Munduk and Jaitiluwih, Bali, Indonesia

You know you’re headed off the beaten path when you’re on a rather small island (Bali is only 80 miles from top to bottom) and your local driver has never heard of the town you’re headed to- or, for that matter, ANY of the villages up in the mountains.  He stopped to ask for directions four times, he turned around and headed in the opposite direction at least three times, and then finally drove us headlong into a wall of clouds and a torrential downpour. We drove by people in rain ponchos huddling with their motorbikes under trees or lean-tos waiting for the sheets of rain to let up.

At the top of a mountain ridge, as we passed monkeys crouched by the side of the road, our driver leaned back and motioned for us to hand him the map in our Lonely Planet guidebook.  He held the book in front of his nose with one hand while he navigated hairpin turns on the soaked road with the other hand.  After looking down the steep valley on our left and noting that there was no curb, no guardrail, just pavement turning to mud turning to cliff, I closed my eyes tight and prayed he’d stay on the narrow road.

Our driver kept looking back at us and saying emphatically  “So far away, yeah?”.  It was clear he both thought we were crazy to be headed off to this middle of nowhere and was angling to be paid more than we’d already agreed to.

We dropped our bags in our bungalow on stilts just in time to see the clouds clear.  We’re in Munduk, a simple village surrounded by verdant vistas in every direction.  We can see Gunung Lesong and other mountains in one direction, and the north coast near Lovina in the other direction.  The air is cool and misty here.  Our bungalow is surrounded by a private lily-pad pond swimming with fish.  We have a tangle of green plants growing in our open-air shower.  There are roosters roaming the grounds and two caged black birds with yellow-crested heads who whistle and speak Indonesian words at us when we walk by.

Our first night here, we were the only guests.  We ate an early dinner in an empty open-air pavilion set for about sixty.  We watched the sky turn brilliant shades of orange as the sun slipped down.  I spied a big brown spider, maybe the size of a small mouse, in the rafters over our bathroom.  I’m trying to forget I saw him.  And hoping he’s not hungry.

In the morning we woke up and opened the carved double doors separating our mosquito net-draped bed from our balcony to see mist rising from the chlorophyll-green mountainside.  There were swarms of red and blue dragonflies darting back and forth just above the bushes and at least six different kinds of butterflies flitting from flower to flower.  The black butterflies cast a shadow when they fly overhead and are as big as birds.

We went for a hike along irrigation canals, ducking under overhanging leaves and brushing away spider threads.  We passed coffee trees, vanilla pods, jackfruit, and anise growing nearly wild among the ferns and vines.  The path opened up at a crashing waterfall.  Looking up, a foam of big white droplets catapulted over the edge of the rocks, briefly catching air and then falling to the sandy bottom where we stood.  We were quickly saturated with the cool mist that blows off the falls, the same mist that feeds the lush foliage growing on the cliff face.

On the way back into town, we got lost.  We followed unnamed footpaths through the forest and out into rice paddies where a cow was tethered under a shed and a man and his wife both worked under the sun, wearing those conical straw hats we saw all over Vietnam.  They were raking the clayey mud to prepare for another planting.  The man pointed up a steep hill, through a rural cluster of homes, as the way back into town.  As we passed, every dog got up to bark at us and baby chickens scrambled out of the way.  A man sat on his front porch playing a bamboo xylophone (called a Joged Bumbung), and smiled at us.  In the sun, and even in the shade, it was searingly, sweat-drenchingly hot.  We made it back to our bungalow just in time to hear the rumble of thunder announce the arrival of afternoon rain.  We spent the afternoon reading in our his and hers chairs on our balcony, listening  to streams of water drip off the edges of the thatched roof.

The next day we hired a driver to take us back to the southern coast, but asked him to detour through Jaitiluwih along the way.  We drove through 18 km of terraced rice fields that are centuries old and have been nominated for UNESCO status.  We also stopped to see the hindu temple of Pura Taman Ayun, an incredibly peaceful and atmospheric complex that looks like the jungle and spiders will take it over tomorrow when no one's looking.

