Today began with another beautiful sunrise over the rice fields. But you probably knew that since you just looked at that photo and read the caption. And you're smart like that. This morning, the farmer who tends the field in that photo was beginning to plant his rice crop. They plant 3-4 times each year. The rice begins as a small, dense patch of "baby rice". And, as I appreciated the labor involved in growing the rice, Ayu arrived, quizzed me on my Balinese, corrected my pronunciation, and made us black rice pudding for breakfast. It was my least favorite breakfast we've had, but it was definitely not bad. It was a rice porridge that was served with palm sugar syrup and toasted coconut milk, which Ayu made fresh. She broke open a coconut, toasted the pieces on the open flame of the gas burner, scooped out the flesh, blended it, and squeezed out the liquid through a sieve. Time consuming, but tasty. After a rice-intensive morning, Wayan arrived to take us on his long-anticipated tour of The Real Bali. Wayan is a compact man with a wide smile and long dark hair tied back in a pony tail. In bold contradistinction to all the other guides we've seen, who wear traditional Balinese sarongs and headwear, Wayan wore a white, buttondown shirt, tight, flair-leg jeans and pointy leather boots. He looked far more Mexican or Native American than Balinese, but regardless of what he wore, that dude has STYLE! Wayan has been a tour guide in Bali for over 30 years. He began as a taxi driver when he was 17. He co-owns 4 villas with investors from other countries. They front the money, he manages the construction and day-to-day running of the villas and he gets 10% of the profits. It seemed to me that he got the shitty end of the sharing stick in those deals, but he seems very happy and is clearly doing well relative to many other locals. As we drove, he explained that Ubud, the bustling, crowded tourist mess we visited yesterday was a sleepy little town before the movie Eat, Pray, Love was released. Now, it's a congested, stifling mess with a goddamned Starbucks. I totally understand the irony of me, a tourist, complaining about tourists. And I've thought a lot about this. As excited as I was to visit Bali, if I had known before what I know now, there is no way I'd visit. It seems to me that tourism is going to destroy this beautiful place. There's no infrastructure in place to handle the ever increasing loads of tourists who swarm over the small island. Wayan wasn't happy about the outside companies (yes, I'm looking at you, Starbucks) getting a foothold in Bali, but he and almost everyone we've met is totally pro-tourism. Except for Russian tourists. Every singe person involved in tourism in Bali has complained about Russian tourists being rude and having no respect for the people, the land, or the culture. But the Balinese will happily take their money and not get flustered by them. The money has improved their lives immensely and I can understand that. I just don't see how it can possibly be sustainable. However, that's not my decision to make and I'll get off my soapbox now. Today is all about culture and art! And road repairs. We started by attending a traditional Barong dace that featured a bewildering cast of characters, an utterly incomprehensible plot, and, what sounded to my untrained Ugly American ear like a single, repeating song, hammered out on xylophone-like instruments for 90 minutes. There was a cheat sheet supplied for uneducated tourists like us, but the English version was a delicious mélange of confusing word soup and I opted just to absorb the essence of the play. Here is my synopsis: The play featured a Baron, a mythical, lion-like creature symbolizing good, and a monkey who appeared at the beginning of the play and was later inexplicably killed and eviscerated in a spectacularly gory scene featuring witches, a dagger, an enormous monkey penis and an amputated nose as well as many, many other delights. It was A+ musical theater at its best and I absolutely loved it, though I will admit that my overriding thought throughout was, "Wow. It must be SO hot in those costumes!" The play seemed a bit long in places where each movement of the feet or fingers in a dance have very specific meanings that I could not comprehend. But, a decade after it started, the play ended when everyone died. I think. It was a little confusing and the monkey penis was rather distracting.
