Ubud, Bali: Day Two

Friday, July 11: This is also referred to as Shopping Day. We decided to hire a driver/guide from the hotel to take us on a five-hour tour ($75US) to some of the villages so that we could experience more of Bali do some more reasonably-priced shopping. Our driver, Swayla (my spelling and probably not his) asked what we wanted to see and we gave him a list. We drove on, what we might consider, backroads. Each village seems to specialize in a certain kind of art form. This is very interesting because in Balinese there is no word for art - it is just a major part of the culture. Of course, many places use the word ART in English to tell tourists that they have art to sell, but in reality, this whole place is based on art. Everywhere you look it seems that either things are placed so well, or it is just a natural part of the environment. Maybe art is truly in the eye of the beholder, and in Bali everyone is a beholder!

We saw villages that specialize in wood carving and stone carving. Bringing these things home must be quite a chore. We stopped at one shop where they had huge slabs of mahogany that they had sliced into amorphous table tops. Some were ten feet by three feet and four inches thick - that just won't fit in the suitcase! The guy in the shop told me that a man from Texas buys a container-full every three months and ships them back. Either the guy has many, many dining rooms or he makes a great profit off these tables - I assume the latter!

In Batubulan, Joani hit the mother lode. Swayla took us to a batik and ikat factory where they sold piece goods. After seeing an ikat weaving demonstration, we shopped and bought some nice batik and ikat pieces for reasonable prices. We were able to compare the prices to those in the shops in Ubud from the previous day, and we know that we did really well and got great quality as well.

We also visited some jewelry shops in a village called Celuk. The first one was fairly touristy and even their Pandora beads cost more than at home. As we pulled into the second shop, Joani said, "I've read about this one - great quality but they don't negotiate." Well, if the quality is good and the prices are right then sometimes negotiation isn't necessary - and this was one of those times. We got a demonstration and then Joani bought some earrings and an ankle bracelet - beautiful pieces.

Our next stop was a coffee plantation. Coffee is grown in Bali, but this was a very small, kind of touristy place where they had a variety of coffee and spice plants and was interesting to go through. We got a taste of about 10 different coffees and teas. One of them, that we didn't taste, is purported to be the world's most expensive coffee called, Kopi Luwak. The unique way that it is processed is what drives the price up. It is made from coffee beans that are passed through the digestive tract of the Southeast Asian palm civet, which looks like a cross between a cat and a monkey. The civet eats the beans and processes them whole and then excretes them whole, unscratched and without dung. The civet seems to very picky and eats just the reddest and ripest beans, which are also the best for brewing. It only eats the outer covering, however something appears to happen to the bean as it travels through the civet's intestines. Yeah, what happens is that I'll never drink it!

Now that we were shopped out, or should I say cashed out, Swayla took us to the Goa Gajah Temple. This is a really old temple that, like most Bali temples, is still in use today. Every house has a small temple and every village has at least one temple of its own. Because it is a temple - a religious place - we had to dress appropriately. Luckily they were happy to provide matching sarongs for the two of us. I don't know which of us looks better!

After our long, hard day, we just had to treat ourselves to massages. Dinner was at the Indus Restaurant, high on a hill overlooking the rice paddies - at least that's what they say. Even with the full moon it was way too dark to see the fields! Nevertheless, the food was typically Balinesian and typically good.