Quarter Year

I like this about Sam – an in-the-moment simplicity developed through attention.

We scored an awesome situation, yesterday evening, relaxing on a wooden porch that reaches over the water on Ko Lanta’s eastern shore. The wide, parallel floorboards run from the porch railing to the house, then up the wall to the high metal roof. The tide was just creeping over the rocky beach. As Az and I laid there we heard boats motoring in the distance, rolling waves and chirping birds. We heard hammers tapping metal, people talking, people walking, people singing, cooking and crying, a Muslim call to prayer and occasional wind. The loudest sounds bounced off an island across the channel. The sun was just pushing through the clouds, though it was late enough that none reached the east-facing porch.

Sunrise the next morning

Three years ago we drove past the traditional wooden houses on this, the less-touristed coast. They seemed to glow with lives busied by projects unrelated to us Westerners, and I was hungry to see it. I remember hoping that, if only we looked curious enough, if only we drove slow enough, we would be invited in. It’s harder than you think to get inside someone’s house when you’re traveling: most locals assume you want to see the tourist sites, and we don’t commonly invite ourselves to dinner. And I remember, years ago, peaking into one of these houses and wondering about the natural light climbing from the sea-side back porch, up the hallway boards and through the front room, where families live open to the street. How to get invited inside? For years now I’ve tried to imagine rhythm of this traditional Thai life. What would be inside that house?

Yesterday, when we drove slowly along this road, a simple sign read, “B&B.” We had to stop. Kim welcomed us and called her husband, Sam. Sam had the idea for the B&B: he fantasizes about a worldwide network of homestays welcoming travelers, who later repay the good deed to travelers in their own town. It’s the exact same idea as Couchsurfing.com, but in its infancy and without a website.

Finally, we were invited into the house.

It’s open and airy, constructed completely of wide wooden planks, except for the metal roof high above. It’s like sleeping in a Wild West saloon, or so I imagine. The kitchen sits in the dark, unpainted entry, where only a little natural light drips in through the front door. This is the front half of the house. We walked down the hall toward the sea. The back of the house is dominated by one enormous room, separated from the hallway by a slatted wall. In this room the whole family sleeps on wicker mats and keeps all their possessions.

The bedroom.

A wall panel opens to the outside to let a breeze roll through. Off this bedroom is the main bathroom, which consists of a gravity-flush toilet and a wash basin. The Thai shower two or three times a day to keep cool, so the bathroom floors are always wet, which we find kinda repulsive. The hall opens onto the sea-side porch with solid, waist-high railings. The high ceilings theoretically keep the house cool in the summer, though I’m sure there’s only so much you can do.

When at home the family splits time between lounging on the front porch, lounging on the back porch, and, in Kim’s case, working in the kitchen. On another home’s porch I saw people sitting or laying on the floor. We did the same in Sam’s. He said they sleep in different rooms depending on how they feel. Sometimes it’s the bedroom, sometimes the back porch, sometimes a little loft in the “attic” (the space above the hallway). Most families have their kitchen and toilet in the back of the house and they throw all their natural waste onto the beach for the high tide to reclaim. He said the waste would feed “the animals,” meaning crabs and fish.

At one point in the evening Ali, a very nice Brit who arrived at the same time, suggested we turn on some music, but I noticed that nobody else in the town was listening to music. We could hear everything along the shore – all the motors, dishes and discussions. No music. In fact, Sam said that the villagers prefer to listen to the waves rolling under their porches and the wind stroking their metal roofs.

Just then, though, bass started booming from a couple doors down. On my walk to the store I found the culprits: a group of Westerners, who were renting the house, played music without noticing they were the only ones doing it. I later asked Sam about the religious makeup of this little fishing village. The main town is Chinese (slash Buddhist), and this half is Muslim, but in a few years it will be Protestant.
“Why Protestant?” I asked.
“Because Westerners are buying up all the houses: the five at this end of the street have already been sold.”
“What will happen to the Muslims?”
“They’re moving into the hills.”

Krabi also has a fairly large night market in relation to its size, which was right across the street from our hotel, so each night we would go and get some cheap treats, banana pancakes, fresh squeezed juices, fried dough pieces with coconut jam and of course phad thai. On our third night, we heard loud music playing outside our room and went out to find an enormous weekend night market. It had a stage and many clothing stalls in addition to the food vendors, so we walked around to look at everything before we sat down to eat. There were more options at the weekend market, so we got papaya salad and stir fried vegetables. Also, there were cute outdoor bars that served fruity cocktails by the glass or jug. A jug cost 99 baht, or $3. A great deal if you are ever in Krabi on Fri-Sun.

The whole ‘having a driver’ business is new to us: Mul didn’t even mention Alex, sitting behind the wheel, when they picked us up at the airport. After a while we understood that it’s normal to ignore the drivers, maids, nannies and cooks, to talk as if the person that’s there is not there. When we went for a drive, Mul said it would be just the four of us – him and Michelle, me and Azure. Alex drove us.

On that first day in Jakarta, Azure needed a dress for New Year’s but the mall’s parking lot attendant didn’t like that our car was trying to force its way in through the service entrance. Mul can handle any problem, though, and he ignored the workers’ NOs and used the service entrance anyway. Another time he told us it was illegal to drive in the bus lanes, people got in big trouble for it, then he did it anyway. We asked what would happen if he got pulled over and he said nothing would happen: he knows the police chief. He said that success in third-world countries is determined by who you know.

Mul runs a number of businesses, his main income coming from cell phone products. In addition to running phone auctions, he sells ringtones and wallpaper, so he’s constantly using his two phones – one was a really nice Blackberry. They had an extra phone for us, which was really convenient, and Michelle had two phones as well. So many phones!

One time Mul was on the phone as he drove us through the gates of his complex. His maid was waiting farther ahead at the curb and he waved her across to the driver’s side of the road. She hesitated to cross in front of his moving car, but he waved insistently, so she went, assuming he’d stop. He didn’t, and he almost ran her over, still talking on his phone. She handed him whatever we were there to pick up, and as soon as it was in his hand he pulled away and almost ran her over again. She had to jump back. I don’t know if he saw her.

Mul and Michelle were very generous, taking us out to some very nice meals we wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. The first night we had a Korean BBQ dinner that he said cost $400 – the meat was amazing and the service spectacular. The next day we went to a hole-in-the-wall noodle joint that he said cost $40 for the five of us. He said it was too expensive, and I agree considering you can find noodle dishes everywhere for $0.50. These noodles were very good, and Mul again generously paid. Sometimes the kids came with us and had their own simple food – Azure noted that Sebastien, the youngest, craved the same thing kids in the US crave: fish sticks and french fries.

When the kids got loud or fussy Mul & Michelle would pass them off to one of the nannies who would take the kids away to eat. Though it’s certainly foreign to us, my impression was that the kids’ needs were being met all the time. At restaurants the nannies sat at a different table and ate food brought from home. A number of nannies sat in the lobbies, all dressed in similar ill-fitting pastels made for dirty work, taking care of kids for the busy parents inside. When we tried to talk to one of the nannies they were surprised and usually didn’t answer. They were the background.

The kids’ nannies live at Mul’s apartment and spend all their time with the family, on call 24 hours. I asked if the nannies had families themselves and he said, “Of course,” but I’m not sure how that works. The nannies eat what Mul buys for them. In-home helpers are cheap because Mul provides a room for them to stay. He said a nanny costs $80 a month.

Mul said his bar tabs sometimes reach $1400 on a big night, but that’s the price of playing the game among the Jakarta elite. “It’s who you know,” he says, and Mul knows a lot of people. On drives Mul would point out the latest immense real estate developments and he would drop for us the owners’ names. More often than not, Mul knew the owner and had done business with him or was somehow related. Mul instructed his driver to take us past the mall with the most cell phone sales in Southeast Asia.

Mul is really excited about getting into the mining business. Mul knows which companies are successful and why. He’s ambitious, quoting a Chinese proverb that says, “Above every sky there is another sky.” He said everyone cares what brand of clothing you wear, what cell phone you use, what cars you have, what neighborhood you live in. Mul rolls with the high rollers, everyone he hangs out with is someone important. In Jakarta, they practically worship successful companies and brands.

Mul said his family is Christian. They are Chinese-Indonesians and retain strong Chinese traditions, living in the city’s “second Chinatown,” the most exclusive gated community in Jakarta. The stunning houses soar, standing testament to the community’s business success. Apparently, in 1998, Jakarta’s Muslim majority rioted because they believed the Chinese-Indonesians controlled all the wealth and withheld it from the rest of the country. Mul retorted that there are poor Chinese-Indonesians, too. He said, for example, that their driver is half-Chinese, and he only makes $150 a month.

Mul put us up in the brand-spanking-new, $130-per-night Bandung Hilton. The pure white sheets attracted me, they were so clean and luxurious. Azure and I never stay in hotels like the Hilton. Mul obviously appreciates the luxury, service and respected brand name. While rain rolled off the floor-to-ceiling self-cleaning windows, we watched the Rose Bowl on a flat-screen tv and I took a very hot shower. The next morning featured the most extensive breakfast buffet I’ve ever seen, broken up by cuisine. Az and I eagerly sacked the American section’s eggs, waffles, cereal and toast. The Chinese section had noodle soups, hum bao and other stuff I didn’t recognize. There was Indonesian, Japanese and even an ice cream bar for kids of all colors.

We ran into Michelle’s family at breakfast. They’re very genuine people – her dad develops organic fertilizer and is lobbying the government to endorse its use. Her cousin is helping. This was encouraging to hear.

Mul and Michelle skipped breakfast because the maids dropped off their kids and they’d played late into the night, the maids returning to their own hotel across the street. I imagine that hotel is filled with the maids for families staying in the Hilton, all dressed in ill-fitting pastels. The kids seemed tuckered out the next morning, and the maids accompanied them with their grandparents while the five of us toured Bandung with Mul’s friend.

We had a wonderful Sundanese (people of Bandung) lunch in a stunning, unique restaurant called the Leaf Village. We ate in outdoor huts that wandered up the misty hillside among enormous ferns and leafy trees. Azure was sick, so she layed down in the hut while the rest of us enjoyed the food without her. Afterwards, Alex drove us to a lookout where we watched the sun drop behind some nearby mountains. This part of Java is magical. I hope Az and I get a chance to tour the countryside someday.

On the next-to-last day Mul had a special treat for me – he took me to a gorgeous spa with four different pools, temperatures ranging from hot tub to icey. We relaxed in the steam room, jumped in the ice bath, then shivered to the sauna. After I brushed my teeth and shaved we got hour-long massages. Mul treated me to the whole evening and I appreciate his generosity.

The next day Az and I were on our own so we went to Pizza Hut, desperate to rebuild our stomaches with some Western food. Michelle joined us shortly after, having put her daughter down for a nap. Michelle is interested in photography but doesn’t know how to use an SLR, so we treated her to a tutorial, introducing ISO, aperture and shutter speed, and how they affect a photo. She seemed to appreciate the instruction, I hope it could start to pay back their generosity.

Mul showed up and we finally said our goodbyes. They were off to a surprise party, so they had their driver take us to the airport. On the way I tried to ask him some questions, remembering a conversation we’d had with a taxi driver in Bali, but it didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think he felt comfortable talking freely with his passenger.

