Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2017
A finished piece
These two are a very popular subject for woodcarvings. You see them everywhere, I am bad that I forgot their names, but they are like the Romeo and Juliet in the stories of Bali-lore.Geo: -8.51927, 115.263
Wyan, who works in the Pradha cafe is an amateur woodcarver on the side, and offered to take me to see some 'Master Woodcarvers' in Ubud. This town is known for its art, and I'm not really into paintings so much, but when he mentioned wood carving I really wanted to see.
We stopped by a few shops, and I kept gravitating to the same figure, the Rice Goddess. There are a bunch of different instances of her, in all sorts of situations. And it was funny, every time I liked one and pointed to it, it was always the Rice Goddess! So that's the carving I ended up with. I don't have a picture of it. Huh? Not sure why, probably because I was stressing about all the price bargaining going on. Even Wyan was trying to help me, 'too crowded is your mind Suss-anne, make empty your mind'. I kept thinking of frickin' Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, where the kid told him 'too many mind' because he was being too-self-conscious and not being a good Samurai. So I really tried to relax and go with the flow on the bidding thing. It's not that the
Apprentice woodcarvers
...working on the base of a table. money was much for the statue ($150) but more that I didn't want to get robbed with my eyes open. The principal of the thing, you know? He started the bidding at $600, so I feel like it's all good. Who knows?
After the stress of the negotiations, Wyan took me to his house where we could chill. He wife and kids were there, and his mom and dad, and cousins and uncles, and a bunch of other people that he didn't even bother to introduce. His Mom made me Bali coffee (yum) and I got a tour of the grounds and fields. Then he showed me his family's carvings, and started the bidding. Ugh. I paid entirely too much, but Wyan had been so great to me all day and I really enjoyed meeting his family and the hospitality, and seeing a real, not-made-for-tourist-thing, that it was all worth it.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0367s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
suzettesp
non-member comment
Yeah, I had to bite my tongue because he showed them to me with such pride.