Before and After

This is us very exicted to leave Philadelphia on January 27th, 2012.












This is us a few shades darker and very sad to leave Bali on February 27th, 2012

Can you spot the difference?

We still haven’t posted about our last two days in Nusa Dua.  We went to the beach, we got ripped off on a crappy boat trip, and spent some more time at the beach.  We also stuffed ourselves silly at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. 

Bali is an amazing place, and were really sad to leave.  Life just moves a little slower there, and it is hard not to be in a good mood all the time.

Hopefully we can go back again in the near future.

The end

On our first day in Bali, Dov (who fully admits that he is not good with change) freaked out and said "what are we going to do here for a month??" Before we even left, Dov was already talking about a return trip. A month can go very, very fast.

I could definitely go back and spend more time in Bali, but there are several things about home that I was looking forward to as well. These include: clean drinking water, hot showers, my kitties, friends and family, and earning some money. I was also becoming a little tired of feeling like "the tourist". The Balinese really do like tourists, mostly because they bring in money. But they have what I feel to be a skewed perspective of us too, and one that I am happy to shed. All they see of us westerners is that we are constantly on vacation (something that most Balinese have never done) and that we seem to have limitless amounts of money to spend. Currently the exchange rate between the Indonesian Rupiah and the US dollar is about 9000 to 1. So it is fairly cheap for us to travel there. You can get a decent meal in Bali for about $1-2 if you go to the locally owned restaurants - I am told that other parts of Indonesia where tourism is not so prevalent are even cheaper. So to the Balinese, it seems like we just have tons of money to spend, and they want us to spend it! Call me crazy, but being seen as a rich upper class by the locals makes me feel a little uncomfortable. To top it off, many of the ex-pats who live in Bali take advantage of the cheap labor and really do live like noblemen. Remember a few weeks ago when we were getting laughed at by old Balinese ladies while we worked in the garden (I wrote about it in an earlier blog post)? The foreigners who live here hire the locals to do their cooking, cleaning, gardening - pretty much all the housekeeping. The locals thought it was funny to see us working in a garden! I don't think they realize that when we tourists go back home we work too, just like them. We have jobs, clean our houses, cook our food, do our own housework. We don't all have a crew of housekeepers like the majority of expats in Bali. But really, how would the Balinese know that? TV? Most Balinese don't have TV's and even if they did get western shows, what would they see? Newspapers? Do you think they are really reporting about what happens in our daily lives back in America? Books? Maybe, but it would depend what literature has been translated to Indonesian - most Balinese don't speak fluent English. And to be honest, I don't know what access they have to books and literature. There is no public library system. And the only bookstores that I saw in Ubud were targeted at tourists.

I didn't do any real research, but as far I can tell, the locals don't really pay taxes in Bali. Not that they get much either - there is very little infrastructure. There is no trash collection or water sanitation. Public schools exist, but they are not completely free. The kindergarten where I was volunteering had a small monthly fee for the students. Jose told us that when families cannot pay, they get help from the community. I don't think the teachers get paid very well either, and the classrooms were small and crowded. But all the students do go to school up until grade 9. For the final years of high school until grade 12, it seems that the fees for school increase. Or maybe it is that there is no community support if you cannot afford the monthly cost of high school? I am not completely clear on all the circumstances, but for many poor families, finishing high school is not an option.

Anyhow, back to taxes. There is no sales tax at the locally owned shops. I don't think that they have anything resembling income tax or property tax. Only foreigners pay taxes to operate their businesses in Bali. Its like when the cops here pull over cars with out-of-state plates and write them tickets. Same concept. Why take money from the locals when you can take money from someone else? This was never more apparent to us than at the airport when we were trying to catch our flight home. We had already paid $45 each for visas before we left the USA. At the airport you have to pay an "International Departure Tax" in cash. And then they told us that we had overstayed our visas by one day (huh? the visa was issued by the consulate in NYC, who had copies of our flight itinerary!!) and more fees had to be paid. By the time all was said and done, we had shelled out a fair amount of cash just for the privilege of being able to travel there. All the fees and hassle at the airport really put a bad taste in my mouth, and made me happy to be headed home.