I went for it, belting out words far outside my range: I set my voicebox free, unrestrained by keys or tones. And though my timing was good I wouldn’t blame anyone for failing to recognize the song. It was horrible-good, I was smiling, and I proved I could shed self-consciousness to fit in with the new group. Even dancers in the club down the hall probably wondered who was this singer with so much misplaced confidence. That’s what it takes, I thought – show them you can be loose and play.

I put the microphone down. I looked around the table but nobody would make eye contact with me, people were kinda quiet. Instead of applauding, some stood to get a drink while others had already left the room during the song. Azure’s face was in her hands. “What the hell?” I thought.

The following performers ranged from good to spectacular, Mul leading the way with a soft, skilled voice that I didn’t even notice because I thought it came from the karaoke track. Other guys sang well, too, and the women were impressive. The highlight of the night came from a Chinese woman whose performance was so captivating that it snapped me right out of the slog of pretending to enjoy myself. Her style was completely un-Western, a high-pitched, nasally song that might be folk Chinese, performed with the kind of talent that deserved a nationally televised concert on a patriotic holiday. It was like her voice was stretching glass. Friends applauded and cheered. I had totally misjudged the values of this group, a social strategy that’s quickly becoming my signature.

Mul leaned over to me, “She was Miss China a couple years ago.” What?

From the second Mul’s driver opened the door for us, this whole night – our first in Jakarta – would surprise us. Miss China was married to the guy who handed me the microphone, an oil company founder and the Secretary of State’s son. The guy on the other side of Mul was head of Citibank Indonesia. Mul himself is related to, among others, a former head of Lehman Brothers who now leads Barclays Japan. Mul’s uncle owns a distribution company in Indonesia with 60,000 stores, something akin to 7-11, and the uncle’s other company produces 70% of the products available in those stores. Another friend owns Forever 21 and someone else is head of the largest mobile phone service provider in Indonesia, a country with 200,000,000 people, fourth most populous in the world (after China, India and the US). Some guy’s dad is running for Governor of Seoul, South Korea. Another guy has a $50 million credit at a casino in Macau.

The numbers he threw out were staggering. The most staggering, maybe, was the story about his friend’s wedding. It wasn’t the fact that 3,000 people attended, though that dropped my jaw. It was that they hired a world-famous florist to fly from LA to Jakarta to do the flowers. The price: $500,000.

Not surprisingly, I have some opinions about this that I’m going to have to let cool before pouring them on the blog. Can a blog melt? For now, I’ll just say that this was only a preview of the status-pursuit that would be put on display for us over the next five days.

We landed in Ubud to find an artsy town that had succumbed to tourism as well, though not in the dirty-grime, back-alley drinking sort of way that the affordable areas of Kuta are. Ubud has tons of touts on the main (Monkey Forest Road) drag. We followed one to a hotel and rented the scooter that would be ours for the next three weeks.

Had we not done this, I would have been on my mother’s doorstep again this Christmas. I’m sure of it. But we did rent it and the very next morning (our second morning in Bali), we rode up and away from Ubud. We took risks, turning down roads we knew went nowhere, that turned into poorly paved, or unpaved trails through the hills and the rice fields and we really never came back. We would spend hours away from everything that we would have been sitting in if we had not had the scooter. We did stay in Ubud, but we would wake up early and see what we found to be the most beautiful time. It was the time when the Balinese people were still untainted by tourism. The women went to the markets early to buy and sell produce, kids walked to school, men and working women carried their scythes in their belts and walked or biked or scooted to the rice fields. There was no one shopping in the Polo stores or eating in the cute, upscale cafes. The people who walked at this hour did so without shoes and without mixing with us at all except to wave or smile as we passed by. We didn’t change them and that felt good every time.

I know now that Colombia probably wasn’t that bad. Fred claims that Colombia is still his favorite country that he’s visited. This could be a result of it being the first of his big trip or it could be that he got away from it more than we did. I’m not sure.

Writing this next part, I know that many of the things that I will say are probably wrong, but I will write them anyway. Bali and Colombia are both what we would consider third world. The average person makes about $4/day in Bali and I would assume at least that in Colombia. Bali and Colombia were both colonized, Colombia by the Spanish and Bali by the Dutch. However, it seems obvious that the hold the Spanish had on Colombia was much stronger than that of the Dutch. There are very few traces that they ever existed on Bali at all, save for the fact that there are brick houses in some places, and one building in Munduk appeared to be slightly European looking. Other than that, the hold the Dutch had on Bali outside of the main city, Denpasar is non-existent.

I see this island more like Corsica than I do like other colonized places. It still holds its own values and traditions despite the populations that have held it, including Indonesia. It is Bali.

The people here seem happier than they did in Colombia. They wave and smile as if we are a funny novelty riding through their towns, which we are. They are very peaceful. At no time have we felt at risk here, not even when we took 20 wrong turns and ended up in towns without electricity or running water. Violence does not appear to be in the blood of the Balinese, not with animals, not with children, not with us. There aren’t guns here like there are in America and it feels safer because of that. Also, no drugs.

Whereas I was very angry that the Colombians didn’t take care of their people or grow enough food to support the population, the Balinese do. Not with health care (it is very similar to the USA in that respect), but within communities it seems like they make do. There is an abundance of food growing here and people work with and in it all the time. They eat.

The frustrations that I had with Bali were the social level issues that I would probably have with most 3rd world countries. They are the ones that I expressed in my post about Iluh. Why can’t people create work, why is the education so lacking. Why don’t they figure out how to rise above 3rd world status and charge what they are worth?

I know these are entitled thoughts. I can’t help it. Lately I have thought to myself as the 13 year old girl hands me my rice and gives me $.20 in change, KEEP IT! This rice is worth more to me than what you are charging. But, those are the things that I find so endearing about it. Most people are so honest. When we got off the tourist path, we would pay $2.00 for both of us for dinner. We saw everyone else paying the same.

Breakfast was the most depressing meal of the day. We ate at the hotel because it was free and who are we to pass that up. It was depressing in the same way a retirement home is depressing. Not that everyone there is old, but we were slow. The Bali around us was colorful, fast and dirty and so unlike us, sitting, sipping tea and talking about what we’d do that day — sit at the pool or go to the safari park. We wanted to get out and get going as fast as we possibly could.

Sometimes when we came back from the market we’d do a jalan jalan (tour) through town. It was sort of a victory lap through the main streets of Ubud to look at the people sitting in restaurants eating and drinking and not ever knowing what Bali looked like. They sat in colorfully lit open air restaurants that we were suckers for in real life, but couldn’t seem to stomach when they charged the equivelant of 5 days wages for the wait staff for one meal. We could never resolve our feelings about such extravagence. We’d been to a restaurant for dinner three times. The first two nights we were in Bali, we ate out, not knowing where else to go. The third and final time we ate out was on Christmas. Restaurants aren’t real here, MAYBE in Denpasar, which is a legitimate city, but not in the rest of Bali. If you see one, it is for tourists or tour buses to stop. Once for lunch we drove for about 2 hours our into the rice fields. To our joy, we found a cute roadside joint. The menu was in English and the prices were high. “Do tourist buses stop here?” Mike asked. “Yes, of course,” the girl said. We ate there anyway because we were really hungry, but we didn’t stop anywhere again. We spent that lunch talking to her about how Balinese men were “playboys.” It was one of maybe 300 words she knew in English and I found that funny.

Instead of restaurants, they have food stalls and push carts. Sometimes they will have mini restaurants on the backs of scooters that stop to sell small plastic bags of homemade snacks to workers in the fields. This is where people eat, if not at home.

The Balinese live out in public in ways that we don’t. Whereas PDAs are not ever seen here, it is not uncommon to see naked people bathing in the river at sunset or washing their clothes in front of their houses in the mornings. You see people eating in the foodstalls, with their hands (this is traditionally how it is done, Aviva showed us how before we left). You can see people napping in the roadside stands that are really covered huts with platforms. These things made me uncomfortable at first. I was taken back by the privacy that I was invading each time I saw someone doing something that we do behind closed doors at home, but eventually I realized they didn’t mind and neither should I.

When we left for Jakarta, we were happy with our time spent on Bali. We couldn’t say that we ever went to the beach. I never went in the waves or got a tan, but we were satisfied with what we had leaned of Bali. We got to see people who worked hard, long hours and who worked with their families. They worked together to make their lives function and I really felt that we got a back-end view of Bali. I thought we understood what it would be like to be from Indonesia.

When we got to Jakarta everything changed.

There are bugs in the room, and this evening I came home to the nastiest spider I’ve ever seen, relaxing next to our lightswitch with an air of entitlement. It’s definitely not the paradise Lonely Planet promised, but I reminded Azure, half-encouraging myself, that if we could overcome our dependence on nice rooms we would save a lot of money (and therefore travel longer). She reminded me that nobody at home would consider any of our rooms “nice,” and we do save a lot of money because of it. Oh yeah. Azure wrote a hilarious post about the hotel here: http://www.quarteryear.com/us-vs-bugs

Right now, at 8pm, prayers are echoing in our room from two separate mosques, one voice from the east, one from the west. It’s beautiful, if haunting, and it’s a little bizarre that one muezzin is a child. This area does feel different than other parts of Bali. The young men leer more. Hindu locals have told us that this is what Muslim areas are like. I’m sure Muslim locals would say the opposite. I don’t know the religion of the young men, but, compared to the rest of Bali, Medewi is much less welcoming.

Two miles past Medewi beach we rode toward the water. Groups of young men perched on their motorcycles hanging out next to the ocean beaches, tons of men. There were some women here and there, but mostly just young men staring at us, calling out, “HEY! HEY MAN!” I don’t like when people yell at us. When we first encountered this in Kuta I wanted to ask the touts, “How would you feel if someone yelled, ‘HEY!’ at you?” Maybe not that bad, it turns out. At a homestay in Ubud the owners did exactly that to get a family member’s attention, yelling down to the courtyard, “HEY! HEY! HEY!” It really rubs me the wrong way, but that’s how they do it. A nasty old woman there was responsible for both the yelling and the loogie-haucking outside our window, several times a day.

Back in Medewi, to the west along the shore, a series of pens at the edge of the beach hold cows who graze the trees and grasses. Across the road rice paddies sprawl under the most plastic bag scarecrows I’ve seen anywhere in Bali. The bags are tied to strings that run across the mature rice, and when a farmer notices birds eying his field he yanks the strings and the bags jump. If that fails, a lady standing in the field yells and swings a large flag toward the flocks. From here a number of Hindu shrines dot a village road that lead us inland. We stopped to watch two cocks start a pickup fight.

We crossed the main road and drove toward the mountains, an hour before sunset, surprised that the small towns here aren’t as poor as we expected. The brick houses are well-constructed and the neighborhoods are cute and clean, even deep into the hills that roll down from the national park. The road pierces the jungle for miles and just when we were convinced it would cross to the opposite coast, it petered out to gravel. We turned around.

High in the hills we ran into a mobile vendor who sold us some tasty fried tofu snacks wrapped around beansprouts. The people were nice, most smiled at us, as is usual outside the cities. We were so deep I’m sure no other white people had been up that road any time recently, and the people who didn’t smile at us gawked in surprise. One side of the road teased glimpses across a valley that’s raw and thick with coconut palms and primary growth, jungle toppling onto itself. I wanted to take a picture of the natural beauty, but it would have been a picture that demands a pre-delete button, Azure and I joke. You know your next picture will be a throwaway, so you press “pre-delete,” then take it anyway.

