2. Bali - Eden on Edge

Votes & Views #27

The airport at Denpasar is pretty enormous. Certainly Cape Town International could be accommodated in it. As we spend a little quality time in immigration, I survey the passing parade. Beautiful humanity abounds – but so many of them! Within minutes another five planes have landed and the chaos intensifies as they disgorge their sweating cargo. The efficiency is not quite like Changi; everything is a little more laid-back.

Outside it’s cooler, but a heaving mass of vehicles and humanity greets the senses. Our hotel transport finally manages to fight his way through to us and after a while, extricates himself and us from the parking lot by sheer dogged bloody-mindedness, pushing himself into the streams of traffic. Might is right on Bali roads – but mind the mopeds – they could be carrying the whole family from baby to granny with everyone in between, all on one trip.

Streets are a warren, punctuated by building sites and evidence of civil engineering construction everywhere. Bali is on the move, and the first impressions are not exactly charming. The hotel is like hotels anywhere; rooms are passably clean, but musty. The aircon works, room service is slow and the food is a la the words of the immortal Crocodile Dundee – ‘tastes like s..t, but you can survive on it’.

Next morning reveals the charming architecture of the place though. Kampong-style would be about the best description. Double-storey, tiled buildings connected by leafy walkways, pillared verandas, ornate doorways, sculpted masonry at most extremities (totally surplus to requirements – utterly charming). The main dining hall - no, edifice, rather, is on the second floor of the reception block. Without exaggeration, it is spacious enough to accommodate a moderate herd of elephants. It brings to mind Robert Standish’s description of the planter’s huge mansion built of teak, in his book ‘Elephant Walk’. The roof trusses, which span some twenty metres of room, are massive timber baulks, held together with chains. A console without obvious purpose is crowned with scores of Javanese sika deer antlers. No table-top is thinner than ten centimeters of solid timber slab. In the reception area is an occasional table made of a single hunk of timber, over three metres long, thirty centimeters thick and a metre wide on a pedestal of equal thickness. The mind boggles at this largesse of timber everywhere.

After breakfast our Ricefield Villa driver, young Wayan, arrives and whisks us off towards Ubud. To our eyes, unschooled to Asian matters, city traffic is as chaotic and dangerous as it appeared last night. The rule seems to be that there is no rule – if you want to get into traffic, wait until someone appears that you can intimidate enough to push in front of. Be ruthless; do not give way unless someone has managed to stick a fender, or wheel in front of you, making your own progress impossible. Hoot often. There already seem to be too many people for this modestly sized island – judging by the number of motorbikes on the roads.

The city blends into towns. Shops, houses, factories, eateries jostle with living quarters. There is industry everywhere. Chunks of carved, monument-sized trees, slabs of timber, planks, spars, sculptures and even furniture made of cunningly sliced and sculpted rootstocks of jungle giants line the streets. A mind-boggling variety of furniture which testifies to the inventiveness of the human mind. One thing all local carpenters seem to have in common though, is their complete disregard to the proportions of the human anatomy. Their products are certainly not made to their slighter scale, but even our larger, European frames find especially seats fiendishly uncomfortable – statuesque though they may be. The ex-lumberman in me examines a set of four diningroom chairs, each carved out of a solid chunk of wood, in the form of a cupped, upturned hand perched on its wrist/pedestal. Four of these would need a cubic metre, or about a ton of hardwood as raw material. To while away the potholes I do a little mental arithmetic (which I have just checked on a calculator) and I come up with the astounding fact that even if one likes robust furniture, from that amount of timber, you can actually manufacture between forty and fifty chairs of the sort of design one sees in homes that we are familiar with.

A couple of hours later, our wild ride comes to an end in a back-street building yard, by the look of it. Not very inspiring. A crowd of women and children gather. Our host’s family, Kadek, Suarja’s sister, the wife, Nyoman, another unspecified female relative, confusingly named Wayan as well as our male driver, then Niva, a buxom lass of vague kinship and Kiki, the young daughter, who gives our Mia a warms welcome hug. We have arrived home.

Here I must explain that names in Bali get somewhat confusing. Each member is called by the number order in which they were born, Kadek, Wayan, Nyoman just mean something like first, second or third. Every family hierarchy has them. Most confusing to Euro minds. How they manage in classroom situations boggles the mind – presumably they have to take refuge in nicknames to distinguish between scholars, as you may very well have half a dozen or more all answering to the same numerical epithet.