Once upon a time, Bali was not a huge tourist destination. They lived their lives and did their thing and no one else really went there. The locals grew and made what they needed, and traded with nearby islands for what they couldn't get on their own soil. Most tourism to Bali began in the 80's, and now millions of people visit Bali every year. With all of our money and all of our influence comes a lot of change. Throughout our trip I had been struggling to reconcile with this. Outside of the popular tourist destinations, most of Bali exists in third world conditions, but I don't want to change Bali or the people there. They are wonderful people (very kind, trusting, and helpful) with a very intricate and unique culture. But by being just another tourist, aren't we part of the problem? At some point we were in a car with a Balinese driver, and he mentioned something about tourism and all of the changes that have taken place. I asked him point blank if he thought that the changes in Bali were good or bad. In slightly broken English, he answered something along the lines of "It is good and bad together. Always there is good and bad together". I loved his answer and his honesty.

In any case, here we are back home. I miss Bali already.

A land without water fountains

One of the few luxuries that I am looking forward to upon returning home is drinkable tap water. There is none in Bali. They do not have any sort of water purification system or treatment facilities. You simply cannot drink the water straight from the tap. There are several ways to go about this: 1) boil your water, 2) buy bottled water, or 3) treat the water yourself. For the most part, we went with option #3. Rather than using iodine tablets or things like that which they often sell in camping stores, we opted for non-chemical treatment and bought ourselves a “Steripen”. The steripen uses UV light to kill all the bacteria and bad things in the water. Apparently this is how some municipalities in the USA treat their water anyway, so we figured it was good enough for our purposes. The steripen is made for travelers and treats 1 liter of water at a time and takes about 90 seconds per batch. We had a morning routine in Bali in which we would start each day by treating about 4-6 liters of water.
    
The amount of money that we paid for the steripen ended up being about the same (maybe slightly more) than what it would have cost to buy bottled water for a month. But we both feel better about refilling our own water bottles and not creating a whole bunch of extra trash by dumping several plastic water bottles a day. Also, the steripen worked great. Yes, it was a bit fussy at times, but never once did we get sick from the water. I call that a win.

The first stop in our many legged journey back to Philadelphia was the Singapore airport. For the first time in a month, there were water fountains! As far as I can tell, there is not a single water fountain anywhere in Bali (why would they have them when the water isn’t drinkable?). In many towns in Bali I think that running water itself is still very rare (hot water is even rarer) but we were in Ubud and other towns where there is some amount of tourism infrastructure and money. When we were in more rural areas, we definitely saw people bathing and washing clothes in the streams. In any case, water fountains were a welcome sight! I think I will appreciate our drinkable tap water in the USA more than I ever really thought about before. The steripen came in very handy, but now it can be put to rest until our next travel adventure.

Nusa Dua day 1; The relaxining

We arrived in Nusa Dua on Saturday at about 11 am and got right to relaxing.  Nusa Dua is the resort town in the south of Bali.  It is drastically different then the rest of Bali we saw.  There are nicely manicured lawns everywhere, and immaculate sidewalks. The sidewalks were what caught our attention.  In Ubud the sidewalks were tiles that could be removed to access little streams that were overflow from the streets, and possibly sewage.  It was not uncommon for tiles to be missing, broken etc.  So nicely maintained sidewalks were a bit of a shock.  Especially since no one walks in Nusa Dua.  Everyone takes a taxi, or drives.  It looked like Florida, but with more statues like the one to the right.  It’s hard to see but that is a squirreel of some kind, attached to a garbage can.  Except the quirreell has a vert strange expression on his face.  Like he is rabbid.  There are massive resorts everywhere, with small armies for staff, who all speak English very well.

 

 

 

 

Speaking of resorts, this was our room.  In case you can’t tell, our room opened right on to the pool.  We could open our sliding doors, and jump right in!  We took a lot of pictures of the room, so we might make a separate post just about the room.  After dropping off our stuff, we got right to relaxing!  We went out to the beach, and found a little hut, and sat down.  We were brought cold bottles of water, cold wash clothes (to put on our necks) and a little mister bottle to spray ourselves down.  It’s pretty hard to not be relaxed in a place like that. 

