Bali Hai is Calling...

Well, here it is my last day on the ten day vacation part of the trek and I've just gotten around to writing about Bali. Such is the life here. You really want to spend each day greeting the sun on the beach and saying goodbye from the same spot with a pile of old New Yorkers to fill up the time in between. I am staying at my friend Isabelle's Villa in quite a busy section between Kuta and Seminyak. The house is gorgeous and I have lots of new ideas for tropical gardens. My room is spacious and cool and the furniture is dark teak wood, gorgeous. Isa has a pool area that a large open living room area looks out over. The living room is splashed with red everywhere. One gets the sense of calm and energy simultaneously. She has wonderful taste and everything is beautifully appointed.

The neighborhood seems to have sprung up in the past five or six years and I was surprised to see restaurants rivaling 3Rd Street in Los Angeles with the exception that the host is on the street greeting you and asking you to come in. Since this was my first departure... (not counting the sushi) from Thai, the first thing I ordered was a good, reliable Caesar Salad. I did not know that cheese comes pre-sliced and individually packaged here, so, although I received a very generous offer to visit Lafina Beach on the north side of the island with one of the waiters, I did not frequent Benny's Bistro. You'll be happy to know that I did find a WONDERFUL patisserie which totally catered to the francophile in me and I've been enjoying the most tasty sandwiches, sweet treats and coffee.

OK, OK, I will admit that I broke down and ordered some spicy rice and shrimp. I had no idea where that craving came from! The Indonesian food here is not that different from Thai. The local restaurants are called Warings, like Ocha Waring or Nixon Waring, etc. Usually, they have the food presented in glass cases and you pick out what you want. Stir fried ginger, slices of calimari steak cooked with mushrooms, corn fritters, rice of course, collard greens, etc. It is really delicious and my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. I've also managed to find a homemade gelatto stand down the street from the Villa and I've treated myself every day. After all that spicy food, one needs something to tame the palette.

This blog should have been named FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD!

Notes on Bali.
People do not come here for week, they come for months. Everyone I've met has either been here for two months or is staying for another month or two. There are a lot of expats that do business here in export as well as many factories here (including Levis and Nikes). Labor (and everything else) is really cheap. People are always bargaining with you and you argue over a dollar. It becomes principal but afterwards, both parties are always satisfied. I wonder what the locals think with all of this money walking around and knowing that everything is so cheap.

Surfing is also the national sport. Every morning, the surf classes are filled. I think I may have written that I arrived in Denpasar nearly drunk after inhaling the fumes of three Swedish guys who sat next to me on the five hour flight. At least they were polite and apologized for their boozy reek. They were on their way to Bali for several months to learn surfing. They figured it would be easy since apparently, snowboarding is their life. They were also prepared to get into some fights. This is obviously a world I haven't experienced except through "Dogtown and Z Boys" which I learned after some investigation, everyone in the Balinese surf world has seen.

The beach is walking distance from Villa Karisa. The tides are almost always low and even when it comes in, it's nothing compared to the angry roar of the Atlantic hammering at you "Here I Come Like It Or Not!". You can walk out quite a while in quite temperate water and enjoy some really soft, rolling waves. The sand is smooth and hard but small and granular. It's easy to walk on, not easy to get off your body.

You can rent a chair and umbrella for about a dollar or two each day and then get pummelled for most of the morning by vendors selling everything from replica cross-bows (no, thank you) to wooden beaded do-dads (no, thank you) to manicures and pedicures (no, thank you) to belts with buckles that say "Harley Davidson" and "Hard Rock" (no, thank you) to, well, just about anything. Everyone starts off their pitch with "Where do you come from?" and if you answer, your beach chair and umbrella becomes an island surrounded by people desperate to get on shore. At first, charming. Last day, exhausting. Once the vendors know you mean NO THANK YOU! you are left you alone. Hey, I understand, everyone's gotta make a buck.

One Night in Bangkok...

"...and the World's Your Oyster.."

From the man who co-wrote "CATS". I did not get the sense of Murray Head's glamorous BKK in the three days that I was there. Between super malls and gorgeous gold leaf temples plunged right in the middle of the city between motorcycle mobs and taxis on nitro, the energy was definitely chaotic, frenetic and bizarre.

