Ubud to Lovina

We left Ubud July 28th and took local transport to the north of the island to a town called Lovina.  We took a "Bemo" from Ubud - this is a small van with two narrow benches running down each side from front to back.  We had 5 legs on this journey which took about 4 hours, 4 by Bemo and one on a local bus.  Just checked on Google, our route was about 82 miles.  We had short stopovers, but considering the fact that we were usually going about 20 miles per hour, 30 max, it's not surprising it took so long. Three school girls got on at one point, they were in uniforms and going home for lunch.  One, a 15 year old, spoke English and asked us if we were going to visit her orphanage.

We really wanted to talk to the locals sharing our rides but language seemed to be a real barrier.  The people we've talked with who speak English all generally deal with tourists, it appears many Balinese do not speak much English. (And we don't speak Balinese or Bahasa Indonesian.)


The day before we left Ubud we visited the palace grounds and a wonderful museum.

Grounds of Museum Puri Lukisan

I really enjoyed the Balinese style paintings.  They seem to fill every inch of the canvas with detail.  Here is a favorite:

The Idiot Who Became King, 1932, Ida Magus Made Togo, based on Balinese folktale

Detail from above painting

This was a beautiful mask which I believe is used in Barong dances:

After a relaxing time at the museum we walked back to where we were staying.  It was late afternoon which apparently is rush hour.  The traffic was crazy!

Last night we attended a children's performance of music and dance. The children had been taking classes and this was a performance to show what they had learned.  Western tourists were invited to attend and there were about 10 of us.  It was delightful to watch, similar to everything we had seen at the dances in Ubud, but at a kid level.  One of the girls dancing invited each tourist guest to get up and dance with her.  Liz and I got up together and I got to practice some of the moves I had been watching so closely.  I threw in some finger twitching and got a cheer from the kids.  It's very interesting, the skilled dancers we saw in Ubud move their hands in a very particular way which involves a twitching of some of the fingers.  We could see that the girls were learning those same skills.

We have been seeing more cats in here Lovina.  Liz made a friend - a young kitten.  We were happy to hear from the woman selling things at her stall that she takes care of this kitty and has another one at home.

Liz and I both had a massage yesterday afternoon and had interesting conversation with the masseuse beforehand.  She is 53, married with three adult sons.  Some things we learned about Balinese culture from her and a few other conversations:  extended families live together with the wife going to live with her husband's family.  Marriages are not exactly arranged, but the child and parents will typically agree on the spouse-to-be.  Free education is available for 6 years of elementary school. (But I later heard from her daughter that there is a cost...) Junior high and high school can be quite expensive.  I don't know if children with disabilities are served at school, but tend to doubt it.  We've seen a couple young adults with deformed feet, one who is able to walk with difficulty, one in a wheelchair.  I'm quite sure both of these conditions would be corrected with surgery at a young age in the US.  Medical care seems to be very expensive for the average person.  Many people live in family compounds which are a walled in area with several buildings.  Every compound seems to include a family temple, even if it is as small as 8 feet by 8 feet.

Art is everywhere, sculptures at intersections and in the temples on buildings.

Next post - dolphin watching tour and visiting a ceremony at a Hindu temple.

Ubud, Bali

We've been in Bali for 5 days now and went straight to the village of Ubud. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed the first few days.  It did not seem like the idyllic village portrayed in the book and movie Eat, Pray, Love, much less an island paradise.  There are narrow streets filled with cars and motorbikes and crossing the streets is challenging.  It's the high season so there are lots of tourists and many vendors asking us to buy things as we walk by.  Every block has men with signs for taxi asking if we want a ride.  I've been totally turned around and unsuccessful at following maps, not what I'm used to.  But now things are feeling more comfortable.  The same walk to the internet cafe where I'm writing this has gotten shorter every day, funny thing.

Ubud is known for its culture and arts.  We've gone to two dance performances and one shadow puppet show.  The dance performances were amazing, the puppet show less so because it was difficult to follow the story.  The kecak dance was our favorite, 50 men chanting and dancing while other dancers in elaborate costumes dance and tell a story.

Dancers at Legong dance performance

We first stayed at Nirvana Pension for three nights, then went to another guest house.  Both guest houses are a family compound where they rent out 5 to 10 rooms.  Family members also live there, and every compound has its own temple area.  A delicious breakfast of local fresh fruit has been included at both places.

Entrance at Nirvana Pension

In addition to the dance performances we've explored Ubud and gone on a bicycle tour.  We were picked up in a van and driven for breakfast to a restaurant overlooking Lake Batur, which is situated between two volcanic mountains.  We then stopped at a coffee farm and saw a variety of plants in addition to coffee.  We were offered samples of about 16 types of coffees and teas.  We then got on the bikes and cycled about 25 kilometers, almost all of it downhill.  We had other stops to see a huge banyan tree, a rice paddy where they were harvesting rice, and a family compound.