 

 

 

 

 

We started getting hungry, so we walked down the main road to find some cheap food.  Along the beach it is entirely resorts, and the restaurants are all very expensive.  They are not just expensive by Indonesian prices, they were expensive for places in the USA!  So we walked out to the road, and the difference was night and day.  The beach felt like any beach resort town in the USA, but the road felt like Indonesia again!  Stores selling the same touristy junk, little to no sidewalk (our resort was not in Nusa Dua proper, but the next town north called Tanjung Benoa)  We found a road side stand that sold us two meals, dessert, and filled up our water bottle for $5!  And the food was delicious!  For dinner we went to a small warung where a few of the employees from our hotel were eating.  That’s how we knew we were eating in the right place.

 

After some more relaxing at the beach, we went back to our room to take a bath.  Our room came with a bath set which had some mineral salts, candle, and flower petals.  It was VERY relaxing.  We soaked for a while enjoying the flickering candle as the last of the day light faded.  It was incredibly romantic, which is not something we do often, so it was a nice change of pace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After feeling fully relaxed we went to one of the Hotel’s restaurants (It had 3) to see some Balinese dancing(left), and have some dessert.  Dessert was delicious (if a little expensive) and the dancing was mediocre.  The picture of the dancers didn’t come out so well, but the picture of the stage did!.  It was a beautiful night, and we could see a bunch of stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our goal was to come ot Nusa Dua to relax, and on our first day we had done a terrific job!

Om Swastiastu!

Om swastiastu is a formal Balinese greeting which can be roughly translated in Hebrew as "Shalom" or in English as, "Have peace and safety". Technically this is a Sanskrit phrase and along with Hinduism, it originated in India and was brought to Bali later on. Anyhow, the corresponding symbol is also quite popular here. It is associated with well-being and luck and it's pretty common to see this symbol on houses, gates, and jewelry.




At first it is a little strange to see this symbol displayed so prominently, since we usually associate it with something else entirely. The first few times we saw it around it threw us off guard a bit. But once you get to know the people here and a little bit about the culture, it becomes just an an ordinary sighting in Bali. The people here are among the friendliest and most welcoming that I have ever met. They are very accepting of the numerous tourists who visit their island, no matter where you are from or what your background. They might look at you funny if you are doing something that doesn't make sense in their culture, but that is about the extent of their cultural insensitivity. Considering how friendly and helpful everyone has been, I really stopped noticing the symbol on houses except when I was looking for it. Around here we were able to stop thinking of the symbol as "something bad" every time we caught a glimpse of it on someone's house. However, I think if I were to see this symbol in most other parts of the world I would be far more uneasy.

This one was on a sign pointing to our hotel in Nusa Lembongan.

And this one is on Ganesha's hand in our home-stay in Ubud.

Leaving Ubud

Today we are leaving Ubud :(  We are going to Nusa Dua for our last weekend.  Nusa Dua is the fancy beach resort town, and we are looking forward to relaxing in the sun on the beach before getting back on the plane to head home.

We will miss you Ubud!

Klungkung. Not just a sound your pipes make!

Yesterday was our last full day in Ubud.

We woke up early to go on a nice bike ride up north.  Most of the bike ride looked like this.  Beautiful rice patties, with a back drop of palm trees.  On occasion we would get glimpses of Mount Agung, which is a giant volcano towards the middle of the Island.  This mountain is very important in Balinese culture.  Each town has a temple of death, and normally the temple is on the Moutn Agung side of the town.  Also when giving directions, Balinese do not use north and south.  They have a word which means toward the mountain and away from the mountain.  Obviously this direction changes depending on which side of the mountain you are on.

During this bike ride we went in to a store and took this picture.  Thats a lot of cats.  CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS.
















After the bike ride we decided to get Balinese massages.  This was a GREAT idea.  They were about 7 dollars each, for an hour of relaxing soothing massaging.

We had to go to the Bumi Sehat office to get our volunteer t-shirts, and used this as an excuse to go through monkey forest one last time.  And this is what we saw.  There were a bunch of monkeys swimming in a small ravine trying to cool off.  It was incredibly cute.  We watched them frolic in the water for a while, and then said our final goodbyes to the monkeys

Once we got over our jealousy of the monkeys for being able to go for a swim,  we got a taxi to Klungkung, which was the old central kingdom of Bali, until they were slaughtered by the Dutch around 1908 (Jerks).  We went to the hall of Justice (what a great name).  This was the supreme court of the Klungkun kingdom.  There were two main huts, one for the supreme court, and one for the king.  They both had ornate illustrations on the ceilings, telling traditional Balinese stories.  We tried to take some pictures, but the pictures do not really convey how crazy these buildings are.

