Michael and I are invited to attend one of these hair cutting ceremonies and at the party afterwards the locals gather around and watch all the Westerners eating and talking.  It’s not rude–they’re genuinely interested in how these people eat or what mistakes they make to good-naturedly laugh and tease them about.  When they bring us food I get some chicken, which looks like just a large piece of meat.  I put the entire thing in my mouth and realize it’s just a large bone.  The locals see this but don’t burst out laughing until I’ve tried to clandestinely remove it from my mouth.  This kind of thing goes on for the duration of our stay here.

I get tired of Made driving me all over town on his motorbike so I get my own.  It’s a blast to ride it around the village and to visit the beaches whenever I want, plus it only costs about $3 to fill up a tank–which is actually a very dangerous act.  There aren’t gas pumps here, rather there are places with glass bottles filled with gasoline sitting outside.  They have little tin roofs over them, but anytime before 11am and after 1pm the sun is directly on them because the roofs are so narrow.  They’d be very easy to crash into as they’re right on the side of the road, and the owners of the places smoke cigarettes around them all the time (though they tend put them out when pouring it).  I haven’t seen an explosion yet, but I’m waiting.

From a lookout

Originally published August 4, 2007

Kuta, Lombok is a small town where everybody still stares at you if you’re a foreigner, not because they are sizing you up for how much money you have but because they just don’t see many people like you. The kids scream “Hallo!” as you ride by them. The locals break their puzzled look as soon as you smile at them and they return the smile. Everybody loves my pasty white skin and often say they wish they had skin like that.

However it is a surf spot so in parts of the village there are the regular touts and hawkers, but you don’t have to go far to get away from them. But then even the hawkers aren’t as persistent as elsewhere.  Made takes me to a beach spot on his motorbike, about a 30 minute ride up into the hills on a tooth-rattling road.  The beach is worth it.  In the course of the two days that I go there I see a total of 7 other Westerners, two of which are friends staying next door.  This beach is called Mawon.  The sand is white and has perfectly round grains half the size of a pin head, incredibly deep turquoise water, and is in a little cove with some fishing boats.

Fishing boats at Mawon Beach

There are some locals who sell stuff here, but they’re all very chilled out and not pushy.  I set my stuff down where they are hanging out on a beruga–a very cool little platform that you find everywhere on Lombok and Bali, about thigh-high with a thatched roof, all open to the air, and bamboo slats to sit on.  Once your butt gets used to sitting on bamboo it’s a great way to sit and watch the ocean.  We talk for a while, they practice their English a bit and help my Indonesian pronunciation.  They’ve got jewelry, blankets, coconuts, and more all lying around the beruga for purchase.  They’re not pushy at all about selling, which is something I love and respect, so I slowly gather gifts for people back home as we sit and watch the foamy water bubble in and fizzle out.

Mawon Beach

There are Hindu temples every fifth building or so (Bali, unlike the rest of Indonesia which is Muslim, is mostly Hindu).  They are made of stone and usually have a coating of moss on them.  There are shrines inside, usually the same kind of stone, with small containers containers made of bamboo reed and banana leaf, stitched together into a square with thorns, and will have anything from flowers to rice to small pieces of meat in them, usually with a lit incense stick. Gustee puts one on the altar on my porch every night and morning as well.  As I understood from a local they are offerings to the gods to bring good fortune.

Backroad of Ubud

I suppose you could call the city dirty, but I don’t really notice that straight away.  Instead I notice all the friendly people, all the shops and varieties of eateries scattered all over the place.  Even though this is a highly touristed area people will still talk to you even if you don’t plan on buying something from them.  There’s usually garbage lying in the gutters (they sweep the streets and sidewalks every night) and there are dogs everywhere.  Most are simply lying in the absolute middle of the sidewalk sleeping, most look like they have mange, but most appear otherwise healthy as many of them actually are pets I believe, or are simply fed leftovers all the time.