We coasted down the hill and stopped at a grocery store for some carb snacks – chocolate bread, jackfruit chips and peanuts. At a gas station Azure offered a chip to the driver behind us, and he happily took her up on it. Everyone lol’ed.

We stopped at some food stalls and ordered bakso (soup with balls of “meat”), though after watching a lady make an egg-filled, veggie-rich soto ayam (chicken soup) we second-guessed our decision. The bakso held its own anyway. While deciding where to sit we did the usual smile-at-people routine, and one little boy called, “Tourist! Tourist!” but his mom shut him up quick. It reminded me of something that happened regularly when I said something stupid as a kid. Specifically I remember the Canadian Exchange – a yearly event when players from a Canadian soccer team stayed with families from our American team, then a couple weeks later the roles reversed. I welcomed the Canadian kid to our home, saying, “Welcome to the lifestyles of people on Somerset!” imitating Robin Leech. My mom shut me up quick, even though it was just silly in my mind, because of course we weren’t rich & famous. It was just another house, to me. Maybe we were rich compared to that kid, though, I don’t remember.

One of the years I stayed with a Vancouver family who lived in an apartment. They ate french fries with gravy and had a toddler daughter named Sidney – I felt sorry that she’d grow up in an apartment. I called my parents collect (they were proud that I could pull that off), but I was homesick and scared because the family was unexpectedly different. I don’t know if I felt sorry for them or uncomfortable about being outside my bubble – probably a combination – but I remember crying.

Today, in Bali, as we drove through some of the poorer neighborhoods and watched the pickup cock fight, I thought about how last year we passed similar Colombian poverty and felt sick from a distance. This year we’re in it, on a bike of course, but we face the differences and keep pushing ourselves to understand it. As we went deeper and deeper into the mountains I started feeling nervous. I glanced at the gas, we had plenty, so I had to ask myself, “You’re not nervous about the scooter; do you trust the people?”

On this trip I’ve come to the conclusion that fear is not a good reason to not do something. Fear is an emotional response to perceived risk, and our perceptions are so often wrong.

Back at the food stalls Azure ordered a delicious pancake thing heavy with chocolate, peanuts and condensed milk, and the cook battled flying ants as dusk dropped to night. We drove home through a storm of flying ants, they were all over the road, maybe attracted by the headlights. They floated thick like Seattle’s cottonwood blooms in truck headlights, then rolled like dry leaves as the trucks passed. As we crossed the bridge into Medewi two swarms of larger bugs pelted my neck and chest, at first I thought it was gravel. It was disgusting. As soon as we got home, and I snuck past the enormous spider, I washed my face and hands. Not much you can do about that.

The fact that the woman working at the hotel came down in price without us even asking for it should have been a sign. We put down our stuff and I went in to wash my face and arms from the exhaust. I was greeted immediately by an inch long creature coming out of the drain. All 20 or his legs were kicking and I screamed. Mike didn’t respond, he just laid on the bed. There were other, less offensive creatures in there as well and I picked up the shower head and mercilessly washed them all down the drain. I showered, closed the bathroom door tightly and took a nap.

We didn’t spend much time looking around the room in the daylight. We hadn’t thought about it then because we were so tired. When we woke up, we went for a long ride and when we got back it was dark. I went to switch on the porch light, so I could get my key in the door. I unlocked it and went in. Mike waited to tell me that there was a spider outside, not one foot from there my hand had flipped the switch. “Where?” I asked. He pointed. “Oh my god!” The spider was literally the size of my hand. And it was fast. We spent the next ten minutes trying to get it away from the door, trying to scare it away, but not have it attack us. Mike went to look at another room. I thought about the spider jumping onto my face.

It wasn’t any better, so we decided to stay. There was only one light in the room. It was the one above the fan. The other bulbs had been taken out and since Bali has made an attempt to use only energy saving bulbs, it was harsh, almost neon. It was hot in the room, so turning off the fan was not an option and the light flicked all night with the fan. The room felt not unlike a prison cell.

The bed was up against the wall and there were burn marks from the outlet that stained the wall and the sheets next to the outlet. We pulled the bed away from the wall, cautious not to look too closely at what was behind it. We laid down on the bed, clothes on. The light flicked. Flick, flick, flick, flick, flick. I looked down at the floor. A few big ants were running around. I killed them with my shoe. I looked over at the dresser and noticed two spider nests clinging to the underside of a small ledge. “They probably won’t hatch tonight,” Mike said. I was not willing to take that chance, so I took a piece of paper and scraped one off. A mama spider jumped out and I yelped and jumped back. I killed her with my shoe and then made Mike do the other one. My nerves couldn’t handle it.

I laid back down and stared at the ceiling for a while before I watched the littler ants rush in to clean up the remains from where I had killed the bigger ants and knew there was nothing I could do. I zipped up our bag and rolled the sheets around me tightly. It was 80 degrees in the room, but full clothes it had to be.

The next morning, we had our free breakfast on the porch. Our door was open and I could see two more nests in the door jam, mama spiders nervously pacing back and forth in the transparent cocoons. Beneath the door was an ant nest. It was inside our room. “Did you see that?” I asked, pointing to the ants. “Mmmmhmmm,” he said.

“I hope they don’t expect that we’ll stay here,” I said.
“I think they got the picture when they heard all the screaming last night.”

Mike would later tell me that if I had asked to pack up and drive back in the middle of the night, he would have gladly done it. The bugs won.

Nasi Campur

Nasi Campur stand

Then we go over to the Ice stand. I get the Es Buah (ice fruit) and Mike gets the Es Apokat (ice avocado). This consists of cut up pieces of whatever you ordered with shaved ice and condensed milk on top. Once you have eaten the fruit and ice, you drink the sweet milk until the bowl is completely dry. It might be my favorite desert, especially when my mouth is burning from the sambal. ($.30 each)

Es Buah

Es Apokat

We could be done after that, and most nights we are. Some nights I like to go to the sticky rice stall and get some sweet rice for the morning. It makes a good supplement to whatever free breakfast we get from the hotel. Before we found out about the Es Buah, I used to get the rice treats for desert. There are all sorts of rice products and some tapioca pieces at the stand too. When you have made your choices, they sprinkle shaved coconut and chocolate on your selection. ($.20)

Waiting for the rice treats

Adding the final chocolate.
Sometimes Mike wants a Bakso (meatball soup) or Soto Ayem (chicken soup) after dinner. I don’t think he needs this, but he says he does, so we’ll sit down and he’ll load it up with too much sambal and start sweating. He doesn’t think a meal is complete if his mouth isn’t burning afterward. They put cabbage and rice noodles in the bottom, then pour in the broth, top it with chicken and egg. The sauces are on the table to make it as spicy or sweet as you like it. ($.50)

Round 2 at the Nasi Campur stand

Things you can expect from the Gianyar market and others like it.

1. People will serve the food with their hands. They will not use a single utensil to transfer it from its bowl to your plate.

2. There will be flies and other bugs around. They will be on the food. This is unavoidable.

3. At no point will the food have been refrigerated during its journey to your mouth, including meat.

4. There will be dogs and kids running around.

5. The food will be authentic. It will be spicy and delicious.

6. You will know #5 is true because you will be the only white person there. On only one occasion did we see another white couple. They were with a guide and they did not eat any of the food, not even the es buah!

Years ago, Ari’s uncle converted from Hinduism to Christianity in an effort to become a better person. I don’t necessarily think Christianity’s values are any better than those of Hinduism, but Hinduism is the religious norm of Bali. Religious conversion would be a monumental, conspicuous declaration, a tangible reminder to himself that being good is a decision. I’m familiar with the strategy of rejecting cultural norms to feel I’m living intentionally, I noted, as Christmas approached in the US. I even got a tattoo to remind me.

Maybe I’m projecting. Ari’s uncle converted, then he was miraculously cured of some sickness in his leg, then he really let the faith rush in. He never brought up relgion, though, except when I asked.

Uncle swims farther against the tide in practicing organic farming on his clove farm. His pesticide consists of tobacco leaves burned under the tree to smoke out the insects. He uses natural sulfur to fight fungus on the roots. He sources his organic compost from the town’s restaurants & food stalls. Before the shift to organics, the chemical fertilizer stripped the soil of important components, and his clove trees hung sick until he tried the compost. He’s the only organic farmer locally. I asked if his religion and farming practices were related, but Ari said they weren’t. I think it’s too much a coincidence that the only Christian and the only organic farmer we’ve met happen to be the same person. My own conclusion is that this man thinks critically, holds himself to high standards and makes an effort to move in the direction of his principles – that’s how he’s different. I found him to be extremely thoughtful and polite.

Bapak

Bapak, a 71-year-old who looks 85, said his family split from a larger kingdom near Ubud (on Bali, crossed the mountains and established their new home in 1883. His is the seventh generation since the split, Ari’s is the eighth, the kids running around the living area comprise the ninth generation in Munduk. He emphasized that the pioneers’ names – and even those of the second and third generations – were never recorded and are forgotten.

The family has lived on this land – where we ate and talked – since the 1883 exodus. In 1965 Munduk got a road and was officially established. Ari can remember the road being bumpy and unpaved even in his lifetime. The lakeside fisherman’s village we visited, Limpah, still lacks a road. I asked if people live differently in Limpah than do people here in town. Ari didn’t understand the question at first, then he said, “no.” I suppose I asked a strange question in the first place, I’m not sure what answer I expected.

The Dutch ruled Indonesia for 300 years. During WWII a base building (like a communication hub) operated in Munduk, and Bapak remembers a Dutch soldier giving him a piece of bread when he was seven-years-old. Then the Japanese forced the Dutch out, ending the 300-year rule. The Japanese didn’t give Munduk trouble since it was so small and poor, they simply claimed all of Bali and that was it. Apparently they had a presence in Denpasar. Indonesia gained its independence when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I asked if Bapak had been frightened after the ruling powers left (would there be civil war?) but he said, “no.” Apparently Bali was pretty well-united.

We asked Bapak if he’s friends with Bapak Dewa from across the street – the coffee farmers’ grandfather. Satisfyingly, he is. They’re about the same age and I imagine they grew up together and share memories of different times. At a little temple in Ubud I met another old Bapak dressed in a nice sarong and headscarf; he asked me for money after I took his picture. Today we ate lunch with a family following a private tour of their farm, and they let us hang out and ask prying questions the entire day. They even bought us snacks. Then this evening another family cooked us dinner, and Ari translated all night while we asked prying questions of Bapak and the uncle. At no point throughout the day would anyone accept money from us, and though we spent almost nothing, it was by far the most valuable day we’ve had.

Ari has a buah-hati, a sweetheart, he knows he wants to marry, but he doesn’t want to propose until his wanderlust has run its course. He says his girlfriend has low self-esteem when it comes to simple things, so he tells her to practice confidence in the mirror. Each nuclear family is called a “kaka” and this family compound includes four kakas. When Ari marries his buah-hati they’ll start the family’s fifth kaka in the unfinished house where we ate. The house, when all is said and done, will cost about $8000 to build from foundation to roof tiles.

