London Calling...

(We wrote this from the UK, but posted it when we got home, because of so many internet problems we faced in the last weeks of our trip...)

We arrived in London the evening of Sunday, July 1st, the day all airports went to high alert because of terrorist threats. Although the actual air travel was uneventful, it took well over an hour to hail a taxi as they were required to wait off-site until passengers required them rather than to queue at the curb in the usual manner. Once we were finally aboard, we sped off for our friend Clare’s house in Acton, northwest London where we would spend our first week.

We had a relaxing time and the weather was gorgeous—cool, dry with a light breeze most days—an apparent surprise to all of the UK since there had been record rainfall and flooding to date. In fact, there was so much flooding that we had to cancel our previous plans to join our friend Gillian on a journey out to the English east coast to explore the countryside. Instead we unwound at Clare’s for the week and explored London.

We had a quiet day on Monday and on Tuesday Amy had a meeting in town. Kathy met Amy and Amy’s friend Sally at Gulshan Tandoori, our favorite Indian restaurant on Exmouth Market.

On Wednesday, Conn, who is taking care of Clare’s home until the family decides how to settle the estate, returned from his time with family in Ireland. That day was our first major adventure, including a stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington for the Surrealism exhibition (Surreal Things, now ended). Dali’s witty designs mixed with Miro and Ernst sets created for Diaghliev’s ballets; Schiaparelli’s gowns decorated with raucous crustaceans provocatively accentuating certain particularly erogenous bodily zones, dresses and coats made of fabric cut against the bias in off-angle patterns, a “shoe hat” and many other witty puns turned into sculptures, paintings and interior designs—such as a door painted on a wall between two functioning doors—were some of the more memorable parts of this wonderful exhibition that served, among other things, as a lively reminder that postmodernism antedates Foucault!

On Thursday, after Kathy got her hair cut by Anna (with whom Kathy had originally found the bravery to cut her hair very short and let it go to its natural salt and pepper grey!) at The Klinik on Exmouth Market, we ate jerk chicken at Cotton's, the new Caribbean restaurant on the market and then walked to Oxford Circus to buy new mobile pay-as-you-go phones. Then we headed to the Old Vic to see a mystery-thriller play at old Vic, Gaslight, for which we had gotten half-price tickets at Leicester Square, walking through St. James Park where they were setting up for the London leg of the Tour De France. Gaslight, written by Patrick Hamilton and ably directed by Peter Gill, is a melodramatic Victorian period piece first staged in 1938, on which the movie featuring Ingrid Bergman (for which she won an Academy Award) was ultimately based. This version was brilliantly acted with grace and restraint. Rosamund Pike played Bella with perfect pitch and balance, not over-the-top.

We ate a late light dinner at Tas on The Cut, enjoying several Turkish meze dishes—a yoghurt/cucumber dish similar to tzatsiki, some delightful prawns in garlic, and hummous—and headed back to Acton on the Piccadilly line, which, not unsurprisingly, was delayed in the tunnel, putting us back at Clare’s after 0100. Needless to say, we slept late the next day.

Friday, our friend Gillian came into town from Grantham and we ate dinner with her at Clare’s, catching up on all her news of the last few months. The next day, we moved to Carlton Court, a studio apartment located in central London on Maida Vale, part of the Interval Hyatt Timeshare system. A great location, (right next to Jude Law’s house! whom Kathy spotted in front of his house twice on her walks around the area) we nonetheless found the facilities below par and wondered if we would make it through the week.

Later that day, despite having vowed not to venture into the center of town over the weekend, we somehow found ourselves right in the middle of Tour De France activities as we attempted to meet Gillian at the Gourmet Pizza restaurant on the South Bank before seeing Shaw’s St. Joan at the Royal National Theatre. A high energy and timely production of Shaw’s interpretation of the story of Joan of Arc, we found the play both imaginatively staged and ploddingly tedious. Ann-Marie Duff plays the role convincingly; her very physical acting is an inspiration. But Kathy felt she might be coming down with a cold and so we left at intermission and made it an early night.

