19th – 22nd February, 2017

It is weirdly hard keeping this blog going. Lots of good intentions and few excuses, especially at the moment when, to be honest, we are hardly busy, but the days now seem to have a bit of routine that does not include ‘time for blog’. No wonder I could never keep a diary beyond the end of January!

Ok, I last left you with our arrival at our very nice hotel here in Seminyak on the south west coast of Bali. Seminyak is part of the Kuta-Ketian-Seminyak strip, a conurbation of resorts that were once villages, but are now the main hub for tourism, running from the decidedly brash, party Kuta (with some of the slightly seedier nightlife) to the upmarket, chic Seminyak. They are about 10km southwest of Denpasar, the capital, which covers most of the southern tip of the island.

What strikes you where we are is the plethora of really nice shops that would keep your average interior designer happy for weeks. Most of what is in them would not be out of place in Chelsea and some of the prices are about the same, though you can pick up plenty of bargains but then you have the problem of ‘how do we get the huge pot/Buddha/table/elaborately-carved doorway/huge tree-decoration thing back to the UK?’. Fascinating window shopping and it really is just as well we have no space in either our luggage or our house (though we do have room in the garden – more on that shortly). The main difference with Chelsea is the rather dodgy pavements, which more often than not have motorbikes parked on them and the traffic, again, mostly whizzing motorbikes jockeying for position by even a metre, which sometimes involves using the pavement as a temporary piece of road. Oh, and the taksis (taxi in English – or should it be Greek. In Malaysia they spell it teksi, which sounds as though someone really posh coined it way back when. The same goes for the word fesyen. Just say it in the sort of voice that would have called girls ‘gells’ and you will soon pick it up!). Anyway, the taksis. They are very keen and it is not so much ‘touting for business’ as ‘tooting for business’ and they won’t take no for an answer even though you are walking in the opposite direction down a one-way street. Val got very excited when one pulled up alongside of us and said ‘hello, taxi’, except she thought they had said ‘hello, sexy’! I was thinking that I could make my fortune by selling t shirts with ‘No thanks, I don’t need a taxi’ emblazoned on it.

There are also a lot of restaurants ranging from the local Balinese warung or cheap eaterie/cafe/bar to some much more upmarket places with western prices. The good news is that it does not have to be expensive to be good and we have found some tasty places, both local and international cuisine so both Val and I are happy. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good nasi goreng/satay/mie as much as the next person, but every now and then it is time for a burger or pizza. We did not opt for the breakfast at the hotel on the basis that is costs about £25 each, so we stock up on a few goodies from a bakery next door and snack in our room or sometimes nip out for a brunch at a total cost of about £20 tops. The good news is that I have actually lost a bit of weight, which is a bonus! We did have one dodgy moment yesterday after visiting Shrimp Sambal for the second time, then sauntered down the street (toot, toot, ‘taxi’?), found a nice bar which not only had live music, but was also showing Tottenham v Everton. We even started chatting to a nice couple from England (they seemed nice, even though they are Arsenal supporters), when all of a sudden my stomach did not feel good, I came out in a sweat and felt as though I was going to faint. They must have thought it odd that we left in such a rush (I didn’t even finish my Bintang beer). Luckily there was a taxi! The good news is, all is well and I seem to have only had a mild setback.

I was amused by Shrimp Sambal (which I can heartily recommend, by the by, dodgy tummy notwithstanding) as it was a bit like either the Spam sketch from Monty Python or the crow sketch from the Two Ronnies as it is, not surprisingly, almost exclusively shrimps on the menu. We had shrimp and avocado salad, shrimp bombs, shrimp nasi goreng and shrimp metah, a spicy salad type dish. Luckily the puddings were shrimp free (which may have accounted for my Bali Belly later!)

Other than looking at the shops, having the odd spa and eating out, we have kept ourselves occupied with table tennis, the gym, the pool, reading and Yahtzee (I am one ahead after 536 games – which just proves that it is a game of chance once you have mastered the tactics). And here is a photo of yours truly enjoying a good soak after an arduous working over on the massage table – it’s a tough life!

I think I forgot to show you the photos of the pool from our balcony, so here you go. I have to say, it is most imaginatively done, with a beach with real sand which extends for half the length of the pool. I have no idea how it doesn’t clog up the filter. The only downside is the water is possibly too warm (‘oh, please, John, enough!!’ I hear you cry). It is decidedly warmer and more humid here in Bali at between 30 and 33 degrees, which means that we have about 4 showers a day at least. No rain to speak of, though it is supposed to be wet.