There was also a small museum which talked about the Dutch conquering Klungkun, and how the Dutch won easily since they had guns, and the Balinese had spears and daggers.  The whole complex was quite beautiful, and was well worth the visit.  And we also took this picture.

After Klungkun we went to Petulu.  This area is noteworthy since every evening thousands of white herons return from finding food during the day.  Every where you look you see these white herons.  They roost in the trees, and litter the road below with their feces.  We were even lucky enough to see some baby white herons.  It was hard to take a picture of them without a zoom lens, since they often roosted quite high in the trees.  Every morning they leave, and then come back in the evening.  The birds just started roosting there in the late 60s.  Legend says that these birds are reincarnations of thousands of Balinese that were slaughtered during the Indonesian communist regime in the 60s.  These birds are considered holy by the Balinese.

By the time we got done with all of this, we were quite tired, so we went home to rest up, and have dinner with the volunteers who will be replacing us.  The highlight of the night was dessert, when we went to a Cuban themed restaurant.  I had Tres Leche cake.  It was DELICIOUS!  They also had a very good Latin music band comprised entirely of Indonesians.  We were VERY impressed.  There was also salsa dancing, which we are terrible at, but we gave it a try anyway.  There were some very good dancers though, so that was fun to watch while we ate.  Then we headed home for sleep.

Now we are packing to leave Ubud, which we are very sad about.  We are off to the beach to spend a few days in the sand and sun before getting on a plane for 36 hours of travel home.

Gardening is a lot easier with an army of children, and Balinese Cake Lady

Yesterday was not very exciting.  We hired a driver to take us to the Jewlery town.  Most of the places he took us to were HUGE stores, with air conditioning, and prices in american dollars.  These were not the stores we were interested in.  Our favorite one was an artists co-operative  with 49 jewelers.  It wasn't crowded at all.  In fact, when we arrived, they opened up the store for us, and turned on the lights.  Nothing about these other stores was picture worthy, except for how ridiculous they were.

There was no class scheduled for Thursday, so we went to the garden in the afternoon.  To our surprise there were 15-20 kids waiting there.  We thought they might be there for an english lesson, but when we got there they all went over to the garden!  They were so excited about working in the garden!  There were so many of them, that Ilana and I barely had to do any work.

To make things even better, Balinese Cake Lady showed up!  Ilana and I both got one, as did our little helper (pictured on the far right).










After the garden, we went out to dinner with the other volunteers in honor of our "last day" (which it isn't.  We are still in Ubud till Saturday).

I am going to take this time to talk about the Bumi Sehat Youth Center for which we are volunteering.  It is part of the Bumi Sehat organization, which was founded as a health clinic.  The founder of Bumi Sehat is Robin Lim, who was recently awarded Here of The Year by CNN.  The youth center provides free English and computer courses to the youth of the Ubud area.

Volunteering for the youth center has been an incredible experience.  We have been teaching English, and working in the garden with the kids.  Teaching English in this setting is not like a classroom setting at all.  Kids are there voluntarily, and are generally enthusiastic about learning.  Only one time did we have a problem with trouble makers, and it was easily solved, as the trouble maker got up and left.  We don't teach in a class room as most would think of it.  We teach in a small hut that can fit about 12 people comfortably, and there are no walls, so anyone can see in.  This results in other children in the neighborhood seeing us teaching English, and standing next to the hut during class, and some have even joined the class.  Sometimes it feels like we are the entertainment ("Look at the funny westerners!").

Working in the garden with the children has been a joy.  They are super enthusiastic about doing the work, and as soon as you show them how to do something, they will continue to do it, until you tell them to stop.  I have never seen kids so ecstatic about working in a garden!

Bumi Sehat is an amazing organization, and if anyone is looking for a volunteer opportunity, we highly recommend this one!

A bike ride, and some fun pictures

Uncharacteristically, we slept in yesterday.  We didn't get moving until 11 am or so.  We decided to go for a short bike ride before we had class at 3 pm.  About 15 minutes in to our bike ride we found these, and Ilana insisted on getting a picture on one of them.