Monday we awoke with great enthusiasm. Eager to be free of our less than adequate housing situation, we decided quite spontaneously to head out to the Cotswolds to stay at our longtime favorite B&B Farncombe in Clapton-on-the Hill, run by Julia Wright. We were in luck and booked our usual room overlooking the valley and Bourton-on-the Water for two nights.After an old fashioned roast chicken and chips dinner at the local pub, The Manse, and a great night’s sleep and Julia’s full English Breakfast, including her home-baked bread, we set off for what amounted to an 8 mile walk.

The fields were a bit wild, wet and overgrown as we hiked down from Clapton. Luckily Kathy had borrowed Julia’s knee high ‘Wellys’, and we made good time along the river into Bourton-on-the Water arriving before the buses of tourists swarmed in for the day. The fresh air smelled wonderfully clean as we trotted through fields of poppies and wild flowers, no other humans in sight. From Bourton, we crossed the fields working our way up river first to Lower- and then Upper-Slaughter. These smaller villages are postcards of the rural English countryside where it seems as if little has changed in the last hundred years or so. Suddenly we encountered a bus load of smiling, bowing Japanese tourists making their way single file along the country path that leads from Upper to Lower Slaughter.

Having worked up quite an appetite, we lunched in a flashback-in-time, The Westbourne, a several hundred year old, low-ceilinged pub with a beautiful outdoor patio right abutting the Windrush River. Amy enjoyed a blanched pear stuffed with gorgonzola cheese set upon a glazed onion salad and Kathy had a sandwich of bacon, brie and avocado with chips and then we finished off with lovely cappuccinos as birds chirped overhead.

Wednesday we hired a car to take us to Oxford and the train back to London. But before leaving Farncombe we enjoyed a delicious French toast breakfast and took one last hike, accompanied by Julia’s two dogs, energetic stick-chasing Rex and Bess, the old black. We left the Cotswold’s at noon and, after dropping Kathy in town in Oxford, Amy paid a visit to a colleague in the village of Iffley, who will be celebrating her 90th birthday later this year.We reunited back in town later in the afternoon for a light dinner, sitting outside in the afternoon sunshine at the Head of the River Pub and then headed back to London.

Our last days in London were quiet days spent in the British Library, with the exception of a fabulous performance at Sadler’s Wells of the new Matthew Bourne dance The Car Man. Loosely based on Bizet’s Carmen, the production was a high energy, mesmerizing tour-de-force, exactly the sort of show that makes you come back to London again and again, despite the noise, the expense, and the incredible rudeness one encounters merely walking down the street.

Friday was our last night and we met friends Valerie and Rawdon at Les Trois Garçons, a chic, pricey restaurant in the Shoreditch area of east London, recently turned into a trendy, bustling center of night life. Our reservation was for 730 PM and after a challenging effort to get to the street on which the restaurant is situated, turning and returning through a maze of one-way streets, we settled into our table and took in the high kitsch atmosphere that the ménage-a-trois of antique dealer/owners has created. Bric-a-brac decorate the walls and from the ceiling in the center hangs a “chandelier” of antique evening purses that dazzle and sparkle in the candlelit interior.

Amy selected a dish of bream, steamed and served with fettucine, while Kathy, Valerie and Rawdon enjoyed Roti du Porc, which came arrayed on a bed of delicate seasonal vegetables. We were all set to share the tarte Tartin, but the waiter informed us that it took twenty minutes to prepare; our time at the table had expired. Kathy couldn’t resist explaining that, in the future, customers should be informed of such time constraints in dessert ordering, which in any case, she added, wouldn’t have been encountered if the main course had arrived on time…The waiter didn’t seem moved to contrition and we left to explore the LoungeLover bar around the corner, owned by the same trio.

Saturday we packed and happily left the overly hot and disappointing Carlton Court for the peace of Ireland, the last leg of our journey....

Hej, Fran Stockholm

(NOTE: We are posting these from Ireland, in a part of Donegal that lacks broadband access, making adding images difficult to upload...more photos to follow...)

