Chapter Four

Acquiring My Bali Senses

By:  Suzen

The smell of incense, wood fires and frangipanis...this is the smell of Bali for me and no matter what the context there is something beautiful to see. Even on the broken sidewalks, if you venture a glance up, there is a woman in ceremonial dress with a basket of offerings on her head, walking slowly and with the confidence of one knowing where she belongs or a boy in his sarong and head-dress on his cell phone laughing like any boy anywhere in the world. I feel pretty certain that I have never experienced a friendlier warm gentle group of people as a whole. Bali people are patient in traffic with a smile ready at any moment; soft spoken and totally unpretentious. Sure there are exceptions but what a great norm!

The Market (Bazaar) begins with vendors arriving at 4am. If I am on the street at first light around 6 or 6:30 (it's happened!) I see women returning with their groceries! Many women still shop early in the morning for the day and often cook just once. The Balinese do not typically eat together, they eat alone when they feel hungry or when there is something available.  There is no sleeping in around here anyway, the roosters begin crowing before 6 am and they are insistent..."get up, get up, it is a new day!" I am just at the foothills and the sun rises more rapidly than I am used to. A soft daybreak a little before 6 turns quickly to sunlight a little after 6. And the same with sunset, darkness comes quickly and early, again around 6 -6:30. We are so close to the equator that we have almost 12 hours of light and dark each. The rhythm here is easy, slow and friendly. So much smiling! All women can walk with enormous items on their heads therefore learn very young to walk without moving their heads or shoulders, and with a slow measured cadence. Hence the movement is in the hips, which makes the women's walk beautiful and mesmerizing.

In the afternoon you can always look up and see all shapes of kites high up in the sky, or at the soccer field little boys running with 3 yards of string and a little kite trailing behind them. Everything has a small beginning. Around 4:00 in the afternoon the side streets, at least the ones that I have been on, have badminton games going on. All ages, girls and boys. You would be hard pressed to find kids at any game anywhere having more fun than these kids, big and small, with a simple badminton racket and a birdie. Sometimes even the adults play.

Speaking of food, I am addicted to the Ubud Cafes. Little open air types with free wireless and some with organic foods. The other day I went around the corner to a little "juice bar" for a bagel. Price - $1.00. Do you think they threw a cold bagel on a paper plate with a plastic square of jelly at me?? No, as I sipped on Bali coffee (from a cup and saucer!) I was served a perfectly toasted crispy chewy freshly made bagel on a "real" plate with two little ceramic bowls, one of shaved butter and another one of homemade citrus jam! As a garnish, there were chunks of fresh papaya, pineapple and banana.  (I do now realize that you can OD on papaya and pineapple. Who knew?) I love the food here and the presentation of food. All of this for one American dollar! Plus $.60 for the Bali coffee...

I was a bit under the weather and had been on the banana, yogurt & rice regime for a couple of days. Feeling better and having tolerated the bagel and coffee so well, I ventured out around 5:30 for dinner. I did have the bowl of rice again, but being the risk taker that I am I added a side of wok tossed veggies. And a pot of ginger tea...real shaved ginger included. I received a plate of rice surrounded by little fried onions $.50...then a full bowl of seasoned sautéed onions, red & green peppers, zucchini, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. For one American dollar! This was a side dish! (However, I have noticed, if the cook realizes the sides are your dinner, they will make the sides a dinner! Very accommodating these Balinese!) I spread out the rice and shoveled on the veggies and then just stared at the beautiful color and the fabulous aroma. I have to say very soberly - I was in heaven.

It came as a bit of a surprise to discover that most of the cafes I like are not owned by Balinese at all. They are generally owned by westerners and specially cater to the tourist and the ubiquitous ex-pats from some western country or another. Of course, the chances of me being able to acclimate to a true Balinese diet are quite slim for my American belly. And, on the up side, the food is great and it is cheap!! That pretty much puts an end to the discussion for me. One of my favorite cafes, Bali Buddha, is an organic café that uses ingredients from Bali farmers so that's good. And jobs are created for the young Balinese workers.

