Savouring the REAL Bali

The telephone on the bedside cabinet rings. It’s hotel reception: “Peter, if you go to your balcony you will see the old farmer is preparing the field outside your window”.
Where in the world would reception call you with a message like that?

We are back in Junjungan, in our favourite room in our favourite hotel :o)

The Junjungan Hotel is actually built in a paddy field, with views from the balcony consisting entirely of rice fields and palm trees. The back wall of the hotel has rice growing at its foundations! By night incessant crickets’ chirrups and frogs croaks chorus a soothing tropical symphony. Countless fireflies hurtle across the paddies like miniature flashing meteorites, zig-zagging in search of receptive females. Occasionally one lands on the balcony, surprisingly small like a flying ant, its dazzling glow fading to a dull gleam while it rests. Then aloft once more in a brilliant flash of incandescent green to resume the search for a mate.

By day the air resounds to the indignant quacks of the paddy ducks as they patrol designated areas, keeping down floating weeds while visiting herons and egrets polish off small eels and insects. All around cone hatted workers are busily tending to the rice crop. Immediately beneath us an elderly farmer and his wife are squelching knee-deep in gloopy grey mud, painstakingly turning over the soil using a fork. Several hours of hard labour will be needed before they are finished. Now the farmer wipes his brow, looks up and smiles at we idle tourists and then opens the sluice to flood the freshly dug paddy. Later he will bring in a pair of cows to trample and break up the clods ready to plant a fresh crop of rice.

His wife returns to their simple shack on the far side of the paddy while he starts the chore of cleaning the water channels. With deft flicks of a machete he cuts clean vertical edges, narrowly avoiding amputating his toes as he moves along. Then, with not one single wasted movement, he makes three passes along the channel, clearing the cut debris with his fork. The result is an immaculately edged and beautifully regular channel.

He calls me over and smilingly explains what he has been doing and why the ducks are so important….. or I assume that’s what his words and gestures mean because he speaks no English and I speak only gibberish! But there is warmth and understanding, and he grasps my hand firmly before going back to his shack. And as he goes away I can hear the chugging clatter of a mechanical cultivator in a neighbouring field. There a young couple take it in turns to work, getting through four times the area with a fraction of the effort. The old man will work with the simple tools he has ‘till he can no longer move. That’s the way here.

In the afternoon we borrow a couple of bicycles from the hotel - a pink job with a basket for Madam and a standard mountain bike for me. We hurtle off gleefully through the rice paddies in the direction of Ubud. We stop to survey a squashed cobra in the road - some five feet long, it still looks vaguely threatening. An old lady comes over and looks aghast at the monster. She chortles and chatters to Jan for a full five minutes, but neither has a clue what the other says or means. But it doesn’t seem to matter, and we part with waves and smiles.
On we plunge, before stopping to take a steamy walk through the Botanical Gardens. Built in a huge depression, these lush tropical gardens are surrounded by running water and protected from the wind. A natural suntrap combined with large volumes of water equals unbelievably high humidity. We nearly drown simply breathing in steam!

Feeble with dehydration we return to the cycles. And a fundamental flaw in our planning is revealed: To arrive at the Botanical Gardens we have travelled exclusively downhill. The return is an agonising slow, sweat drenched grind back up the slope :o(
No more bikes for a while :o(

Back at Junjungan we flop gratefully into the spa and soon all the sweat and aching muscles have bubbled gently away. Bliss.

As the light begins to fade the herons and egrets in the paddy fields lift off and take flight. Wherever they may be they all have one common destination. Just down the road from Junjungan is one of Bali’s most remarkable sights: At 5pm in the village of Petulu 8,000 herons and egrets all descend to nest in the trees and temple roofs. Since 1965 these birds have congregated here, pairing up for life and raising their broods in the trees of the village. The villagers see the presence of the birds as a blessing and make offerings to them at the temple. As a result the birds thrive, less threatened by their normal natural predators by roosting in the centre of human habitation. In the fields the birds are wary and difficult to approach. In the village they obviously feel secure and you can get within touching distance before they shuffle away.

Petulu is in easy walking distance of Ubud town centre. The nightly gathering of the Herons takes place every day at 5pm. It’s one of Bali’s most fascinating free spectacles … yet virtually no-one ever goes there.

Next episode: Monkeys Swim and Monkey Dance!

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