Nyoman and Niva are our chauffeuses and as Fay and I are senior, infirm citizens, we get a ride to the villa; my relatives opt for a walk. Fay is an experienced biker, but I haven’t mounted an iron horse for almost fifty years. I view the slender Nyoman with skepticism and opt for the slightly heftier Niva to drive my not inconsiderable weight down into the unknown. Since we are barely acquainted, I hoist myself up behind her sturdy back, and clutch a thin metal grip-thing below the level of the seat, and we tear off down the path which dips and jinks between houses and a deep-set, but shallow canal on either side. I try hard to anticipate which way Novi will weave between pedestrians, chickens, potholes, builders pushing wheelbarrows and round right angle bends and T-junctions – but I wobble, so, in desperation I decide to risk being accused of indecent assault on a minor, and I clamp my knees firmly round her amplitude, while clinging on for dear life. Not as good as putting my arms round her waist and really snuggling up – but after all, we’re just getting acquainted. Later Kadek tells me it’s perfectly proper for complete male strangers to embrace nubile maidens while on the pillion seat of a bike. Ah well, later perhaps.

The path is perhaps a metre wide at best. There is oncoming traffic, pedestrian and motorized; farming activity and transport of produce, as well as building materials being carted or carried to a number of construction sites along the route. Choking clouds of smoke come from smouldering heaps of rice straw, and the odd duck, chicken, cat or dog joins the busy highway. In the midst of fields dotted with hovels of the workers, strange Italianate mansions or villas rise from behind high walls. Three minutes of sheer terror, then we are deposited at the Elysian Gates. Inside these imposing, carved gates, a deep narrow garden; a strangely harmonious blend of Balinese, Hindu, Buddhist and Japanese elements. Some bonsai look-alikes in pots are dotted around the grassed open space, strategically raised on low plinths ( which I later discover to be skylights of a whole underground series of storerooms and previously, the living-quarters for the family). A stepped watchtower to one side looks like a three-storey gazebo. The Buddha statue has a red hibiscus in its belly button. The house is hardly visible behind a huge jackfruit tree and other, diverse shrubbery.

It transpires later in conversation with our host, Suarja, that foreigners, though welcome, can’t own residential property in Bali. So they take a local partner, with whom they have a legal contract to permit them access to the property they purchase and develop, but it is a sort of lifetime-lease. The fixed property reverts to the Balinese partner once the alien has shuffled off – or it might even be stipulated that the contract ends after a number of years. So Suarja has a Japanese partner from Tokyo, who every year spends the odd weeks relaxing in these rustic surroundings after his hectic business life in the city. In between these times, Suarja rents out the villa and the services of his family to the likes of us, to pay for upkeep and also to earn a living.

The main dwelling may have a concrete core, but the impression is purely organic. Timber, bamboo and atap are the main elements – the glass is hardly noticeable – just the spaces between pillars and the rolled blinds at half-mast to keep the sun at bay. From the outside the roof looks like a haystack, from inside it’s a marvel of detailed, interlocking construction; an intricate landscape for roaming geckoes, who invertedly bark defiant challenges at each other as they scurry about in the evenings.

The sanitary department smacks of Japanese influence, cleanliness and sophistication. One needs to remember to drop the blinds before use – something that probably comes more naturally to a Tokyogi who is used to living in a glass cage three metres away from the neighbour in a similar, opposite apartment in the building next door. The toilet has triumphal, carved double doors – very chic, and a phenomenon we encountered a number of times during the next eight weeks.

The entire top storey is taken up by sleeping quarters and bathroom. Two large double beds in the huge room itself, an extensive porch out front, with similar sleeping arrangements outside, should one so wish, and another narrower veranda at the rear of the house, overlooking the pool and the ricefields surrounding the place. The view on all sides of the house at the lower level is confined to the formal, tropical beauty of the garden, the structures, swimming pool, koi ponds, statues and altars. From above, you have an uninterrupted view of the surrounding agricultural activity as the extended village gets on with their daily work. Paddy fields border on each other, occasionally interspersed with shanties where the farmers live during the harvesting season. The fields are demarcated by an intricate system of channels, through which the flow of water from the distant hills is directed by some, communally negotiated plan. Everyone has water for their fields; mostly enough for a harvest every hundred days – much needed for the ever-growing population.

We are surrounded by an agricultural settlement visible for 270 degrees around us, and though it may not sound very exciting, it is a delight to watch. Men armed with long-handled sickles, walk into a ripe patch of rice and almost casually, start slashing. The result is gathered in middens and when sufficient amounts have been accumulated between the fields, a few days of drying under the tropical sun seems enough and a little one-lunged threshing machine is dragged on site through the mud and the harvest is fed into it. A horde of women descend on the resulting heap of grain; they rake and gather it up, winnow it, and it is bagged, only to be carted away on the pillion seats of mopeds, stacked three high, for consumption or sale.