Heathrow is a nightmare to travel through these days. And a high security alert caused by a self-immolating driver crashing his jeep into Glasgow Airport Terminal that day only made matters worse. We had been prepared for the “one bag” policy, allowing each traveler only one bag of small size to carry on. At the BA transfer desk we explained about the long flight from Hong Kong, delayed even longer by the staff exercise and joked with the agent that we certainly hoped our bags arrived in Stockholm safely. And then we waited three hours for the next flight, having already missed our original connection.

The opposite of Heathrow, Arlanda is an efficient and easy-to-get-around-in airport. Once we cleared immigration, we waited for our luggage to appear on the carousel and weren’t altogether shocked, although we were certainly disappointed, when Amy’s large green bag failed to materialize. Where it had gone would take us days to discover. After missing for three days, a call to BA in London revealed that the lack of personnel, equipment failures, compounded by who knows what other security measures, had created a backlog of some 11,000 bags gone lost and waiting to be delivered from London to whatever final destinations. Miraculously, the bag appeared at our hotel in Löngholmen on Wednesday. We were lucky to have packed smart with enough clothes to attend the conference and be about town.

Löngholmen Island is to the west of the old part of Stockholm. Situated on an island, it is the site of a former prison, now defunct since the sixties, and more recently transformed into a hotel and conference center. Surrounded by a small forest and abutting a part of the river used for swimming, it makes an excellent location from which to explore what has to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

Stockholm’s gracefulness is the effect of a number of factors, including the cityscape itself, which retains the signature architecture of old Europe uninterrupted by the metal and glass structures that have transformed the outlines of London and, to a lesser extent, Paris, for instance. Positioned on the water, Stockholm is actually part of an archipelago that constitutes this part of Sweden, itself dotted throughout its landscape with lakes. (We had hoped to take a boat trip to some of the outer reaches, but didn’t have the time on this trip.) The weather was perfect; even the occasional rain didn’t dampen the mood created by the days of long light, days that begin with a creamy 400 AM dawn that descends into a “night” whose darkest hues reach no deeper than the cool violet of dusk, even at 1100 PM!

The fact of Löngholmen’s former existence as a prison was evident throughout the hotel, in some places more starkly than others, which created quite a subject of conversation and controversy at Amy’s conference. Luckily our room, a double, was devoid of photos of former prisoners which were stenciled onto the walls in some of the smaller rooms, whose dimensions closely mimicked that of the former cells from which they had been transformed. Even the bed linen was grey and white striped!

Each morning Amy woke early for a brisk forest walk and then we both went to breakfast in time for Amy to make it to the “social dreaming matrix”, which is one of the methods of group study explored at the conference. Participants share dreams and associations a way to tap into some of the unconscious workings of the group. Kathy even participated in two of the sessions, which are open to non-members, and found the associations in the second particularly insightful and moving.

Kathy had intended to visit her friend Anna’s summer home, but plans were changed by a family emergency, which took Anna unexpectedly back to Iceland for a few days. For two days, Kathy wandered around the old town of Stockholm, enjoying the gorgeous weather, the wonderful sites and gathering ideas for future art projects. We sampled some of Stockholm’s excellent restaurants, including in Södermalm, the former working class area of the city, which has recently become a mecca for boutique-seekers and café-goers, discovering a newly opened restaurant, Binbadgen, that served dishes from around the world.

On Wednesday, Kathy traveled to Örebro and worked with Anna for one day on the final edits for their new anthology, returning to Stockholm on Thursday in time to hear Amy’s excellent paper and enjoy the stimulating dialogue her work generated, which reverberated over the remaining days of the conference. That night we celebrated friend Bridget’s recently completed and certified Ph.D. in an Italian restaurant, La Famiglia. Reputedly the place that Frank Sinatra frequented when he visited Stockholm, we enjoyed its old world elegance and classical dishes, such as Osso Buco, which Kathy savored. On Friday, there were more panels and an early evening supper at the stunning city hall, site of Nobel Prize award dinners. After a buffet of excellent Swedish fare, including salmon dishes, salads, some fine wines and a selection of cheeses, we sailed along the port and enjoyed Stockholm’s graceful skyline. But Saturday found us both “grouped out” and we opted not to attend the final conference celebration. Instead, we enjoyed a final simple dinner of pizza and salad at a nearby Italian restaurant, and prepared to leave for London the next evening.

ernet

Leaving Bali was difficult. Our brief time there had been at once restful, sensual, and culturally stimulating. Yet we looked forward to the new adventures we might have in Hong Kong and making whatever discoveries we could fit into the two brief days of our visit.

