BALI, Indonesia—I’m here in the home of “Eat Pray Love,”but there’s just no escape from the Bay Area.
Chatting with an owner of Bisma Eight, a boutique hotel in Ubud where my 550-square-foot guest room (with jungle-view terrace to boot) is bigger than many San Francisco and New York City apartments, I was hearing about “Silicon Bali.”
It’s a phenomenon where young digital nomads from all over the world work in tech, often in co-working spaces, with cheap living costs and lush scenery.
Staring at rice paddies in Ubud or its surroundings while coding seems novel. But, if Ubud could transform Elizabeth Gilbert from a depressed divorcee to a happily married best-selling author, perhaps its life-changing magic will also work on techies.
A “mocktail” class at my hotel concocts alcohol-free libations from fresh fruit juices and herbs. My favorite, Lost in Monkey Forest, consists of passion fruit puree, pineapple, mango and lemon juices, and sweet and spicy syrup flavored with clove, cardamom, star anise and cumin. It’s named for the nature reserve a 15-minute walk from my hotel where unusually mischievous and larcenous monkeys like to steal things from visitors.
In the midst of making a Bisma Berry Sling, with a puree of three berries and hibiscus syrup, I start talking to a Dutch man who turned out to be CEO Europe of Silicon Valley-based Jaunt, a virtual reality firm.
I was about to ask why he’s based in Amsterdam and not Silicon Bali, when I noticed he was transfixed by his smartphone. “What are you watching,” I asked?
“The Golden State Warriors,” he replies. “Love Stephen Curry.”
In my Balinese cooking class on Bisma Eight’s rooftop terrace — fish curry steamed in banana leaf and banana fritters made from rice flour batter — the chef greeted me with a hands-clasped-in-prayer gesture, the traditional Hindu greeting on this Hindu-majority island in Muslim-majority Indonesia.
As I’ve never met a spicy food I didn’t like, I went to in search of more Indonesian food nearby and delightedly find Murni’s Warung, a well-recommended restaurant with a shop packed with Asian crafts and textiles in front.
While savoring my beef rending — so coated with Indonesian spices, I thought the cubed beef was ground meat — I learned that its owner, who sources from Southeast Asia, China and Afghanistan, had given a talk on Balinese textiles at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, and exhibited at the city’s Tribal Arts and Textiles Show.
My cooking class was just one of many classes at my hotel, from Balinese dance to kite-making. In fact, art beats inside the heart of Ubud, Bali’s cultural center, a city of 50,000 that seems bent on making visitors learn an art form while here. Classes abound in puppet-making, silver jewelry-making, mask-carving, batik, fruit-carving (how dull to just eat a fruit; carve it into an artwork instead) and bamboo weaving. You can even learn to make small hand-woven offering to the gods out of flower-topped coconut leaves; these can be seen adorning sidewalks in front of businesses and homes all over Bali.
Entire villages here make a single craft, like carving wood or stone. I even spotted a village whose niche was wood carvings of Garuda, the eagle-shaped god. The businessperson in me wondered how they could possibly survive, with everyone making the same thing.
Finding things to do as a solo traveler is so easy. From Ubud tourism, I picked up a leaflet of the music, dance and puppet plays to be found at Ubud temples or palaces any given night. Choosing Legong dance, I was mesmerized by beautiful young Balinese women in ornately brocaded costumes and headdresses in stylized dance movements.
Picking Kecak dance another night, I watched shirtless men chant repetitively and hypnotically as if in a trance, then dance around fire. At the end, flaming embers are kicked toward the audience, alarming indeed to front-row spectators like me.
“This would never happen in Australia!” a man exclaimed behind me. “Safety laws!”
Another time, I visited a coffee and spice plantation, Oka Agriculture, to sip a special coffee I’d long heard about: Lewak coffee, made from fruit excreted by a civet-like creature, whose digestive juices apparently do wonders to create a tasty treat. The verdict? Not bad. Yummy, in fact.
Having heard about a wonderful book festival, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, where Bay Area novelist Michael Chabon has appeared, and the Ubud Food Festival, I was thrilled to meet the founder of both, Janet de Neefe, who has lived in Bali for over 30 years.
“Bali gets under your skin. It’s so picturesque, it has a charming culture and the people are extremely sweet,” said the Australian, who, with her Balinese husband, also owns both Casa Luna restaurant and Honeymoon Guesthouse in Ubud. “It’s an easy part of Asia, with so much beauty.”
I recalled the rice paddy terraces in Tegallalang, outside Ubud, so startingly emerald-green that Ireland should sit up and take note. The jungle view behind the Starbucks on Ubud’s main street, Jalan Raya. The many-pavilion-like structures behind gates I assumed were temples, which turned out to be family compounds, where several generations live together.
The elaborately-ornamented everything, from gates, masks, temples, carvings to the fascinating array of Balinese paintings from different eras in the Museum Puri Lukisan.
Beauty and ease indeed.
For more information, see www.bali.travel, www.bisma-eight.com and www.fabulousubud.com
