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Chapter Two
Arrival in Bali By: Suzen
I have safely arrived in Bali! My senses are overloaded and I may be over stimulated for quite a while! The 27-hour flight was pleasant; no layover time may have helped, one hour in Chicago and one hour in Tokyo.
photo right- Suzen leaving Tampa International airport
We flew north over Canada and above Alaska and the Arctic Sea. High over the Bearing Sea I crossed the international dateline flying west until I was east. Then just before 10pm, about an hour from Denpassar, Bali, I crossed south over the equator.
I arrived at 11pm Thursday night Bali time...11am our time...how easy, I didn't even have to change my watch!! From Immigration and bag search I walked out into the warm Bali night and immediately saw a familiar face...otherwise I may still be wandering around the Denpasar airport! Susan Spilman and a hired driver loaded up my things and we drove about an hour north.
Just before 2am we got to Susan's house where I had a shower and immediately fell into a semi-coma in her guestroom. 6:30 the next morning the roosters and daylight woke me up. I sat on the porch facing the rice fields and had delicious Balinese coffee, truly the best coffee I
Susan has a house in a compound, which is a walled plot with 2 or more houses and a family alter. Her compound has 2 little houses, hers and a Balinese family's, with 2 beautiful kids, Lucy 10 and Ketuk 6. Foreigners can only own property in Bali with a Balinese. Susan's place is in a quiet little village of rice farmers. The area is beautiful but I am eager to get to Ubud and on my own.
One of Susan's friends from Ubud came over on Friday for lunch, my first full day in Bali. She invited us back to Ubud to hear a Balinese singer and guitarist play at the Opera Bar & Grill. This artist name is Balawan and he is a fantastic guitar player, his band is called a Batuan Ethnic Fusion, combining traditional Balinese gamelon music with jazz fusion. He is an international artist but we had him to ourselves in a cozy local bar, maybe 50 people total, which his brother owns. Check him out on Wikipedia...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wayan_Balawan. The group there that night was from all over the world, as I will discover most of non-Balinese Ubud is.
That night I stayed in Ubud overnight, in the guesthouse (Gandra House) where I plan to get a room once the Swedish guy moves out and makes room for me. The room I stayed overnight in has cold water only; the room I want has hot and cold! Spoiled, I know.
 Photo above- Lane to Gandra's House
Here is how we got from Susan's village, Bona to Ubud. First with my messenger bag (with my MacBook and clothes and toiletries) in front of me and my sling bag slung over my back, I rode
Turns out the Bemo is a tiny old van with benches across the sides...no door! This is when I
Tuesday morning, it's cloudy today but there is Bali coffee, fruit, boiled bananas with coconut...yummy. Now it is raining, steady beautiful Bali rain, bouncing off the green leaves of bougainvillea and frangipani, bringing the rice fields to maturity.
The friend of Susan's I mentioned earlier lives at Gandra's House. She is a Canadian retiree from Alberta (and social butterfly) who stays at Gandra's 6 months every year and has for the past 20 years, since backpacking through China and Southeast Asia in 1986. She introduced me to Gandra and to some of the other people there. My new home is a small room with a bath and a porch looking straight into a garden of orchids and bougainvillea with caged birds!! And
Wednesday morning I woke up at 6 when the roosters started at daybreak and immediately saw the full moon in descent in the western sky and said wow, how lucky I am!! And the next
Photo left- Houseboy Ningha on coffee break
At around 7 am that morning came the highlight of my trip thus far. My next door neighbor from Canada took me on a bike (bicycle) ride uphill through the rice fields...stunning beauty early in the morning. Now I am remembering why I am here!! The bike ride wound up into the hills where the terraced rice fields are flooded with a simple yet ingenious water system and Banyan trees grow to astonishing sizes. The Balinese consider these trees to be sacred. We saw flocks of Balinese ducks that are trained by a duck herder with a long pole with colored flags attached. They are herded like sheep! We wound through villages and on the way back we stopped in at the Ubud fitness center, which looks like any western gym, except for the floor to ceiling windows looking out into a rain
photo left taken during bike ride
Today is Thursday, ending my first full week in Bali. Last night I went out with my Canadian friend from Gandra's House to dinner at Casa Luna where a very nice soothing Brazilian Band was playing. Then afterwards we went to the Jazz Café for drinks and to hear this great Latin band of drums and guitars and a saxophone and watch some very good dancers! There were a couple of gorgeous Balinese men dance instructors with their white western women clients dancing and at the end of the evening they danced with each other. It was beautiful, in many ways! Just like Bali.