There are a lot of cats too but they are not as prominent, but many of them have broken or entirely absent tails.  This is seen all over Southeast Asia and yet no one that I meet in any country, whether local or tourist, seems to agree on exactly how or why the tails end up like this.  In Ubud I am told the tails are purposefully cut or broken to differentiate them from strays.  It’s the first of many explanations that I hear.

Every few years the government sponsors a program to round up and de-sex cats a dogs.  This is only done when overpopulation becomes a problem (who can say when enough is enough though?) and the program fizzles out when the problem has more or less receded.  Then they start it up again a few years later.

There are lots of Westerners around.  They congregate at the nicer looking restaurants, not realizing that in a place so touristy most of the eateries, even the not-so-posh ones, have a higher standard of hygiene than those bad places they’ve read about.  The restaurants that cater to Westerners always have much less spicy dishes and always have things like pizza or spaghetti and meatballs on the menu.  I have a much better chance of meeting an English speaking local eating suckling pig at Ibu Oka or at the foodstall down the street.  Meals anywhere range from US$1-8 with drink(s), averaging at around US$3 total.

My favorite night spot is a stone’s throw from Loka House, where I’m staying, called the Deli Cat.  Run by an Icelander, one is sure to find plenty of musicians, writers, artists, and other various ne’er do wells of society, both local and Western, to have a fun night any night of the week.  I even meet one of the most popular Bali artists (emigrated 15 or so years ago), Jason Monet.  He doesn’t care to talk about his ancestral connection to Claude Monet nor his paintings, which are found in the finest resorts and museums around Bali and all around us in the Deli Cat.  Instead he stops women passing by letting them know how devastatingly beautiful they are. Later he makes this noise for me, a gutteral noise from his throat, which sounds exactly like a digeridoo (those things aboriginals play).  Of course, he also makes a similar noise when growling at the previously mentioned devastatingly beautiful women with differing effects.

Jason Monet's Kuching, Sarawak 2000. Jason Monet died in 2009 in Bali, his home for over 15 years.

Originally published July 11, 2007

Sagar Beach

My last night in Kuta, Lombok is spent fruit bat hunting with Made and my neighbors.  Made loves bat hunting, and his wife thinks it’s gross so he doesn’t do it that often.  We go out into the hills on our motorbikes when I find out that my bike has no low beams and a high beam that points almost straight up into the sky.  We stop once in a while and shine a flashlight up to the trees, or just point my bike toward them.  Nobody but Made actually sees the bats in the trees until they fly away, so he’s the hunter.  Sadly the bats aren’t out tonight and we only get one.  We cook it for breakfast the next morning and I become privy to a great secret: bat meat is really really good.  It’s a tiny bit sweet because of the fruit it eats, the texture is softer than jerky but still kind of tough, and it has a range of great flavors, somewhere between pork and duck.

Originally published August 4, 2007

Entryway to Loka House

Gustee brings my breakfast whenever I get up, and before I wake he has said prayers for me and the guesthouse, lit incense on the altar on my porch, and brought me a pot of boiling water and tea and coffee. It is here that I fall in love, as most Westerners do, with banana pancakes.  It’s apparently difficult to perfectly replicate these outside of this area due to the ingredients they use, so I can’t accurately relate to you the absolute joy it is to eat a single banana pancake in the morning, with a large side of fruit.