We flew Cathay Pacific from Denpasar to Hong Kong, arriving at Hong Kong’s massive airport around 830 PM. After retrieving our luggage, we set out in search of a working ATM and then took a taxi from the island where the airport is located to the main Hong Kong Island.

We used timeshare points to stay at the Hong Kong ‘Grand Hyatt’ and walked into its magnificently stair-cased, circular lobby around 945 PM. The desk clerk, new to her job, was a bit more effusive in her introduction to the hotel and its features than we could appreciate at that hour and Ricky, the bellman, would have been easily at home in San Fran’s Castro district. After a nearly five hour flight and arrival into decidedly hot and sticky Hong Kong weather, all we wanted was a quick shower and some food.

Our room had a stunning view of downtown Honk Kong, which at night was festooned in more than the usual array of neon lights in preparation for the 1 July 2007 celebration of the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to mainland jurisdiction (an event more consequential for some than others, as we would discover). ‘Las Vegas of the East’ was how we came to refer to it. The next day, we resolved, we had to find a replacement camera (on which these photos ultimately were taken), because the sights were simply too fantastic to be missed.

After breakfast the following day, we set out for Kowloon, where the art museums and main shopping areas can be found. Taking the ferry across the harbor is efficient and cheap—except in our case. We discovered after boarding the boat that we had been short-changed almost $100HK and spent the next half hour explaining to the harbor master what had happened: We had presented a one hundred HK dollar bill to the ticket taker and received change for a ten! Perhaps we were mistaken, he suggested; not knowing the money; wasn’t it possible we only thought we had exchanged the larger bill? Since the only denomination issued by the cash machine was in hundreds, that was impossible, we explained. At that, the supervisor insisted that they would check the end-of-the-day receipts and get back to us.

The heat was oppressive and after walking a few blocks, we dashed into a nearby electronics store to find a replacement camera. We selected a new model that could take both pictures and video and in which we could fit the now-dormant Nikon’s memory stick (still containing our precious Bali photos). Camera in hand, we proceeded toward Linda Chow’s custom tailor shop on Peking Road, which the Hyatt concierge had recommended as one of the best places to find suits made to order.

Linda had been expecting us, but since we were late, she’d gone next door for lunch. Even though her assistant encouraged us to begin by picking out a design, the process seemed overwhelming until Linda, summoned by her frustrated assistant, arrived. A small woman in her late fifties, Linda had a no-nonsense approach to her sales. The price was the price; she had enough business and the quality of her work spoke for itself. If you wanted something rock bottom, you could go elsewhere. And we started to do exactly that, until Kathy encouraged Amy to think about what it would mean to have a suit designed to fit her perfectly for the same price as ready-to-wear Anne Klein; it was an opportunity not to be missed.

Amy picked out an elegant pattern and brown checkerboard fabric. Linda measured, asking precise questions like, "Do you always wear this watch or sometimes another?" and "Where do you like your trousers to sit?" dictating numbers and instructions in Cantonese to her assistant. Around the small shop filled with fabric bolts and dozens of fashion magazines—"Pick anything; I can make any dress or suit to your specifications"-- many photographs hung on the wall depicting Linda with her clients around the world, including university Presidents and US naval officers, which led Amy to comment on the history of her own career.

After the fitting, Linda took us to lunch at her favorite Dim Sum restaurant nearby, ordered the food and filled us in on the history of her thirty years in the business while instructing us in the proper eating of baby bamboo shoots (stem in mouth first, then suck the leaves in), those delectable long green stemmed vegetables that resemble baby broccoli plants. As we consumed pork rolls, and shrimp balls, all flavored delicately, Cantonese style, Linda told us about her many trips to the US to visit her daughter and grandson, who live in California. "I’ll be making another trip in the fall; you can come for a fitting then," she told Kathy, who had decided to wait for her bank account to replenish itself before choosing a new outfit.

