Backroads through Bali

Ok, so Keith was right, the backroads are better. We’ve spent the last two days getting into the real Bali, and we’ve found things to take our breath away—for so many reasons.

On Monday, we were off to Bali Treetop Adventure, which is a series of platforms and ropes challenges high in the trees in a botanic garden. We were all alone at first, which was good because then others couldn’t see that Michael and I preferred the practice patch to the actual challenges, nor could they see that Michael started off on ropes that he later found out were for little kids. Many of us got in over our heads at some point—when you finish one tightrope and round a platform and then realize that you seriously, seriously don’t want to do the next thing. Three of us spent some time or another paralyzed up at the top of a tree. But not birthday boy. He was fearless. He climbed up and down, swinging and walking and sliding and hurling himself from place to place. I would have been terrified for him (as I was for me) if there hadn’t been such excellent safety harnesses. He was disappointed to not be able to do the hardest course, and made me promise that I’d bring him back when he was tall enough. It’s not so hard to promise to go back to Bali!

The whole family was less challenged and equally delighted by our day yesterday. We began with breakfast on a volcano overlooking a lake. While the black lava fields were chilling (1000 people were killed there when the volcano exploded over a village some decades ago), the glassy water and majestic volcano cones were somehow soothing. Then to a plantation where we tasted the sweet (but not in any way chocolaty) seeds which will become chocolate and held the bright red berries which will become coffee. We sniffed the branches of a cinnamon tree and fingered the leaves of the vanilla orchid plant. And we learnt about a coffee which they sell in Bali and say is the most expensive coffee in the world. Ready for why? It is a coffee berry which is eaten by a small fox-like animal called a luwak who then poops out the intact beans, which are collected, washed, dried, and then roasted and ground. I kid you not, but I’m still not sure that they were not kidding me. Anyway, we’re tourists so we drank some—and it was smoother than any coffee I’ve ever had. No postulating about why.

Then we were onto our seriously dodgy bikes for 25kms over backroads and downhill through Bali. Other than the bike mishaps (both Naomi and Aidan’s bikes dropped their chains, but Aidan’s topped us all when he lost his whole crank and pedal), it was the most amazing bike ride I’ve ever been on. We stopped from time to time for the guides to tell us cultural things—we saw farmers planting rice in the paddy, up to their knees in water and mud. We went into a house compound and learnt about how they were set up and what they were like to live in. The kids were astonished—and perhaps aghast. In this compound, which our guide said was quite like his, there is no running water, no real walls, no glass windows. The kitchen still is over an open fire, the food processor a motor and pestle. The “bank” out back was one sorry looking calf who will be worth 6,000,000 rupiah in 3 years, two piglets and their mother (who seemed to know I was a vegetarian). They wove the bamboo at the back of their house into roofs and walls and floor mats. We were struck by the depth of the religion, the way it touches every moment of their lives, the way they live with their spirituality the way they live with themselves and their own thoughts. There was nothing about that life which was familiar to me, other than the mothers holding and nursing their babies, a common bond.

We biked past rice paddies, stopped at a tree that was more than 500 years old which vibrated with a kind of wisdom I can’t name. As we passed houses, children would race to their front doors to see us pass, shouting “Hello!” at the top of their lungs and jumping up and down with delight at Aidan’s cheerful Hello back. We chatted with the Swiss and Dutch families on the tour with us, with the Balinese tour guides. We ate lunch at a restaurant perched over rice paddies.

Then, finally, back through traffic much worse than DC rush hour, to the Monkey Forest in Ubud, where adorable and terrifying monkeys are the kings, and you are permitted to be with them as long as you don’t carry a bag (they’ll chase you as they did Michael and snatch it from your hands) or a banana (they bit our guide 6 months ago because he had a banana behind his back) or look at a baby funny. It was frightening and amazing all at once, the monkeys like humanoid rats, swarming over everything. Suddenly I got a glimpse of 5pm in New York City, when the humans swarm like rats out of office buildings. Are we really so different?

And so that’s two days in Bali. This morning we went to a local market, which was perhaps too real for the kids. Filthy and smelly and packed with scents and sounds and people who felt seriously foreign. We are not in Wellington anymore. Still, we rallied and bought a few gifts (but still not the ubiquitous wooden penis bottle opener which is in every shop). And Naomi, Aidan and I each got a henna tattoo. Now we’re home at the hotel, the cool pool a welcome and quiet space after the busy bustle of the last two days. Vacations can be exhausting.

Tomorrow is our last day. We have had wonderful and horrible times here. We will return home different, which might be the most wonderful thing to say at the end of the holiday.