Odalan at the Lake, Part I (Bali)

I just returned from dropping off a packages for Aileen and Leger to take to friends in Bali. Whenever any of my San Francisco Bay Area/Bali group friends go to Bali, we take gifts and mementos for friends and relatives of the others. Sitting at dinner with Aileen and Leger and their two children, I remembered the last time we were in Bali together. At that time their daughter, now six, was only a year and a half. Their son had not yet been imagined. What I particularly remember about those few months is the odalan at the lake.

Leger is from mountainous Kintamani, where every year there is a huge celebration for the anniversary (odalan) of an important temple on the shores of Lake Batur. Thousands gather from villages all around the lake for a three-day ceremony and festival. Everyone camps there for the entire time, building temporary bamboo structures from which they hang blankets and grasses, creating a Baliense Arabian nights village of tents. That year, Leger, ever adaptable, put up two large Target tents he had brought with him from San Francisco. Those tents were the envy of the ceremony.

I drove up to the ceremony from Ubud with my friend, Wayan, and when I arrived, I found Leger's family busily setting up their make-shift tents. I knew Leger's extended family very well from years of carrying letters and photos back and forth between San Francisco and Bali. Even when I had no letters, I often stopped in to visit Leger's parents, his stylish brother, Ketut, Ketut's beautiful wife and their little son. I adored Leger's charming, younger sister, Putuh, who had lived with Aileen and Leger in San Francisco the year after their daughter was born. She had returned to Bali not six months before, married her childhood sweetheart and moved to Lovina. Of course, they were both at the ceremony. It was like old home week to hang with Putuh and Ketut; I had known them both for years, long before either was married, and we had some catching up to do.

It was July, but it was very cold at night. I remember sitting by lantern-light in front of one of the dozens of little warungs that sprang up around the camp, sipping hot coffee to warm up. Ketut was so cold he wore a parka over his sarong, as did many, many others. Wayan, Leger and Ketut decided to go gambling, as there are always hot games going on at these things. I headed in the same general direction to buy a fleece-lined jacket from one of the many clothing vendors. If you are getting the picture of a large, vibrant community socializing in this city of tents, that's what it was, and what it is every year.

Aileen, her toddler daughter, her sister-in-law, Putuh, Leger's cousin, Buddhi, and I wandered about the gathering. I looked up now and then to the temple presiding over the lake on volcanic Mt. Batur; when it awakes, Mt. Batur can overflow with fire and death as it had just a few decades before. Natural disasters and tourists (who can impact like a naural disaster) come and go. But this ceremony, this celebration and this gathering were all part of an ancient fabric that wove the Balinese together from time that reached back until it dissolved in dreams.

Despite my study and extended stays in Bali, I don't pretend to have any kind of deep understanding of Balinese culture; I am suspect of foreigners who think they truly understand. Even expats who have lived in Bali for years and have Balinese spouses tell me they feel they are forever pulling back new layers of the onion. But Aileen and I appreciated that the structure of religious ceremonies and community obligatons had kept Balinese culture strong (yet changed) in the face of decades of tourism and a major war. We were startled when occasional frustrated tourists honked their car horns at the milling crowds, as they impatiently tried to drive on the road that ran from further up the lake, through the ceremony and out of the mountains. Where could they be going more important? And how could they have been so out of touch to not notice a tent city arising from the lake shore? Clearly, this was one of the biggest events going on in Bali at the time. But it wasn't in their guidebooks, so they rushed off to see some sight, missing this rich opportunity to share Balinese life.

We walked around, buying pisang goreng (fried bananas) and other treats. Aileen and I had to get Putuh or other Balinese friends to buy them, as the vendors were determined to overcharge us, since we we were "tamu". Usually I can get a decent price when I speak Indonesian while bargaining, and Aileen, with her obviously half-Balinese daughter in tow, even tried bargaining in Balinese, but these people were cut-throat. Batur has a rather hard core reputation for this. We stopped and gambled a few rupiah at simple little games, not as intense as the more high stakes games the guys were playing. The fact is that a lot, and I mean a lot, of Balinese men have major gambling problems, though, of course, others just indulge as occasional entertainment. It can be a grey line.

We came across little girls in red lipstick and golden headresses dancing legong, a performance that in this instance was meant for entertainment rather than temple worship. The refined, small movements, the calculated flashes of the eyes, the fingertip control were all so much more in place here than at the tourist performances, where the audiences jostled for photos. (My friend 'Tut, who I met around this time, had been poor as a child and been made to dance baris at tourist performances. He had hated it.)

We ran into many people we knew, mostly from Kintamani, but many from Lovina. It is not uncommon for people from Kintamani to find jobs in more heavily touristed Lovina, and there is a bit of a symbiotic relationship between the two places. So we talked with a number of people. In Bali, talking with just about anybody means hearing lots of gossip and often becoming the topic of gossip yourself. If you've spent any time at all in Bali, you know the Balinese have got to rank among the world's biggest gossips.

