Hyped up Bali: Part 1 Ubud

In the royal place in Ubud

Hyped up Bali

Bali comes highly recommended. Conde Nast Magazine named it an “island you have to visit before you die“. There was that book and then that movie, you know which one I mean, where Julia Roberts finds love on Bali. People whose opinion I trust deeply love the place. After 10 days I am less convinced. My best guess is that we just didn’t do it right, we didn’t travel far enough out of the tourist places, or we drove through the jammed streets at the wrong time of day. Maybe it’s that we don’t have enough love and respect for crafts, or maybe it’s too little patience with other tourists, but mostly Bali made me a bit sad.

Depending on who you ask, Bali had 3 million, or maybe 4 million visitors last year. This number is taking its toll. Last week, Bali’s minister of tourism was quoted in a newspaper describing Bali’s tourism as out of control. When I looked around I saw a region chewed up and spit out by tourism and all those chatchkies that go with it.

Our first stop in Bali was Ubud, the artistic and spiritual center of the island (also, I believe the Eat, Pray, Love part of the island). There are some really lovely parts of Ubud, but the center is given over to souvenir shops, grand tourist restaurants and taxis. There is a large set of expats and visitors on a spiritual journey and many tourist services that cater to their needs. I could have had my intuitive fortune told by a women who started telling fortunes on the streets of the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. I looked at her picture and said, “yes, yes you were on Haight street back in the day.” I also could have had past life regression therapy with another expat. There was a lot of yoga, which I will admit was a nice thing. Occasionally I felt like I was stuck in the blog, “Stuff White People Like”: Yoga! Massage! Organic food! Taking about burning man! Smoothies! Scooters! Eating lunch overlooking locals working in the rice field! (that one was both slightly weird and also cool in its own weird way). None of these things are bad, but they felt created for tourists. They were there for my benefit, or the benefit of the expats who frequent them, not for the benefit of people born in Ubud. Some tourist infrastructure is nice, and important while traveling. The disappointment comes when you feel like you are in Bali-land and not well, Bali.

Ducks in a rice field

I told my sister in law that the town felt hit by the tourist stick and she said “On the upside, if we believe everything we see in movies (and what intelligent person doesn't) Javier Bardem is cruising around those back roads in a very sexy, rugged jeep.” Good point Jessica. Andrew and I rented a scooter and zoomed around for most of a day to find Javier. That was really cool. We went past temples we would never have found on foot. We found small streets lined with shops, still all shops for tourists, but smaller and with nicer stuff. I bought some fabric, my first souvenir purchase of the trip. Andrew and I looked at each other and said, “Ahh, this is how you see this area, it is much cooler on a scooter then on foot, we get it a bit now.“ We also drove into a rice field to have lunch at an Organic restaurant. That was on the tip of a French girl we met while renting our scooter. I am not sure why this girl thought sending two beginner scooter riders onto a long, curving narrow path through rice fields was a good idea.

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Would you send newbie scooter drivers down this path?

It was perilous. It is not that we would hurt ourselves, we couldn’t go fast enough, but accidentally running over a duck or dropping the scooter into the meter deep drainage ditch were definite possibilities. To my right, sitting at the organic café, was an American girl describing in great detail how like, amazing burning man is, like. To my left were three retired Americans talking about a variety of things including spiritual experiences during yoga class. No disrespect to spiritual experiences in yoga class although they don‘t really make good stories. Note on the organic café, it only serves organic food, it has a demonstration farm next to it, and it has a sign “Please be considerate of others while smoking. If someone’s smoking bothers you, speak up, we will support you.” Which for about 1 second seemed interesting until I thought, “You bloody wusses. You run an organic café. Grow a pair and just ban smoking.” The views from the café were stunning and we watched as farmers burnt their fields. After lunch we tried to zoom a bit more on our scooter, but alas, we spent the next 1 + hours in one giant, slightly scary, defiantly noxious, traffic jam. Andrew drove and he was fantastic. I would never have been able to manage it on my own. My Hero.

My hero

While in Ubud I occasionally wanted to poke fun at all the women in their yoga clothes walking around town, but generally the visitors in Ubud were lovely, polite, nice people. They may talk about chakras, but they did it with a smile and some respect. Once we got off the main roads in Ubud, it was lovely, dare I say stunning?

part two comming up next!