I am pretty sure this was in front of someone's house.  Some day, I want giant elephant statues at the gate to my house!

After anouther 30 minutes of biking, we stopped to take a picture of this nice view

As we were getting ready to get back on our backs, a Balinese woman motioned to us to come towards her, using her hands and grunts.  It was obvious she didn't know english, and we didn't know why she wanted us to come towards her, but we did;  She gave us sarongs to put on, and took us in to the temple across the street, that we had not even noticed.  It wasn't an especially nice temple, but the woman seemed very insistent that we walk around and take pictures.  This was all inferred by more hand motions, and grunts.  Finally she pantomimes holding a baby, and points to Ilana.  After some confusion, we realize she is asking if we have any kids.  We say no, and shake our heads, and she is appalled!  She can't understand why we don't have kids!  She pantomimes smoking, and points to Ilana.  We shake our heads.  She pantomimes drinking, and points to Ilana.  We shake our heads.  She pantomimes lifting weights, and points to Ilana.   We shake our heads.  She pantomimes running, and points to Ilana, and we nod our heads yes.  This is very upsetting to our new fertility coach.  She pantomimes animatedly that she should not run, not lift, not drink, not smoke, and not bike, so that she can have a baby.  She then makes a small circle with her hands, and pretends to eat out of that circle with an invisible spoon.  This totally confuses us.  After she
repeats all of this advice, including the eating out of the circle, she insists we take a picture with her and Ilana.

As we are leaving the temple, she points at a coconut and makes the circle motion with her hands, and eats out of that circle with an invisible spoon.  She was telling Ilana to eat lots of coconut, in order to have a baby.

After all that, we taught our last lesson at the youth center.  It seems like we just got started!  Along with teaching, we have been working very hard on a garden, which is doing quite well.  The kids that we teach seem to really enjoy working in the garden, which is kind of awesome.

After dinner, we could see a lot of stars, which is unusual here at this time of year.  Since it is the rainy season, it is almost always cloudy here, especially at night.  We decided to trek a little bit out of town in an attempt to see more stars.  We got to a spot on top of a hill which we though might be better, but ended up being the same as down in Ubud.  But we started playing with the camera and long exposure times. 

 This was my first attempt at light writing ever, and it was the best of all the ones we tried last night.

This one we tried a couple of times, but could never get it quite right.  This was our best attempt












And this was one we just thought looked cool.  Those little points of light are stars!

Preschoolers and the new moon

I feel like there has to be a joke in here somewhere.... Like "What happens to preschoolers when there is a new moon?" Except that I don't have a good punchline to the joke. And the real answer is that in Bali, they get even cuter than usual. In addition to our volunteer duties at the garden and teaching English to older kids, 4 of the volunteers for Bumi Sehat also go to a local preschool twice a week to teach English there. Today was the new moon, and in Bali that is a big deal. We were told that everyone at the school would be in traditional dress, so the other volunteers and I did our best to dress the part.

When we got to the school, we found a sea of 4 and 5-year-olds in the courtyard getting ready to pray. The kids all came dressed for the occasion, and most also came to school with the necessary ritual items for prayer (incense and flowers).  Most Balinese are very religious, and most are Hindu. Usually prayers are said several times a day. Its a public school, but prayer is clearly accepted here and it is just seen as a part of life. Overall, it was very interesting to watch the students and the teachers do their thing. As volunteers, we have been welcomed into the school community which is very nice. Aside from seeing a bunch of kids dressed up in their traditional clothing and looking very spruced up for the occasion, it is also very interesting to learn a bit more about the culture. I have absolutely no complaints about volunteering, because it helps to give us a window into what life can really be like here.

Small Bali part 2

Like I was saying in the last post, we stepped off the boat on Friday and were ready to explore! But did I ever mention that Bali is pretty hot? Well, its HOT. After spending some time walking, looking for the nice beaches, and getting pretty sweaty, one of the best decisions that we made after arriving in Nusa Lembongan (or what I have referred to as Small Bali) was to rent bikes. This gave us a great opportunity to get all over Nusa Lembongan, as well as an even smaller neighboring island, Nusa Ceningan. One of the neat things about these islands is that no one has cars. Pretty much all travel is by bike, motorbike, or by foot. I guess boats might be used too, if you want to get from part of an island to another. And we did see several smallish trucks that were being used for construction or for delivering goods. Most of the roads are about 6 feet wide (just wide enough for 2 bikes to pass, or for one truck to get through. While biking around we would see other travelers on the road here and there, but once we left the small towns the roads were pretty empty. It was really nice for biking.