While Ari’s sisters cooked, their many young children ran around or stopped to stare at us as, landing in the lap of Ari’s father, a 71-year-old Bapak (the title of all older men here, and the honorific you use when addressing them directly).

Though there are no family names, Ari adopted de Madia (the French, “from,” combined with the Indonesian, “the middle”) to indicate his philosophy – he doesn’t want to be too rich, nor too poor, just hanging out doing his thing in the middle. It’s also a reference to this village being “madia” of Munduk, which refers to the wider collection of villages in the area.

Ari prepared the herbs that flavor the soup: tumeric, a strong red onion, lemongrass, garlic and candlenut (which I’ve never heard of). At one point they ground fresh sambal on a dark mortor, with the setup beforehand being a single chili, a pinch of salt and some shrimp paste reposing right in the middle of the stone platter. Just gorgeous. Then a sister ground the ingredients and added them to the soup.

When dinner was ready we walked the compound’s paths to Ari’s new construction, the shell of a house that was just finished enough to protect us from rain during the outdoor dinner. We sat on the concrete floor at a low table. There was no door, just an opening, and where there would be windows was just a frame looking out on a tree, behind which the valley extended.

Dinner started with vegetable soup that tasted just like the soup from Julia’s on 65th. There was white rice, fried potatoes and sweet chili corn fritters that stuck to our teeth. Dessert was taro cake, a gooey, sweet paste that’s topped with coconut. Ari mixed arak (palm liquor) with lime & honey, which he warned was really strong, but I found it weak compared to the drinks I mix myself at home. He poured the cocktail into shot glasses (his Japanese sake set) and we sipped them after the meal. We drank water from a bottle.

Later in the night there was a lightning storm that, through the unfinished window, lit the sky behind Ari as he spoke. I managed to catch a shot of him lighting a cigarette, face illuminated by the flame. Over thunder, Ari translated our conversation with his uncle and Bapak. It was pretty damn magical, yet another night I couldn’t have imagined had I not experienced it firsthand. It justifies traveling.

More on Ari’s uncle & bapak tomorrow.

I paused, caught off guard. Surabaya’s not that far away, maybe a half-day of travel. I thanked her and left the office. Almost anyone we ask has never left Indonesia, and most people haven’t even made it off of the island of Bali. Not only is it too expensive, but there’s little precedent for travel in the modern culture.

Ari is the only Indonesian we’ve met who has traveled abroad extensively. We met him when, sitting outside a restaurant, he started talking to us about the state of tourism in his ancestral hamlet of Munduk. This, we thought, is a forward thinker. He’s happy Munduk is getting its 15 minutes on the tourist trail, but he’s determined to make sure popularity doesn’t destroy the land that is his home, travel fad or no.

The next week, Ari invited us to his house for dinner. We learned a lot that night.

Ari works around the world on a cruise ship. The unequal pay dramatically favors Western workers, so Ari cleans the pools and does hard work and gets a fraction of what his coworkers make, just because he’s Indonesian. But he sees the world, something that’s otherwise impossible for many with his finances. He’s been to Japan, Vancouver, Amsterdam, more, and he says, “I was in Amsterdam for just two hours, but I can imagine how the people live.” He’s eager to share this understanding with any Dutch person he meets on Bali. He feels connected to them because he’s been to their hometown. We know this feeling, but it’s hard to express because people can’t conceive of their homes as the culmination of a many-thousand-mile journey.

A lot of the night we talked about the trouble of getting a visa for the US. I wasn’t really interested in this topic, except that the price of a visa is a shocking $500 per person, which I can’t imagine them spending to get in temporarily. In Vancouver he stepped off the boat to discover he couldn’t afford more than a cup of coffee. You know what he said? I find this significant: “It’s so expensive there.”

When do I say, “It’s so expensive?” I say it about Japan, England, Scandinavia. This word choice implies that Ari doesn’t think of himself as poor, he thinks of other places as expensive. Food in Indonesia is cheaper, he can go out and enjoy a night playing pool with his friends. His finances, limited in the view of Westerners, are normal to him.

If we had approached him with pity tonight it would have been harmful: pity doesn’t afford a person pride.

Ari stood in his favorite country, Japan, and looked at the streets, peaceful and clean. Nobody buzzes around, it’s calm. Ari was amazed to watch how the Japanese dealt with their trash: people carefully consider the item and put it in one of five or ten proper receptacles, each with its own purpose. On Bali the locals drop trash on the ground where they’re standing, put it in a stream or river or dump it on the road next to their store. Ari had never even known that throwing away trash was a THING until he visited Japan. It had never occurred to him that one should do this. That’s the battle he’s facing among his compatriots.

Ari recognizes trash collection as a symbol for the roadblocks to both tourism and environmental health. As it stands, you can walk into town holding a piece of trash, looking for a trash bin, and leave town holding the same piece of trash.

The problem is too big, he feels – people have to change in the head, and that’s next to impossible. His main idea, so far, is to start by “speaking to the river,” which means, I think, putting up a sign at the river asking people not to dump their trash there. It sounds like a good start.

Az and I are all gung-ho about starting programs to get people to be more responsible: We suggested that, first of all, there needs to be an opportunity to throw things away – something simple as a garbage can next to a recycle bin. So why not start there, start with making trash cans available? (It’s simple to say, but what materials do you use to make them? And who picks up all the garbage?) Apparently there is a company in Seririt (the closest large town) that recycles plastic, but it pays next to nothing for the materials, so people just dump everything in the river.

The second part of our ambitious plan was to educate children about the benefits of consuming less unnatural material and recycling or disposing properly of the rest. We told Ari that some American Wwoofers who work in the schools here might make good allies since they’re looking for projects. He hadn’t known about the Americans, but his brother had.

My brilliant idea is to put up posters that read, in English, “Bali is not beautiful.” with a picture of someone dropping a piece of trash on the ground. It would be controversial and insulting, but it would get the point across. They live on an island that everyone agrees is gorgeous, but I think it’s important to realize it’s limited beauty, and their actions have an effect on it.

Azure asked whether coming to a third-world country and preaching responsible consumption is any different than coming on a religious mission to convert heathens. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s different, it might not be. The “green” movement could be the current incarnation of ancient earth-worshiping religions. So maybe we’re no better than missionaries, trying to change someone else’s unique values because of stories we were told half a world away, cleansing the world of its diversity.

Uh, the next few posts will have better endings.

Fast forward six months. Mike and I are sitting in the courtyard of a family-run coffee farm. Mike is sitting with the men and I with the women. The 11 year old daughter is staring at me smiling. She is watching me as she has been all day, at times mimicking my actions. I can’t communicate with her. I didn’t study the language and her English is not great. But, we had bonded earlier when she and her brother had chased me around the terraced fruit farm. You don’t need language for that. At this point we were very familiar and so her staring is fine with me.

Mike on the other hand is chatting with the men. Without those Indonesian tapes we would have never stayed so long (6 hours at their house). He was able to communicate enough to hold a conversation and even though it wasn’t nearly as complex as he would have liked, it was enough to open the door.

The day had started out normally for both parties. The family greeted us warmly as they do all the tourists that walk down their driveway looking for a tour and ours, as usual, began with a misunderstanding. Mike had talked to the family the night before and asked if we could come see how chocolate was made. They said they produced it, which we had learned from Iluh the day before was rare or non-existent in the area. Obviously excited, but also knowing not to get our hopes up, we walked down the driveway ready to work. They walked us out to the terraces as Iluh had and showed us the trees and the different fruits and talked about what everything was. I wasn’t really paying attention. Mike was walking with the man of the family and they were speaking in Indonesian about the trees. Mikes Indonesian was better than the man’s English, so it was the language of choice.

I hung back with the kids. The man’s oldest child was a girl named Butuh. She was 11 and accompanied by her 6 year old brother, Made. They were both very patient for children, respecting the exchange that was happening between Mike and their father, they brought out some dried cloves to show and hung back quietly without making a scene. Not understanding what was going on between the men and not really caring much about the trees, I started watching Butuh and Made. Made would have little outbursts where he would start dancing or moving his arms. He would spontaneously climb a tree or jump around. If the kid were in the states, I have no doubt he’d be on rydalin by now. He was that kind of boy. His sister never dismissed him, though. She was as patient with him as she was with us.

This one bored me a lot (people looking at cloves)

I took out my camera and snapped a few photos. They weren’t remarkable and I was honestly kind of boring myself with what I was doing, taking pictures of trees and kids and nothing. For whatever reason, my mind started wandering as I watched the kids and I started thinking about what messages I was giving them with my actions. What was I telling them was important to me, to westerners, what was I saying about the way we acted and what we did. I had a strong urge to communicate something to them, to bridge the gap and show them that we were not so different, so I started copying them. It wasn’t in a bad way, but I just wanted to become closer to them even though I couldn‘t speak.

They would march in place, so that the mosquitoes couldn’t land on their bare legs, so I marched in place. When we would head down the makeshift terrace steps, they would run down, surefooted and stop their momentum by cutting out and running along the flat ledge until they could stop. Despite their warnings “hati hati” I implemented this practice as well. I climbed a tree, I ran around. They soon wanted me to go in front of them and would laugh out loud every time I would go fast down to the ledge below. I handed the camera to Mike and went into a dead run up the hills and along the terraces. They immediately caught on and began chasing me. My size was an advantage and a disadvantage. My legs were twice the length of theirs, so my speed was far superior. The problem was, I was too tall o go running beneath the trees with ease like they could, so I had to duck almost doubled over as I ran. I would stop for a second until they had almost caught up, then, like a trapped animal, found a new escape path and darted in the other direction. I was happy to see that they were out of breath because I was gasping for air, so we stopped and walked along with the men again.

We walked up to the house and sat down at an outdoor table. The dad asked if we wanted any coffee and we said yes. I believe this area was like a tasting room to get you to buy coffee from them, but instead we used the time to do tricks with the kids. Mike was a hit. He would put a piece of fruit in one hand or the other and the kids would guess which hand it was in. The third child had appeared, Neomin, with huge eyes and fine curly hair. The three of them would point to one hand or another. Sometimes they would all chose the same hand and other times, one would defect from the group. Whoever got it right would do a little victory dance in their chair to rub it in and then they would all scream “lagi lagi!” (again, again).

Lagi Lagi!!!

We went into the mill area to watch the chocolate beans roast in a big metal oil drum, heated by a gas burner below. They simply picked the chocolate fruit, opened it up, dried the seeds in the sun, then roasted them in the oil drum. After all the seeds had been roasted, the family sat around the courtyard and shelled them.

I sat with the women near the door of the house and Mike sat with the men under a covered open space across the courtyard from us. If I thought olive sorting was tedious, I don’t even know the word for what this was. It went SLOW. We shucked less than a gallon an hour between 8 people. The women were more serious about the work. While the men would talk and go off on tangents, getting up and down, the women powered through. Especially the oldest woman, who was the grandmother. I tried to stay on par with her, but she never took a break. Not one. Mike had mentioned that the older women never smiled and I wondered if it was because they had the hardest lives. Not only did they work their entire lives, they also didn’t have the same freedoms as the men.

Mike conversing with the men.

We were sitting on ground. The floor was made of cement and I had to hunch over to grab the chocolate beans to shuck them. The women kept offering me a small wooden stool and I kept declining. I tried to explain that since I was so big, it was hard enough to reach the ground. If I were to sit on the stool, I would have had to bend an extra 8 inches to pick up my beans.