After the dance, we met Wayan back at his car. He asked us what we thought of the dance and I said that I liked it, but it was a bit confusing because I didn't have the cultural background necessary to give context and meaning. He looked a bit hurt so I added that the monkey dick scene was exciting. I guess. But probably not for the monkey. Can we just go now, Wayan? On the drive to our next stop, Wayan explained that we had seen the tourist version, which is basically just a summary. The actual, traditional performance can last 6 or 7 hours. Our next stop was a silversmith. There are, for want of a better description, districts in Bali where artisans sort of cluster together. There are districts full of silversmiths, woodcarvers, painters, people selling Absolut bottles full of gasoline, etc. The silversmith we went to see gave us a fascinating demonstration of how they make silver and create jewelry using the most basic of tools. The work was gorgeous, the talk was fascinating, but ALL I could focus on was the silversmith's feet. He did still appear to have the full assortment of toes. But goodness knows how. I'm still shocked that anybody in Bali has more than 3 toes, but they all seem to be doing okay. I really should have taken more photos of the silver, which was beautiful. They make rings, necklaces, ornaments, and a Balinese specialty box that is designed to hold a piece of a baby's umbilical cord after they're born. The babies wear it (or keep it handy, I suppose) and if the child ever gets sick, they open the box and eat the dried umbilical cord after preparing it with a variety of herbs. True story. And I would have gotten a photo of these lovely boxes, but I got distracted by the statues outside the shop doors. Kerri bought a few small rings and we headed off to watch woodcarvers narrowly miss impaling themselves. There were no photos allowed in the gallery, but I was allowed to take a few of the pieces that were on display outside. And, honestly, the work inside was absolutely breathtaking and none of it seemed to be spattered with blood from a slipped chisel, which was nice. It was some of the most intricate and amazing wood carving I have ever seen. I bought myself a small Buddha statue made from crocodile wood. Be careful looking crocodile wood up online. Just sayin'... From there, we visited an art gallery that featured the work of over 150 local artists. It was much better than the previous one we had seen. At all these places, as I mentioned before, an employee stays with you the entire time you are walking around a store or gallery. It's nice to have the personal attention, but it can make it hard to adequately mock the really, really bad art when you find it. Our guide at the gallery was very quiet and low-key funny, but I was distracted the entire time by the spiraling tufts of ear hair that was cascading from his ears. It was the lushest, most luxurious ear hair I have ever seen. It was like a mohair sweater was unraveling inside his head and pouring out his ears. It seemed rude to ask for a photo, so please just imagine it. Or maybe go look up crocodile wood. When we were so full of Balinese culture that it threatened to leak out our ears like ear hair, we headed back to the villa. We passed some almost ordinary Balinese street repair on the way. What separated this from other street repairs was the unusual use of safety cones. Typically, you just drive around a corner and find: a) A gaping hole in the road. b) a pile of rocks the size of a '56 Buick c) Both of the above I am not making fun of them at all. The people of Bali seem to have a very healthy relationship with cause and effect. If you are dumb enough to fall in the hole, maybe you'll be smarter next time. Or you'll be snuffed out of the gene pool. Either way, problem solved. Back at the villa, Ayu gave me more lessons in Bailnese and prepared yet another amazing meal for us. Tonight was the night I had to pay for all the meals that had been prepared for us at the villa this week. The total came to about $125. For a week's worth of spectacular breakfasts and dinners. It is amazingly inexpensive to eat in Bali. Even less expensive if you are willing to eat in the local warungs, but you will probably lose those savings in toilet paper expenses afterward. It's all about balance. After dinner, I went for a walk up past our villa and had one of my favorite interactions in Bali so far. ![]() I walked up the road, smiling and greeting everyone I passed. They all smiled and waved and greeted me. I walked until I spotted a naked man climbing up out of the drainage ditch where he had been taking a bath. Several people passed him on scooters or motorbikes and it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary. I decided that strolling by at a leisurely pace and chatting with him was just a bit too intimate for me, so I turned around. Maybe it was his laundry that had been abandoned in the road the other day. On my way back, I passed more people including a couple boys who were maybe 9 or 10 years old. Rather than warning them about the naked man up the street, I greeted them in Balinese. They smiled hugely and one asked me where I was from and how long I had been in Bali. He complimented my Balinese accent and asked me if it was my first trip to Bali. The kid's English was great. I answered his questions and made my way back to the villa, where I waved at the rice farmer who was finished planting and was leaving an offering in his temple. As soon as I got back inside, I started thinking about how friendly everyone was and I thought I should have engaged more with the two boys. They were curious and friendly and, while I wasn't rude, I didn't talk for long and they were clearly interested in chatting. I went back outside. The boys were gone, but the rice farmer was still there. I greeted him and struck up a conversation with him. His English was way better than my Balinese or Bahasa, but was very limited. We laughed and talked about rice and birds and Mt. Agung and tried to pronounce each others' names for about 10 minutes. He explained the rice fields, the offerings he was making in his temple, and told me that the birds in the field right now eat insects and frogs, not rice. It was 50% charades and I'm guessing that we each understood 10% of the other's conversation, but it was a wonderful moment of connection that made me very happy I went back out to talk with him.
And that he wasn't naked.
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