Assured that the suit would be ready for final fitting the next day, we left Linda at her shop door and headed back into the heat, interrupting our walk to the ferry as often as possible with stops in air-conditioned stores.

Back on the HK side, we were once again reminded of San Francisco as our taxi delivered us to the base of the funicular tram that travels nearly vertical to the viewpoint overlooking the city, known as ‘The Peak’. Along the way, we were entertained by the driver who told us in perfect English about his educational plans to ensure that his three children spoke the best English possible: start studying the language early in school, practice at home and listen to the English-speaking radio stations as often as possible.

As it was late Friday afternoon, the tram was packed but luckily we made it to the top before the largest crowds hit. On the way up, we tried to figure out the new camera and were lucky we managed it because when we reached the summit, we had a magnificent view of the harbor and mainland China in the distance to the west. Stopping for a snack and a drink at, of all places, ‘Bubba’s’ an American franchise, we rode the tram back downhill and taxied to the hotel.

By then, we had given up the ferry money for lost. Yet, when we returned to the hotel, there were no fewer than five messages from the harbor master, requesting us to contact him to arrange a refund of our money. Curiously, even though they were ‘certain no mistake had been made’, they were nonetheless willing to return the cash and we arranged a time to meet the next day, letting bygones be bygones. The heat had so tired us that we decided to order room service. While we waited for dinner to arrive Kathy used the tripod to take some more great shots of the setting sun and nightlights of HK.

The next day was a whirlwind. We checked out of the hotel, leaving Ricky with our growing mound of luggage, and set out to collect our ferry refund, then visited the Hong Kong art museum, and completed our shopping, including Amy’s suit fitting at Linda Chows, in the sticky Hong Kong swelter. By early evening when we returned to the Grand Hyatt to collect our luggage we were near collapse, having enough energy only to take a swim and eat some dinner, killing time before leaving for the airport and our 1230am departure for London and Stockholm.

The flight from Hong Kong to London takes almost fifteen hours and the thought of that was daunting enough. Imagine our frustration when we arrived at the airport to discover that this was the time British Airways had picked to run a check of staff performance in a simulation of computer breakdown! All passengers had to be checked in and their luggage registered by hand, without the use of computerized tagging, etc. As a result, the flight departed nearly three hours late! Even though we weren’t flying in the back of the bus, the trip was the least satisfactory part of our journey, made worse when the two couples seated next to Amy decided it was time (at three in the morning) for a dinner party. Finally, Amy convinced the flight attendant to exercise reason and we were able to sleep for the rest of the flight.

Missing our connection to Stockholm in London, we worried about our bags, a worry that proved well-founded when we learned upon arriving in Stockholm that one of our bags had gone missing. Luckily, it wasn’t the one that we most needed and we took a taxi to the Långholmen Hotel in Stockholm, hoping for the best.

After the disappointment at Besakih and the long trip, we took the next day, Tuesday, to rest and recover. That left us only two days more to see what we could on the clearly too ambitious list of sights we had made for our Bali time. All would be photo-less adventures as our jinxed camera proved truly broken.

After brunch, and an attempted yoga session in the room—not very successful because of the stone floor and lack of mats—we spent the rest of Tuesday reading and writing and planning a second trip to Ubud in search of some stone statuary we had promised ourselves we’d find for our San Diego garden.

On the road out of Denpasar we again approached Batubulan where two days before we had seen shops filled with imposing sculptures—Ganesha, Vishna riding Garuda, and assorted other gods and monsters carved into stone statuary made from sandstone, lava rock and other materials. We alighted from the car and began our search for two figures to guard the gate of our house and another larger statue—perhaps Ganesha—to adorn the platform near our backyard fireplace.

It didn’t take long to find what we wanted. Still, we wandered up and down the street to make sure we had chosen well and then returned to the first shop, spending half an hour bargaining over the price until we reached an agreement and arranged to have the three statues—and a few smaller gifts for family—crated for shipping to California. Fingers crossed that we don’t receive a box of crumbled stone six weeks from now!

We drove into Ubud and ate at Wayan’s café, a small outdoor restaurant on Monkey Forest Road, and then walked down the steep street that lead to the monkey forest itself, where these creatures considered sacred to the Balinese wander freely among locals and tourists in a state-supported sanctuary.