All this is done by the measured, constant efforts of less than a dozen people. In between food has been cooked in the field, children fed and washed, the stubble has been burnt over, and smoking, gossiping and visiting has not been neglected either. The livestock is tended; a few golden-eyed cows wander about, rafts of ducks are led into the fields by a man bearing a long bamboo pole with scraps of rags tied to it. Once the destination is reached, he plants the pole in the mud, and apparently the ducks accept that as a ‘mother protector’ figure or beacon, to which they will rally. Meanwhile they have to dabble in the mud for a living. All their minder has to do in the evenings, is to collect the pole and his flock and walk them home again. Scrawny, long-legged chickens range up and down the fringes of the ricefields, contesting any scraps of nutrients. They do not get fat (or tender) during this process.

At any time during the day, there are numbers of small, apparently waving objects floating in the skies on all sides. They are difficult to make out, but I suspect they are kites. This is confirmed during later excursions, when we get closer to the dwellings from which they originate. Kite-flying is a national pastime, and at times there are hundreds in sight, gaily dipping in the breeze. Many are dark in colour, with painted faces on them and fringes around the edges. They are rigged in such a way as to dip and nod eternally – which may have a religious significance. Certainly, there are huge examples of these flown above Bali; we saw one that covered the entire loading area of a small truck. Others again, show the Chinese influence, in that they have fancy carved or papier-mache heads of dragons, and long, sinuous bodies. Naturally we stop at a kite factory during one of our excursions, and invest in a half dozen gaily coloured pieces of aerial art for assorted grandchildren. Just a pity we have to limit ourselves to the smaller sizes so that they can fit into our suitcases. We are especially charmed by the ‘galleon’ kites, which are in the shape of a three-masted ship, with the sails cunningly rigged to give lift. I had actually seen one of these fly at a kite festival in Cape Town, and thus I was very happy to acquire one for my grandson. Just hope it flies!

We intend an excursion, so after another exhilarating pillion-ride, our driver Wayan takes off in the direction of Ubud. Almost immediately we land up in a gigantic traffic jam. It takes over an hour to progress a few hundred metres, down through a ravine, up the other side towards town. Not even the mopeds can get through, and scores of them start returning along the narrow sidewalks – on the wrong side of the road. We decide to quit and Wayan makes a ten-point U-turn by sheer determination and complete disregards for all other road users, and half an hour later we are back to where we started off from. From ‘sources’ we learn that there was a mega-funeral procession under way through the centre of town. Some thirty-five unfortunates were to be cremated. No, not a mass slaying, nor a bus accident, nor an epidemic. Local custom dictates that the deceased are buried for some five years to permit the soul to escape and find another host for its next reincarnation; then the remains are exhumed and cremated in batches. An eminently sensible idea, so as to minimize traffic disruption and the waste of fuel.

We laze about and are served on hand and foot by smiling, gentle people, eager to please. No great hardship. Once we have settled in, we decide to try our mobility despite Fay’s crutches.  We venture out again, this time to a noted temple in a jungly ravine. Wall to wall tourists, of course, and we join in and have to don gaily coloured temple sarongs to hide our unseemly knees – most dashing. The main feature of the temple is a spring bubbling up through white sands in the walled temple pool. Next to it the water flows through a row of gargoyles into the public dip, where crowds of devotees (and hot tourists) line up in the waist-deep pool to be purified under the waterspouts. We wander about and admire the aged stone sculptures and lavish gilt and paint jobs in between. Here and there are small islands of peace, and some white-robed men and women attend to their prayers.

An early morning trip to the volcanic caldera of Gunung Batur is arranged. This is in the north of the island, right next to the massive Gunung Agung, the almost three thousand metre high volcano that last erupted some fifty years back and killed a number of people, as well as destroying numerous villages on its slopes. The road climbs steadily, but there is so much haze about, we can’t actually see our target. Everywhere are deep ravines, cut by erosion, through tens of metres of exposed strata, all rich, umber and fertile; legacies of tens of thousands of years of eruptions from the volcanoes in the north. Then, suddenly, we are at the edge of a cliff at Penelokan, looking down at a blue crescent of lake, curving into the crater walls on the opposite side – for we are now inside the caldera of Batur. On the right are the towering green-clad walls and spikes left by a giant explosion in the distant past. To the left a massive cone looms, with a number of smaller, half obscured craters, fresher slopes of volcanic debris, and several small plumes of steam, where the monster signifies that it is not yet dead by a long stretch. My heart beats faster – I am actually inside a ‘live’ volcano.

