Bali
Sometimes my travel experiences are heavily influenced by my host. My overwhelmingly positive impression of New York City, for instance, has a lot to do with the fact that I was always visiting my friend Gowtham who really knows how to live. He's blessed with a sophisticated palate for enriching experiences, and I trust his recommendations. The first time I visited New York City alone, I didn't have anywhere near the same quality experience.
My time in Bali is inextricably linked to my hosts, Michael and Ning. I met Michael in a hostel in Dalat, Vietnam. He's a successful homebuilder in his early 60s, so a hostel isn't his normal accommodation, but he had the good fortune of being seated next to Monish on a very long bus ride. Monish excitedly talked about the fun group of guys he had met in Ho Chi Minh City who were meeting up again in Dalat, so Michael decided to join us for dinner at the hostel we were all staying in. We all hit it off right away. Michael entertained us with the stories of the adventures of his youth, which included a motorcycle tour from Los Angeles to Tierra Del Fuego and two different motorcycle tours from Switzerland (his homeland) to South Africa. He had such a good time that he booked a private room and decided to hang out with the young people for a few days.
I didn't understand how large Bali is when I planned my trip. When I accepted Michael's generous invitation to stay in his home, I guessed the island was about the size of Koh Pha Ngan and that as long as I had wheels I could explore at my leisure. In reality, it can take five hours to ride from one side of the island to the other.
I spent most of my time in Jimbaran, hanging out with Michael and his wife Ning and accompanying them in their daily routines. Michael is a character. He has a passionate (although I suspect, somewhat new) interest in nutrition and fitness. He's the patron saint of stray dogs. He jokes around with everyone no matter how brief the interaction and speaks enough Bahasa Indonesian to charm the locals.
Jimbaran is still a fishing village despite the luxury resorts and high end communities being built all over the beach. One of our first excursions was heading to the wet market to pick up some oysters for the evening.
No one among us had the skill to shuck them with a knife, but Michael's screwdriver method was pretty darn effective.
Michael has been building a comfortable life on the island for nearly twenty years. He has carefully curated his neighbors by buying several of the lots on his street and building homes for his friends and a few that he owns and rents out on AirBNB. While there are enormous mansions on the hill above, this little community feels much more neighborly. It's luxurious enough that any westerner would feel comfortable, yet the homes are on small lots that mostly overlook the street. This contributes to the sense of community.
The beach is less than five minutes away by motorcycle and I accompanied Michael on his morning run on the beach almost every day. In the evenings, he takes his dogs (strays rescued from the beach) on a long walk. He stops to feed every stray dog we encounter on the beach.
It's impossible not to smile at the trailer he built to pull his dogs behind his motorcycle.
On our first evening walk, I saw two straight-looking Indonesian guys walking along the beach holding hands. Michael said that kind of affection was pretty common here and was quick to defend the value of it. He informed me that Balinese babies are considered too holy to be allowed to touch the ground for the first few months of their lives, so they're always being held by someone. I was relieved that he didn't suggest we hold hands, too.
I ate almost all of my meals with Michael and quickly acclimated to the quirks of his daily routine. In the morning he runs. He fasts until lunch, then eats a huge bowl of fruit, nuts, seeds, oats, and yogurt. He walks his dogs on the beach in the evenings, and Ning joins him for a very late dinner.
Ning clearly works hard to anticipate Michael's every need, and she extended the same wonderful treatment to me throughout my time there. She or their staff supplied me with constant meals, snacks, and tea. Ning couldn't possibly have been more thoughtful, generous, pleasant, or accommodating. She's an adorable sweetheart of a woman.
Bali is a beautiful place. I've been to quite a few beautiful tropical islands lately, but none of them have had so many brightly colored flowers on all of the shrubs and trees.
While Indonesia is mostly a Muslim country, Bali has a Hindu majority. The prettiest temples I visited didn't allow pictures inside, but you can sort of get a feel from some of the outside walls.
Michael's neighborhood is right next to a Balinese Hindu temple where they played music and chanted for two days straight in honor of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. Michael told me that they burn books and aren't allowed to learn anything during this holiday, but I couldn't find a secondary source for this. Ning is Muslim, so she wasn't familiar with the ceremony.
Bali is home to some very famous and beautiful temples, so I figured I'd spend most of my free time exploring them. I had hoped for some recommendations about which to visit, but Michael had nothing positive to say about any of them. In his view, the presence of westerners has disrupted the locals' ability to practice their faith and turned the temples into tourist traps full of annoying merchants. In his opinion, westerners with an interest in eastern faiths are pretentious or confused. He openly expressed his contempt for yoga and meditation and suggested that people in search of spirituality ought to practice "the religion of their own culture." He's a Christian because that's how he was raised and his wife is a Muslim because that's how she was raised. Ironically, his pluralistic view that any faith you're raised in is an acceptable and equal path seems more aligned with Hinduism than the religion he professes.
I slogged through gridlocked traffic to check out a few famous temples, but traveling long distances was unpleasant enough that I didn't make it to Ubud to see the ancient water temples. I've traveled enough now to know that you just can't see everything.
Garuda Wisnu Kencana
The closest attraction to Michael's house is the Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park. The park surrounds a massive statue that can be seen all around Jimbaran.
It's somehow less impressive up close than it is from far away. When you see it from a distance, it elicits some intrigue because it's huge but you can't make out exactly what it is. But up close without any contextual clues of its size, it's a little dull.
The complex contains some giant blocks of rock that were much more beautiful and impressive than the statue to my tastes. I couldn't get any details about how they were made. I'm guessing they must have blasted through an existing mountain to carve it up into rectangles. Otherwise I can't imagine what they would have built it from.
Tanah Lot
The ride to Tanah Lot was so gridlocked and miserable that it convinced me to stay close to Michael's house for the rest of my trip. The area was 90% tourists and 10% temple, and you couldn't actually go up to the temple as a tourist. It was a pretty beach, though.
Uluwatu Temple
This was another temple that you couldn't actually go inside, but the temple grounds were beautiful. It's on a high cliff overlooking a magnificent beach.
Michael had recommended exploring the different beaches, but I wasn't exactly sure how to do that. I guess I'm still thinking of expansive Southern California beaches where you just show up and hang out. I don't know how to "explore" miles of identical shoreline. Tropical island beaches have a totally different character every 200 meters, though. Here are a few of the different alcoves in Uluwatu:
Next stop: Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
I'm taking my time on another blog post for my time at Wat Khao Tham. I didn't spend the whole ten days there because there wasn't an actual retreat. The monks took me in and let me hang out, though, so I stayed until I was ready to leave.