Today in Ubud, a Balinese guy called out to me on the street, "Hey, are you from Hawaii? Is that a Hawaiian tshirt?" I laughed because I was wearing a floral tropical print Hawaiian shirt that I would call .... sort of Balinese! Nobody here wears these though!
This morning we had an amazing adventure-- which relates to Hawaii -- we had tea with a Balinese prince! Who loves Hawaii!
The Prince:
On our way back from 2 nights on the slopes of the mountains (more about this later), we asked our friend/driver Made Kepeler to take us by a town we read about, Krembitan/Kerambitan, that was the capital of one of the 7 Balinese kingdoms until the 1920s, and still has 2 palaces. One, we read, is sometimes opened for guests, especially wealthy dutch guests from cruise ships, but sometimes commoners can come on with them for the major feast and dance nights they have to showcase the local Balinese culture. So we decided to see the town to see if we would want to come back later. Made had never really checked out this town, and never had visited the palace or Puri, but he was game so we went.
So anyway - we park on a sidestreet next to gates to a large courtyard; but no signs, English or otherwise. We walk in to the first large courtyard: on one side is an antique gilded carriage, and a jeep; and a large open "bale"; and another gate. No people. We walk into the next courtyard: ornate carvings, guilded roofs, large "bale" or open sided house, and a few individual bungalows, with lovely antiques and paintings. Still no people. Between two bungalows, another smaller gate; peeking through, we see a stooped old lady, in a sarong, who says not a word. Looks private! We retreat.
Made comes with us again, and this time we find a tiny stooped old man. We ask for information, and he says (in Balinese), well, maybe you want to talk with the prince? we said Nooooo! he goes away, brings us a card, again says, "maybe you like to meet the prince?" We insist we don't want to disturb him... he says well he would like to meet you and give you information. In we go, into the private courtyard. This palace it turns out was all built in the 1700s, and now we are in the truly gilded part, with a mix of lovely art and some children's drawings, and we meet the prince! A dignified diplomatic man, very dapper, in nice sarong and all the colors, checked cloths and gold, that belong to someone important. He invites us up onto his bale, whose golden posts are snugly draped in red black and white squares, and we notice that everyone else present - the tiny old man, and our friend Made - are trying very hard to be sure they keep their head below his head! Poor Craig, too tall to even attempt this. We have been reading about Balinese etiquette, now we are really feeling on trial - are we pointing our feet the wrong way? are we using our left hands inappropriately? He invites us to have a coffee or tea, tea is brought, the tea bringer very carefully comes up the Bale in a way not to bring his head above the head of the Prince who is now sitting down. He begins to "talk story." Turns out it is a good thing we are from California! and Hawaii! He has been to both. Turns out he tells us all his favorite stories about his own cultural mis-steps in the U.S.! Getting in trouble for smoking his favorite cigarettes, Dunhills, in a no smoking shopping mall in SFO! And not a single ashtray in sight! Feeling very nervous to realize he should not have brought Balinese food with him - saying a quick prayer so the customs people won't arrest him! Then discovering the food is spoiled anyway and trying to figure out where to get rid of it, in a modern American hotel! decides to dump it outside in the garden - no luck! The bellhop refuses to let him go walking outside in LA, "too dangerous"! We started to feel better and better about itching our legs (bad to touch them in public) with our left hands (oh no) unconsciously! And keeping our shoes on when we came up on the bale!
Finally he invites us to drink our tea - you can't start to eat or drink until your host invites you - and I have to figure out how to pour Craig's tea without raising my head above his... I'm basically crawling on my knees over to Craig's teacup.
We had a lovely long chat. Turns out his visit to Hawaii in 1982 impressed him, he heard all the Hawaiian music in the hotels, that's when he decided he wanted to be sure all Balinese hotels played local gamelan music, and he decided to start featuring his village's dance style regularly at feasts, so the style would not die out! He was very sorry about Hawaiian culture disappearing. I told him that sometimes the dances are still done, in Hawaii, for the original reasons and that seemed to make him happy.
So how to leave... in Bali you must ask your host for permission to go! Since we had never had to do this yet, how about figuring this out when you are with a prince! We asked if we could take his picture. Turns out the combination of 3 is a bad one - it's possibly because odd numbers, 3,5,7 have sacred significance! So we thought maybe Made could be our 4th... but apparently not, somehow he preferred his own valet, the tiny old man. Maybe Made is not a high enough caste. So we got our picture and this eased our way out.
Whew!
There were lots of nice things about this lovely palace. As the tiny old man let us out, we got to see a few of the bungalow interiors, the 4 poster antiques and old timey carving styles on the statues. Very luxurious and in the ancient magazine rack, were ancient National Geographics. There was a tremendous black and white photo from the 1920s of the last Balinese king, with some of his descendants. But we were definitely not wanting to be guests of the prince, all on our own! We don't know how to socialize for hours with royalty. Nerve wracking! But fun. The prince likes to fly kites for a hobby, we could just imagine seeing him let his hair down on the black sand beach nearby... maybe next time.
Made was very impressed... he said "I've never met a prince!" We never had either...
