On the road

… when the nail design on women’s feet is just as colorful, complicated and excessive as on their hands. Why – because they can wear open shoes all the time!

Sorry, saw that stupid pun and just had to copy it.

Everyone has heard about the tough laws in the city state and the strict punishment for seemingly small transgressions. Most are also declared using pictograms.

Knowing this, and having a rather stereotypical picture of highly educated and business-oriented Asians in my mind, I expected Singapore to be a tropical, modern, somewhat sterile hub of Big Money, elaborate city planning, well dressed people, and exotic food. The latter is true. Everything else – not so much.

The city itself is quite chaotic. Mike called it a cultural Baumkuchen:

Layer upon layer of people and their traditions, religion, and way of life.

Singapore reminds me a lot of New York. It is important in the financial world, and its skyline represents this. But turn a corner, take a smaller side street, and you’ll find rundown houses, broken sidewalks, and cigarette butts on the ground. We found a dozen within 10 minutes.

Singapore is also a true melting pot. But to use a different metaphor (dinner time is coming up): In Singapore, there are areas dedicated to specific cultures (Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam, as ingredients). Simply heat and let simmer—not a problem in this weather—and you’ll get a tasty stew. Or maybe I say curry. Ok, maybe I tortured that metaphor a bit. But I’m huuuungry!

That’s what you may find when you go jalan-jalan (for a walk) in Bali. We went out two days ago in search of a local laundry service. We wanted to get as much cleaned as possible so we wouldn’t have to spend our first weekend at home washing, and because the idea of schlepping 20 kg of stinky rags to Singapore and then to Berlin just didn’t appeal.

Of course, we began by checking our hotel laundry prices, but we absolutely, resolutely refused to pay 48.000 IR for 1 shirt (= 4€; = twice as much as in Berlin). Insane. So we started searching online for laundry services in Nusa Dua. It turned out that there are several in the area, but they don’t have websites, and laundry service is not something people seem to write about excessively in their travel reports. After more digging, we found a review of our hotel which pointed us in the right direction.

So right after breakfast we checked the weather (cloudy – so we took a chance and skipped the suntan lotion), loaded our backpacks, and went out into the world. The moment we left our hotel, the sun came out. And stayed out. Oh, well, nothing ventured…

The first waypoint on our quest was “Nyoman’s Beergarden”. It is located in the south west of Nusa Dua, and is an impersonal sort-of-franchise dump with cliche, horrendous beer jokes (in German) tacked to the wall. Classy. NOT!!

At 11:27 there were two waiters at work, and a lone customer: A tall, tanned, salt’n’pepper haired westerner with a grizzled stubble beard, garbed in camo board shorts and a washed out t-Shirt, sucking on a bottle of Bintag (the ubiquitous local brew) nestled in a foam rubber cozy. Pure class.

Mike tried his Bahasa on a waiter to get us pointed in the right direction. They didn’t know of any nearby laundry, so Mike turned to the somewhat sad looking white guy perched on the corner stool. And what kind of burnout did he turn out to be? The New Zealand-born captain of a super-yacht (or “super-yeeeeht” in Kiwi drawl), based in France, who resides in his Bali house whenever he doesn’t have to work. And when his toe isn’t broken (like now), he surfs.  Looks really can be deceiving. “Boss”, as everyone calls him, was very helpful and named three possible laundry joints.

After scouting two of Boss’s three suggestions (and selecting one), we walked full circle back to the hotel. On our way home, we passed a temple-like wall, complete with typical demon doors. This enclosed a grassy area, in the middle of which was what at first glance looked like a roofed, raised stage, was completely packed with people. After asking permission, we entered the compound. We clamored onto the meter-high platform and realized it was not a stage. Inside the narrow periphery of the slab were concrete stands leading down to a tiny arena, and they were having a cockfight!!!!! Of course we stayed.

