A Rare Car Trip to Denpasar

It's rare these days for me to take a trip in the car. Problems with my ankle (two botched surgeries a few years ago), my back (a chronic problem dating back to my fieldwork days in Northern California) and my peripheral vision (from the first stroke almost three years ago now) first stopped my from driving the car and now has made it uncomfortable to even sit in a car for more than a short ride. So, I stick the my beloved motorcycle unless a situation arises where I need to use a car. Yesterday, one of those situations arose when I need to accompany one of my daughters down to the American Consular Agency in Denpasar.

I'm a driver: I was a cab driver for a few years, drove a fork lift for a while in a factory and have been attached to anything mechanical that can move me from one place to another. I don't trust most of other drivers, especially in Bali where road conditions are, at best, challenging. But, as I can't really drive a car, I used my wife's occasional driver yesterday to take Rebecca and me down to Denpasar. I loved it. I loved it not because someone else had to battle potholes, lunatic teenagers just graduating from school and driving like they have some impenetrable shield around, the clueless textters who drive with one hand on their motorbike and the other on their handphone (forget about watching the road, they're too busy getting out that vital SMS to someone obviously important enough to risk their life and the lives of other drivers), the tourist-bus drivers who have the biggest vehicles on the road and make sure everyone knows it, and the mad dogs who run out into the street oblivious to speeding machines. I loved it because it gave me a chance to gaze at Bali's natural beauty and its unique architecture.

Those of us who have been here for a while, and who don't live in traditional Balinese compounds, tend to forget about their special beauty. And, there are many along the road from Denpasar to Singaraja. My status as a non-driver allowed me to stare into the compounds as we sat in traffic or slowly passed by. My anthropological imagination running wild imagining live in one kampung or desa after the next. And as we drove up into the mountains on the way home, I was dazzled by the late afternoon sun highlighting the lushness of a Bali just coming out of the rainy season.

Knowing that I won't be making these trips very often anymore, I avidly accumulated all these visions of this graceful and gorgerous island for future reflection. Just another nice day in paradise.

Some Quiet in Ubud

I didn't realize how long it has been since I've been to Ubud until I look at this blog – six months. So, I decided to get out on the road since the weather seems to have turned and the dry season is peaking out from behind the masses of rain clouds that have filled the skies of Bali for so long. It was during this trip that I realized one of the major reasons that I love spending a night or two down in Ubud: it's quiet. Really quiet. Life in Kampung Bugis is a never-ending stream of auditory assaults from chickens, motorcycles, hordes of children, trucks, cars, neighbors, the local mosques and puras and the occasional plane or helicopter buzzing overhead.

I was sitting on the little veranda outside my room at my favorite homestay in Ubud reading a little book about Rimbaud in Java while enjoying the quiet and peace when an American tourist came by to look at the room next door. I overheard him unsuccessfully trying to bargain down the price of the room. He asked if he could bother me for a moment and inquired about “that sound.” I asked him what sound, and he replied “that buzzing, is it a saw or insects?” Oh, that sound. Insects. Nature. Life in the tropics. “I guess we could live with that,” he muttered. Probably not though as he didn't come back.

 I stayed an extra day this trip and wandered down Monkey Forest Road to see if it had changed as much as the main road which is definitely more upscale these days than it was back when I first started staying in Ubud. Surprisingly, it's not all that different – just a little more crowded with cars, buses, motorbikes and tourists. A stroll along Monkey Forest Road can get hot with all the exhaust from the stream of vehicles, so I stopped at a little cafe to have a few cold Bintangs and watch the tourists passing by. I noticed that they have a determined little march, not looking left or right, charging on ahead to their destinations, generally ignoring the calls of transport from the line of guys sitting along the road trying to drum up some business. The eat, pray and love ladies with their flowing white dresses or baggy hippy pants, however, tend to float dreamily like eagles scouring the landscape for some tasty prey. The new additions to the hodgepodge of shops along the road were the aromatherapy shops and the spas that offer a variety of massages, tonics and pampering. I glimpsed two of the ladies in white blissfully exit an upscale-looking spa and enter the hot noon sun and chaos of the road still under the trance of their retreat into the world of alternative therapies and escape from the stresses of the mundane world.

For me, the trip was a chance to talk to some old friends and meet two new ones, as well as travel the road to Kintamani that passes through some of the most magnificent of Bali's natural beauty. And, of course, there's always that thrill of riding a fine motorcycle around the island.