Bali, Spring 2015

How to describe this place?  

I'm sure to many of you "Asia veterans" all this will seem a bit obvious, naive, and elementary but this is definitely been an eye opening experience to someone who hasn't seen it before. I know a couple of days wandering around rural Bali doesn't make me any kind of authority on anything, but I can't help but share my impressions. 

As I was driving ( or more correctly "riding" as to drive here would require a special kind of insanity) back down from the mountains to Ubud it occurred to me that nearly everything I was seeing as we drove down the road was new to me. You never feel so sheltered as to realize you have lived a fairly long time without knowing what all this was like. To see more clearly how people go about their daily lives in not better or worse, but simply different, ways. Again, Bali is not Asia by any extent; and I think most well traveled people would even say it's not even representative of Asia.  However, the countryside does give you an idea that things have been like this here for a long time.  

Between the bike ride and the car that day we passed (just to name a few):

School Bus - Bali Style

• A couple of, I would guess, 5th grade girls in school uniforms riding double on a scooter (presumably on their way home from school)
• Piles of recently cut cabbage sitting in front of a house being sorted by a team of women
• Hindu House temples ranging from the barely standing to the ornate
• A group of men cleaning the intestines and "parts" of some kind of large animal in a stream
• Women in brightly colored clothing all walking out of a temple together. 
• Bright banners over homes to mark various ceremonies
• Countless stray dogs who always manage to avoid the insane traffic
• People on motor bikes carrying so much cargo that if it wasn't perfectly balanced they would tip over instantly. 
• A (best guess) six year old boy in a Jack Daniels t shirt who insisted on high fiving all of us as we rode past on bicycles. 
• Dozens of small roadside shops selling gasoline in reused Absolut vodka bottles (who needs gas stations). 

And much more; this is just what I can remember off the top of my head.

Trip to the store?

What I didn't see:

Anyone even a little overweight

Anyone angry about anything

Any car not made in Japan (saw a grand total of 1 German and 0 U.S. Or other European name plates the whole time)

As I'm writing this I realize I wish I had pictures of all this but I'm not sure that would capture it properly anyway. 

Money 

People told us this before we left, but it's hard to convey how inexpensive things are here. Even at hotels where you would expect to pay premium "captive audience" pricing most things are very cheap.  $4 cab rides, $10 dinner entrees, $3 fruity drinks are all pretty much the norm.  You can go cheaper easily if you want to as well if you get away from the main tourist places.  So far the one exception is wine, which makes sense since it all has to be imported.  A basic bottle of wine can cost the same as the entire meal for 4 people.  Viva cheap fruity drinks and Bintang (local Pilsner). 

We have moved on from Ubud which is more or less in the jungle (middle of the island) down to the coast.  The area we are in now is called Nusa Dua and its definitely a different feel. A lot of the big international brand resorts are down this way and while its still Bali it's also much more generic and manicured. There are parts of Nusa Dua that you could probably pick up and drop down in Hawaii and not notice much difference. But thankfully even here you have the Balinese feel to the place. From the architecture to the people to the food this is definitely Indonesia. 

One thing we are very aware of is how empty the hotels and restaurants are in both locations. This is the very end of their low season and the Australians and Europeans that seem to make up the bulk of the guests don't usually show up until July and August. Of course driving around the streets and villages the roads are anything but empty but it's nice to be able to just show up for dinner for example.  The hotel pools are the other place you notice the lack of crowds. It's pretty much pick your favorite location around the pool each day. No towels "saving" spots here. 

A couple of things I want to start doing.  I have gotten used to taking off my shoes before going into my room and I really like walking around barefoot. I'm not sure this will work well in January in Chicago but maybe this summer.  They also have these really cool extra deep couches here that are wide enough for you to pull your feet on to.  I think I need one of those.  

I have heard from others that Bali is a magical, spiritual place. I've never been sure what people mean by that.  I don't have any interest in pseudo-Eastern spirituality that I would associate with Bali. Would I get some sort of breakthrough or revelation just by being here?  This week I have had and made lots of time for reading and introspection. This isn't necessarily the way I planned it, it just worked out. I didn't schedule our time here nearly as " full" as I normally do on a family vacation.   But it's funny how unstructured time, especially in the right setting can get repurposed for introspection. I received no mountain top revelations during my dawn hike on Mount Batur, no life changing words from a holy man, but real, incremental, plotting progress in my spiritual life brought about primarily by making space for God to work; without noise, without distraction.  So maybe it is a spiritual place.  I hope to better incorporate this discipline of structured-unstructured time into my life when I'm back in Naperville. We'll see.