While Mike and I concentrated on not being accidently forced from the platform, one really nice Balinese even gave me his place, a gallant gesture even if it was in the last row. Below, they first presented the two combatants to the turbulent crowd. Then the betting began: Upon some invisible signal, the spectators began waiving Rhupi bills in the air and screaming what sounded like “ta-ta-ta-ta-ta”. This frenzied chanting continued for over a minute until it stopped just as suddenly as it began.

I guess that signaled the beginning of the fight, because the now hushed crowd edged in closer. Despite our greater-than-average heights, we still weren’t able to see anything but heads.

We experienced the event like this: First, it a hush fell. Then two collective groans. And then everyone went home. Later, we learned that this cockfight also had ceremonial significance as a blood offering.

The rest of our walk was uneventful, except for the Balinese declaring us “gila” (crazy), because we actually like walking. No one here ever walks if they can avoid it. They all drive. Everywhere. Mostly motorbikes. They don’t know what they’re missin’!

P.S.: We picked up the laundry today and payed – drumroll, please – 46,000 IR for 36 pieces of laundry. Adding the taxi fare and tip for the laundry lady, we would have been able to have 4 shirts washed in the hotel. Score!

If you are ever near Ubud, go see the monkey forest! But not because of the monkeys. They are cocky little creatures with really long teeth. They will go after you if you have anything resembling food, and if you don’t oblige they will steal your hats, glasses, bags, or worse – bite you. So no, Christiane, we didn’t bring any bananas, and we didn’t touch one a monkey. 

We went there because it is a sacred forest with over 100 different species of trees, among them immense banyans, and Pule Bandak, from which the Balinese masks are made. It is beautiful and very impressive.

Just as we arrived, a cremation ceremony was beginning. A wealthy 70 year old man was being sent to join his forefathers. The body was placed in a sarcophagus in the form of a bull, with the cover comprised of the back and tail. (The bull is the mount of Shiva, the destroyer, and the symbolism is typical for a funeral). The bull was erected on a small pagoda-like shrine, an elaborately ornamented affair comprised of three levels, again reflecting Hindu cosmology. Our guide Juli told us that the whole ceremony probably cost between three to five thousand Euros – a small fortune in this country!

On our tour, we also visited the home of a Balinese family in Ubud. Subsisting on rice farming and some woodcrafts, they earn a little on the side by letting stupid, tall, white, long nosed strangers trample around their home. So we – stupid, tall, very white and long nosed strangers – obliged.

Entering the compound transported us back in time: The doors in Bali are narrow – not to keep people slim, but to keep demons from entering two abreast. If the demons still manage, the first thing they encounter is a wall, where they will smack their heads. 1^st lesson: Demons are quite stupid.

The compound is completely walled in, both as protection from intruders and against evil influences, i.e. demons. The layout of a Balinese home is always the same, an open-air compound containing a few tiny enclosed and semi-enclosed rooms. Towards the sea (where the demons live), there’s the toilet, the pigsty, and the garbage heap. Towards the mountain (where the gods reside), is the temple. But one man’s mountain side is the other man’s sea side. And to protect the temple from the evil influence of the neighbor’s toilet, you need a wall.

To enter the kitchen (or any other room, for that matter), you have to climb very steep steps. Why? Because demons have short legs (2^nd lesson).

The kitchen is tiny and dark, with a low table, a brick fireplace with 3 pots (one for meat, one for rice and one for water), and a cupboard. The cupboard is used to store the food prepared for the day. There is no refrigerator. In this heat. That’s why everything is really, really spicy.

The bedrooms are strictly segregated: There is one bedroom for the boys of the family, one for the unmarried girls and grandparents, and smack in the middle of the approximately 200 sq. meter area, the bedroom of the head of the house and his wife. While the kids’ bedrooms are four-walled—if tiny—separate buildings, the master bedroom is a simple platform open on three sides. Privacy, shmivacy.

If there’s a death in the family, the deceased is laid out on the marriage bed. Next to the kitchen. For up to 10 days. In this heat. We didn’t ask about decomposition. Didn’t seem right.

Thursday we dragged our lazy behinds out of the sun chairs and did a half-day tour: silver smithy, Ubud, a Balinese family, and a monkey forest.