Gili Trawangan Island, Lombok, Indonesia

It’s 8 pm.  The sky is dark, save for the perfect half pie of yellow moon directly overhead, and for a few bright stars that are the first to come out after sunset.  I’m standing on a patch of smooth fine white sand, just below the high tide row of coral pieces washed up on the shore, and a steady rhythm of salty waves are washing over my feet and ankles.  The water is the only sound I can hear at this moment.  Inhaling deep through my nose with my mouth closed, it feels like I’m standing in front of a warm humidifier, sucking water vapor into my lungs.  My skin is sweaty and damp in the hot thick air.

Off near the horizon, there’s frequent flashing of heat lightning in the clouds.  Most flashes are hidden in the layers of atmosphere and illuminate the outline of clouds for a brief instant, but a few lightning bolts pierce down toward the sea.  Every once in awhile out of the corner of my vision, I glimpse a hermit crab lugging his shell across the beach in the moonlight.

We’re on Gili Trawangan Island, a tiny stretch of sand and scrub brush off the coast of Lombok Island in Indonesia.  We arrived this morning on a speedy small boat that fit about 15 people and skipped across the waves for about an hour after departing Padang Bai harbor on the east coast of Bali.

There are no cars or motorbikes on this island; the only transport choices are flip flop treks or horse drawn carts down the dusty sand road that circles the island.  We loaded our luggage into a horse cart strung with jingle bells and clip-clopped past the busy smattering of backpacker hangouts and small upscale poolside hotels to the much quieter and sparsely populated northern tip.

We found a room in a brand new stucco and thatch-roof villa decorated in eggplant and amethyst with a second-floor verandah looking out to sea.  This handful of bungalows is owned by a pair of friendly, laid back Dutch women and is staffed by an equally friendly local crew.  The menu is an unusual combination of muesli with canned milk, tapas and sangria, Bintang beer and banana pancakes.

The beach is beautiful, it’s got the clean white sand and blue-green water that Mohit was holding out for. The sand is scattered with driftwood, seashells, and coral bits.  There’s a reef directly offshore, about 50 meters into the ocean wading through thigh-high water.  We’re looking forward to a few days of nothing more than reading, napping, and enjoying the aqua-colored views, especially since Mohit’s suffering from a queasy stomach, our first bout with Traveller’s Belly.

This island is not luxurious at all.  Many bungalows have only cold salt-water showers (we are lucky to have cold fresh-water showers).  After sunset, we smother ourselves in DEET to keep away flies threatening us with Dengue Fever.  The island is powered by a noisy generator we passed on our way (and which we thankfully can‘t hear from our slice of beach), and the power cuts off unexpectedly several times a day.  Our room has no AC, and I laid awake sweaty last night even with two fans pointed at us and the white sheets thrown off.  But the views are restful, the pace of life is at a standstill, the water is warm, and snorkeling beckons.

Balinese Food

Balinese food is so artful.  We’re back in veggie heaven, so there’s all the colors and textures.  And then there’s the perfect little pyramids or cones of snow white rice.  Our meals have been beautifully presented on carved wooden platters or banana leaves.

We’ve been trying to sample as many local dishes as we can, and there hasn’t been one yet that we haven’t enjoyed (although, I‘ll admit- we‘ve also been ordering comfort food from home, like thin crispy wood-grilled pizzas and iced coffees).

On the day we arrived in Ubud, we had lunch in a pretty shaded open-air room with a moat running around the edges filled with swimming orange and white goldfish.  The room was separated from the street by a wall of water droplets that trickled into the moat.  I was served a fragrant mound of stir-fried green beans with bean sprouts, shredded coconut and a scattering of tiny crunchy brown beans, flecked with slivers of spicy red peppers and topped with crunchy bits of tiny fried onions.

