26 Sept.2010, Lovina Bali

We are back on the boat on the north coast of Bali anchored off a small resort town called Lovina, along with, at last count, 66 other pleasure boats travelling with the Sail Indonesia Rally. The Rally offers a very helpful hand dealing with the bureaucracy along with a range of locally organized events, tours, performances, meals, and workshops, many of which are free and all of which are voluntary, kind of like a cruise ship. It’s quite a value for the $500 entrance fee, especially in a country that is so difficult to negotiate independently.
It’s a big deal in Indonesia. The President of the country came to welcome the Rally at one of the first ports of call. At another, civil unrest broke out because the Rallyers were going to be fed at a daytime event during Ramadan. The event was cancelled and the police had to escort the Rallyers back to their dinghies.
The Rally isn’t exactly our Indonesia. We flew back to Bali and put Amy on a plane for the US, unlocked the boat (which was very well looked after by Isle Marine Services in Serangan), reprovisioned, and headed off. Crew Richie decided that the slopes of the Alps were beckoning (not hard to imagine after a few weeks in sweltering Indonesia) and flew to Europe to land a ski resort job. Tom’s condition is very good so we feel able to manage the thousand miles to Singapore on our own.
Here is our Indonesia. Rasa Manis sitting at anchor off a village on the East Coast of Bali whose main industry was manually extracting salt from salt water until off the beaten track tourists and expats starting trickling in ten years ago. In the foreground is a small slice of a 100 year celebration for the big Hindu temple for the area, the opening sacrifice to appease the seas. Five thousand people dressed in white paraded offerings onto massive display tables. A sampling, including a live goat with a stone round its neck, were tossed into the ocean.
There was a series of silent prayers, everyone seated on the ground. Someone would hand you flower petals – marigold, rose, hydrangea. You put your hands together with a flower petal just extending from the where the middle fingers met, up to your forehead. Then the petal went into the hair, then you took another petal, repeat. To laughter, the priests came around and sprinkled everyone with holy water.
At dusk we were the only white people who made the 4 km. fast march up the lower reaches of the sacred mountain Gunung Agung to attend the ceremony at the temple. Just so you don’t think this was easy, and in support of our statement above that the Rally offers good value. We happened on this event by pure happenstance. We pulled into shore for a night’s sleep and another boat anchored there offered us a ride ashore to look around. Being Bali-philes we knew from the fresh decorations hung all over town that something was up, and speaking Indonesian, we asked, and asked, and asked. It took a lot of asking to get answers. When we heard it was a 100-year commemoration, we were hooked.
We camped out in an uncomfortable anchorage for three days waiting for the event to start. At the end of the opening ceremony, we found a sponsor –a guy with a restaurant on the beach who wanted to build his business with visiting boats - to lead us and find us scooter rides home in the dark. He had to endure some friendly razzing about bringing white people to the temple and he told us there were plenty of laughs at our expense.
We had carefully prepared and worn our Bali formal dress – sarongs(long wrap skirts), formal shirts, sashes around the waist and a headscarf for Tom. Exotic and respectful, but in which we look rather foolish, and in which it is difficult to stride up a mountain much less sit crosslegged. We sweated buckets and endured physical pain when we were the last to sit down in a throng of people in the middle of the street for more prayers. I don’t think there was a square foot for either of us. Tom ended up on the lap of a young woman and I ended up with a foot under someone’s rump. Lesson learned for next time – sit down fast and claim your spot. We rented a motorbike and wangled an invitation to a roast suckling pig party for the third day of the festival, but high seas, rain, and a nasty virus suddenly appeared, which is when we sadly gave up “our Indonesia” and joined the Rally – which once again, we say, offers some really good value. Looking forward to more.