Prior to the little stomach upset, with no correlation intended, (just too much activity and too much food!) I actually had quite a bit of Balinese food. For example one day for breakfast I had a black rice dish made with black rice, rice pudding and palm sugar and something that I just couldn't place.... Black rice is somewhat of a delicacy here; it is actually a breed of rice that grows black. Anyway, quite a nice desert, but a bit sweet for breakfast. Then, on the same day, around noon my neighbor, Maxine, says "today we are having suckling pig." I don't eat a lot of meat anyway and haven't eaten any whatsoever in Bali, but this was a declarative statement so I went along with it. I was trying to fend off my reputation as a complete woos. The restaurant for this dish is supposedly world renown, but as all the best local places tend to be around the world, it is not a place I would likely go into on my own! The recipe has been handed down for generations and guarded by fierce old women! To cook this delicacy they actually take a baby (hence the word suckling...I thought it meant really juicy but apparently that is succulent!)...so they roast this little pig for 8 hours on a spit (originally it was a hole in the ground) while applying spices. It is served just like "pulled pork" in a BBQ restaurant in the south with rice and some Balinese veggies; mainly spinach like vegetable and it was very, very good, totally succulent!! Leave it to me to avoid meat and then go straight for the baby pig! It took a day or two to get over that.

Just this week I swung over to the other side with a lunch from a little café owned by a Balinese healer. For those who have read the book, "Eat, Pray, Love" it is Wayan's place from the Bali section of the book. Since there were only 2 tables I had to sit with a couple of girls already there. They were drinking some concoction of herbs and stuff. I was there for the vitamin lunch, which consisted of about 6 little plates of certain foods, mostly grown there at the café, for the optimum health lunch. It began with Turmeric tea which was grated at the table by the cutest Balinese kid I have seen yet. The meal then progressed to tomato chutney and water spinach and seaweed, (very rubbery) and red rice and toasted coconut and bean sprouts with a delicious sauce. Believe it or not it was really yummy. And I felt clean from the inside out too.

The other addiction I have is the Bali massage. Not only is it THE most relaxing treatment ever but the cost is ridiculous! My first massage was $4 for one hour. Complete with an outdoor shower surrounded by smooth rocks (and a little wall!). The most expensive one by far has been $110,000 rupiahs...eleven American dollars!! That is $11. Even my warung eating, lonely planet across Asia on a shoestring backpacker friends, can have this luxury! And most do. The salons I have been to are clean and nice and the Balinese masseuses are well trained and very professional. There are just soooo many of them, the price stays very low.

I met a couple of new friends the other day. Actually they are the two girls I sat with at Wayan's place having the vitamin lunch. 30 something's from Singapore. Very sweet and very cool women. They were renting a car (with a driver!) to go up to Lake Batur the next day and invited me to go. Der, yes! The cost of the car is per car so the more passengers the cheaper. We went all the way up into the mountains and hung around for 2 or 3 hours and came back to Ubud for $30. That was $10 each. I feel guilty now. We had lunch in view of Gunung Agung, a live but dormant volcano. It last erupted in 1963 and cause massive damage all over Bali, resulting in a dire food shortage since so many of the crops were destroyed as well as many lives lost. Now, as it lies so still and majestic it is beautiful to see, but there is still a tinge of grief knowing the devastation it can and did cause.

When we got back to Ubud about 5:00 we went to a drum circle held at the soccer field near my guesthouse. There was an equal mix of Balinese and westerners. Extra drums and other percussion items were passed around. (I did give it the old white girl try! No one yelled encore.) It was very cool to see the Balinese teenagers laughing and playing mixed in with these tourist types. As a rule the Balinese are accepting of outsiders and treat everyone with a kind respect and seem to actually enjoy interacting with us.