The Penjors:
today, the day before Galangan, is the local Thanksgiving day. It's also the last day to elect the ceremonial arching bamboo, called Penjor, in front of every house. This is a lovely tradition. The men make them... the women's job is to make the fabric and woven bamboo decorations that go on them later. To make them, you get a 30 foot young bamboo with the ability to arch daintily at the top; you wrap it with leaves so it is pretty and smooth, and attach stiff, folded/looped leaves stapled carefully to create a one foot wide band of open lacework along the outside of the whole curve. Then on the inside of the curve you hang young ripe rice tassels, and leaves cut into geometric designs. You attach colorful strips of dyed bamboo leaves, and maybe red cotton tassels or pink ribbons. Often the whole street has a similar geometric design or tassel in common. From the very top end of the arch, hangs about six feet of flexible fiber, and on the end of this is a giant tassel made of leaves. Then you carefully stand the whole thing up in a 5" hole in the street next to your sidewalk so it is by your gate. Sometimes you have to stand on a truck to get it straight. After this, about six feet up in the air, in Ubud at least, you attach many many flexible leaf spikes each about 3 feet long to create a giant puffy skirt. Below this you attach an offering house with a flat platform, and vertical walls, and a curved/arched or pointed roof top, made of woven bamboo in green and yellow natural colors. Your wife then puts a bright golden yellow or white fabric skirt around this, and hangs stiff woven geometric banners from this, made of bamboo dyed green and red. In some parts of Bali you add a golden or yellow or shiny white umbrella with fringe. White to the east, golden to the west. White mauka, yellow makai. Inside the little bamboo house go offerings.
The whole street is lined with penjors and they are all made of young bamboo that is not stiff yet so the tops dance in the wind, and the hanging pendants bob up and down. It is quite lovely as you can imagine. I see Craig has found a picture from the web. Wait til you see ours!
About five or six men seem to be working on each penjor. This is amazing work particularly since nearly all of them got up at 2 am this morning to work in teams of ten or so to slaughter and butcher pigs and use this and other ingredients to cook amazingly delicious (to Balinese at least) food, much of which gets eaten the same day. On this and other holidays, the men do most of the ceremonial cooking, and most of the ceremonial decorating.
One group of nine men that we passed explained that because they had had a wedding in their family a few weeks before, they were erecting "double penjors", even more elaborately made than the rest, one with a yellow and one with a white flag. Lots of work! Lovely! It all comes down again in about 10 days.
The Peaks
Craig and I spent the last two days up in the center of Bali, in one of its 3 sacred mountain groups. Last year we had stopped along on of the busiest roads in all Bali, the north-south road between Denpasar which is now the largest city, and Singaraja, the port on the north side of Bali which in Dutch times was the major chinese trading and sailing hub. We had seen a very plush looking hotel there, and stopped to use the restrooms.
Now we had learned an important clue, from one of our friends: When looking for a hotel room off season, bargain, and to bargain most effectively, learn what the most special price listed on the web is. Last year we had asked for a price list - the cheapest room listed was $115 plus 21% hotel/service tax. Now we went on the web - we found many prices including $65 inclusive and $45 inclusive. So I had called from Ubud, as my balinese friend had suggested, and asked them if we could come for the "web price." Well in this off season, of course! they would get almost nothing if we used the web consolidator - they were very happy to get the same price from us directly. We figured everyone would be happy. And, everyone was.
Craig has probably already written about our hotel, the Pacung Asri, also called Pacung Mountain Resort. It is high up on the spine of mountain that the 2 lane, busy highway spikes up. Yet on each side of this spine are phenomenal views! And our hotel was built right into the side of the mountain. It's steep enough that it has its own funicular! And -- we were the only guests. They put us in a "deluxe" room. It was great. Four flights of stairs down from the reception, and restaurant, was the pool, and our room. You could walk down 6 more flights, and be in the rice fields by the river. At the bottom were some lovely bungalows belonging to the hotel, then rice paddies, with a few cowsheds and a few of the flimsy bamboo houses the farmers use when they need to sleep by their fields (like when they need to be harvesting). From our room, you looked up at four beautiful peaks that appeared and disappeared depending on the clouds.
We stayed there 2 nights, and had a great day in between in which a local driver, a very pleasant man named Chok, helped us update our balinese wardrobe and then took us over through gorgeous views (a place called Jatuwileh, famous for longstemmed red balinese rice) to one of my favorite temples, one of Bali's 6 most famous, second only to Besakih: This was the temple Pura Luhur Batukau. Balinese language is interesting: most of this time this is pronounced "Batukaru" or Batukalu. It is way up on Mt Batukau in one of the few virgin jungle areas, the air is filled with scents the way Hawaiian forests are, from the scent of aromatic leaves more than from flowers. The temple was being prepared for the Galungan feasts. Impressively, many people had used rice paste and bamboo to create small temples and offering items decorated intricately with curlicues and squiggles and geometric designs all made of rice paste colored with bright food coloring. Truly beautiful. There were people there getting blessings and collecting the local sacred spring water. There were a few tourists there, but Craig and I were the only ones dressed as for temple, and I had a purple sarong, a touristy one from our first trip, but had on my new pink solid, not lacy, kebayah that Chok had helped me buy in his own town, Batubili (or something like that), with a proper balinese pink sash (I'd seen a lot of women with this style sash recently). The women were SO pleased that I had taken the care to dress nicely! The ladies at our hotel had helped me tie my sashes and sarongs appropriately and I was very happy that the ladies of Pura Luhur Batukau were pleased. It was nice to feel like we were doing the right thing. Craig also had the right items on although he didn't look quite as stylish as he will tomorrow, at Galungan.
This may be enough for today! Craig has written about the butterfly park... also a very very nice experience.
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