In the morning I would walk over the tile floor through the narrow shuttered doors to the porch and look over the courtyard, to the field where two slender Balinese cows were stepping gracefully through the tall grass. The grass was green and luminous in the early sun and the air was cool and sweet. The birds kept downstairs had begun to sing, and for a few hours in the morning Bali was lovely.
Later, the grass would be dry and the air would be oppressively hot and sticky as packs of motorbikes buzzed up and down the street and clamoring vendors hounded us down the sidewalk, and I would squint around in the glaring sun and wonder what had happened to the wonderful Bali of the early morning.
It took us a long time to write this page. We thought about Bali for months after we left, remembering those parts we liked and those we hated, trying to decide if it was a place to which we will ever return, and if so, how we would do it. We still do not know the answers.
The days always started with a bit of surreality. After washing up in our bathroom, one wall of which was dirt lined with candles, tree roots and plants, we would squeeze out the narrow door of our room and look out at the reflecting pools, birdcages, and lush plants that filled the courtyard of the Puri Bunga hotel. In the cool mornings we would normally linger over breakfast in the hotel's shady patio and feed Kathryn bits of mango and watermelon, chatting with the other guests. The hotel staff always came by to ask if we had a "program" for the day. Sometimes we did have plans for the day, and sometimes we even followed through. But if we dawdled after breakfast, napping or reading, the heat and humidity almost always proved fatal to whatever ambitions had started the day and we would spend the afternoon in the shade, making only short trips out to dip in the pool or walk down to the beach.
Most of our excursions were the typical ones that most tourists in Bali took. A drive inland to the arts and crafts town of Ubud, a trip to the Pura Ulun Danu temple overlooking volcanic Lake Batur, some stops to see silversmiths and weavers and woodcarvers, detours to some particularly scenic hills stair-stepped with shining rice terraces, a evening watching the sun set over a seaside temple, Pura Tanah Lot.
One
thing all of these places had in common was their great beauty. Bali is
one of the most scenic places we have ever seen, bursting with vivid colors,
blessed with wonderful light in the mornings and evenings, and everywhere
exotic buildings and temples of intricately carved stone and wood against
a backdrop of thick tropical foliage. The most striking sights, for us,
were the carefully terraced rice fields climbing up steep slopes like the
contour lines of a topographical map, the bright green rice shoots glowing
in the sun, the water shining and strips of bright plastic waving on tall
sticks in the wind to shoo away birds. Rice is the primary crop on Bali,
and a whole set of rituals and festivals is built up around rice planting
and harvesting. We were not on the island long enough to learn much about
them, so we simply admired the sight of the fields.
The temples were also fascinating. Bali is awash in temples; every village
has at least three (one for birth, one for life, and one for death, we
were told), and almost every home and business has at least a little one.
The biggest temples in spectacular locations (perched on the edge of a
volcano crater, or built on rocks jutting out into the ocean) are popular
tourist attractions, but we also liked having our driver stop at small
village temples where it was quieter and easier to poke around -- but only
to a point, since tourists are not encouraged to enter certain parts of
the local temples. We never figured out the rules but simply let our driver
let us know where we could go.
Balinese temples are open-air places comprised of at least two walled courtyards. The entrance to the first courtyard is guarded by a special tower that looks like an intricately carved spear tip that has been sliced in half and the halves positioned like bookends on either side of the stairs. The entry to the inner courtyard is guarded by carved figures who keep out evil spirits, and the stairs are arranged to make a sharp right-angle turn, which is easy for people but hard for evil spirits. Shrines of varying size are scattered inside the inner courtyard, from small ones several feet high to tall shrines with eleven roofs stacked on each other. Both courtyards contain pavilions, some roofed and some not, where gamelan music is played, dances or cockfights are held, or offerings are stacked. The uncovered design of the temples is logical for the climate of Bali, where much of the "indoors" is simply an enclosed courtyard or shaded patios.
Many lovely buildings were not old temples at all, but fairly recent homes, shops, and commercial buildings. The Balinese often took care to include attractive tiled roofs and carved stone columns and wooden details in even new buildings, and in the tropical climate these were quickly weathered gray and layered with moss in a most picturesque manner.
One
of the most charming aspects of touring around Bali was the constant presence
of rituals and religious practices. Every village, no matter how small,
had the prescribed three temples. The carvings were kept draped in black
and white checkered cloth. In the mountain towns we visited, where fresh
water was fetched in buckets from the single village tap and the houses
had only dirt floors, most of the courtyard entrances were still equipped
with an imposing carved stone pediment meant to warn off evil spirits.
Every morning and every afternoon, Balinese businesses and many households
set out small intricate baskets of flowers, rice, and grass as ritual offerings.
These colorful little offerings were even balanced on car dashboards and
taped to motorcycle handlebars. One of our drivers told us that when he
had stopped making offerings in his car, he had suffered in an accident;
since resuming his offerings he had had no further problems.