The day pushed on and we kept up the shucking. Tedious work suits me. I find it rewarding. And, it was an activity that everyone could participate in, which I appreciated. The grandparents could shuck, the kids could shuck. Aunts and uncles shucked. It was truly a family activity, a time that everyone could get together and just be in the same space for hours and hours.

My hands started to hurt after a while. It is similar to shelling peanuts, except the pieces inside are not loose in the shell, so it makes it harder. My back ached badly, but I wanted to finish the job. People started getting up and messing around, but as long as the old grandmother continued, I continued. People came down the driveway from time to time. A French couple came on a guided tour, a brother returned from his transportation gig, a man selling snacks on a bike came down and the family bought us some bags of jackfruit and tofu treats. Butuh showed me how to eat them.

Eventually, the sun shifted and I was forced by heat to go to the men’s compound. The kids followed. The men didn’t work as consistently as we did and they eventually had all gotten up. It was just me and the three kids. My back hurt so badly that I needed to lay on my stomach to shuck. The kids did the same. The youngest started touching her toes and I copies her. I did some push-ups and yoga moves and the kids mimicked. It was like gym class, except they were laughing the whole time. I eventually looked over at the sunny spot I had abandoned and the old woman was still shucking quietly. Everyone else had left. I straightened up and got back to work.

Laying down on the job.

Eventually everyone left to go look at the new addition that the family hoped to rent out. It was just me and the old grandmother in the courtyard. I was uncomfortable and my fingers hurt so bad. That would have been fine if I knew we were making progress. I looked over at the basket and we had barely made a dent. We were maybe 20% done and we had been working for 3 hours. I finished the little pile that I had started and stood up to join the others.

I thought I was tough and that I worked hard at home, but I had met my match. There is no way that I could work like this, day after day, with so little progress, for so little reward. I thought about what I think my time is worth and how much the grandmother thought her time was worth. I wonder if she felt valued at all. Does it bother her that her hours are worth pennies. It is the only thing she has ever known, so I suppose it doesn’t. It bothered me, though. It seemed pointless.

At the end of the day, I could understand the kids. I related to the way they played with each other and with me. Butuh wants to be a teacher, Made, a pilot and the youngest one wants to be a banker. I don’t know how she got that idea, but the point is that I can understand what it is like to be a kid with a dream. I could understand the dad and mom. They were doing the best with what they had, trying to make an easier life for their family with tourism and expansion. The Grandfather liked to work. He reminded me of my father. He was out working in the fields even though he didn’t really need to be, but he had his time to talk and at times laugh.

It was the grandmother that I was stretching to understand. We only made eye contact three times all day. She kept her head down. She smiled at me once when they were asking if I would have kids someday. That was about all I got from her. I never understood anything about her except that she loved her family, perhaps sacrificed much for them. I imagine she had seen it all. I think her stories would be the most different from my own and the most shocking of the family. I wished I could have spoken with her about her life because there were no answers in her actions, she only worked.

We left on the best of terms. They gave us a papaya and a young coconut. Mike said the littlest girl cried. We had spent the whole day with the family. I had said perhaps ten words the whole day, Mike many more of course, but their presence had seeped into my life. They were familiar to me now and I liked that. When we went back to say goodbye the next morning, everyone was around. They immediately came out and were even more welcoming than the day before. They said when we come back to Bali, we should come see them with our baby (I accidentally told them I was pregnant and never corrected the error).

A clove tree dropped olive-shaped berries which would give up their oil – there is no spice in these old cloves. The oil can be used for digestion on the skin to heal wounds or, if rubbed near the eye, it will cure headaches. He broke up a leaf and rubbed it on my arm where I got the lime burn. The farmer roasts the young cloves to burn off the oil, then he chops them to use in cigarettes. People can just chew them for digestion, and of course there are the 1000 other uses for cloves. He referred to the taste as “menthol,” though I don’t know if menthol is actually from cloves.

We moved on to the coffee berries. When the coffee is young, Indonesians feed babies the meat of the berries. The mature berry meat sweetens around the bean and takes on a hint of the coffee flavor. I sucked on the meat then spit out the bean. The bean is pale beige before it’s roasted. I wanted to know whether we could chew the leaves – is it the cocaine-like stimulant? – but I never got a straight answer.

He showed us other fruits, one of which I’d never seen before. It grows at the base of a small, spiky palm that sports some nasty thorns. When the tough, thorny skin is peeled away it reveals a fruit that’s fibrous and sweet, shaped like a shallot but tasting like an apple. We also nibbled on an unripe mango (which they eat, I guess), and we had bites of this and that as we picked our way through the orchard.

Azure inspecting the product.

The farm is three hectares with about 300 coffee bushes. The bushes, which prefer hot shade, produce 200 kilo per harvest, each kilo fetching 50,000 rupiah ($5), two harvests a year. The family makes $2000 per year off their coffee bushes. Five people work (all older men) the three hectares, none of whom are family, though we did run into the farmer’s father out gardening on a terrace. I asked the father if he liked working and he said he did. High in the forest a couple men swayed from bamboo stalks, cutting down dead bamboo.

The kids chased Azure up and down the terraces. The kids loved her. I was impressed with them – they climbed trees and knew a hell of a lot about plants and Butuh, the oldest girl, was very patient with me when I couldn’t find the right Indonesian words. If I had been a kid I would have been bored to death. She was nice but a little shy, and I think intelligent. At one point we quizzed her in English – what was her favorite food, her favorite teacher, her best friend, etc – and she answered well (though, to be honest, I wonder why kids who have taken English for 6 years aren’t fluent – they should be). In the forest Azure hung the camera strap around her neck and let her take some pictures. I explained that she needed to focus the center of the view finder on the object she wanted in focus, and she managed to snap a good shot. She wasn’t thrilled with the attention, though, and handed the camera back, preferring her basked of cloves.

The kids LOVED durian – Az caught the boy kissing one in the forest, very cute. When their dad finally opened it they crowded around, mouths watering, but the boy threw it down in disgust when it proved unripe. They also grew jackfruit and mangosteen in the forest, and some fruit they said was used for nasi goreng (fried rice), but not eaten. I simply couldn’t imagine what the hell that meant, and gave up trying.

On the way back I asked about chocolate – whether people make it here, and the farmer gave an affirmative response! I was pumped. He said we could make some today, so he climbed a tree and pulled down a couple ripe fruit and opened them right in front of us. We sucked on the flesh outside the seed and again it was sweet with a subtle flavor, not really of cocoa.

Chocolate fruit! Those white things are the cocoa beans.

In the roasting room, a room lit only by natural light which would look beautiful at any hour, the farmer dumped a bucket of sun-dried cocoa beans into the roaster, an empty oil drum. They rolled over the fire for about 2 hours, I think. He then dumped them on the floor to cool for about half an hour.

Doesn’t melt in the hands.

After the beans cooled he carried the bucket to the courtyard where the family started shelling. They’d peel the outside and hopefully reveal a full bean. They dropped the shell on the pavement and the bean in a bowl. Eight people shelled in the courtyard, myself & the farmer and his grandfather on one side, then five women including Azure on the other.

The three kids sat around with us and we talked a little nonsense. I taught them some magic tricks – notably the one where you show them a coin then have them guess which hand it’s in. Instead of using a coin I used a fruit rind. The kids loved it, shouting “Lagi, Lagi!” Again, again! I also taught them the one where you make a bean “disappear” by counting 1, 2, 3! and tossing it over your shoulder on 2. It landed on my head once and the boy thought it was hilarious.

He was a ball of energy – running around and jumping on things, shouting, running after tourists who’d come halfway down the driveway. He’s already a handsome young man, I think the chicks will dig him.

Back at the roaster the farmer lead a French couple on a brief tour. While trying to figure out what to do with ourselves, I misspoke then misunderstood whether we should stay or go. We eventually decided to stay. I asked the grandmother if she was the one who cooked, but of course I mangled the meaning. I tried to ask a number of times who cooks for the family, and every time they thought we were asking for food, which they would be happy to supply. Az and I insisted that, no, we were just asking who did the cooking. Ohhhh. His wife. Every day. “But,” he insisted, “do you want to eat here?”

He asked if we eat pig and we said yes. He said the pig was butchered halal. Apparently both Hindus and Muslims practice halal, but they prefer different animals. The pig was actually very tasty, served in small bites on bones. With it he served an excellent homemade sambal and not-bad vegetables. We fully expected a sit-down meal with the whole family, or maybe just the kids & men, or at least the farmer, but instead they placed us in a small room with the dishes, alone. We ate hurriedly because we weren’t interested in sitting alone while the family worked outside. The farmer briefly ate with us, then he jumped up to attend to something. He didn’t sit with us, though, he sat in a separate chair. He cooked the whole meal, making the pig Balinese style, with jackfruit, somehow. Lawar, I think.

Outside we continued shelling beans, I joined the men and Az joined the women. The sun came out strong and we moved under cover into the shade. Later it started raining, the weather changing easily. I gathered most of my information about the family at this point – they lived here for 70 years, the farmer and Made were married 12 years ago (the official start of their family and the age of the oldest girl). Bapak Dewa was 69 but he looked older. I asked how many people lived in that little compound and never got a straight answer. He said five lived there, but many more than that came and went. I wonder if “people” discounts children and the elderly, which might put the actual number closer to 18.

Grandpa spoke the best English of anyone there, save his older son who briefly stopped in. I tried to ask whether Americans landed in Indonesia during WWII, but he didn’t understand. He was a learner – he pulled out his ragged English-Indonesian dictionary and often leafed through it to find a word. He showed genuine intereste in us, in learning from us. I told him that we love to learn on trips – language, work, people. He seemed happy to hear this. I asked how long it had been since he’d learned English and he said he learned it in school over 50 years ago. I was amazed that he spoke the best English considering that everyone else attended school more recently than he.

They asked whether Azure and I were married, of course, and they expressed concern that we had been “married” eight years without conceiving a child. Azure let slip that, yes, we’re expecting a child, and the kids got excited. Of course we’re not, but you can only be asked so many times before you start lying. At 30, Azure would already be starting late for an Indonesian. They showed surprise that I only have one sister and Azure doesn’t have any siblings. This kind of loneliness isn’t part of their world, it’s probably seen as a sickness.

I explained that I’m Jewish and Azure is Christian, but it’s not a big deal in the US. The kids loved Azure, and at a number of points the kids mimicked what she was doing. She laid on her stomach because her back hurt and the kids all laid on their stomachs. She did pushups and they tried to do pushups. She got into downward dog and they followed. It was really cute.

The time shelling cocoa is absolutely no different than the time we spend sorting olives. It’s time spent on a mindless task, socializing. I wonder how many hours people spend every day, around the world, sorting or shelling things by hand and talking. That we don’t have anything like that seems to be a loss – relationships are established and strengthened there.

Shelling.

According to Bapak, this shelling procedure was “experimental,” but here’s the process: They harvest the fruit and open it up to take out the large seeds. They dry the cocoa beans in the sun, then put them in the roaster for two hours, and let them cool 30 minutes. After that the family shells them in the courtyard. They take the shelled beans and put them in a mill to be crushed by pestle. At that point the beans should be a powder, but they were too oily, so they wrapped the beans in newspaper and pressed out the oil. This batch was a little less oily, but not quite a powder yet. I’m not sure what they did next, maybe they ended the experiment. Apparently they ship the finished powder to Java, so they don’t even make the chocolate in Bali, as promised. I was duped.