View of Lake Batur

The tour ended at the Monkey Forest, it has a temple and is a sanctuary for macaque monkeys.  There are hundreds of monkeys there, running all over the place.  Vendors sell bananas, and the monkeys will crawl on visitors to get at the bananas.  (We didn't feed them.)

Monkey mom and baby

Main temple in Monkey Forest

A sarong and sash are required to enter the temple area and are provided

Despite tourism and western influences, Bali culture is still very strong.  Islam came to the island of Java next door over a thousand years ago, and the Hindus there moved over to Bali.  Bali remains mostly Hindu, but it has developed in a unique Bali fashion over the centuries.  There are many temples and religious ceremonies are a part of everyday life.  One huge aspect of Bali culture is offerings.  Offerings are set out daily and are seen everywhere:

Offering on the sidewalk in front of a shop

Typical daily offering

After Made brought us our breakfast she distributed offerings around the family compound

Offering in produce section of a local grocery store

Most locals speak at least some English, but we've learned a few words of Indonesian and Balinese (two different languages).  We now love saying "thank you" in Balinese (suksmon) because every time we do we get a huge smile.

Tomorrow we leave to go north up the island.  Our plan is to take local transportation and stay with a couchsurfing host in a small village.  On to our next adventure!

Tokyo

Mom went home to Seattle from Honolulu, and I flew over to Tokyo where I met up with my daughter Liz.  We'll be traveling together for a month before I have to go back home for work and she goes off on her own adventures in Nepal and northern India.  We spent 5 days in Tokyo and barely scratched the surface. Tokyo is the largest megacity in the world, 35 million. The subway system is incredible - very complex and yet we found it quite easy to use after the first day or so.

Tokyo subway map

The thing that made our Tokyo visit really special was the families we stayed with. Liz has been using couchsurfing.org for a few years now. She set us up to have several couchsurfers stay at our house in Seattle over the past year and all were good experiences. So when she suggested couchsurfing on this trip, I was up for it. We stayed with two families, one for three nights and the other for one night. Our contact for the first family was Chie, a 28 year old young woman who did a lot of traveling before becoming a mom. She and her husband and two daughters (6 months and 2 1/2) were very welcoming. They provided us a room to sleep in, invited us to share a couple meals with them, and took us on a walk through the neighborhood to see a Buddhist temple. We had interesting discussions about our two countries and we could ask them our questions about Japan. They lived a short walk from a subway station so it was very convenient to go sightseeing from their house.

Me with 6 month old Shima

Chie, Koji and 2 year old Eina

Liz with Mick and her family

 After three nights with them, we went to Yokohama, about an hour south of Tokyo, and stayed with Mick and her family. She teaches English to blind students and is fluent in both Japanese and English braille. Her husband teaches English at a junior high school. They have two sons - 4 and 9. We again had our own room, this time with a tatami mat floor and futon type beds to sleep on. So comfortable and so Japanese. Mick met us at the subway station and took us with her to pick up her 4 year old at daycare. Then we went to a grocery store to buy supplies to make spaghetti for dinner. It is so interesting to go to grocery stores in foreign countries! We wanted to make a cobbler or cookies for Chie's family but couldn't find the ingredients. It's just so different. We prepared dinner together at Mick's and had interesting conversation. Her husband videotaped Liz and I and asked us a few questions about our thoughts on Japan. When we were at Chie's we had lunch with a friend of hers and her 11 year old son. He also asked us questions, for school report. When we asked him his impression of the US, his quick answer was "guns". When we asked Mick's husband the same questions, his response was "powerful corporations".  It's hard to be very happy with either answer.  

Some observations on Tokyo:
- cars drive on the left, so people also walk on the left. On the busy escalators in the subway stations, you stand on the left and people can pass on the right. We kept forgetting this :)
 - Many people ride bikes, especially in the residential neighborhoods. Most bikes have baskets and many had seats for small children. Many bikes seemed to be unlocked. - The Japanese are very polite, courteous, and helpful. The subways are very quiet. There's a sign that forbids talking on cellphones on the subways and the one time I saw someone doing that, he had his hand over his mouth. We also saw two women leave their purses to save their seats at a food court while they went to get food. I had to take a picture.
 - There are no tattoos. Our host families told us it is associated with the mafia and a person cannot get some jobs if they have a tattoos. I also saw very few sleeveless shirts on women, which I was wearing because it was so hot. And no visible cleaveage.
-  We were surprised by how few tourists we saw anywhere. Most of the time we were the only non-Asians on the subway. We couldn't find postcards anywhere or other tourist information. Mick's husband told us postcards used to be popular maybe 20 years ago, so maybe technology has done them in.
-  One last thing - we saw Mt. Rainier coffee in cups in stores in the refrigerator section. Both host families were familiar with the brand and wondered if there really was a Mt. Rainier. The brand has been around for 20 years and is a Japanese company. It has a logo very similar to Starbucks and is named after my favorite mountain. But only found in Japan.

