We arrived at Denpasar airport, Bali, in mid-September 1991. It was a quick and efficient arrival (with our bags being off the plane before us) and we soon found ourselves in a taxi to the nearby town, Kuta.
Although I have titled this beautiful Bali, Kuta wasn’t. There were, however, lots of insistent hawkers trying to off-load fake Rolexes on us, often suggesting their beauty.
We moved on quickly the next day by bus to Ubud, which is a small inland town nestled amongst the rice paddies and rolling hills. We noticed immediately that inland from Kuta Bali was already looking a lot more promising.
There were plenty of ‘hotel’ touts waiting for us when we got off the bus, but they were not as insistent as in previous places, and we felt able to wander up and down the street looking at the possible options. It’s amazing thinking back at how easy it was to find where all the accommodation was just by reading the guidebook and following the simple maps outlining the town streets. The guest-houses tended to be a number of little bungalows (moving on from our previous experiences of ‘sheds’) in large gardens. They were hidden away from the street by tall walls with welcoming arched-entrances to the gardens. The gardens were green and well-cared for with colourful plants and flowers. Beautiful. (I recorded the one we stayed in as being 12000 Rupiah per night – the off-season price which had plummeted from Rp20000 when we first looked – there were Rp3300 to the £1).
The food in Ubud was fantastic, from the banana jaffles (an Australian import to South East Asia – basically a fruit-filled waffle) on the front porch of the bungalow to the satay and gado gado around town. So much fresh produce… It was also a lovely little town to wander around with many arty shops, selling batik, paintings and Balinese wood carvings. There was also a monkey forest at the end of the town where you could while away time watching the monkeys jumping through the trees.
We also visited Antonio Blanco’s house. I couldn’t remember anything about him so just googled him and “women are the focal point of his paintings and one could say that Antonio was a painter of the eternal feminine and his style is romantic-expressive and dreamy” (Wikipedia). My diary entry is slightly different… ‘he seems to be a pervert with a nice house and garden. Weird pictures, mostly female nudes from porn magazines’. Clearly I have always been so appreciative of great art and culture. I did like his garden though.
From Ubud we hired a jeep to explore the island. Initially we noticed that the back door wouldn’t lock so we had the pleasure and entertainment of watching 4 men with a piece of wire and screwdrivers fighting with it. Whether we did ever lock it or not after that I don’t remember.
As soon as we left the busy roads around Ubud, the whole pace of life changed and we could properly appreciate Bali – and it was beautiful. We arrived pretty quickly at the Bat Cave Temple where there appeared to be a huge festival going on. People were crowded together, wearing bright colours and carrying offerings, and they welcomed us to join them.
Opposite the cave temple the sand was totally black showing the volcanic history of the area.
Further on along the coast we suddenly came to a bay where there were fishing boats pulled onto the white sand. It was so different from the previous bay. The outrigger canoes were painted in bright colours with those amazing swordfish-like noses (not the nautical term I’m sure). Little did we know at that point that 10 years later we would be back and jumping out of those boats with a 3 and 5 year old to snorkel and look at the incredible fish and coral below the crystal-clear waters.
We also found ourselves in a village where we heard music and were dragged/encouraged into a garden/cafe to watch a man plonking away on a bamboo xylophone, whilst his brother wove a plate from palms and we drank a potent coconut drink. (He assured us no alcohol…). The man showed us a huge scrap-book of names, addresses and photos (presumably of all the other unsuspecting souls that he’d encouraged into his garden) then showed us how to play on a small pipe made from bamboo. It was a fascinating noise/tune, but at the time he was also continuously chewing the red betel nut that stains teeth and tongue red and he had gross inch-long thumb-nails and it was all more than I could cope with for one day, so we didn’t stay for an encore! (Perhaps as a result of the potent coconut drink?).
As we continued our travels on a narrow road over a headland, which wasn’t yet properly surfaced, we saw lots of people working on the land. They often stopped and waved. They gave the impression of enjoying entertaining tourists with their everyday activities. We passed a number of processions too and stopped whilst they moved past us, watching the women carry burning offerings on large silver trays and huge piles of fruit on their heads.
Later in the day as we headed down from a headland there was a flotilla of blue-sailed dug-out canoes returning home after a day fishing. Beautiful…
You can see from the checkered sails that they appeared to be made from the same stuff that those big blanket bags are made from. Simple but effective.
Down at sea level we passed some salt-fields. Again we watched women workers, carrying buckets of salt from the dug-out vats where it had been dried out.
We drove back to our place through hills where the fields had been cut over the years to grow the rice – some as narrow as 4′ wide. Beautiful, and possibly treacherous.
The next day was spent driving through rice paddies. I had never seen somewhere so green! Beautiful!!
I don’t think I quite understood exactly how rice was grown prior to this trip (other than in paddy fields) so this was quite a revelation to me. We spent ages just sitting watching and admiring the view.
We also visited the Mother Temple, where we had to dress up to go up to the temple. It was quite a climb up and then we were pretty disappointed when we got to the top, because they wouldn’t let us in to the temple complex. It was so different from places we’d already been where they’d welcomed and encouraged us in – especially as this one had asked for a steep donation (well, about £3) for the sarong to cover us…
Moving on we came to Lake Batur. From there you could see the highest volcanic peak of the island – Mount Batur. Our plan was to get up early the next morning and climb up to the crater, but for that evening we watched the sun set and chatted to a young girl at the lake edge – learning how to balance her basket of souvenirs on our heads…
It was another fail though. When we woke up after a cold night we decided we were just too tired to climb the mountain! (A first for us to not go to the highest point?). Instead we headed north through the green hills and countryside for another night at another beach.
The last day we drove back to Ubud. We found some very impressive galleries to peruse the amazing wood carvings. It was disconcerting though to come to places where everything was priced in US dollars. For one thing in most places there were no prices. It was part of the haggling game to work out what the price should be…or, at least, what you were prepared to pay. And the other worry was that we were told that as we weren’t with a tour group we could immediately reduce the price of anything by 50%…
Back in Kuta we found a place to stay not far from the airport so that we could walk there the next morning ready for our flight out. The prices of the rooms were so inflated in comparison to the idyllic places we’d been staying. The beach was pretty grim and the walk to it was along a road of building sites, where we had to dodge numerous holes in the pavements which showed the deep storm-drains below. We were again surrounded by rip-off watch salesmen…and all of the delights of nasty souvenir shops and stalls.
As well as the general feeling of being in a resort that was still being built, we found ourselves surrounded by drunken tattooed Aussie beer drinkers. It was enough for us to put pen to paper and write an amusing ditty – I mentioned before the lack of culture…
We’ve seen some horrible places in our time
But Kuta’s right up there in front of the line
It’s so tacky
Everything’s placky
Coming here is almost a crime…
The airport in the morning was something to behold too. We were there at 5.45am and the place was teeming with people still partying from the night (and possibly the week) before. Beer everywhere…
I’ve said previously it would be a real shame if people went to these all-you-can-eat-drink resorts and didn’t see the rest of the country. Perhaps really it’s a great result!!
Bali was beautiful, beautiful…
Plushprostate Adventures 