"Hey, I saw you with Wayan!" one young man called to me. I had no idea who he was, but apparently he knew me. "What happened to Made?" he asked leeringly, naming a boyfriend from years before and a different part of the island. I've spent a lot of time in Bali over a lot of years, but having two serious boyfriends over a 10-year period there is the social equivalent of having 30 flings in a one-year period in the States. If you have a boyfriend in Bali, you might as well marry him, because you will never, and I mean literally never, be allowed to forget that relationship. It can feel like the entire island knows your business; it doesn't take much to be scandalous in a society where the women are all but cloistered.

The good thing about Bali: It's community oriented and it seems like everybody knows everybody. The bad thing about Bali: It's community oriented and it seems like everybody knows everybody. Living in Bali is a lot like living in "Mayberry".

This day was for socializing and renewing old bonds. The next day we would enter the temple to pray.

To be continued...

Happy Holidays

I have been receiving text messages and emails from Bali to add to the cards friends and family in the States have sent me. In honor of the holidays, I am posting a few Bali photos that represent the spirit of love and family.


Luhde and Ayu. Luhde and her husband, Wayan, are long-time, steadfast friends. (Spring 2005)


Wayan and Agus, who is incognito in his super hero identity (Spring 2005)


Luhde and Ayu (Summer 2002)


Leger's brother from Kintamani, Ketut, and his son reading letters and viewing photos from Leger and wife Aileen in the States. (Spring 2005)


Friends (1996)

'Tut trying on my motorcycle glasses and generally being dorky

Scopes Monkey Trial Revisited - It's 1925 Again!

Well, here we are, more than 75 years later. Babies have been born, grown into old age and died. Yet school districts are still forcing U.S. courts to revisit the Scopes Monkey Trial. See CNN

A federal district judge in Pennsylvania ruled Tuesday that "intelligent design" is religion, not science, and that teaching it in the public school district at issue is a violation of the First Amendment. Well, alleluia! Even this Republican Judge appointed by George W. couldn't swallow such a blatant disregard of the separation of Church and State. Yet proponents of "intelligent design" swear they will not be stopped.

It's common knowlege that "intelligent design" is a movement; many school districts are warning U.S. children that 1) evolution is only a theory and not science, and 2) "intelligent design" (translation: Adam and Eve myth) is science and not religion.

The San Francisco Chronicle quotes a physics professor at Case Western as saying, "U.S. children are consistently scoring behind those of other nations in...science." Is it any wonder?

Held Hostage by an Orangutan (Kalimantan Part V)

My previous related posts about the orangutan preserves in Tanjung Puting:

Heading for Kalimantan, 12/05/05

The Klotok (Kalimantan Part II), 12/11/05

Up the River (Kalimantan Part III), 12/12/05

About the Sanctuaries (Kalimantan Part IV), 12/13/05

Held Hostage by an Orangutan (Kalimantan Part V)

I stood frozen, sense overcoming the fear rising in my throat. I knew I had to remain calm. An orangutan with the strength of several men gripped my hair tightly, holding me hostage. My mind raced; how could I escape without being mauled? (I had never heard of anyone being mauled by any of these peaceful primates, but I was in no mood to weigh statistics.)

Calmly, in a purposefully conversational, non-threatening voice, I said to my so-called guide, “Said (Sah-eed), can you help me? Said?” I was, of course, completely panicked, but I made every effort not to show it.

Moments before, we had watched red apes of all shapes and sizes swing in from the forest canopy for feeding time at the first orangutan sanctuary we visited, Pondok Tanguii. They traveled on vines and branches from the depths of the rain forest, reaching one arm over the other until they arrived at the feeding station, a platform in the middle of the Borneo jungle. These orangutans were still being given a hand-out of sorts, until they could completely acclimate to the wild and make it on their own. At the feeding station, they scrambled for bananas placed there by the Tanjung Puting park rangers. (The rangers were young, shirtless Indo guys, one of whom had a poster of Jennifer Anniston in his room. I saw it when they let me use the room to change. Jennifer Anniston?)

After watching the raucous feeding, Said and I walked further into the jungle. He had seen a young, adult female ape sitting low in the trees, and he recognized her. Many of the orangutans had been given names, and Said reached up to Anher. She took his hand and held it politely. Said started shooting my video camera when I did the same.

He was still shooting when the orangutan suddenly stopped holding my hand and strongly and agressively grabbed my forearm. She startled and frightend me, but I was powerless in her grip. She then snatched hold of my hair with a hand and both feet, putting a lot of her weight on my head, almost using my head like a tree branch. She would sometimes release the grip of one of her hands, but not before she grabbed my hair even more tightly with a foot (there's not much difference between the hands and feet of an orangutan), always very, very tightly, right at the roots. It seemed she would pull my hair out. The rangers, of course, were nowhere in sight.

