Baliquities

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Time to detox for a few days after a much needed 5 day beer session in Kuta. Of which drunken antics you don’t need to know of as I mostly can’t remember...or just plain refuse to remember. Time to sample a little Balinese culture, and Ubud just so happens to be one of those places where this can be done. Centrally located Ubud is a big draw and is naturally one of those places that everyone seems to flock to on a trip to Bali, offering a wealth of Balinese history, Hindi temples, dances and local handicrafts. Ubud essentially being a collection of small villages that over the years have merged together to cause a bigger conglomeration of a town bustling with life, but not to the likes of Kuta or Denpassar, things do seem less rushed yet with the similar touristy trend that can be found in most south-east Asian locale.

Upon arrival like with any new arrival in a new town my bearings where completely absent upon exiting the bus. I was trying to find a place called Monkey Forest Road, the hotspot for guesthouses, or Losmen as they are known in Indonesia. Slightly different to a guesthouse whereby it is generally a family owned property with just a few rooms available on their plot, which kind of makes it fairer on the local community, spreads the coin more evenly. Finding took me some time though as I entered Monkey Forest road at the wrong end, the road loops round in a wonkeyish U-bend fashion. First walking downhill finding nothing, it was only once I had cleared the bend and began walking uphill that accommodation began to rear itself, which was typical, sweating and slobbering all over the streets coming all so naturally to me. The first joint was more of a hotel type spa complex, looked pricey, and at $50USD a night, for me it was, so I shunned them. I then found a place for a more moderate 120,000IDR a night, they were full. 3rd time lucky I found a small passage way off of Monkey Forest road, in just 20 seconds of walking I found myself in complete silence away from the hustle & bustle of the main road, here I found a losmen, I felt isolated and as always I liked it, the place I found was called ‘Nani house 2’ and the owner wanted 100,000 a night, a bartered him down unprofessionally to 90,000 IDR a night, including breakfast. Not bad, but I’d prefer to be paying around 50,000 - 60,000 a night as at around the 100,000IDR mark it kind of makes accommodation one of the most expensive in south-east Asia, which I wasn’t expecting of Indonesia. But anyway, I doubt it will change my life that significantly. The room spacious with a double bed, high ceilings, jilted light fixings and nicotine stained looking walls, it would do the job, I was just happy to have somewhere to throw my bags down and to take a nice cold shower, washing away both grime and sins.

After a shower I went to check out Ubud, walking along Monkey Forest road packed with its souvenir shops and upmarket and slightly pretentious looking restaurants and bars it didn’t take too long to get offered a blow-job from a girl who looked about 12. ‘Blowjob sir?’ catching me a little off guard.
‘oh..no...no thanks, that’s not quite cricket’

Away from monkey forest road with its slightly over commercialised feel I preferred the little back streets that channelled off out into the countryside. Small temples and quaint little dwellings, make for a more peaceful and relaxed neck of the woods. About 30 minutes walk and I find myself in rural Ubud district, rice paddies for as far as the eyes can see, an important commodity for the Balinese. Locals ploughing their paddies by hand, caked in mud, the stagnant smell rising up from trapped pockets in the earth, made me reminiscence of my days rice farming back in Japan. No easy job in the immense heat, day in and day out, a job that here has probably hardly ever evolved its farming techniques for a great number of years. Scanning across the rice paddies you will see that rice farming as well as being a popular trend to the eye of an artisan is also an art form in itself, the way terraces divide from one another with their mud walls and water that flows and channels intricately about the paddies to irrigate the crop. And with the sun giving up hope for the day it really is very picturesque. Really very peaceful to, the locals not seeming to be hindered by my physical presence greeting me with ‘Hello’ as I walk by.

By evening I had built up quite an appetite and went in search for someplace that wasn’t pretentious looking, a lot of places geared towards lovers and small groups, not stinkyass solo backpackers with no friends like me. I found a place, free wifi as well, food was good, service painfully slow, and they played the World Cup game between The Netherlands and Japan. When the game started I found myself surrounded by Dutch people, quite a few kicking about in Bali it would seem. Holland winning 1-0, but the Japanese unlucky not to close the game with a draw.

After the game I went back to my losmen, sat on the porch at my big table and did some reading. Finding that the temperature drops more significantly here in central Bali as opposed to the coast, so much so that I had to pull on a lightweight jacket. When I went back inside my room to head to bed I found something sinisterly evil lurking on the wall in my room, a spider, the size of a babies face, out of reach, not out of sight, and definitely not out of mind, I didn’t like it one bit, but there was very little I could do about it. So when I slept on this said night it was done so with one eye open just in case it tried to get into my mouth and do some creepyass spider shit. But it wasn’t hard to keep track of it, when it moved you could literally hear it lumbering about, so whenever it did so I can assure you that the lights went straight on ‘WHERE ARE YA? WHAT YA DOING? SIT DOWN!!!’

Depending on how potentially fussed you are the positioning of the fan at the end of the bed could also be an issue for some people, I for one like to have a good old fart session before I drop off, and with the fan blowing at the tip of your bed you get your own bowl bombs smashed right back in your own face with dual force, you literally get your head kicked in by your own farts. But for me I don’t mind, it’s an interesting experience as I quite happen to enjoy sniffing my own farts, something strangely therapeutic about it, always has been.

20/06/10

Upon waking up this morning I did a quick spider check and it had stuffed itself right in the corner hinges of the ceiling, it looked content, and so this actually made me feel content, and the thing wasn’t inside my mouth or inside my pantyhose like in Tasmania, that’s another tale for the pub some day. Satisfied I went to check out the Monkey Sanctuary, the big draw down Monkey Forest road. A religious site to the Balinese boasting 3 temples and some 300 Balinese Macaques.

It’s always interesting watching monkey behaviour, their just so human in everything they do, the way they look at you, the way they itch, hold bananas, the way the dude monkeys mostly sit on their arse all day and scratch their monkey balls. And like other humans, naturally they can’t be trusted. ‘The monkeys may become aggressive if you invade their private areas’ the brochure kindly states, a similar formality for human beings I should say.

A lot of people were feeding the monkeys bananas, the monkeys wise to the fact that when the human kind buy the bananas they come in a bunch as a opposed to a single banana, so the humans were trying to hand a monkey a single banana before becoming terrorised and abused to hand over the rest of the banana blunder. One woman getting her handbag ransacked, these monkeys mean business, and they know a good banana when they see one to, more often than not they will peel the skin from the banana, take a butchers at it then toss it away and go for the next one until the perfect banana has been discovered. I personally didn’t bother feeding them, I don’t really trust them one bit, all nice and cute one minute before some random chav-like act of violence overburdens them and they decide that they want to rip your face off and throw it on the floor, then you’d just be stood there with your no face looking down upon the floor at your own face which in turn would be looking back up at you at your no face with your own face.....or something. But anyway I’ve read and heard enough monkey horror stories to know better than to give a banana to a crazyass monkey.

All monkey’d out I headed out into the sticks once more for a walk along Campuan Ridge. Essentially a ridge with deep gorges either side which lead up to rice terraces, lush green vegetation everywhere and houses built into the hills, the sound of running water from deep below. A great little walk as you get a cool breeze that rides up from the gorges below that keeps you from melting into a puddle of sweat.

With my cultural exploration complete I decided it was time to hit the bottle again, next stop the Gili Islands.

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