our hosts at the Villa into town to pick us up some to go food and we all lazily swam around in the pool for a while to counter the heat and humidity of the afternoon.

A surreal day of pleasure, though I am not sure whether we will be venturing out for another road trip. There seems to be quite enough around the Ubud area to entertain us. Tomorrow I may venture out for a hike, they call it a trek here, though as yet none in our entourage has signaled an interest in accompanying me. They want to go shopping, so I may be trekking solo again.

Agung Villa, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia - Has It Only Been One Day

5 hours due South of Hong Kong as the plane flies is Indonesia. It is a country of many islands, and the massive island we are on is Bali. We landed in the city of Denpasar, and even as the plane was descending, it was clear to me that I was entering a realm of only-in-the-movies or fairytale land or detached reality...words can not describe it. I couldn't have wished for anything more.

After debarking the plane, I began to sweat. The sign that said "Smuggling illegal drugs into the country carries a penalty of death!" was not the reason, it was the humidity. 120 degrees of Phoenix summer heat is a breath of fresh air compared to the overbearing dense tropical moisture. I love it!

Exiting the terminal, after buz let slip and broke 1/3 of our duty free liquor allotment, we were greeted by our driver/house assistant and began the drive north to the city of Ubud. I've jumped out of an airplane. I've stood inches from a 6,000 foot drop into the Grand Canyon. I was less than 30 feet from a 300 pound wild black bear. I would try near any adrenaline rising adventure I could think of, but I know I would never try to drive from Denpasar to Ubud. The drive took a little over an hour, and probably only covered 40 miles into the center of the island, but it seemed an act of magic that we made it with no accident or fatality. The straight narrow roads had our car driving on all sides of the lane markers as swarms of small motorcycles passed us and were surpassed by us. The rhythm of the road and traffic was hard to comprehend yet our driver deftly maneuvered around all obstacles. Well, not all, on the final dirt "road" to out villa, he was out maneuvered by a duck herder and his ducks. For nearly the final mile, we had to go at a ducks pace as the 40 or so ducks in the roadway had no intention to let us pass. It was frustrating to be so close and have to move at a web footed pace. Let's just say that I was feeling quite smug when I had crispy duck for dinner last night.

We arrived at Agung Villa, a few kilometers outside of Ubud, around 5PM and my euphoria had me often sying things like, "This is awesome." And, "I love it here." And, "I can't believe how great this is." And, "Look at that, look at this, hey there's a frog on the sofa." I even proffered that I don't want to leave and perhaps I'll find a wife and live here forever. And this after just being in Bali for 2 hours. It is a day later, and I am tempering my words to others, but the euphoria has not abated. This is awesome!

In a future post I will probably go on at length about the Balinese cuisine, so I'll save the details for then, but we went out to dinner around 7PM and had a meal that tantalized. After returning to the Villa, I was impatient to get out last nights Hong Kong blog to clear the slate for this. So on to today...

The cock crowed. The frogs roared. And a multitude of animals I don't know yet pounded a steady beat in my ear drums til the sun came up. The villa served a standard fine breakfast, and the rice paddies beckoned. Villa Agung isn't much. A rich ex-pat came here and built 4 "luxurious houses" in the middle of a landscape of rice paddies. 5 feet from my bedroom window a farmer toiled over his paddy with rudimentary tools for his family's subsistence. I'm theoretically homeless and jobless right now, but a bit of guilt of our wealth creeps into my conscience with all we encounter. I could slip a twenty dollar bill to a farmer and it may be more than he earns all month. I wish I could give them all a twenty. Buz and I encounter many of them as we trod through their paddys.

We headed out of the villa, leapt over the first of many aqueducts we would encounter and proceeded along the extremely narrow paths the farmers use to access their plots. To us it was a puzzle, more a maze, where we had to determine whether we could proceed or needed to backtrack to find a solid footing around the waterlogged paddys. We passed many shanties where the farmers rest and their wives trudge to bring them their meals, simple wooden covered two person huts of existence. Perhaps we walked a mile, and all along we encountered the locals who smiled at us blatantly obvious tourists and gave us a hearty happy "Hello!". Oddly wonderful it was.

After returning to the villa, the masseuses had arrived and after they finished with sis and dix, we passed by our pool and for $10 we had an onsite hour long massage that was worth every penny and even a few thousand more pennies. Labor is cheap here and perhaps the best advantage of visiting a place like this. Yet it is a guilty pleasure, which we shall repeat every chance we can.

