Bali
Posted by Shelly
In October we spent a week in Bali, Indonesia. The first few days were spent at a beautiful hotel on the rural east coast. Other than early morning or late afternoon walks up the coast we never left the hotel property. The hotel was on a rocky beach from where hundreds of local fisherman depart every morning at 4:30am and return three hours later with buckets full of fish (barracuda were biting when we were there). We snorkeled, swam in the pool, read, napped, and enjoyed massages.
After four days of complete relaxation we hired a car and toured the island. We stopped at Tenganan Village that still follows a traditional tribal lifestyle and saw some 14th century cliff carvings at Yeh Pulu.
We spent the second half of the week in Ubud. Ubud is in the middle of Bali and is surrounded by rice terraces. Many artisans live in Ubud and the surrounding villages resulting in wonderful shopping opportunites.
Batik is one of the types of art that is famous in Bali. Greg and I took a batik making class from Nyoman Suradnya, an artist who shows his work internationally. This was my first time to batik since 5th grade art class. First we drew our design on stretched cotton and then we copied our design with melted wax. Next we used watercolors to paint the cotton. Blending is a lot harder than one might expect. The next step involved painting over all the watercolors (leaving the background blank) with a second coat of wax. Then the cotton was dipped in indigo and dunked in boiling water to remove the wax and set the colors. We spent more than 5 hours in the artist’s studio (beautiful open air buildings in the family courtyard).
Bali is 95% Hindu so the local dance performances are based on traditional Hindu stories. One night we went to see the Kecak Dance, which is based on the Hindu epic Ramayana and tells the story of Prince Rama and his dramatic rescue of Princess Sita, who had been kidnapped by the King of Lanka. Perhaps most impressive was the continual chanting of more than 100 men, who clicked their way through an hour of "chak-achak-achaka" sounds. The show ended with a dancer in a trance who ran around through very hot coals.
Both Hindu temples and flowers are plentiful in Ubud. Often the statues of the gods at the temple gates get fresh flowers tucked behind their ears. Offerings are made to the gods for every pot of rice that is made. Offering plates including rice and spices and flowers are put on the grounds and somewhere high up. The high offerings are for the good gods and the ones on the ground are to appease the bad gods. In some instances even the family scooter gets an offering.
75% of Balinese food uses a mixture of about 12 spices as the base seasoning. We took a cooking class at a local restaurant. The chef spent over an hour introducing us to new spices. We made satay, which tastes much better when stalks of lemon grass are used instead of wood skewers. We also made chicken curry, coconut vegetable salad, grilled mackerel, and coconut milk shrimp.
Other than artisans and shopping, Ubud is also famous for the Monkey Forrest. Greg went, bought a bunch of bananas and wisely hid them in his backpack so that he would be able to navigate his way through a horde of monkeys. According to his story, he sat down on a bench and unzipped his backpack just enough to reach in pull out a banana. Before he was able to pull a single banana out, a rather large monkey had climbed on top of Greg's backpack, bared his teeth at Greg and stolen the whole bunch from him. At least she shared.
Not sure where our next trip will take us, but I am already looking forward to it.