Yeah, that’s LeBron.

A man came by selling eggrolls (lumpia) while we were shelling. The young boy bought me a bag and showed me how to open it with my teeth, then how to access the sauce with my teeth, then pour the sauce on the eggroll and savor. Take a bite of the provided fresh chili in between bites of eggroll. They also bought us jackfruit and a popsicle.

We spent some time showing each other tricks. I did the sewing-my-fingers-together trick. The boy tore a piece of paper and pulled it with an invisible string. I showed them how to remove your thumb (which they loved) and I crossed my eyes and moved them independently. The farmer whistled by blowing into his cupped hands, and I’m still working on it. I whistled through my teeth, which Made matched in both pitch and volume. We said we could communicate in the forest, if need be. I wanted to show them that I had double-jointed hips but decided it might be inappropriate.

At one point Made went running after a couple who wandered down the driveway. He shouted, “You like coffee? Production?” The tourists didn’t respond, so his dad told him to shout, “Transport?” This unsolicited solicitation rubbed me the wrong way. I explained to him that it’s more polite to address a wandering tourist with, “Can I help you?” He repeated, “I can help you?” and “Do you need help?” but Az and I reiterated, “Can I help you?” in exactly that order. He made a note of it and I told him that Made should learn the phrase.

The rest of the time we helped them make their business Westerner-friendly. I asked how many tourists came and he said about seven groups per day, which I imagine was an exaggeration. Azure and I would never have known they made coffee here unless Fred had told us. Even then, when we walked down the driveway we would be welcomed or an annoyance. A roadside sign explains that they make coffee, but it’s in Indonesian. I promised I could double or triple the groups of tourists, and here’s how: “Family-Run Coffee Farm, Tourists Welcome.” Simple, informative, inviting without being sell-out pushy. I wrote it on a piece of paper.

After hearing my promise of increased traffic he walked to the road, took down the sign and painted it white. It was drying when we left.

Seeing the value of having his target market right here, giving free advice, he started asking us about the room they rented out. I went to investigate. It was an alright room, but not that great, and certainly not worth the 300,000 ($30) they were asking for when we could stay up the road at Munduk Sari, with a spectacular view and immaculate rooms, for 220,000. They even imagined renting out both bedrooms for 600,000 total, which would never happen. Azure wanted to consult them about the price, but I insisted that we let them learn their own lessons and not talk about money. We wouldn’t want someone telling us how much or little to charge for our business. We investigated the bathroom: there should be two rolls of toilet paper at all times and a bathmat, but otherwise fine. The kitchen: first, advertise the kitchen. Many tourists would love a kitchen but don’t have access. Add a permanent stove top (which they were planning to do), cutlery and a mini fridge (which they were planning to do). Otherwise great. In the bedrooms I had to advise him: those air holes above the door are where mosquitoes come in, at least in paranoid minds. Westerners are afraid of malaria, and if I saw that I would decide not to stay here. Either put a screen over those holes or put a mosquito net over the beds. Otherwise great.

The last thing was something I repeated again and again. I hope they understood how serious I was. I said carefully, “If you have internet or wifi, many people will come here. The only internet in all of Munduk is at an expensive hotel, and it’s not wifi. Americans and Europeans might spend two or three hours a day on the internet at home, so when they come here they want to use it. Azure and I drive to Lovina (one hour away) just to use it. Get the internet. You buy it and the tourists will pay for it.” I said it to Bapak, I said it to the Mom, I said it to the Dad. Get the internet, you will be able to charge much more.

Afterward, Az was saying how it’s kinda like someone telling us, “No, you have to have transportation to the moon. Our people go to the moon, you need to get it because it’s important to us.” Trying to figure out how we could better get the point across, she said we could blow their minds by taking them to an internet cafe and showing them video chat. Yep.

We ended the day by ordering a young coconut (Iluh explained to us that nobody sells coconuts because everyone already has trees in their yards) which Made delivered via a tricycle with a boxed-in wagon in tow. He got off his bike, opened the side of the box and pulled out the coconut with hilarious ease. We all laughed, just like in a book.

Dad accessed the coconut water, which Az and I drank from cups. Then we ordered a papaya for the road. The disappeared for a while so we assumed it was time to go. Made got upset, saying, “Aren’t you going to eat papaya with us??” and we said, “No, we’re eating at the hotel tonight,” thinking he was inviting us for dinner. As we approached to say goodbye, Dad walked out with a plate of sugar-covered papaya cubes. Of course we sat down and finished it with the kids, then we really, seriously excused ourselves. I asked Mom (who runs the business) how much to pay for the coconut, papaya and farm tour, but she refused to accept money. On the one hand this was a generous gesture because of course she could have charged us. But on the other hand we had just helped them shell chocolate for a couple hours then provided some pretty valuable hotel consultation. I would have been surprised if she’d charged us.

Eating some local chocolate would have been great, but apparently they don’t make any fucking chocolate here, for real. So I’ll have to wait on that. We took some incredibly beautiful pictures today, confirming the adage that the best photos come after the stories.

The girl working there was named Iluh and Mike met her yesterday while I was buying water. He was asking about chocolate to anyone who would listen and she had told him that her friend was a chocolate grower. Thinking that we could go see how chocolate was made, Mike set up a meeting with her for the following day (today).

We met her at 1pm and she closed down the “tourist information office” to take us. There was no formality to this, she just closed the door and locked up shop and walked us to the trail. I don’t know what her motivation was, since it was not a paid tour, but we think it has something to do with the Bali Childrens Project, and organization that I believe sponsors the office and tries to get donations to put Balinese children through high school. We learned the it costs $40/month to put one child through high school. She had been sponsored/adopted by a woman named Joyce who is from California who is the director of the project.

I think she also wanted to practice her English, so I asked many, many questions. Here’s what I can remember…

The difference for a child who goes to school vs. one who does not go to high school is that the one who doesn’t go will work in the fields. Those people make 30,000/day ($3) and cannot find work everyday…maybe one week a month she said. The children who go to school can work in tourism like she does. At a hotel or something like that.

I asked if there are any other jobs, not tourism and not farming and she said not really. I was going to ask more but we got distracted by something.

I asked what she went to school for. She said English and computers. Computers being word, excel, the internet. I had forgotten that those things were learned and not intrinsic. I take that for granted.

I asked her if she still studied English and she said no, that that would cost more money and then I said she could learn from books and she giggled and said she guessed she could.

I asked what she talked about with her friends when they hung out. She said she didn’t hang out with friends because she worked in the office from 8:30-4:30 then went to work for another foundation called “HELP”.

She had been “adopted” by Joyce and John, but only lived with them for one month of the year when they were in Bali. Her mother had died a long time ago and her real father was very poor. She had not lived with him in a few years and didn’t see him very often, which she was sad about. Another man she referred to as her father as well, but called him Bapak. He was the director of the foundation and spoke English well. I think she and her sister had lived with him and she still lived with him when she was not living with Joyce and John. I think it was a “normal” situation.

As we walked along the path, she would stop and point out various plants and trees. It was very informative. At one point when we had been walking for about 45 minutes, Mike asked if the chocolate plantation was down in the valley where we were going. She said no, that we had passed it. Where are we going then? To see the waterfall. We weren’t really aware of this and so we asked about the chocolate production and she said that people dried it here, but did not make chocolate with it.

We stopped at the waterfall. It was very beautiful, maybe 120 feet high. It was thin and the mist was very refreshing.

We asked why they didn’t make it here and she said because no one knew how. They make it on Java and I asked why they didn’t send one person to go learn how to make it and then bring the information back and make it here. She laughed at that. Actually laughed. She thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. We had a very one sided (Mike and I) conversation about possibilities and she really did not seem to comprehend the need for any of that. We explained that we were being very American, but we asked her if people create new jobs here. She said no. People are either farmers or in tourism or sometimes work in shops.

It was difficult to ask all the things I wanted because of the language AND cultural barrier.

When she talked about low wages for farmers, I thought about labor unions.

When she explained the two career paths I thought about all the industries that are absent from Bali. I thought about marketing, I thought about investments (though they do have very primitive investment schemes, her organization gives baby pigs to poor families. Seven months later, that family must pay the organization $70 for the baby pig, but the grown pig can be sold for more. The family makes money by raising a pig)
I thought about invention fairs for children and groups who come up with new services for the communities. Trash collection does not exist here and so the streets are full of litter.

It is very very simple here. People work 7 days a week. All day. They will work for almost nothing and cannot even survive on their wages. And innovation is almost non-existent here. In fact, I get the impression that people who step outside the box are laughed at. There is a sense that if one thing works, others should do the same thing because it obviously works, so when you drive down the road it is mango stand mango stand mango stand for about a mile, then grape stand grape stand grape stand for another mile. One woman will sit and sell the same fruit as the woman next to her for hours a day. I think the competition here kills profit and hurts everyone, but how do you even start explaining what that means. In town it is the same thing. Every store carries the same things, every restaurant, the same foods. It is a funny novelty for us, but I can see it is not helping the people rise above anything.

I asked if she had been outside Bali. She said she had been to Java, but not all the way to Jakarta. She said that she would like to travel someday and California is where she would like to go. She asked me what the difference was between California and Bali. I couldn’t even answer that question. I explained that California was big, perhaps 20 times the size of Bali. I wasn’t sure. I asked if she meant the California that she sees in movies and she said yes. I assumed she meant Los Angeles. I couldn’t even describe Los Angeles. It is very big is all I could think of. Are there a lot of buildings, she asked. Yes, more buildings than trees. I decided to tell her about plastic surgery, since it is a fun novelty. She laughed when I indicated larger breasts and she seemed truly confused when I told her some people will get new noses. She didn’t understand. I asked her what she thought California was like. She didn’t answer except to say that she thought the people would be very nice. Joyce is from California, so I would assume she thinks that all people are very nice.

Iluh is very small. She might actually be a foot shorter than me, which would make her 4’8” tall. She is definitely the smallest person I have ever seen. Her English is not great and I tried to envision her walking around in Los Angeles. It made me a little sad. I am afraid she would be overlooked and I doubt the girls at the tourist office would invite her to their homes to make traditional Californian food as she did to us. On one hand I hope she makes it to California, even though the odds are stacked against her. She makes $40/month right now. We paid $900 to get here. It would be great for her to see another country so different from Munduk, but would it be kind to her? I am not sure.

We walked back from the waterfall, never getting to see a “chocolate factory” but that was okay. When we arrived back at the “tourist information office” there were people on the steps waiting for it to open. They were hot and irritated and Iluh didn’t seem to notice. They asked us if we had went to find her to open it and I felt so stupid saying, no, she just took us on a 2 hour hike. Sorry about that. Mike asked her something about recycling before their irritation halted the conversation. We aren’t asking anything touristy, we said, go ahead. They got hotel information, but ended up using our recommendation instead. They are staying next door to us now. I told them they could get hiking maps from the hotel. It took 30 second to set them on the right path because they were Americans. We knew how to talk to them and what to say.