For another lunch, we sat in another open-air room next to a garden of ferns and palms centered around a fountain with an ivory statue of a multi-armed goddess.  Mohit enjoyed grilled chicken topped with a smoky sweet pepper sauce.  I had chunks of white fish mixed with diced green and red peppers steamed inside a banana leaf, flavored with coconut milk and curry spices and garnished with a squeeze of fresh lime.  Both of our entrees were served with sautéed cabbage, green beans, carrots, onions, and tiny green ferns.

For dinner one night we attended a traditional Balinese dance performance.  Live musicians played hand drums, wooden flutes, tinny cymbals, and an instrument that looked like a xylophone with bamboo pipes. The women dancers wore dramatic eye makeup, gold headdresses and purple silk sarongs.  The male dancers wore carved and painted wooden masks and layered costumes of red, gold, green, and magenta.

While we enjoyed the performance, Mohit ordered a mixed seafood grill; a platter arrived with two different kinds of fish, huge prawns, squid and octopus, all glazed in a spicy sweet tomato barbecue sauce, and served with a dipping bowl of fish sauce with slices of green onions.  We sat inside a private gazebo on an elevated platform, barefoot and cross-legged on cushions in front of a low table, our flip flops tucked underneath on the grass.  Bats swooped overhead in the fading evening light and a lizard ran under our table and across Mohit’s feet.

For another dinner I had the most delicious pureed pumpkin soup with chopped bits of tomato, flavored with coconut milk and shreds of Thai basil.  The soup was served with hot crispy sheets of prawn crackers.  Yum.  Mohit ordered fettuccine Balinese style.  The pasta was smothered with a thick yellow curry and studded with prawns and squid.  His favorite meal in Ubud was at a candlelit sidewalk restaurant, where he enjoyed a chicken curry that reminded him of his travels in Thailand.  

On our last day in Ubud we took an Indonesian cooking class at a restaurant in town.  The market tour that started the morning was uninspiring since the piles of vegetables, eggs, dried chilies, and buckets of unrefrigerated salted fish were being peddled in the back corridors of a dark musty concrete maze.  But the dishes we prepared resulted in our best Balinese meal yet.

First we made a spice paste (called Base Gade) which is a kitchen staple and is used to flavor a myriad of dishes.  We minced together shallots, garlic, chilies, and fresh turmeric root that stained my fingertips yellow when we cut it.  We added ginger root and another local root called galangal, which has a bitter, hot flavor similar to wasabi.  To this we mixed in shrimp paste, coriander, white and black peppercorns, nutmeg, cloves, cumin seed, sesame seed, salt, and a local oily nut called candlenut (because it will burn slowly like a candle if lit).  The whole lot was blended to a fine bright orange paste (traditionally, it’d be laboriously worked into a paste using a stone mortar and pestle), then stir-fried in sizzling coconut oil.

We mixed a generous portion of the paste and some palm sugar into minced pork meat, then molded handfuls of the spiced meat around bamboo sticks and lemongrass stalks (this kebab-type dish is called Sate Lilit).  We browned the meat sticks on a hot flat pan then plucked them off to eat directly.  They were salty and sweet and tasty.  We also used the Base Gade paste as a base for a chicken curry with potatoes and carrots cooked in coconut milk.

We steamed a mixture of water spinach, long green beans (a foot long each(!), but cut into smaller pieces), bean sprouts, carrots, and cabbage, then mixed in spicy stir-fried grated coconut, hot red and green chilies, shallots, garlic, and shrimp paste.  Flavored with a dash of salt, this was simple, healthy, and surprisingly flavorful.

My favorite dish was called Tempe Manis (or “sweet tempe”).  Tempe is a cousin of tofu, it’s a cake of fermented soybeans (but unlike tofu, the soybeans are still whole).  We sliced the tempe into thin wafers, then deep fried the slices in coconut oil.  I’m not usually a fan of anything fried, but when the resulting crackers were drained on paper towels, then mixed with a spicy sweet paste of palm sugar, sliced chilies, salt and pepper, the result was a nutty crunchy caramelized snack with a bite of hot pepper.  Delicious and like nothing I’ve ever tasted!