My new friends are Paveen, of Indian descent although she was born and raised in Singapore, and Emilie who is a 5th generation Singaporean, which is about as unheard of as a 5th generation Floridian!  (see photo above of Emile, Paveen and me) They met in Australia at a university there and have been friends ever since. When they heard of a special fare to Bali for under $200 round trip they took a long weekend and came over. Smart girls! These girls are foodies from way back. They were so much fun to eat with and each meal took hours to get through. Especially Emilie who I feel fairly certain can easily eat her weight in one meal and somehow never gain an ounce. Must be all that chewing.

A funny thing happened. I had already booked a bike tour for Thursday before I went to Lake Batur with my friends on Tuesday. On Thursday when I embarked on the bike tour we ended up going to the exact same spot at Lake Batur! O well...even though there is a lot of Bali to see, I have never yet regretted seeing anything twice!

The cycling trip began at 7:30 and eight of us went by van up into the mountains to Lake Batur. There we had breakfast with a stunning view of the mountain (volcano) and the lake and then drove down to pick up the bikes. (And helmets!) 

There are plenty of older American & Europeans in Ubud but wouldn't you know I ended up on the tour with 5 people from Australia along with, thank God, 2 citified Londoners. The Aussies were all like "Oh no worries mate, we're from the Outback! This won't be hod!"  Of course, I had 15-20 years on all of them as well!! But I am happy to report I did keep up. From sheer pride, but nonetheless...We biked 26 kilometers, (I believe that converts into a hundred and some miles! Measuring on the Suzan scale of how long it FELT!)

We made several stops in the villages to view a temple and a Balinese compound and family. The family so graciously allowed us in to gawk at their way of life, must have seemed like we were from outer space what with our helmets and tank tops and just plain stares! This family was a typical village farming family with everyone from the grandmother down having their assigned responsibilities. Our guide had been educated in Java and stayed there several years but came home at 31 to get married and move back into his compound and take care of his parents and any unmarried sisters. He was the youngest son and custom is the youngest son is responsible for the parents in their old age. He also inherits the property. Next we visited a coffee plantation. Being from the south the word plantation threw me, it really was just a very small farm. But coffee beans are grown there, shelled, dried, roasted and ground. Personally I love Bali coffee. It is a fine powder and is made by the cup simply by stirring in hot water. The plantation also grows cocoa beans and cinnamon and ginger and a bit of tobacco along with all sorts of exotic fruit. The Balinese are masters at not wasting anything. All the parts of a plant are used for something and then returned to the earth. Even their offerings, which can be all kinds of food, are offered to the gods and then returned home and eaten. The gods require the essence of the offering and allow the actual offering to be use by the giver.

A good part of the ride was down hill, which believe me was not without peril. I thought we were on an asphalt bike trail but shortly (immediately) after starting I noticed motorbikes, cars, trucks along with the every present Bali street dogs AND walkers shared our space. The road space was about the width of a Ford Explorer! However, the traffic was sporadic and we had the road to ourselves a lot of the time. The road would be a beautiful piece of asphalt curving around rice fields and then for no apparent reason it looked like a bomb had fallen in the road. Chunks of asphalt everywhere and huge potholes all over the place. Then there were the hills, uphill not so bad, downhill, another story. Hurtling downhill at the speed of light you come to the bottom to be faced with a curve and a wok sized pothole. Land in one of those pits and your kidneys end up smack in the middle of your throat chakra!  Did I mention the seats were not the "gel" seats I am so fond of.

We stopped at a banyan tree that reportedly is 500 years old. Banyan trees are considered to be sacred by the Balinese and can never be cut down. While we were marveling at this tree someone appeared with a big bunch of bananas (probably the tour people). And while we were devouring these like a pack of monkeys a woman came walking along the road with a big black tub full of sand. (Not tour people.) As my fellow bikers found out, it wasn't sand but dried ground coconut. They claimed it was really good.

Tomorrow I am going to a beach called Candidasa on the east side of Bali, near the port of Padangbai. AND there is a new adventure looming in my future!

More Photos Below:

Photo Above- Village Grandmother working...

Photo Above- Morning Sun Before Bike Trip

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