There is a bridge connecting Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan which we biked across. We did eventually find some nice secluded beaches on both of these islands. We also found cliffs, mangroves, houses, schools, temples,  and plenty of seaweed. In a matter of 2.5 days, I think we saw most of what there is to see in Small Bali. We never did make it to the biggest of the "Nusa's", but that is mostly because the only way to get there is by boat. It also sounds like there is very little infrastructure there and not too much tourism unless you come prepared with a tent, which we are not. Over all, we saw what we saw, and had a great time doing it.

Life in small Bali

This weekend we left what I will call the "large" island of Bali, and set sail for a much smaller set of islands. If you disagree with my distinction of big and small islands, you can debate me on it later if want to. But for my purposes of distinction, big Bali is capable of being completely self-sustained. You could cut off all access to the outside world and I think that the Balinese would be just fine. They grow lots of rice, which is a staple of their diet. There are farms that grow other fruits and vegetables. They have pigs, chickens, and cows. And there are still plenty of craftspeople who know traditional ways of doing things. If for some reason there was never another foreigner or foreign product that entered Bali, I don't think they would need us at all. (This is all just my opinion - you can debate me on anything you disagree with).

The island where we stayed this weekend is called Nusa Lembongan and you could probably walk the entire island in about a day. And unlike Big Bali, this island seems a little too small to be self-sustained.

We left on Friday on this boat:

And about 90 minutes later, we arrived in Nusa Lembongan. You can easily see Bali from this island (there is Mount Agung, the large volcano in the background). And without daily trips to Bali for supplies, I think it would be much harder for these people to survive, or at least to live comfortably. The internet tells me that about 5,000 people live on Nusa Lembongan. The majority of them are seaweed farmers, and we definitely saw plenty of seaweed sitting out on tarps to dry. They have plenty of fresh fish here, and coconuts. And there are chickens and cows on the island that have been brought in. But the boats bring in a variety of fruits, vegetables, rice, and other supplies every day. We saw what essentially seemed to be market when the boat came in with supplies.

After our first day of walking, biking, exploring, and swimming, we got to see a great sunset. I'll post more pictures tomorrow from our other 2 days on the small islands.

Planting part 2

Last week we started seeds in the nursery. This week some of them were big enough to plant in the ground. Some students took turns helping to prepare the soil and mix in some cow manure (Although Dov and Jose really did most of the hard labor). We planted 3 beds of corn. The beans are also starting to get big, but Jose thinks they need a little more time in the nursery before they are ready to plant in the ground; It's only because the sun is so strong here, and at their current size he doesn't think they stand a chance. This just means that next week we will have more fun with planting.

We had a lot of people show up to help. Most of them are just kids from the neighborhood who were curious about what was going on. A lot of them seemed to really enjoy doing the planting and getting involved, so that was pretty cool. Overall, a good day was had by all.

Balinese cake lady

We have a Balinese cake lady who I am just about in love with. She is awesome. She shows up at the garden around 5-6pm every day just when we are hot, sweaty, tired and starting to get hungry. Last week she seemed to have the perfect knack for coming just when we most needed a break and a quick fix of sugary food. Unfortunately we missed her on both Monday and Tuesday this week and I was very sad. So I was thrilled when she showed up today and I got my daily dose of Balinese cake! I was missing my Balinese cake so much that I almost bought it at the Gianyar Market today, but I am glad that I held out and stayed loyal to my Balinese cake lady. She rolls in on her motorbike, with containers of sweets strapped to the back. She also has thermoses of hot water for coffee and tea.

As you can tell from the picture, Balinese cake is really nothing like what we think of as cake. What is not apparent from the picture is just how delicious it is! This photo was take after half of it was already eaten, and it really doesn't do it justice. The green things are balls made from rice paste, with a liquid center of palm sugar. They are sprinkled with grated coconut and then more palm sugar drizzled on top. There is also some black rice pudding on the side, and sometimes pieces of fruit. Delicious.