Leaving the Beach

Friday, June 21st

Yesterday afternoon we hired a driver to take us to the water palace where the last king lived until the rule of kings ended in 1920. It is an exquisitely beautiful palace that looks like a temple surrounded with water and overlooking the ocean. The driver was a friendly young man well-versed in English. He had worked at a nearby hotel owned and operated by a Chinese businessman. He said the Chinese bosses are very strict and don’t allow employees to take days off to go to family ceremonies which are such an important and frequent part of Bali life. So he quit his job in the hotel, acquired an SUV and now drives tourists and ex-pats around to wherever they want like to go. This way he is free to take time off for family matters whenever necessary. He has an offering on his dashboard with marigold flowers and other plants placed in the shallow little box made of straw. In fact, all our drivers so far have offerings on their dashboards. They replace them daily. Sometimes the drivers stop their cars in the street, roll down their window, and buy a fresh offering from the woman with the basket on her head, full of freshly made offerings for sale.

Water palace where the last king of Bali lived until 1920 

Water palace

Our lovely bathroom at the beach

A man in our group has a friend in Taos who comes to live here in Bali on the coast for six months out of the year. She is disabled and lives on her $1000 social security check. While she is in Bali, she is able to rent a nice place for $2000 a year, have a driver and a housekeeper, and cover all her expenses with her social security check. I was told there are quite a few ex-pats living in Bali on their social security checks and having a good life. I wonder what they would do if they had serious health problems with a small social security check and no ability to use their Medicare insurance. For anything major, I guess they’d go to Thailand or Singapore where health care is supposed to be of high quality and inexpensive.

While I was eating breakfast in Ubud last week, I met a Russian woman fluent in English from years of living in the States, who told me her story of how she ended up in Bali. She is a mother of two children and an alcoholic. She left the children in the care of relatives and came to Bali to rehabilitate herself in her own particular manner. She eats the healthiest food she can find, goes to yoga and meditation groups on a regular basis, goes to various retreats throughout the area held by ex-pats where she says she does her inner work. She also gets daily massages. She enthusiastically recommended a spa to me where she said there was a male massage therapist from Java who will “do anything you want. I highly recommend you try it out. If you go, ask for Joseph. He will come to your bungalow at night when he gets off work and do whatever you want to make you feel good, including sex. And it only costs $12 for an hour.”

Sex tourism is apparently common in Bali. Most of the sex for hire is with Javanese men. I was told there are special group tours for Australian women who want to come to Bali and have sex with Javanese men as part of their vacation package. The driver assigned to them also serves as their sexual partner while they are here. I was told that HIV is not uncommon in Bali as a result of the sex trade.

Many workers come from the neighboring Muslim island of Java to find jobs in Bali. Their female children are recognizable with their little head scarfs.

Children of workers from Java

So far, I have seen no alcohol consumption among Balinese people. Maybe that’s from Muslim influence since most of Indonesia is Muslim, while Bali is mostly a Hindu culture. It could also be a misperception, since I'm only seeing a tiny fraction of what goes on during our month in Bali.

The pool overlooking the ocean at Amarta. Good-bye beach. I'll miss you.

Saturday, June 22

Last night was uncharacteristically cool. It’s still cool this morning---a great relief from the energy-sapping heat and humidity. Normally a highly energetic person, I’m like a slug in the heat. I suppose I would adapt over time if I lived here. No wonder people move more slowly in the tropics.

We saw a beautiful dance and gamelan performance last night done by our teachers and their troupe of performers. This family has a long tradition of performance. The father of one of our teachers appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, as we saw in a little movie about the troupe’s history before the actual performance began. My pictures don’t do the performance justice. You’ll just have to come over here and see it yourselves in person.

I will sign off here. We’re heading into town this morning to do our own little performance to demonstrate what we’ve learned in our Balinese dancing and gamelan classes. Our audience will be the teachers and their extended family. They’ll get a good laugh I’m sure. We also boldly invited some Australian people we met at the beach who were curious to see what we were up to.

Classical Balinese dance performance

Beautiful Balinese dancers