I totally lost it. I jumped up and scared the dog away. Mike laughed and I shot him a look of death. “That happy dog licked you!” he said. “Shut up!” I yelled. I instantly rubbed Purell all over my arm. The skin was not broken from this offensive lick, but the rabies’ symptoms started immediately. I stared at the spot and of course it started to redden. It burned, some shooting pains radiated the area of the assault. It was all in my mind, of course. The Purell probably added to the problem, but I was convinced I had rabies.

We were staying on a sailboat in Koh Samui at the time and I was trying to keep my fears in check around our hosts. By the time we got off the sailboat a week later, I was living on borrowed time. I had read that there were only a few reported cases where somebody lived with rabies for more than a few days, a week tops, but I was obviously one of those freak cases and so I prepared for death.

Mike was so good to me and only made fun of me a little. We headed to Bangkok on an overnight train and for whatever reason I decided it was a good idea to read Tuesdays with Morey, a book about a man dealing with his eminent death. I could totally relate. I spent the entire night crying and planning for my death away from my loved ones. I called my mother and told her I had rabies and that I was probably going to die (not the first time I had called her with this claim, sorry Mom).

When we got to Bangkok, Mike took me to the hospital to get treated. I think he was relieved to put an end to my nonsense, but, I walked in to the office and straight-faced, asked about the chances that I had rabies. I explained the situation to the doctor and she just looked at me like I was an idiot.

Was the skin broken? No. Was the dog angry? No. She was confused.

She paused for a minute and leaned back in her chair, trying to figure out the best way to give me the bad news. “People aren’t stupid,” she said, “They aren’t going to let a rabid dog run around biting people. And, the dog clearly didn’t have rabies.”

Oh. Mike was vindicated. He had been trying to tell me this for weeks.

When we decided to come back to Southeast Asia, I was expecting more fear, but surprisingly I have changed. I didn’t get one booster vaccine and forgot to pick up my travelers diarrhea pills from the doctor before I left.

When I got diarrhea almost immediately after arriving and it didn’t stop until, well, it is ongoing actually, I realized this meant I can eat whatever I wanted. I obviously already have something, so even if I got something else, one thing will eat the other thing and I would deal with it when I got home. It actually opened up my options, like the tasty veggies that have been sitting out for days that carry a 100% chance of sickness, or the mystery street meat and chicken balls that taste good, but occasionally have a bit of something else in them.

On the day we left for Munduk, Mike noticed a large burn on his inner arm at the joint. He remembered rubbing it when he had lime juice on it and it stung even more. He was a little nervous and asked a few people what they thought it was. I thought it was probably from where he carried his helmet when he wasn’t wearing it, and he confirmed that it was in the right location for that.

We got to Munduk and I noticed that my arm now had a burn on it too. It didn’t look exactly the same, so I thought maybe mine was from where I had forgotten to put on sunscreen on the ride up to the mountains. I was convinced that that was my issue, completely separate from Mike’s.

Fred and Raini asked if we burned easily. They are both dark and I’m sure think of us as light weights because we are so pale, but no, I don’t burn like this. Not even when I work outside all day. So if it wasn’t a sunburn, what was it? The burns were in a weird shape and they were huge. Mine were streaks, they could have been liquid. Fred mentioned that brake fluid could take the paint off cars. Where had we gotten in contact with break fluid!?!?! What would happen to our arms?

For 2 days the burns got worse. They darkened and started swelling. This time Mike was the one getting nervous. We had no idea what it was, so we had to suspect everything. We were lucky that it was on our arms and not our faces. For this reason, we couldn’t trust any of our creams or ointments or any mixture. We were planning to go back to Ubud eventually, but realized that since we did not know what the culprit was, we couldn’t do anything that we had done before.

Mike started to question why we had come to a third world country. All of the horror stories that we had heard were rushing in to our thoughts. Could someone had thrown acid on us? Is this a disease we didn’t know about and hadn’t prepared for? Was this what leprosy looked like?

With no real answers, we were left to wait and worry. After about three days, it had stopped getting worse and peaked out as a series of dark red streaks for me and a large red patch for Mike.

On day 4 I put my hand on my wound and realized that it matched. It was a hand print, the darkest areas where the thumb and forefinger had sat for a moment, then 4 streaks for the 4 fingers that had touched my arm. Mike’s hand roughly fit as well, so we knew it had to be chemical, but which one. On day 6, mine started to blister and Mike’s had already begun to peel.

Even though it was healing, we still didn’t know what had caused it, which was the worst part. We went through all the events of the day in question. Mike kept going back to the lime. I remembered squeezing some lime into a coconut that morning, had it reacted with one of the lotions that I had put on to burn me? I remembered using lemon juice in my hair as a kid, trying to lighten it. We started thinking that if it could bleach hair, would it have a similar effect on skin? We went to the internet with this and Googled, “lime burn sun” and it popped up with an answer we were satisfied with. Apparently it is common, the easy term is Margarita Burn. Apparently, when lime sits on your skin while you are in the sun it intensifies the burn. I probably had second or third degree burns from this. I was only in the sun for an hour without lotion and it was filtered mostly.

That fucking lime burned my skin!

We breathed a sigh of relief and laughed at all of the things that had gone through our heads, but the thoughts are unavoidable. When you are in a new place with so much time to think, you think the worst.

This morning, Raini woke up with some blisters on her lips. They look like burns, which make sense because she remembers sitting in the sun (after eating lime!) and thinking her lips would burn. Even though she remembers the thoughts, she is still freaking out a little. It doesn’t look that bad to us, you can barely tell, but for her, it it all consuming. She didn’t even come down to breakfast because it was so “bad”. It really is nothing, the rest of us can see that there is nothing that she can do except wait for her lips to heal. It won’t happen again if she wears protection, but she’s already made an appointment with the doctor.

The first is universal: young men, 14-20 years old. A young man (and especially a group of young men) is more likely to make fun of us than to smile, wave or say hello. This is the way it is all over the world, but Bali seems to have its young men in check pretty well with its very rigid expectations regarding social inclusion. As annoying as they might be to us, they don’t seem destructive, and there are plenty of really nice young men.

The other group is surprising: old women, over 60. Ninety percent of the time an old woman will not only refuse to smile at us, but will look away in disgust. I have no idea whether it’s because we’re white, I’m male or because I’m a white male, or if it’s something else from their own lives that is causing some bitterness, but they’re just cold toward us most of the time.

Everyone else – kids, young women, middle-aged men & women, and old men – is enthusiastic to see us driving down the road or stopping in at their shop.

We’re loving riding through the smaller villages in the mountains which seem to never get Western visitors. They smell like burn piles and fruit, the kids are usually running around barefoot, the people are relaxing in the shade or working on small projects in their courtyard. Even the poorest people here seems to have land that supports rice paddies or fruit trees. There’s no lack of food here, which I imagine could actually keep a place from developing since there’s no benefit to locking it up and forcing others to pay for it.

Before sunrise the next morning we arrive at the beautiful lake – it supports some primitive docks and a few simple shelters on stilts about a hundred yards out, serving what purpose we’re not sure. Even at dawn a fisherman was returning, quietly beaching his dugout on the flat, grassy shore and carrying his catch home to the village.

The mysterious structures in the lake

We took pictures as the sun rose over an eastern ridge and sprayed soft light, through clouds, onto the bamboo docks. We tried to catch the docks as silhouettes. We tried to capture a ground mist as it drifted over the shore where the lake’s edge blurred with grasses. We tried to capture ghostly fishing nets that hung on posts to stay dry overnight.

Eventually, as the town awoke, we tried to capture a man and his two young sons going out to fish in a double-hulled dugout, the younger one so small that his brother had to carry him piggyback through a foot of water to the boat. Dad used his oar to push them through the grasses, then he paddled the boys just 20 yards offshore to where they would fish.

Men began to trickle out of the village after this – a man with his son, a young boy by himself, an older man alone. All were heading out onto the water to catch their food.

The dock

I found out this village is called Limpah and it’s associated with the small mountain hamlet of Munduk, where we were staying. I asked a guy we met if the lives of people in Limpah were different than the lives of people in Munduk and he didn’t really understand the question at first, then said, “no.” I suppose it was a weird question to ask in the first place, I’m not sure what kind of answer I expected.

The town

Sorry to bring this up in a travel email, but I have to share it:

That night I watched a documentary about fishing in Senegal. I’ll spare you most details, but there was one sequence that changed my understanding of our relationship with the third world. Because European waters are over-fished, European vessels now fish in West Africa. In Senegal, a fisherman can no longer earn a living because a European vessel is depleting the fish stocks. To support his family, the man is forced to immigrate to Milan, Italy. The documentary finds him working a factory’s midnight shift. He says, “Of course I’d rather be home fishing with my sons. But there’s no fish left, so I have to come to Europe to earn money to send home.” In a nearby market, restaurants buy fish from Senegal. I imagine an Italian couple ordering the fish and complaining about the surging population of Senegalese immigrants.

First world consumers are buying away the primary source of protein for areas of the third world because it tastes good. Literally starving people.

(A picture says a thousand words: Click here.)

Back here in Bali, we ask a lady if it’s ok to swim in a waterfall and she says, “No.”
“Is it dirty?”
“No, it’s too cold.” Azure and I laugh at this a little, as the cold water would be fine for us. Remembering the perfect little village in the mountains, Azure asks if we can swim in the lakes.
“No,” she says. “It’s dirty.” She explains that the nearby vegetable farms’ runoff includes chemical fertilizer and pesticides.
“But people eat fish from the lake?” I ask.
“Yes.”

So that’s the situation. I look at the Senegalese man and that photo essay and wonder how I could justify eating fish. Then I hear about vegetable farms poisoning lakes and fish (and the toxins they’re putting directly on the food) and wonder whether I could even justify being a vegetarian in Indonesia.

Anybody can tell you how much I love tuna sandwiches, but there still seems to be no politically responsible option other than local, organic, vegetarian.

The temple that punctuates the town.

I started looking into how to find him and what times were best for him –I had been waking up around 6am and didn’t want to barge in when the man was still sleeping. I wasn’t finding answers to those questions, but I was finding a lot of people saying, “make sure you have time to wait in line for hours,” “he says the same thing to everyone,” “he will say that you will live to be 104 years old and to not drive so fast.“ Maybe I didn’t want to go.

But, what could I expect? The book had been a bestseller! And not only that, its target audience was the masses of middle aged women who were looking for the same (re)discovery of who they were and what they were doing in this world. Looking for validation and liberation, a number of them would surely find their way to his doorstep. It was my mother who first slid the book my way and after turning my nose up at her, I probably made some snotty remark and slid the book back. Within weeks, the book was everywhere and everyone seemed to love it. Eventually, I would find myself with a lot of free time and a free copy and I read it. I flew through the first part. Eating, hanging out in Rome, speaking Italian, what’s not to love. I dredged though the prayer and when I finally finished the love, I thought, why couldn’t she just talk about eating the whole time?!? It was a cute book. Ketut was a memorable character and when I mentioned in passing that we were in his town, my mother said, well why wouldn’t you go see him, you are right there. Good point.

I was still on the fence, leaning towards not going when Fred and Raini arrived. Raini had her copy of Eat Pray Love with her. She was reading it for the third time and when we asked if she wanted to go see Ketut, she was shocked and excited to find that he lived in Ubud. Her excitement was contagious and I soon realized that I would probably go.