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Ahhhhh….now this is more like it.  THIS is the Bali we were dreaming about (at least the one I was…Mohit’s still holding out for deserted, and *clean* white sand beaches).  The roads surrounding Ubud are curvy and the scenery alternates between liquid expanses of bright green rice shoots, dense jungle of ferns and bamboo, and suddenly steep ravines with trickles of water tumbling below to narrow rivers.

Our hotel is a collection of terraced villas amid a still blue pool and overhanging gardens.  We have an airy, sunny, top-floor room with a four-poster bed draped with netting (for decoration only, since there are barely any biting bugs here) that opens onto a terrace with a beautiful carved wood bench.   From the terrace, we have a tree-top view of the hillsides beyond planted with rice and edged with tall coconut trees, over which the sun sets in the evening.  Tasty fresh-to-order breakfasts are included and this all sets us back a whopping $36 USD per night.  There is one drawback- Mohit’s been fighting a cold these past few nights and he’s been woken up in the early mornings by a persistent barking dog next door.  But we’ve looked at some of the other options nearby and have decided to stay put for now.

This town is more laid back.  The sidewalks are still lined by girls handing out pamphlets for spas and massages, and men trying to sell us taxi rides.  But life here moves at a slower pace, the shops are brimming with paintings, handmade silver jewelry, dyed batik fabrics, pretty baskets and hand-woven ikat fabrics.  The traffic is less urgent.  Every restaurant has a fountain or a rice paddy view or a garden.  There’s plenty to keep us occupied and happy here for weeks, we think we’ll stay for 5 or 6 days.

On our first afternoon in town we decided to explore the Sacred Monkey Forest that’s at the bottom of the hill on the outskirts of town.  The sanctuary consists of a series of paved paths cutting through a tall, dim forest, with a few temples scattered within, and is inhabited by a band of grey Balinese macaques.  At first glance the monkeys are cute.  We saw tiny baby monkeys with black hair clinging to their mother’s bellies, and pairs of young monkeys chasing each other and playfully rolling around.

But then one of the big grey males with a fuzzy beard started stalking Mohit.  Unlike many of the other people nearby, we didn’t have any food, so we couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t leave Mohit alone.  Suddenly he lunged and yanked the yet-unopened bottle of water out of  Mohit’s hand and triumphantly sat down in the middle of the path.  He promptly punctured the bottle with his sharp teeth, then held the bottle aloft and let the streaming water fall into his mouth.  Then he grabbed the top with his little grey hands, unscrewed the cap, and chugged the rest.
Mohit was annoyed.  I was laughing, and making fun of the shriek Mohit let out when the monkey lunged at him.  However, as soon as I stopped giggling, two monkeys started scrambling towards me.  I shrieked even louder than Mohit and backed away quickly.  They chased after me and I screamed and ran backwards even faster, trying to shoo them away.  They kept after me and it was only after I nearly toppled off the side of the path and barely missed tumbling down a steep forested hillside that they finally gave up.  This time Mohit was laughing.

On our second day, I treated myself to a wonderfully cheap three hours of spa bliss.  I was massaged with a fragrant jsamine-scented oil, followed by a gentle green tea exfoliating scrub.  Afterwards, I rinsed off and then soaked in a warm bath filled with floating red and purple flowers.  A girl brought me a plate of fresh sliced papaya and a cup of tea with big chunks of ginger at the bottom.  I topped the morning off with a foot massage and pedicure.  Now this is vacation.

In the afternoon, we followed a recommendation in Lonely Planet for a four hour trek along Campuan Ridge, above the Gunung Agung River, through tiny rural villages, past periodic isolated art galleries, and among more rice fields.  We bought a tiny traditional Balinese painting of tropical foliage and colorful birds.  We came back to town sweaty, exhausted, but thrilled with the amazing scenery.  This is a beautiful slice of earth here.