At the gate to the forest several women were selling bananas to tourists for monkey-feeding, but we opted to walk and watch without directly participating. No matter how many times you’ve seen monkeys in the zoo, it remains an incredible sight to watch them wandering freely, jumping on the occasionally shocked tourist whose banana in hand proved simply to good to resist.

Taking a trail that led to the south side of the forest, we passed another street of shops and then took a small road that led to the village of Nyunkuning, relatively less trafficked than Ubud itself, but still home to a few villas and small houses for tourists to rent.

As we waited for Wayan to meet us, we sat on a corner at the junction of two main roads and were as much involved in watching village folks as they were in watching us. A warm rain fell. Several children eating sugar cane peered at us over the wall of their home, which was just behind where we were seated. They’d pop up every now and then with to greet us with a giggling "hello" and a big smile when we "helloed" back.

Two women beggars with babies slung around their hips approached us one after the other and we realized we had seen little direct begging in the other areas of Bali we had visited. Instead, most poorer folks mask begging with the offer of something to sell—flowers, postcards, trinkets, whatever.

We decided against visiting the museum in Ubud’s center since our drive back would be slowed by the weather, now falling heavily. But we did stop to see two of the other properties managed by the same company that operated our villa. One was situated in the middle of a working rice field, and the other larger villa, once owned by an ex-pat German artist, was located on a hill overlooking the bay.

Clearly, one needs a lot more time even to scratch the surface of this region rich in history, culture and art. The next time in Bali, we’ll probably choose to be based in Ubud.

One day more in Bali to indulge in massage and manicures and then finish packing, preparing for the journey to Hong Kong, and, after two days there, a long flight would take us to Europe and the start of Amy’s conference in Stockholm.

We’ve been neglecting the blog for reasons both technical and physical—our camera broke only a few days into our Bali week and then a deep tiredness overcame us. It was time to unplug for a rest.

(We are catching up with entries about our further adventures in Bali, our two days in Hong Kong, our time in Sweden and travel to London …)

The first Sunday in Bali, and the day after our first venture into Ubud, we spent in quiet reading and writing at the villa, watching the clouds shift to reveal Mt Batur in the distance. That night, we enjoyed a lovely dinner of grilled fish with sauce sembal, a tomato-based chili-spiced sauce for the fish and accompanying rice and vegetables prepared by Nyoman, the cook.

We awoke to a pool of water near the front door, the result of a malfunctioning air conditioner, which was to be repaired while out of the rooms, and then set out early Monday for the long ride into the Klungkung region of Bali, considered the traditional center of power and the location of one of the most sacred temples—Besakih. A complex of temples developed over many centuries, Pura Besakih is dedicated to the triumvirate of Hindu gods—Siwa, Wishna, and Brahma. Each of these three major deities has a large temple and an additional nineteen temples complete the complex.

That day the traffic was unusually heavy and it took nearly three hours to reach Besakih. But we had lengthened the journey further by asking Wayan, the driver, if we could visit his village in the Klungkung area, a side-trip he was more than happy to take with us. Leaving the more densely populated regions surrounding Denpasar, we drove along the southeastern coast and then turned inward and headed north passing through an area dense with rice fields. The lush green vegetation was interrupted by small villages, each with its own now familiar maze of temples, houses, storefront cafes and small craft businesses.

Just beyond the border of Klungkung, Wayan turned off the main road and made his way through a small village, greeted on the road by cousins and other relatives and friends who recognized him. As we continued out of the village, the road narrowed until it became a narrow dirt lane winding into the hills and ending perched at a vista point above the village where we had a view through the fields to the sea beyond. As we got out of the car we heard a group of children singing. A summer camp of kids had traveled from Denpasar to the countryside for a day’s walk in the rice fields and forests above them.

The children were as curious about us as we were about them and while they sang traditional songs, several turned to us, hoping we’d snap their photo. We obliged and then walked along the path to the well-hidden temple that had served Wayan’s family for three generations. The children followed us and we stopped at the steps of the temple to take a group portrait.