Our guide, Juli, spoke quite good German and she seemed to be very interested in discussing politics, tradition, and Bali’s development, and Mike is always ready to argue. They both enjoyed it, and no topic was off limits.

So during our trip, the two of them hit several, sometimes quite critical, points. Juli is deeply rooted in Balinese tradition, which showed in many of her arguments, which often stressed the difficulty of modernization among such strong traditional beliefs. Best example: We touched the topic of demons. She readily admitted that she also believes that there are demons. In her opinion, they don’t cause cancer or hepatitis C (a belief held by many Balinese), but…when it comes to demons and demonically caused maladies, it’s still much better to “don’t ask, don’t tell!”

I  love to watch TV ads in foreign countries, especially when I don’t understand a word. For example, in the last couple of days I learned that drinking a “special” yoghurt drink will teach you English, that putting a drop of washing liquid in a bowl of water will clean your salad and tomatoes, and that eating a cracker is better than swallowing  your friend’s motorcycle helmet. Who’d’a thunk!

We usually chose resort hotels for our stays, ‘cause we like resort hotels. Plus, they make life easier if you have to pay attention to what you eat (both calorie-control wise and Mike’s fish allergy).

Usually, we book half board. This time we didn’t, and this has given us an interesting insight into our psychology:

Half board on this trip would have cost 37 € more / person / day. Having dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurants (which we did on our first evening here) cost us about 37 €/ person.

Now comes the twist:  We wouldn’t have spared a thought about the costs had we paid half board. But actually paying it, counting it out, signing off on it is painful. We started calculating:  “That’s about 3 times as expensive as eating somewhere outside the hotel! We don’t usually pay that much at home for dinner!” So we decided to not have dinner in the hotel anymore. Weird, isn’t it?

March is off-peak in Bali; it is the end of the rainy season and the hottest month of the year. Sometimes it’s like sitting in a steamer. (We like that ) So it’s mostly empty here.  But some people find their way here anyway. And it seems it’s the crème de la boor. Guests here are mostly Russian, Japanese and/or Chinese, and extremely unfriendly. They won’t smile when you pass them in the hallway, they have no thank you for the waiters, and if you’re especially lucky, you get pushed out of the way. It’s an incredible contrast to the natural friendliness of the Balinese.

* Stoffel (n) = boor, twerp

No news is good news, so don’t worry that you haven’t heard from us until now.  It is lovely here. Just like last time—absolutely lovely.  And to prove it, we have attached a photo of Mike at breakfast.

The journey to Bali was quite uneventful, just very, very long. It took us about 25 hours from door to door, leaving Germany at 4:45 in the morning and arriving at the hotel at about 1:00 pm local – which is 6:00 am German time. Ouch!

After boarding the plane from Frankfurt to Singapore, we set our watches to Bali time and basically skipped a whole afternoon, jumping directly to evening. Mike impressed one of the flight attendants by declaring the airplane lunch “DINNER!” Apparently not too many passengers make the leap to destination local time directly after boarding.

She was also very nice. It was her final flight; she is beginning a new career in marketing. And she was a Singapore local, so Mike got a ton of tips and ideas for our stay there. Looks like we have to prolong our stay from 2 days to 2 months. 

We didn’t get as much sleep on the plane as we had hoped, but it worked out OK in the end. The jetlag didn’t really hit us at all. A first!

Out hotel, the Laguna, is very nice. It has beautiful pools (aka “lagoons”), direct access to the ocean, 3 restaurants, a spa, a fitness center, a spacious room with a nice bathroom, a garden view (actually, it’s a wall with busty busts of half-naked women pouring water into a pool), complementary flip flops made out of palm leaves… just like its sister hotel the Westin, where we stayed last time.  The Laguna is a few years older than the Westin, which shows a bit in the hallway carpet.

The last couple of days went exactly as planned:  Eat, sleep / read / doze / read / chat by the pool and/or the beach, chill, eat, go for a little walk, eat, sleep. In a word:  Perfect!