We could see why a driver in Bali would want the gods on his side. The twisty roads were usually wide enough for one-and-a-half cars at most, normally without any parking lane and often lined with deep ditches masked by tall grass, and packed with a dense mix of jeeps, motorcycles and scooters, tour buses, minibuses and bemos, all constantly overtaking and turning and stopping and popping in and out of blind turns. The average speed was very slow -- 40 mph, perhaps -- and most of the drivers on the road were professionals, so we suspect the accident rate in Bali is not as high as one might think. However, I would imagine the accident rate for tourist drivers is high indeed. Considering the maze-like nature of the local roads and the incomprehensibility of the road signs (perfectly legible, but of course in Indonesian), the fact that most cheap jeep and cycle rentals come with no insurance other than coverage for the rented vehicle itself, and the potential for extortion by the notoriously corrupt police force (our drivers were often stopped by policemen to whom they gave "tips", and some friends we made at the hotel found themselves paying a cash fine to a policeman for no apparent reason), we had no inclination to drive in Bali.
This meant that other than short shopping ambles in the neighborhood, we did not travel independently in Bali. Instead, all of our touring around Bali involved hired cars and drivers. A lot of drivers hung around the hotels offering guiding services, and the hotel guests would get together in the morning and compare notes on the drivers to hire and to avoid. We hired two drivers during our stay, Nyoman and Nyoman. The chances of getting two drivers with the same names were pretty good, since all first-born children are named Wayam, all second children are Made, thirds are Nyoman, fourths are Ketut, and then the names start over again. (We read that occasionally first-born boys are named Gede and first-born girls Putu, but we never met any.) It was important to tell them apart since one had a old car with airconditioning that never worked, although it was advertised, and the other drove a roomy, cool van and got along wonderfully with Kathryn, so we resorted to calling them "Nyoman One" and "Nyoman Two". The drivers were familiar with the tourist sights, the usual routes and the most popular tourist restaurants and shopping areas on the way. Many drivers seemed to have their own network of tourist stops (silver boutiques, view restaurants, woodcarvers) where they would steer his passengers. When we asked about visiting out of the way places they looked confused and sometimes tried to discourage us from going -- whether because none of their friends were on the way, or because they thought we would not like it, we were not sure.
The
tourist areas of Bali, however, were filled with irritants that were impossible
to avoid. Street vendors followed us down the street hawking cheap watches.
If we acknowledged them or, heaven forbid, stopped walking to glance at
their displays, other vendors would rush up until we were surrounded by
insistent men holding trays of three-dollar timepieces. The entrances to
temples were clogged with children selling souvenirs. They latched on our
elbows, clamoring "one dollar, one dollar", and thrusting fans of postcards
and woodcarvings in our faces. We saw agitated tourists swallowed up by
these melees and all but disappear, until they broke free and ran for refuge
in the temples or tour bus. A casual look at a van or motorcycle always
brought someone out of the woodwork offering the vehicle for rent, and
on some streets it seemed like every thirty or forty feet we were accosted
by someone offering guiding services, bargain hotels, and driving. Sometimes
it seemed like "Transport, mister, transport?" was the universal greeting
in Bali.
The vendors and children were skilled at hooking their quarry. They would ask friendly questions that were difficult to avoid, like how we liked Bali, our names, or where we were from. Once we had stopped moving to converse, or betrayed the slightest eye contact, they would press in for the sale -- "Beautiful sarong for baby Katrine!" For survival we learned to ignore even the most amiable greetings as we walked around. It was, we thought, strange to explore a new country by stonily ignoring the local people.
When we did want to buy something -- a shirt, a taxi ride -- we then had to bargain for a price. It was often fun to dicker over a few sarongs, and not unreasonable to negotiate the price for a day's driving, but when we were tired and hungry and just wanted a cab ride, getting from A to B just seemed like too much of a hassle. Find a cab, establish where we were going, haggle from a price four times the fair charge to merely one-and-a-half times, insist that the agreed charge was for the whole car and not per person, confirm the absence of extra charges for Kathryn's backpack or a shopping bag . . . it became tiresome and we sometimes felt that if some tourists in Bali acted rude and ugly toward the Balinese, we could understand why they did.
By
the same token we could understand why some Balinese might view tourists
as fat walking bankrolls to be thinned as efficiently as possible. Nearly
three million people live on the island, which is less than a hundred miles
long and fifty wide and mostly mountainous, and the populated areas of
Bali are crowded with people. To support all those people Bali produces
rice, crafts, and export clothing, but most Balinese earn very little money.
Rp500,000 (about US$165) a month is a very good living and the lady who
weaves sarongs on a hand loom earns only about Rp7,000 a day (about US$2);
about what policemen make, incidentally. Compared to the incomes, prices
for staples are not particularly cheap. A used motorcar is Rp10,000,000
and used tires for it would be Rp65,000. Thus it is not surprising that
the vendors try so insistently to sell a pair of pants for Rp10,000, or
even three T-shirts for fifty cents.