photo above- Suzen on uphill bike ride through the rice fields
Photo above- Ubud outdoor market
photo above- Ubud outdoor market at 6AM |
have ever had. About an hour later, Gek, the wife of the family in Susan's compound brought 2 huge bowls of fruit...baby banana slices, papaya, melons, and pineapple. Yum!! The papaya and little bananas are grown right there in the backyard.
on the back of a motorbike 2 villages away to catch a bus called the Bemo. (I was just short of terrified! I can only imagine how the poor boy driving the bike felt with this white woman clinging to him like a baby monkey!) They drive on the wrong side of the road and there are innumerable numbers of these bikes, plus cars and trucks! No one drives very fast, you can't, there are 2 lanes and the bikes pass on either side, or often between other vehicles. (It is nothing short of amazing to see what is carried on these motorbikes. I have seen whole families, 2 adults and the kids!! 10 foot sticks of lumber and what looked like a small mattress strapped on the driver's back and babies of all ages sitting or standing with their little hands perched on the front or holding onto the mirrors!)
knew, for sure, I am in Bali. However on this Bemo ride, Susan, her friend and I were the only passengers, they were saying and laughing that it was a charter! What? OK. On Monday, I discovered the harsh truth of the Bemo...I went to Ubud on my own...enough of the quiet countryside for me! I needed action. Well, I asked for it. Gek took me to Gianyar on the motorbike, a 10-minute ride (feels like longer!!) to where I could get a Bemo. The one I got on was smaller, shaped like a miniature VW bus, vinyl bench on either side, no door of course...this one only had push out windows that opened about 2 inches. There was one woman on the Bemo when I got on. Cool. Then a teenager and little girl got on. We waited. I was just taking in all the activity, noticing an old woman carrying 2 big chickens by the feet. Alive or not I couldn't tell! Oh, she is coming our way...sure enough she & the chickens climb on the Bemo...then 2 other old women with HUGE sacks that took up all of the space and then a man with a duck which was alive for sure. As we pulled out onto the road I thought how long will this 20-minute ride seem? Two minutes later the driver stops...What?! A man with a HUGE crate on his head gets on, with the crate! I don't yet know how...I was mushed up against the back hatch, hoping it didn't fly open...then two more minutes and he stops again. No way. There are 2 seats up front, one with the driver and the other with the guy and his duck. A woman gets on and squeezes in with the man and duck! One more stop and a tiny (thank god) woman and a little boy get on to replace one who got off. All together eleven of us rode this tiny van into Ubud with very little air and 2 chickens and one duck! Wow, welcome to a new world...By the way, I got off the Bemo in front of Ralph Lauren of Ubud! See why I have sensory overload!
we have a huge white rabbit that hops around the property and likes to be petted. Just a small example of Balinese magic!! My room rate of $7 per night includes sheets, a towel and a full breakfast. This morning I had pancakes (a large crepe with banana & coconut and palm sugar)...yuuuuuum...and a huge bowl of fruit and coffee. I could have had eggs and toast! All served on your own veranda by a very cute smiling houseboy. It seems everyone in Bali has a big smile.
thought was one of a bit of loneliness...But then after my houseboy brought me coffee I began to revive J! 
forest!! One hundred American dollars for a full membership for 3 months. Next we walked our bikes through several blocks of the Ubud Outdoor Market, an assault of colors and smiles and the permeating smell of incense and the constant warning beeps of the motor bikes. It is a food market early in the morning and then a craft market after 10am.
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