We have been out and about. We booked a car and driver for the day and headed north. Actually, we headed south first along the street on which our hotel is located, Jalan Sunset, jalan meaning street, so as to avoid the traffic of Denpasar and pick up Jalan By-Pass, as it is called here, to get to our first appointment which was a display of Balinese Barong dance and what I suppose must be called theatre. We arrived a little late, but there was still much to get our teeth into. The Barong is a mythical beast, half pantomime horse and half lion, though it can also be a tiger, boar or pig. The Barong, usually accompanied by a mischievous monkey, is the guardian of good against the widow witch, Rangda, who represents evil. The whole spectacle did remind me a pantomime Balinese style or possibly Gilbert and Sullivan as there were some splendidly dressed older characters who ran around rather ineffectually trying protect the maiden from various other elderly gentlemen, who appeared to be villains of one sort or another, all done in an over-the-top manner. There is also a touch of comedy, not least when a dog appears and is knocked unconscious, or so they think, and then seems to be decidedly less dead as evidenced in the photo below – but all is well, that was just his tail sticking up between his legs! All this is accompanied by full gamelan orchestra of plink-plonk music and crashing cymbals and drums. Great costumes!

We were now heading north through the town of Ubud, though it is very much ribbon development in much of central Bali and sometimes hard to tell where one district starts and ends. Ubud is the art centre of Bali, with chic galleries, stonemasons and wood carvings on an almost industrial scale, not to mention jewellery and clothes shops and the usual tacky tourist stuff. It is actually really enticing, especially if you are looking to set up home or a hotel. Some of the pieces are superb, massive statues or huge carved tree roots. We visited a silver shop, an art gallery, which had some good examples of the unique styles of Balinese painting with some pretty staggering price tags attached and a stonemasons. Now the last proved too tempting and there should be a crate arriving at home in a couple of months with a few pieces for the garden. The works themselves are ridiculously cheap, though the shipping hits you a bit, but we couldn’t resist.

Our driver, Yasa, organised for us to visit a family compound. Bali society, despite a very high level of tourism, still seems very traditional especially when driving north where the roadside has walled compounds joining onto one another. Each compound contains an extended family, the compound and village oriented ‘kaja-kelod’ which is towards Gunung Agung (Mount Agung) and away from it. The mountain is considered the home of the gods. Each family member usually has their own building in the compound with shared facilities with the different structures representing different parts of the body. So the family shrine is the head, the courtyard the navel, the ‘bale’ or raised thatched platforms used for different functions, the arms, the kitchen and rice barn the legs and feet and the rubbish tip located alongside the pig pen, the anus. The one we visited was not that wealthy, but seemed to be well kept. The bell-shaped bamboo like things contain chickens and sometimes fighting cocks (big in Bali). The things that look like posts with a thatch on top are the different shrines of the family. By the way, when building a new compound, much is made of auspicious days to build and measurements are taken of the head of the household and the layout is calculated relative to those.

The smallest organisational unit is the banjar or neighbourhood and each adult male is a member when they marry, with about 50 to 100 being the usual size, though they can be as many as 500. The banjar is effectively the parish council and makes many important decisions on a wide range of issues. And then there is the very important subak, the organisation that controls the sawah or rice fields, made up of farmers who use the water to irrigate their plots, very important to avoid disputes.

Well, a brief insight into Balinese life. Religion, Hinduism, is a very important part of every day life, but I will cover that in the next blog.

We pushed on to see some rice terraces, which have now become a tourist attraction to the extent you have to pay to see them, the money going to help the local community, which is fair enough. I have thrown in a few other rice-related pics as well…

And on we went to reach the furthest north we were going to go, a view of Gunung Badur, a still-active volcano, that last erupted in 2000 and is still smoking now, which is a good sign according to the locals as it means it is letting off steam. Lovely views, especially of the accompanying lake. All very atmospheric, all the more so as there were scudding clouds sweeping in every now and then.

The whole area is quite high up, naturally, and so a good place for market gardening which meant Val could get her fix of durian! Eaten outside the car, I might add. The other fruits highlighted below are mangosteens and rambutans.

Next on the itinerary was a temple or pura called Gunung Kawi Sebatu where there are ritual bathing pools, very important in Balinese religious customs as they are used to cleanse ‘sebel’ or ritual uncleanliness. This could be when women have their period, someone has a serious illness or for a family, after the death of a relative or for a village after, say, a plague of rats in the rice fields. In 2002 after the bombing in which over 200 died, the whole island went through exorcisms of ritual cleansing. I cannot emphasise enough how important all of these rituals are on a daily basis with offerings made to little shrines everywhere, including outside the lift on the top floor of our hotel! They are partly to ward of demons too. I will try to cover that in a later post. Fascinating stuff. Anyway, pictures of the temple. I nearly got lost in the maze of stalls that you had to negotiate on exit selling a huge array of trinkets and quite a bit of tat, including, oddly, wooden penises. No idea why or who is buying them!

We just had time to have a quick look at a local waterfall before heading back into the even heavier traffic nearer to the hotel.

All in all a fascinating day out and a good taster of what makes Bali tick. It would have been great to have been able to explore the island in greater detail, but getting about either involves hiring a car or motor scooter (you can just picture Val and me doing the latter!), which involves negotiating the traffic or getting someone else to drive us. It is a surprisingly big island when you are stuck in traffic a lot of the time. Still we did make another expedition on which more soon.

Well, that was a big post. I will try and start another one soon!