Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition
In which we find ourselves in another part of the world
The internet is awash in pictures of overloaded scooters in various places. We were impressed with this guy’s ingenuity and patience as he lashed this scaffolding to his trusty steed.
A few minutes later he came back for some long sections of pipe. He hoisted them on his shoulder and drove away one-handed. What could possibly go wrong?
It rained every day if our visit, but not for long. We only got caught outside once, forcing us to buy unneeded plastic ponchos. Otherwise, we got to watch from cover of one sort or another. The short bursts were truly impressive.
Once we were sitting at home, the last photo, and a thunderclap was so close that it set off a car alarm. But we were impressed that the power never even flickered.
The main roads around Ubud are two narrow lanes in width. From there, neighborhoods are accessed by driveway-width paths. And from there, you access most of the houses by these narrow sidewalks, which are just about the right size for two people or three motor scooters loaded with construction materials. And since all the houses have high walls and there are stray dogs everywhere, it’s sometimes a challenge to see all this as charming. I mean, it is charming, but you do have to remind yourself from time to time.
Maybe someday development will progress to the point of a grid system like we’re used to. But for now, it’s all built on top of ex-rice paddies, so the land is terraced and transacted by canals. And there’s no money for infrastructure anyway, so it will probably be alleys and improvisation for a while longer.
There’s no possible way that all these people can get where they’re going without crashing. But they do!!!
After the coffee plantation, we continued driving uphill to the start point of our tour.
The group was just five… me on the left, then Camilla and Thomas from Sweden, Ronald from the Netherlands, and Chuck from my old neighborhood in Vermont. It was a very convivial group… I would happily travel with all these people, and it makes appreciate one value of a group tour… if you have any luck at all you’ll meet some nice people. Chuck and Ronald, for example, were thrilled to speak Dutch to each other.
Anyway, that’s Mt. Batur in the distance, an impressively big volcano. One popular tourist attraction is to get up at 2AM (for some I suppose it’s stay up till 2AM) and ascend Mt. Batur in time for sunrise. Too energetic for us.
We adjusted the seats on our rattletrap mountain bikes, so they were less too short, checked the brakes (1out of 2 ain’t bad) and took off.
True to the brochure, the tour was entirely downhill. I think I pedaled about 10 revolutions in total, coming off stop signs, and on a bike with less friction wouldn’t have had to do even that.
There wasn’t as much explanation as I would have liked, but I guess the land we were on was formed by a big slow volcanic flow, so it made a very long and gentle slope. Really fun to cruise down.
We stopped at a little school and looked around.
The faded Say No To Drugs sign was somehow sad… if ‘man-splaining’ is a problem, this English-language message felt like its global cousin ‘America-splaining.’
Next stop, a Hindu temple we couldn’t go in. Then on to a ‘real’ family compound to see how the country people live. It was uncomfortable for me, being paraded into these people’s home while they basically ignored us and we basically ignored them. The children were cute, but their artificial smiles enlisted to sell us crocheted bags made me squirm.
But it was interesting to peek in the house compound. Several separate buildings, two for sleeping, separate kitchen, separate bathroom. One just for ceremonies and rituals. There is electricity and running water, but not much of either. They don’t have a flush toilet, but they do have cell phones.
Our guide Ago.
Then we veered off the road and into the terraced rice paddies. We wound our way along a concrete wall with the flowing water channels snaking in and out along the contour lines of the hillside. It’s an impressive feat of engineering… from above it must look like a printed circuit board.
From there we cruised through some more villages, traffic increasing steadily as we got closer to town. We finished up with lunch of fried rice and Bintang beer at a little cafe.
I wouldn’t have minded a better bike and maybe a little more of a workout, but it was a really fun tour and we met nice people.
Yesterday Chuck and I went on a “downhill bike tour”, more about that in the next few posts.
The tour included a stop at a coffee plantation, where we got a perfunctory tour of some plants,
a peek into the traditional methods of producing coffee,
a viewing of the beans in various stages (including freshly pooped out by a luwak or civet),
and a tasting of all the things we might choose to buy on the way out.
It was fine, in a cruise ship attraction kind of way.
We did not actually eat Wayan’s Raw Balls for breakfast with our fresh papaya-lime juice and Balinese coffee. But the picture was too good to pass up.
Most of the vehicles are scooters, and nobody has any spare coin, so most gas purchases are for like 1or 2 liters.
A few hundred meters from the Royal Palace is the Sacred Monkey Forest.
One minute you’re walking down an overstimulating commercial thoroughfare, the next you’re in the cool quiet jungle.
But it’s not like it was unexpected… we saw a handful of monkeys in town as we got close, and there was this right outside the gate…
The monkeys are long-tailed macaques, and there are about 600 of them. They can leave any time, but they mostly stay in the reserve: lots of nice trees, no motor scooters, and a steady diet provided three times a day. Sweet potatoes, corn, bananas, etc.
You are warned when you enter to not make eye contact, not to smile at the monkeys, and to remove all your shiny jewelry or the monkeys might steal it.
Mostly, the monkeys seemed way more interested in their own lives than ours… you could instantly see the social hierarchies being played out around the feeding area.
This monkey was posing, minding her own business, and then this happened:
There are several temples inside the reserve, with a lot of cool and/or disturbing sculptures.
All in all I was fascinated and a little creeped out. I kinda want to go back and just observe quietly, maybe next trip.
… but if all the trappings of home are everywhere then maybe there’s no place NOT like home.
Starbucks Ubud
For my money, nothing says “can’t escape the 20th century fast enough” like the tangle of wires on the corner.
Another city, another creative way to get below the sidewalk
The Royal Palace sits at the edge of Ubud. There’s some history be learned, but as a regular tourist you just walk into the compound, ogle the Balinese carvings, and then walk out again.
Posing at the Royal Palace, Ubud.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 