We arrived on Saturday night with the group wanting to spend the last evening together. One could get a sense that people were ready to get on with their lives and branch out on their own or go home. We'd been traveling as a unit for fourteen days and although everyone was very kind and thoughtful, alone time was in order as was a day without the plethora of pests we shared space with. We ate at "Saffron" atop the Banyan Tree Hotel, about 85 floors up with a spectacular view of the city. It was delicious, presentation outrageous and billed as a "date" restaurant. We, of course, were the largest group over two. Picture "Vida" at $22 for everything. It was outstanding. At the hotel, we said our goodbyes and everyone sort of went their own way; actually, I had secretly made plans with one of the girls to go out to dinner the following night when her boyfriend from Seattle arrived in town. I had picked a favored sushi restaurant in the city guide named "Daikon". I could have cried when we finally found the street, the taxi driver having to stop at least twice to get directions. You see, Bangkok is made up of these long streets with side streets cut off of them called "Sois" and then there are alleys that branch out from the sois and so everything is connected and confusing at the same time. In any event, as I was saying, I could have cried. We entered the most extravagant, most wonderful sushi restaurant in the world. Geishas greeted us at the door, led us to our seats, whispering past the private dining rooms that surrounded the space. The entire restaurant floated on a shallow pond filled with enormous white koi fish. I was in heaven. Not to repeat myself, but I don't think I''ll ever have such fresh, succulent sushi for $15! I wanted to set up house. I know, you want to hear about the Grand Palace and the Sleeping Buddha (to which I let out an inappropriate "My God!" when entering the Wat, it's the reclining size of a football field) and the weekend market which is worth flying back to Bangkok for. I wish I had been able to go on Saturday AND Sunday. Spanning 35 acres... yes, 35 acres, it is host to stalls and stalls and stalls ... and stalls of foods, goods, art, erotica, more food, more goods, antiques, etc. It was crazy and cool bigger than the Grand Bazaar in Instanbul, bigger than the Rose Bowl for that matter! Needless to say, I felt reckless but since I was on a short leash of three hours, I was only able to cover about 1 or 2 acres. The rest I sadly said goodbye to as I looked outward of the Sky Train back to Sukamvit Road where I stayed an additional night. The next day, I met a couple of the girls from the group at their hostel on a little strip of insanity called KoaSahn Road. I'm sure I'm massacring the spelling here, so bear with me. Basically, this is a little haven for backpackers traveling from all over the world to hook up in Bangkok. There are bars blaring Bon Jovi, wide screen TVs projecting pirated movies and mobile bars on the street. Clothing is about a buck for pants and another for a top, so it's affordable to purchase a new wardrobe and dump anything you've been wearing for the past two months. It was surely a scene and a surly one at that. I don't think backpacking across the planet is in the cards for me anytime soon.

Hello, Your Elephant Is Waiting...

Ok, it seems I got the entire description of my Global Village Habitat for Humanity trip wrong! I truly thought that we were going to build houses at the Elephant Conservation Center and I'm sure that's the tale I told all of you. By now, you've figured that elephants did not join us in our numerous bucket brigades, although I'm confident that their strength would have been appreciated. Overall, the GV Habitat project is a really well run organization in which they try to give the volunteers plenty of cultural exposure, part of which is the R & R portion of the package at the end of the build. This is when the Elephant Conservation Center entered the picture.

The ECC is located in the Lampang province about 32 km outside of the city, and is home to the elephant hospital along with several elephants "in training" for the forestry department. Elephants have long been used by the forestry department harvesting teak, since been embargoed. As these elephants were "put out of service", the government wanted to give them a safe haven to live without the fear of poachers. Thus, the "Home Stay Program" was invented. The cool thing about the elephants in service to Thailand is that each is given a "mahout" or trainer/caretaker that remains with the elephant throughout their entire life, which can span to 90 years of age. The mahout lives on the conservation center's grounds or, should the elephants go back into forestry, travel with them to the jobsite. Their families live on the outskirts of the center. The job is seven days a week. My mahout was a frisky young man named "Li" and my elephant, Pankora. I was told right off the bat that she was A. in love with her fellow elephant, JoJo and B. she was spoiled. We were a perfect match.

Most of you probably think R & R means "rest and relaxation". Ha Ha. In our neck of the woods it meant Rise and Ride. We had to be ready to walk three miles into the jungle at 6:30 AM!
#*($&#$. Indeed. After camping out in a bamboo hut (so many new ideas for the backyard treehouse), enduring a night of enormous worms, screetching geckos, and roosters that just didn't give a damn and crowed whenever they wanted, we hiked through the jungle, literally, through the river and split off with our Mahout until we located our elephant. We returned to the grounds bare back, which was awesome, albeit a little rough on the behind.

During the day, I fed Pankora, "trained" her, which was just for show, participated in the demonstration for tourists, gave her a bath and rode her back into the jungle about 4:PM. The hardest thing was getting on the elephant. Everyone preferred the leapfrog option in which you order the elephant to "map long!" and then hoist yourself by jumping over their heads, landing backwards on the neck and then turning yourself around to face front. Believe me, it's easier than trying to get up from the side. I never thought I'd be this close to an elephant in my life and the opportunity was wonderful. Pankora, definitely in love, was gentle and really quite sweet unless there was sugar cane around. They are quite a site and we were privileged to spend such nearness with them.

The Center also is host to the Elephant Hospital and to several male elephants whose owners couldn't afford to keep them any longer. The tusked ones are kept in a special area at night to fend off poachers. There were several young elephants at the preserve and two had recently been born within the past three months. There is a great website detailing the homestays, the conservation program and the progress of the elephants. If you'd like to see yours truly on top Pankora, check out their website at www.changthai.com and click on the top Habitat Group link. Since we're all in our denim mahout suits, you'll best pick me out by the green hat!
Enjoy and more to come on last thoughts of Bangkok and arrival in Bali.