After some swimming in our pool and leisurely reading, our driver took us to the center of Ubud where we had another dining extravaganza before sampling the dense shopping district and checking out the wares of this artistic enclave that makes it such a popular vacation destination.

My words can only scrape at the bountiful experience that this amazing adventure. It's a gotta be here experience. And I am here! I find it hard to comprehend, and I find it amazing that I have only been here one day. And I have 7 more days of this mind blowing journey to come! I'm almost jealous of myself.

BTW, for the first time in my life I am south of the equator, and yes the toilets swirl counter clockwise.

Hong Kong - Road Trip on Steroids

So much to say. So little rest.

Today I arrived in the town of Ubud, on the island state of Bali, in the country of Indonesia. I've been here 6 hours, and I could probably write a half dozen posts on Bali already. But I need to catch up with the first part of this grand adventure, so I am self-imposing a limit of this post to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong! China. One of the only 4 remaining communist countries in the world (5 if you count Laos - thx for the info buz). To get to Hong Kong from JFK in New York, the shortest distance was right over the North Pole on a 15 hour flight. I left on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday. Out of my plane window I saw a sunset, a sunrise, a sunset and another sunrise before landing just before sunset. Wednesday evaporated without notice. I dreaded the thought of a 15 hour flight, and was really quite surprised that it didn't suck. I watched 3 movies, had two good meals, read a couple hundred pages of a very good book, and caught about 4 hours of sleep. I arrived half way around the world feeling pretty good.

After connecting with meme and buz (mom and dad), we took a half hour cab from the airport to our hotel in Hong Kong and as a group we customized ourselves to frenetic pace of the city by pointing out all the differences we initially saw from our everyday American lives, and there were many. But the differences were fewer than I expected.

To me, Hong Kong seemed a lot like New York City. Towering sky scrapers dwarfing a multitude of the masses of people scuttling block to block shopping and doing business. And there's great Chinese food!

On our first day we went to see the Big Budda on one of the neighboring islands. This entailed taking the subway to the ferry to a bus ride that was so wild that half my entourage nearly became motion sick. Unfortunately fog rolled in that was so dense that after walking up 243 steps to the base of lotus leaves, looking up we could not even see Budda's head. Even so, it was all still an exhilarating trip. But the highlight was how we got back to Hong Kong.

From the top of the Budda mountain, engulfed in fog, we opted to take to the sky for a half hour plunge back to the city. We all (by we all I mean mom, dad, sis, Dix, ReMax and me) boarded a ski gondola like contraption and floated down the hills. Had it been a clear day, I am sure that this would have provided the most wonderful panarama of views that could not be matched. Even with the fog (or was it smog), it was a mesmerizing ride. I would recommend this as a must do trip to anyone coming to Hong Kong, and if the next few days were clearer, I might have been tempted to do it again.

Day 2 centered around the trip to Victoria Peak. After a half mile stroll, meme, buz, ReMax and I boarded the cable car up to the Peak. The ride up had us all facing forward on what felt like a near vertical escalation straight up to the highest points above Hong Kong. Even at this extreme altitude, the massive city below was still impressive. A mile and a half hike around the peak nearly sapped the strength of our contingent, but it enthused me to no end and was more similar to my road tripping hikes than anything else HK had to offer.

On our final full day in HK, most of the morning was spent in Hong Kong Park, a compact and multi-leveled park featuring picturesque little lakes, an aviary, a playground, a tea museum, a sky tower, and one of those places where people move slowly around striking poses, waving their arms and looking funny if it were not for the fact that they took it so seriously. The afternoon consisted of a trip to a classic marketplace where haggling with the dealers helped cut down on the already cheap prices for their wares. Heady stuff all around.

As entertaining as all the above was, perhaps the food was the best part of Hong Kong. We had meals of dim sum, hot pot, and noodles that I would go on at length about had I not already exhausted my writing skills. Each was authentic and excellent. However, I must say that authentic Chinese food is an adventure not to be missed, but the version we get in the states is Americanized for a reason...it tastes better to us.

Hong Kong wow! It was great. But I am newly arrived in Bali, and I can tell that my adventure here will be much more to my style of wonderment. I'm not really a city kind of guy, and I am so not in the city now.