Mt. Rainier coffee - it's not Starbucks

Further thoughts on Hawaii

After Kona we spent a week in the Puna area on the Hilo side of the Big Island, staying at a place I found on airbnb. It was great, right across the road from the ocean, waves crashing on the rocks. We had a one bedroom apartment on the ground level of Jorgina's two bedroom house. Her two cats sometimes came by to say hi. We explored Hilo, and points north and south. The Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden was wonderful, as was Akaka Falls.

Mom at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

Akaka Falls

 One place I really wanted to visit was Volcano National Park. I visited the Big Island sometime around 1981 or 1982 and Madame Pele (as volcanic activity is referred to here) was not active then. Things started happening in 1982 and in the past 30 years lava has covered roads and whole neighborhoods. We drove around the park but the best experience was taking a helicopter tour. While we didn't see lava spewing out like some pictures show, it was amazing to see lava creating steam as it entered the ocean, and trees catching on fire where the lava was slowing oozing out.

Some further thoughts on Hawaii:
- I remember plate lunches well - two scoops of white rice, macaroni or potato salad, and a meat entree. Plate lunch is still around, but now brown rice is an alternative to white. And it's sticky brown rice, so good. Spam still seems popular, we saw spam omlette on the menu at Ken's Pancake House in Hilo (we had mahi mahi instead.)
- I've read about the renaissance in Hawaiian culture since the late 70's and really noticed that. Announcements at the airports were in English and Hawaiian. I talked to a teacher who teaches Hawaiian and is fluent. We listened to Hawaiian music every day, true, on CD's in our rental car on the Big Island - but we also heard lots of live Hawaiian music. Probably my favorite thing about Waikiki is walking down the beach in the evening hearing live music, much in Hawaiian, from the resort beach bars and restaurants. I also enjoyed the Big Island Hawaiian Music Festival.

Ben Kahili and Friends at the Big Island Hawaiian Music Festival

 One special travel moment was going to Kaleo's, a restaurant in Pahoa, near to where we were staying. It was a charming place and Mom I split a delicious meal. Shortly after we were seated, live music started, a young man playing guitar and singing Hawaiian music. We were sitting right by him and one of his first songs was my favorite from the CD we'd been listening to in the car. A magical moment.
- We saw a LOT of people with tattoos, many with polynesian patterns covering quite a bit of skin.
- The spirit of aloha seems alive and well. Yet we also saw a couple of fist fight/scuffles on the street.
- Hawaii is an incredible mix of ethnicities and cultures. What an interesting and wonderful place, I hope I return soon.

Kailua-Kona

If this is the dry side of the island, it must be really rainy on the wet side. We've seen rain every day but not always down by the ocean. Up the mountain side where they grow coffee at around 1000 feet elevation it has rained every afternoon and they say that's typical. We took a tour of a coffee farm around one this afternoon and got out of there just as it started raining.

This morning I managed to get mom out of the condo by 9:30 (early for her) so we could try to see turtles at Kapaluu beach, about three miles down the road from where we're staying. We were in luck and got to see Rocky, who suns himself in the same spot on the rocks every morning. We also saw another turtle in some rocks and shallow water. Mom found out that Rocky is a juvenile turtle, about 15 years old. My guess was 40, he looks like he's been around a while. 

We then went to Kealakakue Bay and while we were looking at the view a couple car loads of young men pulled up and started playing loud rap music. They were a local group "Island Mojo" making a video.  As we were leaving and they were taking a break, I told them we'd been listening to Hawaiian music CDs in the car and enjoyed listening to another kind of local Hawaiian music. Mom told them thank you for letting us listen. They were so nice in response, it's probably not the typical reaction they get from older white women.  We got in the car and mom said, "what nice young men". She was surprised when I told her that had been rap music, she had no idea.  I found her reaction so amusing and we both laughed pretty hard. 

We happened to see the 4th of July parade, followed later by fireworks.

Oahu

I set up this blog before leaving home and here I am on day 12 posting for the first time. I'm traveling with my 81 year old mother for three weeks in Hawaii, one week on Oahu and two weeks on Hawaii Island (aka the Big Island). Then mom's going home and I'm meeting my daughter Liz in Tokyo where we'll spend about 5 days. We're then going to Bali for three weeks after which I'll be going back home and she'll be making her way to Nepal to travel and volunteer for some time, maybe a year.  When trying to think of a name for this blog I realized that I will be going to four islands, all with volcanos, thus the name.

I lived on Oahu for three years in my 20's and I spent lots of time at the beach with friends.  I loved spending time in the sun and getting a tan. A recent diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma in a spot on my leg has changed my attitude about that. This trip we haven't been at the beach much, instead we've been learning about Hawaiian culture and it's been fascinating. We went to Iolani Palace and Bishop Museum in Honolulu, both full of info about Hawaiian history and culture.  We really enjoyed live Hawaiian music and hula on Waikiki beach.  There are free performances and we also went to a couple resort bars where we sipped expensive mai tais while listening to the live music. Hypnotic.

Mai tais while listening to live Hawaiian music with hula