Indonesia part I - Bali

As we exited the airport in Bali, Indonesia (after doggedly and stupidly sticking to the slowest immigration line out of the 6 offered) we set out to find a hotel. We were immediately bombarded with offers of taxis and hotels by a variety of people. We settled on a 20$ hotel for the first night. It looked like it had formerly been lavish and sported basic rooms with balconies and entrances facing the indoor pool, but it also looked like it was sorely in need of some maintenance.

The main street in Kuta was lined with hotels, restaurants and bars and had a lively touristy kind of energy. Every now and then a local would whisper in your ear, offering you illegal drugs, but since its an drug offense= execution kind of country, very bad idea. The same is true of Philippines and signs at the airport reminded you of this surreal fact (though not as surreal as Afghanistan current government's execution punishment for distribution of women's rights materials. Thank god we got rid of that nasty taliban.

The next day we got an even cheaper room, 7$ a night, very good bargain. Even though we decided not to go into the water, we went for a walk along the beach. It wasn't nearly as nice as boracays beach, and more crowded, but it was nicer than Jeju do's. I was amazed at how many buff bodies were there. It made me feel like a Pillsbury Dough Geek. Yes there were the normal people as well, but a disproportionate number of "tv land" mutants. I was also amazed to remember how many more "S" line (Korean slang for curvy) women there are from European descent, likely creating for a completely different bra industry across continents. Epitomes of mammals.

The next day I awoke and we went to go withdraw some money for our next stop. I discovered my bank card was disturbingly absent. Anita and I spent the next day retracing our steps to see where I could have lost it. We completely accounted for our whereabouts the entire day and no place seemed like a place where I would have had it out of my wallet. Nevertheless we went to each of these locations asking if they had found a derelict bank card. None of them had. Our best theory was that I had only put it in my pocket, not my wallet, and when I later reached to pull my wallet out the card had been pulled out with it and fallen to the ground. It sucked... More on that later.

After Kuta we went to Ubud, definitely my favorite city of Indonesia. It was beautiful surroundings, in the middle of forest. Our guest house was on the second floor and had an attractive garden to look at from the two chairs outside of our door, where we enjoyed sipping coffee or a beer.

While there we took in what I consider to be the best live performance I have ever seen in my life. It was a traditional Balinese dance show, with three different stories in it. It took place at a former royal palace so the ambiance was quite traditional and apt. Although it was raining, when the performance began I was entranced. A huge chorus of gambang (Balinese xylophones) chimed in strange harmonies, complete saturating the air with sound and making my hairs stand on end. The music made my senses dance, and that was impressive enough even without the dance. Then, a dancer appeared in the royal archway atop of some steps. She was dressed in an elaborate costume and make-up and began a hypnotic dance in unison with the music. The dance, for those who have never seen it, places a great emphasis on eyes and hands. The legs and body move very little but the movements of the eyes and hands together is very beautiful. Unfortunately the rain REALLY picked up at that point and the performance had to be moved, shattering the moment of zen I was in. The rest of the show, while very impressive, didn't have the same mystique as the first dance. I thought the aspect of the show I would be most impressed by was the Barong (weird dog/dragon beast thing) costume dance, but it didn't compare to the first part.

The next day we went to the monkey sanctuary, a forested area full of Hindu statues and temples. And wow, were there a lot of monkeys. At any given time we could see about 10 of them. They had free access to yams, but seemed to vastly prefer the bananas given by the tourists (purchased for a moderate price). Unfortunately most tourists were unprepared for the monkey thieves that stole whole bunches from them rather than the one offered, and people were generally afraid to attempt to get them back. It was a beautiful area, and as always the Hindu architecture didn't disappoint. For some reason I've always loved mossy stones, statues in particular and Ubud is full of them.

Another amazing thing we noticed there was that the monkey society didn't seem homogeneous. There were the monkeys at the entrance level, but up a flight of stairs seemed to be a different monkey clan. When ones from the lower area tried to climb up, all of the monkeys in the higher area seemed to stop what they were doing to chase off the lower ones. At least so we observed a couple of times. Another interesting thing we noticed about the upper level monkeys is that they seemed to be the "scientists" of the monkey sanctuary. I took videos and pictures of this one monkey who had found two stones that were roughly square shaped. He took these stones and banged them together, rolled them both into a banana leaf and the hit them, rolled them into dirt, banged one of them on a bottle, tried to fit one of them in a bottle or into a water spout, etc... Without trying to anthropomorphize them it really looked like experimentation with objects, and numerous studies show how monkey's and other primates teach learned behavior from one to another, so its not that far a stretch. I think Anita posted one of the videos, but this little guy and the rest on the upper part of the sanctuary seemed to be doing all sorts of solitary behaviors with objects that didn't seem to relate to food gathering, socializing or mating.

After Bali we went on to the island of Java, and the nightmare of Probo Lingo...