We descend along a narrow tortuous road, punctuated by fleets of crawling miniature trucks, grating along in extra-low gear. They are hauling volcanic sand, just tailor-made for construction, out of quarries with towering sides looming over them, all along the route. There is a building boom in Bali. The serene waters of the lake are punctuated by rafts of aquaculture. Numerous clones of a worldwide genre - luxury hotels and spa’s have sprung up around a number of thermal springs spawned by the volcano, yet poverty-stricken villages seem to stretch along the entire western shore. The road twists and turns among the houses, lean-to’s and shops and chickens and children scatter. Suddenly we are out in the country again. Not a house in sight, instead a jumble of rough, black boulders, scattered about, piled up, seemingly raked into ridges. No trees here, just wispy yellow grass, reminiscent of the African steppes. These are remnants of previous eruptions, the last only a few decades ago, while its hidden giant neighbour is still spitting at intervals. The road comes to an abrupt end and we turn around. So much for Lake Batur.

A visit to a market was included in our plans, so off to Ubud we go once more. Unfortunately this proved to be more of a tourist trap than the sort of thing we were interested in. Still, there were some pretty handicrafts on show, and we could not pass them all by. A mad scramble through dimly lit alleys with hawkers urging their wares on you from all sides. As the displays were mostly at knee-height close to the narrow walkways, and up to ceiling height further away, one needs exceptional vision to be able to appreciate all on offer. We quit this potential craft mine, hot sweaty and bothered, and we are glad to escape to a recommended, pleasant eatery down a little alley. It is relatively cool, well-aired and shady, and has a charming, beflowered fountain in the passage leading to the toilets.

Here I sample the only memorable dish in Bali; a jackfruit stew/curry, which strangely enough, is not served with the almost inedible (to us) large bowl of steamed rice that accompanies every dish for the islanders. I acquire some from my companions and ladle the stew on top – heaven. Faintly like artichoke hearts in texture, but with fragrant overtones of flavour. I’m a happy diner. Talking of food, that which was prepared for us by our staff at the villa was quite adequate, but the fish and shellfish were mostly overcooked, while the chicken and pork were tough, close to the point of becoming shoeleather. In the end I learnt to stick with fried noodles or rice, in which the tough bits are chopped so small that they became the garnish – only to stick between your teeth with dogged tenacity.

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Another of my quite irrational desires was to see a hillside artistically draped with green steps of ricefield terraces. Our man Wayan was duly instructed to find these, and as usual, he managed magnificently despite it being a grey and drizzly day. Voila – rice terraces to order, and even a viewing platform, complete with a local bandit who wants to tax us for the privilege of taking some photos. With one hand he took our money, while already the other appeared from behind his back, offering a variety of so-called batiks and other geegaws.

Suarja pays us a ‘state visit’. He is a man of position in local and national affairs; a born diplomat and negotiator. Power exudes from his burly frame, and one gets the impression that this man’s word is law wherever he moves. We have an interesting evening in his genial company and learn a little about Balinese customs and culture that make this island such a different destination from the rest of Indonesia. He expresses a worry about food shortages that are looming for his people, and thinks that tourism is the only answer for that. Would I come back again, he asks? Like a shot, I reply – but it is a long way from South Africa. So why not come and live here, he suggests. In no time at all, he would fix me up with a local partner, we could build a house and he would find a family to look after me. It sounds most enticing, but there is a small matter of dollars or rupiahs to contend with. I have to explain that we are not all idle rich, and some of us have to work to make a living.

He urges us to witness a Kecak dance on the next day. This depicts a part of the Ramayana, the all-pervasive Hindu epic which influences everything from poetry to architecture from India to Indonesia and Cambodia. What makes it different from other dances is that there is no music, just the dancers chanting the hypnotic ‘chak, chak’ and depicting the scenery and elements while the main actors perform a depiction of a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helps Prince Rama fight the evil King Ravana. It is a devotional activity as well as a tourist spectacle, which does not prevent some local children running in and out of the temple during the performance. A testament to the way their belief-system is integrated into daily life, like the ever-present shrines and offerings.