Some of the tourist areas of Bali were better than others. Ubud, for example, was less afflicted with clamoring vendors than the tourist slums of Seminyak, Legian, and Kuta. Even in Kuta there were some fixed-price merchants and even working taxi meters. And we met many geniunely friendly Balinese simply because of Kathryn. Balinese love children, and in restaurants the waitresses would swoop down on Kathryn and carry her away, showing her off around the place and competing to see who could charm a smile from her. At first this alarmed us but by week's end we were perfectly content to leave Kathryn with our driver -- who she adored -- while we toured a temple or went shopping. We seldom saw little Balinese babies, though. In Bali, a child under a year old is not supposed to go outside or touch the ground, and thus little Kate was a bit of a novelty on the island.
Our favorite days were when we got out of the tourist areas entirely. One day we took a drive to Gianypar and Klung Klung, two not particularly touristy cities on the eastern side of the island. The contrast to raucous Kuta, crowded noisy Denpasar, or even boutique-lined Ubud was dramatic. In Klung Klung the streets were clean and quiet, and people went about their way in a business-like, dignified way. There may not have been so much in the way of famous temples, but we enjoyed it much more. We felt able to breathe again.
Until the sun got the better of us, that is. We thought we were used to heat, coming from Southern California and having recently traveling in Australia, but Bali is much closer to the equator, and even in March -- between the rainy season and the dry season -- it was extremely hot and humid. As I walked around, damp shirt sticking to my body and sweat running down my arms, I wondered how well I really would have tolerated travelling cheap in Bali. Little losmen rooms without airconditioning, sitting in the sweltering bemos (cramped microvans that serve as buses) -- Kathryn had already developed a bad diaper rash from the incessant humidity and Mary and I were tending, more and more, to spend the middays in the shade at our airconditioned hotel, making friends with the other tourists around the pool, trading the chance to see more of Bali for the pleasure of just staying cool. You could get away from the harassing vendors and the overcrowding, it seemed, but how could you get away from the heat? And if you couldn't escape the heat and couldn't get used to it, then could you ever really love Bali?
We never answered our questions about Bali in our eight-day stay. A place with so much to like and at the same time so much to dislike, where the culture is different and fascinating but seems so inaccessible to the short-term visitor -- Bali turned out to be much more complicated that the simple tropical paradise we had envisioned.
Traveling On a Budget.
You can spend as much or as little in Bali as you like, it seems. Simple rooms in cheap hotels (losmen) can be had for the rupiah equivalent of $US10-15 a night. Or you can stay in a luxury resort in Nusa Dua and pay dollar prices equivalent to the Hilton back home. $US30/night is a pretty reasonable compromise for a nice place with all the comforts -- particularly air conditioning. Those with a higher tolerance for heat could head for one of the cooler areas like Ubud, or arrive at a different time of year, and stay in a basic losmen.
Similarly, meals can cost three dollars a day or thirty. There are plenty of Italian, Mexican, Chinese, American, etc. dishes in the tourist restaurants and we found them fairly good but hardly bargains. As for Indonesian dishes, their quality seems to vary inversely to the price. We ate a lot of nasi goreng (fried rice) and mie goreng (fried noodles.) In a tourist restaurant in Kuta these dishes could cost Rp5,000 (about $US1.50) and would be boring. In a fancy tourist restaurant on the tour bus route, the same dish might be Rp7,000 and taste even duller. But a small food stall, where mostly local people eat, will serve a yummy, spicy, freshly fried nasi goreng for around fifty cents. The best food I had was some delicious steaming fish ball noodle soup poured into a plastic bag by a food cart parked in the dirt under a tree. (In the little food stalls, we ate dishes that had been kept boiling hot or were freshly cooked, and avoided tap water or things washed with tap water.)
It seems that many people came to Bali primarily to shop for sarongs, wood carvings, and silver jewelry. Souvenirs are seldom marked with prices and bargaining is usually necessary. It is useful to first ask a local person, such as the staff in your hotel, how much something should cost. Otherwise, a rule of thumb seems to be that the merchant's first asking price is likely to be at least twice, and sometimes three times, the fair selling price.
To hire a car and driver for the day, prices vary but $US30-35/day (all petrol and parking fees included) would be reasonable for a nice minivan with air conditioning. If you are paying for A/C, check that it actually works before you start off. Film developing and printing can be quite inexpensive (e.g. Rp10,000, or about $US3.50, for 36 exposures) but we found the quality of the prints rather poor. And we met a young English woman who took in five rolls of film and got only four back, and was then charged a fee for the privilege of searching for her pictures in the shop's big sack of unreturned prints.
Staying Connected
I could not find a Compuserve node in Bali at all, and none of the fax/telex/shipping shops we found actually had a working email service, although many advertised it. So we were completely incommunicado during our time in Bali and missed meeting up with a friend who lived in Ubud. Jakarta, Indonesia has a Compuserve node but we had not checked the number before arriving in Bali.
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© John Liu/Mary Sauve 1997. You may link to this page but you may not otherwise use, take, or republish this material.