Sept. 14 2010 - Solo, Java, Indonesia

We’ve spent almost two weeks in Central Java, based in Solo (Surakarta), the city where Tom lived. Even with previous visits, even with years of third world experience, even with modern technology, we are sort of shell shocked. Solo is the cultural soul of Java, known for its refinement, classical music and batik. A city of a mere half a million people, a sliver of the size of Jakarta (10-15 million) in an extremely diverse country of 225 million.
It’s noisy. The quiet bicycles and becaks (passenger carts mounted on the front of bikes, driven by sinewy drivers) are being replaced with motor bikes and private cars. You drive a motor bike until the family consists of Mom, Dad and two school age children. Then it is time for a new SUV.
It’s dirty. But not as filthy as 20 years ago, when sewage ran in the streets.
It’s hot. Rainy season has begun with mammoth long gully washers.
We are among the biggest tourist attractions around. Indonesians on holiday throng to take our photographs, preferably Amy with their children.
About 70% of the population is Muslim. The call to prayer comes five times a day over the public loudspeaker system. There’s a lot of “come hither” purdah – veils in fashion colors, sometimes with sparkles or other ornaments – fulling covering the hair, ears, neck and shoulders but exposing the full (and often heavily made up) face. Surprisingly, the rest of women’s normal attire is standard Western autumn – dark colors, jeans or leggings, tops with sleeves, flip-flops or sandals being the only concession to the 95 degree heat.
After initially being taken aback, you quickly come to realize that Muslims are “just folks”. There does not appear to be any pressure for others to conform, at least not now. The rest of the population - Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians - claim they are treated with tolerance and respect. That was the official order of the day during the strong-arm regimes of Sukarno and Suharto. Today, one of the scary aspects of the burgeoning democratization of Indonesia is local government initiating new ideas ranging from optional women-only train cars to sharia law.
People seem delighted that we are from America (we were more than a little worried about what would happen if those idiots in Florida went ahead with their Koran burning). Solo is supposedly a hotbed of fundamentalist training camps but the only anti-American thing we have seen or heard was, among many other tasteless trinkets, Uncle Sam hanging in effigy on a keychain.
Our visit has coincided with the end of Ramadhan. While there has been a lull in the performing arts, it’s been quite interesting. For a month, observant Muslims wake in the middle of the night – 2:30 am or so - and eat a big meal before sunrise. They do not eat or drink all day. They at least nominally go to work. After dark, they break the fast and do a lot of socializing late into the night. Like Christmas in the West, Ramadhan is the time for consumption in the form of gift giving, new clothes, and culinary indulgence. Though alcohol can be found in the form of Indonesia’s formerly ubiquitous beer Bintang, it is not listed on menus in this city. It is either barely tolerated, in short supply or rationed – we can’t really tell.
At the end of Ramadhan is Idul Fitri, when everything closes for at least four days. Can you imagine transportation on a holiday on an island of 125 million people with lots of new motor vehicles? We were warned. We planned accordingly – hiring a car and driver to take us to us up into the mountains about 80 miles away. It was virtually a non-stop traffic jam – 16.5 hours – with every vehicle – bus, minibus, private car, scooter- filled to over capacity. Unlike the violently shivering people on motorbikes, at least we were dry in the torrential rains that looked like they would wash down the side of the mountain. We had a very experienced driver who could negotiate the four lanes of traffic on the vertiginous two lane roads. The vistas of that day will last us a lifetime. The trip itself – well, it made a mere sail across the ocean feel pretty tame.

2 Sept. 2010 - Bali, Indonesia

The passage to Bali from Darwin was easy – no wind for the first half, light wind for the second. There was an unanticipated stop for fuel at a small town en route – without going first to the official port of entry for a 2 – 4 day clearance process. We were, after all, trying to beat Amy to Bali – which we accomplished with 2 days to spare.
Our crew was great. We hope Richie returns to “his castle” on Rasa Manis after hitching rides on fish boats and cargo ships to outer islands. His budget is $10/day. His backpack contains a sleeping hammock, a change of clothes, antimalarials, and a couple of Indonesian phrasebooks.
We are all excited to be in Indonesia. Tom spent the better part of a year studying music in Central Java in 1977 and we travelled here together in 1990. Amy grew up on and studied gamelan. We all have all been boning up on our Bahasa Indonesia. With Amy, we are pretty much retracing our steps – staying in the same places, visiting old friends. It’s fortunate she was a history major and doesn’t seem to mind hearing , “33 (or 20) years ago, it was like this…”
We left the boat at anchor at “Royal Bali Yacht Club” to land travel. The marina – one of three in this 3000 mile long island chain with 225 million people – was a sea of garbage. Not a pretty sight.
Bali is still a place of tremendous beauty both natural and man-made. It’s just that the ricefields and farmers in “coolie” hats are now hidden behind the hotels and huge craft showrooms that line the roads. The temples are nestled in between luxury boutiques. The market for Balinese opens at 5 am, by 9am it disappears and is replaced by tourist stalls.
Tourism has made many Balinese wealthy. Stone masonry buildings – a luxury 20 years ago – are everywhere. The roads are filled with brand new private cars and hordes of motorbikes which have largely replaced the old mode of transportation, the bemo, a rusty, dirty, tiny, crowded, sweltering minivan. In 1990, the average woman spent one-third of her waking hours producing beautiful offerings of rattan, fruit, flowers and rice. She still spends a lot of time at it, but now she can buy the raw materials and premade containers from others.
In 1990, Bali was for the Balinese and tourists. Now 10% of the population is from other islands, drawn here by work opportunities. Where there was no Muslim culture to be seen in 1990 (it was virtually all Balinese Hindu), there is a fair amount of it in 2010 – halal restaurants, mosque loudspeakers, women in veils. There is also a fair amount of resentment about the newcomers – the Bali bombers were Javanese fundamentalists. The movie “Eat Pray Love” has not yet opened in Bali, but everyone is talking about it. “My grandfather is the healer”. “I was on my motorbike wearing a red leather jacket. I hope I didn’t get cut”. Everyone hopes the film will attract more tourism, which plummeted in the wake of the bombings.
We based ourselves in the village of Peliatan, near the arts center of Ubud in Bali, at the same “homestay” we lived in 20 years ago. The big change there was electricity and running water. Our hosts Ketut and Wayan gave us a warm welcome. Ketut, a talented painter, dancer and musician, led us to fabulous cultural events night after night after night. Wayan cooked up beautiful breakfasts that we still remembered after 20 years. We were thrilled to be able to attend a cremation ceremony in a nearby village. The event – which happens once every 5 or 6 years - was a massive celebration involving hundreds of people stuffing a colorful parade of animal floats with offerings which are set on fire with the bodies of the deceased (temporarily buried).