Wayan receives orders from the boss, Suarja. He is to take us to a woodcarvers’ gallery for a viewing of their finest products – not to buy, unless something should really take our fancy. We set off on what I perceive to be an unnecessarily lengthy trip, since there are woodcarvers everywhere. However, this must be something special, though my heart sinks when at arrival, we are accosted by a ‘pusher’, who immediately wants to shepherd us towards a couple of uninterested loafers who are desultorily chipping away at raw chunks of timber. As politely as possible, I tell him that we really do know how timber is shaped, and that we want to have a look at the real thing. Well, I am forced to change my mind. The inside of the gallery of crammed with a wealth of sculpted interpretations of human, animal, mythical and other forms of sometimes breathtaking beauty and artistry. Certainly, there are hundreds of items which are stereotypes that can be seen on every street corner and in every curio shop, but in between there are real treasures, unusual interpretations of deities and above all, sculptures with humour – from a gentle smile to a deep belly-laugh is evoked by these sophisticated depictions. My personal favourite was a Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god, sprawled on his back, obviously corpsing out with laughter, and looking as if he had just had an extra deep drag at a joint, the remnants of which he is holding between his fingers. Not easy to explain why this should be funny, but it is my most enduring image of the gallery’s products. If he hadn’t been so heavy, he would have found a space in my suitcase.

I wanted a closer look at a furniture factory. There are hundreds about, so we don’t have to search too hard. I look critically at these, imaginative and often monumental, timber constructions. They have grandeur and certainly presence. Their workmanship is sometimes quite good, sometimes poor, but what they all have in common is that they just don’t fit any human frame, and they are built with a complete disregard for economy of scale or use of timber. Who is going to buy all this stuff, one wonders? China? Europe? South Africa? If one looks at the thousands of tons of timber wasted in small factories on an island like Bali, it becomes clear why the rainforests are disappearing. None of this timber is grown on Bali; the local forests have long gone, I’m told. This timber comes mainly from Java and Sumatra, and other outlying islands. And still, they chop it down like there was no tomorrow. A sobering thought.

Another hot gallop down a warren of streets to find a bookstore. I was hoping to find something printed in that wonderful curlicued writing the Balinese have, which would at the same time give me an idea of what letters they used – just idle curiosity on my part, nothing academic. In Singapore I hadn’t been successful in finding anything more than slightly secondhand, so I didn’t have much hope in that department locally. Still, my luck was in and I bagged second prize; a modern book of local tales, written in Balinese script, transliterated into Roman characters , translated into both English and Javanese Bahasa in parallel. My day is made and I make my triumphant return on the motorbike’s pillion seat cosily snuggled up to the fair Novi.

After a number of cloudy days the sun finally makes its appearance, and I decide to sample the pool at the house, which proves to be decidedly chilly in contrast with the balmy air. A consultation of a website on the climate of the region, reveals that although theoretically almost at the equator, June and July are the coolest months of the year. Mostly it’s been hot, but not unbearably so, and we have enjoyed the change from a Cape winter. In addition, the expected clouds of mosquitoes didn’t arrive, even though we were totally surrounded by flooded rice fields, which should have been a fertile breeding ground for these pests.

 Our last day, and we get our first taste of international finance at its worst. The Indonesian currency runs into many noughts, even when compared to our own, relatively puny unit of value. But Suarja wishes to be paid in greenbacks, which we are happy to oblige with. His sister Kadek however, can’t do anything with dollar bills, it would seem, so she needs obscenely large numbers of the local rupiah instead, to pay for food, housekeeping etc. Now we don’t have bundles of these on hand, so I have to exchange or draw some, always careful so as not to land up with bags full of wastepaper once you have departed from the country of your stay. Then there are small irritations like exit taxes, tips and the like. Always a headache – at each destination we were to visit. Somehow one was never quite certain that the correct number of zeroes had been applied to the calculation, since there were fifteen occasions on which I changed currency zones during the trip. A minefield!

We decide to visit the abode, workplace and gallery of the flamboyant local artist, Maestro Antonio Blanco. He aspired to be all things Dali, Tretchikoff and Picasso to all people, married a local dancer and proceeded to paint – her. You can see the fair (actually dusky) Ronji in all sorts of poses; standing, sitting, lying, smiling, scowling, drunk and sober, but you will see Ronji, mostly in all her nude glory. Quite decorative, but a little too much of a good thing. Loved the garden, and the over-the-top buildings, not to mention the three-storey sculpted serpentine entry arch in the shape of the maestro’s signature – largest in the world, naturally. Definitely worth a quick visit, and the parrots and other birds are so acculturated to Bali that they don’t even bite.

Farewells at the villa. We are sad to leave these gentle, humorous people – Kiki, Made, Nyoman, Kadek, Wayan and Suarja, our hosts. Our drive to the airport brings home to us how much we didn’t see, in part due to lack of mobility, partly because of the short duration of our stay. We barely sampled a few of the island’s attractions briefly – but that was going to be our fate wherever we went in the next seven weeks. Our luck holds and as our plane sweeps over the island, the massive peak of Gunung Agung pops up over the low cloud and lords it over his domain, while his smaller sibling, Gunung Batur with its aquamarine lake lazes in the bright morning sun next to it.