At the point in the road where we had parked the van, Wayan’s cousin was working in the peanut patch nearby. "Have you tried fresh coconut juice," he asked in perfect English, which he had learned from spending several years in Australia. When we told him we hadn’t had the pleasure of that experience he gestured us toward the rear of his plot and shimmied up a tree to retrieve the fresh fruit. Nearby, a pot of peanuts was boiling and a few minutes later we were enjoying a snack of fresh peanuts and coconut juice.

Back in the car, we drove the remainder of the way to Besakih. After stopping for tickets, Wayan thought he might avoid the road that led to the much touristed main entry, but a guard stopped him and, after confiscating his license (which was later returned for a bribe), insisted Wayan drive us on the ordinary road to the main gate.

We had been warned that it was essential to take a guide into the temple and at the very moment we presented our tickets to another guard at the front entrance, a young man offered to lead us into the temple. Haggling over the price was merely the opening gambit in an unending series of entreaties by itinerant traders to purchase some trinket or passing mopeds whose drivers offered to ride us uphill or from our guide himself who attempted to renegotiate the agreed price of the tour. It wasn’t long before we realized that this holiest of places had been transformed into a zone of commercialized exchange.

As we entered the complex we saw dozens of tourists, who wandered with and without guides, among the maze of temples. But there were dozens more ragged and mangy dogs than tourists. From time to time, groups of worshippers entered one temple or another and, as we climbed to various levels of the complex, the guide explained which rituals were being observed.

The guardian statues at temple entrances usually are sheathed in black and white fabric, symbolizing the balance of the forces of good and evil. At one entrance, we noticed the statues were covered in red and our guide explained that in this one spot it was possible for people of any belief to enter and make an offering. We did, half-knowing we would be beseeched for more cash at the end of the "prayer."

Nearing the penultimate level, our guide explained that the seventh and highest level was the holiest in Hindu traditions. Ironically, above and behind this most sacred level we saw another—a level dedicated to selling more trinkets, including giant carved penises, whose symbolism in the Hindu pantheon we were at a loss to comprehend.

Finally, we paid the guide—more than we had promised but he still seemed dissatisfied—and left this "sacred space" with the disturbing realization that globalization and its discontents had altered the relationship between the sacred and the profane along Bali’s cosmological axis.
Had we really expected it to be otherwise?

Perhaps our thinking had troubled the gods. Vishna’s revenge: after snapping our last photo at Besakih the shutter on our little Nikon digital camera wouldn’t budge. That ended picture-taking in Bali...for now.

On the Road to Ubud

On Saturday, we set out in the morning for the area of Ubud. Situated near the center of the island, besides being a rich agricultural region, it is also known for its rich repository of Balinese arts and crafts.

Following a busy road out of the Denpasar region, which itself is lined with rattan and teak furniture makers, wood carvings and stone works, we reached Sanur, another center for Western tourists. Near Sanur, at what we came to call the intersection of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dunkin Donuts, we stopped for a coffee and then continued along another less-trafficked artery away from the beaches and into green hills filled with lush palms and other tropical foliage and many rice paddies toward Ubud.

Along the way, we wanted to visit some of the cottage industries in villages whose now blurred boundaries were once distinguished by the different crafts represented—batik, wood, painting, silver and gold metal work, etc. Yet the art that every one in Bali seems to practice of necessity is balancing themselves—and sometimes the whole family—precariously on a motor bike while weaving in and out of Bali’s never-ending stream of traffic.

Given the lack of public transport, the motor bike is the main form of transportation for the Balinese. Along every road one sees small petrol stops where, for a few rupia, you can buy a quart of fuel in a bottle, dispense it through a red plastic funnel into your tank and continue on your way. One also notices machine shops for repair and other places to wash this essential vehicle. Each bike is carefully maintained and in all seasons is the primary mode of transportation for getting to work, for whole families—often four to a bike—getting from one place to another, as well as transporting goods for many forms of retail industry.

We saw people carrying everything imaginable on these vehicles. One man had a small kitchen on the back of his bike, the basic implements and food products for what must have been a mobile warung (the Indonesian term for snack food restaurants, which are, in function, a little like Western cafes serving as hangouts both for locals and anyone interested in a quick snack). Many folks carried sacks of rice at their feet, or bundled palm fronds for basket-weaving. Several bikes had been outfitted at the back with special carrying cages holding up to five five-gallon plastic bottles filled with mineral water for delivery to area homes and restaurants.