Doorway to my room in Ubud

Originally published July 11, 2007

I’m immediately introduced to Jarkarta mobs. There is a mob of people getting through immigration, customs, visas.  Hoards of people all surging toward the same place.  Luckily they don’t really seem as concerned about safety as Western airports are and I shuffle through to my baggage claim in a matter of minutes.  When I take a bus (free! one point Jakarta!) to the other terminal where my plane departs from for Bali I am told check-in doesn’t start for 3 hours. There’s a mass of people sitting or standing in this outdoor area right outside the airport, and I sit and join them.  I’m off in a semi lucid dream state due to traveling for the past 30 hours when my alarm tells me it’s ten minutes to check-in time.  I grab my stuff and stand up and am immediately in the check-in line, which I haven’t noticed growing beside me.  It’s about 300 feet to the door, and again there’s this mob of people.  It’s supposed to be a single file line, as we can only go in one at a time, but we’re about 4-6 people abreast.  No point worrying over it, I just get in line, thinking about the process I’ll have to go through when I miss my flight.  However, again, luckily, security isn’t a big issue!  Within ten minutes I’m pushed through to check-in and get to my flight’s waiting room with about two hours before it’s scheduled to take off.  Of course, scheduled takeoff times are for fools.  Everyone sits calmly as that time ticks by, all obviously used to such late leaving times, and an hour later we are finally allowed to board.

I get to Bali and get a taxi to Ubud, about an hour away. Putu is my cab driver, and the first thing he tells me is “I am very happy!  I like no trouble.”  He’s a black belt in karate and teaches classes for friends around the area.  When we stop and get gas for the car everybody there knows him.  He tells me he used to be the leader of a motorcycle gang when he was in his 30s and everybody knew him, still knows him.  But, he says, his fighting days are over and he only wants to be peaceful and happy, unless he is helping out a friend in a fight.  You see, Putu really likes to fight.

Originally published July 11, 2007

I watched as a man, perhaps their father, dove into the cold, mountain river over and over.  Every few dives he’d come up with a fish and put it in a bamboo basket floating near the bank.  The boys would wade over to it with him and watch him plop the fish in, look and exclaim over it for a while, then go back to watching the man with intent and focus as he watched for the silver flash beneath the water, then slide in after it.  Sometimes they’d dive in trying out what they’d been watching, but they always came up empty-handed.

Ketambe, Sumatra

I was on my way to Kutacane on a minibus.  All the other passengers had been let off along the way so it was just me and the driver.

“Durian?” he said pulling over to a stand.

“I want to try it, but in Kutacane, yes?” I told him, wanting to get there quickly so I could find another bus to take me to the countryside.  Of course he had no idea what I was saying and so bought a couple durian

Ah, durian.

Ripe durian is the size and shape of a football with rounded ends.  Sharp spikes stud the outside, each about a centimeter in diameter and half as high.  If you throw a durian up into the air and catch it you will have bloody holes dotting your palms and fingers.  Before it’s cut open it smells like any kind of anonymous rotting fruit but slightly sweeter.  Slits are hacked into one end with a machete and the layers are peeled back into sixths when the rotting fruit smell is intensified and the scent of rotting onions is added.  The fruit stall owner carried the carving out deftly and handed us the opened durian.  The stink immediately filled the van and the driver offered it to me.

I pulled out a pit the size of two golf balls coated with goopy yellow flesh and smelled it – not any better up close.  The driver grinned at me, spit his pit into his palm and threw it out the window and grabbed another one.  I put mine in my mouth, ready to turn my head out the window should I begin gagging and vomiting, but instead of tasting apples and oranges and bananas after seething in their own juices in the hot sun for a month, I tasted sweet, sweet custard.  We finished both durians and sat with full stomachs and awful smells wafting from our lips.  I had the same revolted reaction every time I took my first bite during each of my many durian sessions in Sumatra, and each time there was a moment when I didn’t believe there was any way I was going to put this horrible smelling piece of fruit into my mouth and actually swallow it, but after the first taste I would soon be lapping up all the stringy custard I could before whomever I was sharing it with could steal more.

The video below reminds me a lot of being in Southern Laos.  The North has a much larger tourist scene and I spent most of my time there with other travelers.  The South was different.  I didn’t have to choose between locals and travelers because I only got glimpses of other Westerners, never actually coming into contact with any until I hit the 4,000 Islands in the Mekong.  As a result, the majority of the South for me was spent among the Lao people.