Kuta, Legian & Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

Stepping off the plane in Bali was like walking into a wall of sticky hot.  And that was at 10:30 p.m. This was definitely a successful escape from the chilly air of Tokyo.

Tokyo had been so cold, mostly so clean and sterile and orderly, that the lushness and aliveness of Bali shocked my system a bit, and I realized later that it’d taken me a full day to acclimate my senses to the abundance of life here, to think of that life as a natural part of this island and not an indication of things being “dirty”.  Like the ants that had crawled through the stone wall of our villa and into the bathtub.  Or the lizard that fell off the ceiling of our porch onto the tile floor beside me with a “plop”.  The fuzzy slippery richly green moss growing on every damp surface.  The bugs hovering near our breakfast buffet, waiting for entry through the tightly pulled saran wrap.

Similarly, it’s taking me awhile to acclimate to and appreciate the Bali we’ve seen so far.  We’ve stayed in Legian these past few nights, and have wandered left into Kuta (packed with Aussie surfers and middle-aged tattooed ex-hippies, Indonesian guitar-playing Neil Diamond and Eric Clapton impersonators, and cheap tourist trinket shops), and have meandered right into Seminyak (designer beachwear and beach dress shops, carved Balinese furniture, shiny hip modern night clubs).

The traffic is thick, chaotic, and loud.  We’re back in the land of sidewalk hawkers (“good deal for you lady!”) trying to sell us taxi rides, cheap sunglasses, phallic can openers/ key chains, raunchy bumper stickers, beer T shirts, or just a dirty smile (from the little kids with nothing to sell but hands out nonetheless).

Most disturbing to us is the one thing that none of the guide books or any of the people we know who’ve been here have mentioned- the beaches here are filthy.  They’re littered for miles in either direction with plastic candy wrappers, plastic bags, plastic flip flops, plastic bottles.  If you peer close, even the sand grains are interspersed with tiny plastic grains (which makes me think of that disturbing chapter I read in "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble" while on the beach in Vietnam last year).  No one seems to care.  Boys play beach soccer games in the surf, trampling trash with every dash across the sand.  The mostly Australian tourists spread blankets and sit on beach chairs amidst the debris.  It’s pretty disgusting, though I guess people keep coming because it’s so cheap here.  And maybe most people stick to the manicured grounds and sterilized pools of the resorts?  The only place the beach was moderately clean (no doubt due to the constant vigilance of an army of cheap labor) was directly in front of the Oberai resort in Seminyak.  I guess that’s what $400+/ night will get you in a land where the typical villa room in a pretty tropical garden with a pool is about $35/night.

Nevertheless, this place is still slowly growing on me.  For one, we're hopeful that we might be able to escape these crowds and find less spoiled beaches and quieter lanes.  But there’s also the cool breeze that comes off the ocean in the mornings and evenings.  The sunset on our second night here was beautiful, pinks and oranges and yellows that even turned to streaks of green after the sun slipped past the horizon into the ocean.

Walking down the busy sidewalks, dodging motorbikes, every once in awhile you catch a glimpse of the “real” Bali, what’s buried beneath the touristy imported stuff.  The little offering baskets woven out of palm leaves and filled with flowers petals, rice, maybe a cookie or two, and a silently smoking incense stick.

A narrow alley with tall walls on either side covered in dense vines, a lizard darting for cover when you pass, bougainvillea and coconut palms spilling over the walls.  A man crouched beside the street grilling tidbits of marinated meat on slivers of bamboo over a portable coal grill.  The tropical plants that we buy at the grocery store in Boston to bring a little green into our winter homes grow as weeds here in abundance.

So we’re keeping open minds and planning to look for more unspoiled corners of this island, and in the meantime certainly enjoying the humid hot weather.