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Published: October 15th 2008
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Snore
This guy had way too many bananas. Greetings all!
We left the beach craziness of Seminyak on Friday and made our way 1.5 hours north to the rolling hills and rice paddies of Ubud. While still decidedly on the beaten track, Ubud is most definitely a mellower and quainter side of Bali. Part of that has to do with our awesome hotel, the Alam Indah, which is a small, bungalow-style place with open, airy rooms set in lush, flowery, artisticly adorned grounds just outside the town center. We've been spending about half of our days pool-side and/or chilling on our day-bed at the AI, and the other half exploring Ubud and the surrounding rural countryside.
Monkeys figure quite prominantely here. Our hotel abuts the aptly named Sacred Monkey Forest, a popular and beautifully maintained preserve with several small Hindu temples, a number of towering, ancient Bandak trees, and (according to the brochure) 400 Balinese macaque monkeys. The 40-acre preserve being slightly undersized, a good number of the monkeys can also be seen on the streets in town, as well as right here at our hotel.
In fact, while we were enjoying breakfast on Saturday, we noticed a terrior-sized monkey sitting on the roof of a
bungalow across from us; all the sudden, he jumped to a tree, slid to the ground, ran a short distance, scaled another tree, and jumped onto the roof above the breakfast area. As we commented to each other about the monkey's climbing skills, our server yelled-out something in Indonesian, and two employees darted outside, across the eating area, and up a set of stairs leading to only one place -- our room. Soon thereafter, we starting to hear a bunch of thumping, and a few unintelligible, staccato shouts, which were followed by a third hotel employee heading up the stairs to our room, this time with a sling-shot in hand. At that point, a little worry set in, as Anna remembered that all our windows were open, and that there was a bowl of fruit next to our bed, which we had planned to have for lunch. Worry grew to full-scale alarm when we then remembered that next to the bowl of fruit was a sharp knife we brought up to our room to carve the fruit. For a moment, the likelihood of a knife-wielding, papaya-fueled macaque slicing up a quarter of the hotel staff seemed like a legitimate possibility.
Family of monkeys
I find them sort of gross. Is that bad? The thumping and shouting (was that Indonesian for "Please, I have a wife and kids!"?) grew louder for maybe a minute before the ruckus finally petered out. We never saw the monkey leave, but the employees eventually came down the stairs talking excitedly amongst themselves, and slipped back inside--avoiding eye contact with the the pancake eating masses. After breakfast we went up to the room and were surprised to find everything more or less in order--although at least one piece of fruit was gone. The staff has so far taken a Rumsfeldian approach to releasing info about the shown-down, with our inquiries receiving the party-line response of, "No, no problem,"--even by the guy who KNOWS we saw him heading up to our room with, like, weaponry.
While the Australians-gone-wild scene thankfully stayed behind in Seminyak, the heat followed us to Ubud and, if anything, intensified over the last few days as torential night-time rains upped the day-time humidity from steamy to juicy. Said juiciness became too much for Jub's Portland hipster impersono this week. Thus, as the before, during and after pictures below attest to, Jub now more closely resembles a recently shorn lamb than a guy you would
expect to find pounding Pabst Blue Ribbons at a Decemberist concert.
Amazingly, and much to her credit, Anna has been keeping up with her morning runs in spite of the blazing heat, a stick-to-it-ness that has caused us to reallocate a substantial portion of our budget to late-morning rehydration. Her water-loss has not gone unnoticed, as we received word late last night that an entire family of white-tailed deer was seen at the Portland Airport buying plane tickets to fly to Bali to come to Ubud for the sole purpose of licking her running outfit. We'll post pictures in the next blog, assuming they clear customs.
Yesterday we went for a walk in an area outside of town that is known for its terraced rice paddies, and then had a driver take us around to a number of small villages. Religious idolotry predominated the landscape in these villages, as even the smallest have three separate Hindu temples (one for Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva), with nearly all the family compounds also sporting a small shrine, and additional stone carvings, most decoratively wrapped with patterned cloth and elaborate parasols. Our guide for the trip, Swastica (named after the Ancient Hindu
Fire dancer.
This guy literally walked back and forth through the fire with his bare feet, and looked happy about it. symbol, he was quick to point out), chatted us up about Obama - as have several other locals -- believing that the three years Obama spent as a child in Indonesia will mean good things for the country if he is elected. Swastica also took time to lament the state of the U.S. economy and its ripple effect across Asia. The cascading effect of the U.S. economic downturn has been like an X on the mosquito-bite of international outrage over the Iraq war. We were prepared to discuss the war with regularity, but, so far, not a single person we've talked to has brought it up, with many electing instead to lament the state of the U.S. Stock market, bank failures and declining U.S. tourism.
Ubud is also known for the many temples that stage traditional music and dances; we spent two nights taking these in, and really enjoyed ourselves. We were a little ee-er-ee-er on the plot lines ("Is the white monkey who shot the deer with an arrow helping the princess or her evil sister?") but the drumming, singing, costumes (think Barbarella, but with longer skirts), and presentation were very cool, and very we're-not-in the-western hemisphere anymore.
As Anna said, the dancers were well-suited for some serious popping and breaking. We also spent one very enjoyable night drinking red wine with a group of of Irish, Scottish, and British travelers, who gave us great tips on places to see in eastern Indonesia and Malaysia, and who also hooked us up with some small amulets, blessed by some heavy-hitting Hindu holy men. So we've got that going for us now too.
Tomorrow we're off to some small Islands about 4 hours off the coast of Bali. Stay tuned.
Finally, on an administrative tip, if you would like to subscribe to this blog so you get an email each time we post one you can hit the "subscribe" button on the left hand side of the screen. Also (attention mom and dad!) most blogs we've posted have two pages of pictures, to get to the second you need to click "2" on the blue line at the bottom of the page.
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Knobb
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The New Look
Dear Eric, I am happy to see that you cleaned up your act now that you've left your corporate office job and embarked on a trip around the world. You don't want to give the Indonesians the wrong impression. You are, after all, representing America. Ten-hut soldier! Knobb