Some folks on motor bikes wear helmets, others don’t. Some children stand on the middle footrest, others sit in front of the driver. Some women and men in sarongs ride “side-saddle” on the back. One bike carried a family of three—father drove, mother sat on the back nursing her infant wedged in the middle between them!

Cars and motor bikes signal each other with two short beeps of the horn when attempting to pass and one to acknowledge the attempt. That is part of the choreography that keeps this dance at the right tempo and pace, mitigating collisions. Yet the most amazing sensation one perceives from those riding motor bikes is of tremendous calm; despite the frenzied flow, the cacophony of sound and overwhelming smell of diesel exhaust everyone seems to stay focused. Is that what allows them to pass each other as well as cars and trucks in spaces in between, places the uneducated eye cannot even see?

Our first stop on our Saturday journey to Ubud was at a batik-making factory. Outside, under an awning, several large looms had been set up to display the traditional craft of making the threads and weaving batik. Women wove threads into colored clusters and then into meters of patterned fabric, while on the stairs approaching the store, a man sat pouring beeswax onto a delicately patterned cloth in preparation for the several stages of dying and layering of color that would create the final elaborate and complex designs for sarongs and other garments. Since we planned to visit a temple, where the wearing of a sarong and sash is mandatory for women and men, we couldn’t resist buying some of the beautiful fabrics here.

Back in the car, we headed toward the region of Celuk, home for centuries to metal artists and jewelry makers, but stopped to visit and make an offering at our first temple—there are thousands all over Bali, since every home has a temple, as does every neighborhood, village, and region, not counting the national treasures of Besakih and Tanah Lot.

Wayan, the driver, had a sister who owned a shop in the region of Celuk and we stopped there to watch silversmiths—both old and some very young (under ten)—working machinery to craft silver strands to be cut and heated into tiny balls for the creation of some traditional Balinese designs.

The shop itself was an architectural wonder—designed around an inner court with marbled paths leading across ponds filled with koi and lotus blossoms and into the interior where displays showcased some remarkable jewelry ranging in price from inexpensive to haute and (conveniently) priced in dollars for Western buyers. A search for the rest rooms yielded this interesting sculpture indicating which door to choose to find what we needed. We picked up a few items in the shop as mementoes and gifts and continued to the next village, whose crafts were concentrated in wood.

Bali’s tourist industry has been recovering from the setbacks that both natural; and human explosions caused in 2002 (Kuta bombings) and 2005 (Indonesian tsumani). But the recovery has not been rapid enough. Our American presence seemed to amplify the sense of desperation we picked up from shopkeepers who had buoyed by the anticipation of a sale that our mere walking into a store apparently implied and were deflated if we left empty-handed. When we finally arrived in Ubud, the “quiet” in the shops ratcheted up the impact of the lack of tourist sales to such an extent that Kathy began to answer in Swedish when someone accosted her on the street with items for sale.

After lunch, we walked down Monkey Forest Road toward the Monkey Forest, a sanctuary for some of the most revered animals on this island, but first stopped in a small shop. Here was the kind of wooden carvings for which we had been looking. Out of a single piece of acacia wood, one of the shop owner’s family had carved an amazing statue of extraordinary intricacy, vitality, and expressive grace depicting the god Shiwa being transported by the god Garuda. Behind the shop stood a temple overlooking working rice paddies, which we viewed while the owner wrapped our purchases and told us about his family’s generations old craft. He clasped our hands as we left: we had clearly given him more income than he had had for a while. And knowing that gave us a kind of bittersweet satisfaction brought on by this frequently repeated reminder that you travel with your social position more firmly attached to your person than the pack on your back.
On the way back to our apartment we decided to return to Ubud for at least one more day to see the monkey sanctuary and other areas of artistic interest, knowing there would not be enough time, even if we had weeks more, to explore fully this fascinating area. And we also decided that the next day, Sunday, would be a day to catch our breath with time for reading, writing, and reflecting.