The boys didn’t want to go, so the two of us mounted the scooter around 7am and wobbled south to see Ketut. He lives in a small suburb of Ubud, less than 5km away from where we were staying. We stopped once to ask where he was and the group of Indonesian men who were at first confused about what I was trying to ask, finally burst out laughing when they realized we were looking for Ketut. I couldn’t help but laugh too when I looked over at my traveling partner and realized that this officially makes me middle aged.

We easily found his place when we saw the signs and parked the scooter in front of his house. As is the traditional Balinese style, families live together around a shared open air courtyard or series of courtyards. Most compounds have a small entrance and then open up a little to reveal a scattering of separate buildings. There was no one milling around, so we awkwardly walked around inside their home. I was extremely self conscious that we were too early and would disturb them with our western “now” mentality. I was planning to wait, not because there were droves of people but because we had caught a glimpse of Ketut in the bathroom, most likely getting ready for the day.

Raini was more bold than I was and went up and asked a lady at the very back of the courtyard where we should go. She was nice and smiled and pointed us in the right direction back towards the main entrance. When Ketut materialized, he was very kind. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I had figured that after thousand upon thousands of white women coming through his home, he would not be as welcoming, but he was. He quietly led us to the porch of his room and we took off our shoes and sat down.

His energy was calm and patient and he slowly apologized for his English not being very good. We reassured him emphatically that it was great. We could understand every word. Well, most words. He talked about the book and showed his copy. He could not read it of course, but pointed out the places that he was mentioned and Raini pulled out her copy. He asked her to read aloud the part where he is described and asked her what some of the words meant and who is this Yoda that he is compared to? Raini tried to explain in words that he would understand and as they talked about the book and she read aloud, I scooted away and sat on the edge of the porch. I had realized before we even had sat down that this time was not about me and it gave me the freedom to listen and observe.

He explained that he sees the good and the bad and he has a duty to say what he sees. He said if he was “joking” (which I took it to mean lying) with someone about their reading, he would go to hell. Obviously I will never know if this is true of not, but I fully believe that he believed it and so I felt with confidence that he would do the best he could to accurately read each and every person.

He started Raini’s palm reading by saying that he was so happy to be meeting her, which she got a kick out of (it is what he says in the book). He said she was a good person, very good, like a queen. She glowed as he talked to her. He asked her if she had been married before and she said yes, but was no longer married. Raini had married her college boyfriend, who she still holds in high regard, but despite their close relationship, the marriage didn’t work. Ketut smiled and said that many women come from America that are divorced. He explained that in Bali, you cannot divorce very easily. Maybe not at all, but it wasn’t clear. He said that if you no longer want to be married, you simply move in to separate areas of the compound, but still live together.

I thought about what Ketut must think about all of this. He is an old man, he told us 95, but I don’t know if that’s accurate. Within the last 5 years he has seen all of these women coming through, divorced, wanting to know when they will get married again. After spending 90 years in Bali, seeing the local farmer about his rice crops or the woman in town wondering if her children would live long enough to have their own children, what must he think of all these aliens landing on his porch with these problems he has never heard of before. There is no doubt he is a simple man and where I would imagine anyone else to become extremely frustrated by the number of people at his door, his voice reveals only reassurance, albeit with a bit of confusion.

He had seen the faint line of her first marriage and assured her that there was a second line, much stronger. I don’t think Raini really cared about this. I don’t believe her purpose for going to see Ketut had to do with wanting to find another man. She seems to know her own strengths and weaknesses in a way that one could only label her confident. She does not seem to be seeking the approval of others in her kindness and laughter and so I believed Ketut every time he would tell her how happy he was to meet her.

As I predicted, but hoped not to pass, he told her she would live to be 100, that she would be rich very soon, that she should not drive so fast. He went on and on with the phrases that I had seen written all over the internet. This troubled me. Not because he was being generic, but because I couldn’t understand how he was being 100% truthful, which, after studying him, I found him to be, while still making the same claims to everyone.

As he apologized for the fifth time about not speaking good English, I wondered if perhaps his limited vocabulary was partially to blame. I remember reading that you cannot have a thought without the language to describe it. Perhaps in his case, he could have the thought, but not the English language to describe it and so, very simplified, he said the same things. Another thing that struck me, as he told her that she was going to live to be 100 years old, (“not soo long” he said, “but long,”) was that if what Elizabeth Gilbert writes is true and that he does not know the year of his birth or his age, perhaps he has never looked at time the way that we do. When he says 100 years, it is some number in the future that is not close to now. Not that he knows the exact amount of years, seeing as those things seem very unimportant to him, but so long that he does not know. We have time. For him, he claimed that he would die in five years, but he hoped longer.

The time passed and he was slow and patient. He would repeat himself sometimes or ask the same questions over and over, perhaps signs of his many years. And the reading went on with so much hope and so many smiles. I doubt he could ever get tired of people’s bright expressions when he tells them they are beautiful, they will be beautiful until the end, they are smart, they can be successful at whatever they want, they will be rich, they will be happy.

It had been well over an hour since we had first taken our seats on his porch and the sun was now over the horizon and casting the long morning shadows in the courtyard. He spent so much time talking and laughing and on some occasions, he would reveal a story about himself. After the laughter died down from telling Raini that she needs to rest when she has sex three times in one night, as not to be too tired and produce a tired baby, he told us about his old tired baby. The doctor had told Ketut that he was stupid for having made a tired baby and the baby died 10 days after birth. Raini said she was very very sorry about his baby and I could tell she felt really sad about it. Ketut on the other hand, had already grieved because he did not express any major sadness about it and instead went on by saying that he had adopted his brother’s child. He seemed to feel that life happens.

When her reading was done they turned to me, and Ketut asked if I wanted my palm read too. At first I hesitated for a second and then I don’t know if it was on accident, but he said “you want your palm read.” I did. I can’t really say why. I had been hesitant to do so because of the magic of Raini’s reading. If I were to get mine read and it was exactly the same, we would know for sure that it was generic and she hadn‘t read the stuff online about him saying the same things. I could have walked away and we would have never known, but there is a cynic in me that I can’t beat down. I have to know, even if it is not the answer that I wanted to hear, so I said yes, I wanted a reading.

I climbed back up on the porch and sat in front of Ketut. My heart sank when he started to talk about marriage. I knew he had been conditioned by the many before me to start with what mattered to them. I didn’t want to talk to him about marriage. It isn’t something that I have issue with. I was hoping (I suspected in vain) that he would give me the less flowery version. I wanted the bad, not the good, but it didn’t happen. He was happy to meet me too. In fact I was all the things that Raini was and I was really just hoping he would stop talking. I wanted her to have her reading be special and I wished I had never said yes.

He would pause from time to time and I would use those seconds to think quickly, my mind raced to come up with some logical conclusion to why this was happening. I was nervous and giggled and from the photos I can see that I had my skeptical face on. I was never skeptical of him, though, I knew that he was telling the truth. It wasn’t until he told me I would be rich that I had my answer. He said, “You will be rich very soon,” just the same as he said to Raini. At that moment he paused and rephrased, “are you already rich?” he asked.

“Nnnn,,” I said before stopping. I was sitting on the porch of some guy who lived all the way around the world from me. I was on a 2 month “vacation” from my life. Of course I’m rich. “Yes, I am already rich,” I said. He smiled at me.

The thing I hadn’t considered is that all the people who travel many thousands of miles to see him have some things in common. We are rich, we are lucky, we have choices and the means to achieve what we want and we are smart and resourceful. We can fly from far and wide to see this man, but we can’t fly our standards and expectations into his mind. I don’t think he really has a strong idea of what America is like and I don’t think he cares to. He told us that someone had offered to fly him to the USA, but he had declined, worrying that they would just leave him there. The image was not appealing to him.

I relaxed after that. I listen to what he was saying. I looked into his eyes. Our readings were very alike and that was fine, but there were some things that were different. Raini was like a queen, I was like his great-granddaughter. She should keep writing and she will be published, I will be fine in whatever country I wish to live. He did not tell me I could have a tired baby. I had good and bad in me, Raini had very much good.

It went on not nearly as long as hers, which was alright by me. He checked my knees and my back, as he does with everyone. He checked my fingers for my internal organs and was still holding my hand when he looked up and into my eyes. He just looked at me for about five seconds. He shifted his head to the side just so slightly that I noticed, but not enough to be called a movement. I could tell that he was thinking very hard and there was a bit of urgency in his expression. He smiled, not so much like he usually did when you could see his whole mouth, but it was as if his face smiled just a little and he said “I see you very well.”
“You do?” I asked, a little startled by this simple sentence.
“Very well,” he said. I smiled.

He didn’t explain anything else. He never said what he saw and I never asked him to elaborate. We finished and he showed us his book of all the people who had come. Most of the comments were in English, people writing I love you or leaving kisses or hearts, some drew pictures. He didn’t know what any of it meant and he asked us to explain the xoxos and lip prints, but he knew that he had seen all of the people. And I knew that he had SEEN all of them.

In a lifetime I think I will be lucky if one person sees me. Not just what I do, but who I am — the motivations, the fears, the intentions. Understanding people and having them understand you is the one thing that keeps me from complete isolation. But, much of the time I do feel alone, not horribly so, but enough to keep pursuing those connections with those I love. I don’t believe many people have the power to see anyone like Ketut does. It is a superpower that I wish I had.

I don’t deny that many times I am cynical and skeptical. I was with Ketut and the whole time I wished I hadn‘t been. I now see the pure perfection in the way it all turned out. The book was written, the people started coming, he holds their hands, he looks into their eyes. All of these people make the journey to see him for one reason or another and for those who need him the most, he is able to say with all certainty that he can see them. When he saw me and he smiled, he was telling me that who I am is okay. I will take away from this that a person’s power does not rest solely in what they say, but how they make you feel. Ketut may not have said the right things, but he makes you feel like you are special and no matter who you are, you can’t deny how good it feels to be seen.

The first tree – the one that seems the tallest – is in a small fenced area that might be used for farming, it’s hard to tell. This tree is fuller than the other, it looks solid from afar. The road then drops down a hill, at the foot of which the second tree stands. It is much higher than the first, considering the hill. The tree is decorated with a piece of checkered fabric wrapped around its smooth, white trunk, as is the fashion for large trees. The sarong seems to be worn as it would on a man: waist level, for modesty. The tree is strong and proud. It is dizzying from beneath.

Another 50 feet down the road is a volleyball court made of packed dirt. When we drove by there was a small crowd of men watching a match between two pretty impressive teams. The crowd was more interested in the two of us, though, as we parked the scooter to do a little scouting. Other than Azure, there were no women anywhere beneath the trees tonight – just men and boys. We tried to exchange some words with the men but my volleyball vocabulary isn’t very thorough. So we just watched.

Past the court, to the ocean, the sand dunes rise. We followed a couple boys up the dunes and when they reached the ridge they threw off their shirts and sprinted down the steep slope. We crested the hill to a beautiful sight – sunset on an almost-empty coastline with the ocean spraying onto the black beach. The boys who ran down the beach went to join a sand fight consuming 20 boys. They crashed in and out of the waves, throwing sand at each other, jumping on one another. They were 20 brown bodies on black sand playing in the waves. The high beach giving them privacy with the ocean. Often, traveling, I can imagine I’m witnessing something from another time, but hardly any imagination was necessary tonight.