Said spoke to me in a low tone, “Don’t be aggressive, or she will bite you.” Well, duh... No question who would win in a bar fight. Said couldn’t leave me to get help, and he couldn’t really help me himself. So he did the only thing he could - he kept on shooting video! I sighed internally. Well, at least my death at the hands (and feet) of an orangutan would be on film for posterity.

Anher reached down, grabbed my hand and tried to put it to her mouth. This terrified me, but I slowly and carefully pulled my hand back, and she allowed it. Then she put her teeth down to my hair as if to try to taste it. "This is it," I thought. I was scared out of my mind she would take a big bite out of my face.

Finally, I think Anher got bored. I put my hand gently on the foot that was currently pulling the hair out of my head and forced my head down and murmured, “It’s all right... it’s all right.” And she finally let go.

I looked into her eyes, and they were not the eyes of a dog or cat. They were the intelligent eyes of a mischievous human teen-ager, and I could see the wheels turning behind them. Anher looked back at me and smirked.

PHOTO: Photo is of that demon, Anher

To be continued...

My Friend, Gabriel

My friend Shara tells me I don't reveal much of myself in my writing on this blog. That is mostly purposeful. In an effort to put more of myself into this blog, today I would like to write about her son, who is an amazing personality and my friend in his own right. I introduce him to you now, as you will probably see him surface in this blog from time to time. He is now a bit past two and a half years old, though he is probably about 10 months in this photograph. I see the world's potential in him.

I don't have children, and I was never strongly drawn to them. Oh, sure, I was very fond of certain individuals, but not because they were children per se. I have always pretty much interacted with kids the same way I interact with adults - one by one. So when I was back in San Francisco from Bali one year to sell my line wholesale at the international gift shows, it was a bit of an odd match for me to find myself temporarily living with my friend Shara and her 8-month old baby. She had an extra room, I needed a place to stay, so we figured we could do it for a few months.

I had met Gabriel some months before, when he was sleeping and just sort of laying there like a piece of broccoli as babies do. (In all fairness to Gabriel, he was, after all, asleep.) But how much trouble could he be? I thought. No big deal.

Well, long story short, living with them, Gabriel came to look at me as another person who would comfort him and play with him and love him. And, so, of course, I fell completely in love myself. If he was tired and Shara was typing, he would crawl over to me, boost himself up onto my lap, situate himself and fall asleep. He completely melted my heart.

When I was working on my computer, sometimes he would crawl over and hold up his arms to me, wanting to be picked up. "Up?" I would say. And sure enough, soon he was crawling over, holding up his arms and saying "Ugh! ugh!" until I picked him up. ("Ugh" quickly became "Uppppp".) Of course, then he wanted to play with the computer mouse, which had a red light that fascinated him. I let him and lost a lot of work in the process.

"Up" was his actual first word, but he called Shara "Em" as his first word approximation even before I moved in with them (which was when he was eight months old). He had probably heard the word "Mommy" and this was as close as he could get so young. "Em! Em!" he would call to her. The next word he learned after "Up" was "That". Very smart, because he had picked it up on his own and it was handy for a variety of uses. When he wanted us to pick him up to kiss one of the African masks Shara had on the wall (for some reason still unknown to me, she had taught him to kiss the masks), he would point at it and say, emphatically, "That!" When I took him in his stroller down the street and he wanted to see something closer in the window, he would point and say, "That!" Of course, if we were eating food he wanted to try, we heard, "That!" He thereafter quickly learned to say "MMM!" for food, and would even point at newspaper ads of pizza and say "MMM!" with gusto.

A real San Francisco baby, Gabriel ate burritos before he even quite had teeth. I think he might have been about 10 months when I gave him his first pizza when Shara went out for the evening. She was worried to leave him for even a few hours, as she normally took him everywhere. (That kid had a better social life than I did!) However, that night she came home to find him sitting on my lap eating pizza with tomato sauce smeared all over his face. It's still one of his favorite foods. Hey, I'm not the mom, so I leave the healthy eating to her.

Gabriel continually astounded Shara and I with his feats; often we looked over his head at each other in wide-eyed amazement. Both mentally and physically, he was always months ahead of what he was supposed to be doing according to the baby books. Check out the photo (at left) of him at nine months doing a pull-up on my filing cabinet in an effort to reach the CDs. At nine months, he also learned how to turn light switches on and off when we held him up high enough to reach them. He had a look of concentration as he switched the light on or off, and we clapped and yelled, "Yay!" He would beam a smile and clap in response. We clapped and cheered for all his accomplishments, which may be why he still tends to show off when I am around.

In tune with the people around him, Gabriel has always been empathetic. When other children cried for reasons he could not understand, even at a very young age he would look extremely concerned and try to comfort them. Now that he is a little older than two and a half, he is already beginning to take care of Shara. Shara had a bad cold yesterday, so I stopped by to pick Gabriel up for an evening party of our mutual friends and their children. When we left, Gabriel told Shara, "Mommy, take your medicine." At the party Gabriel received a number of holiday gifts. When I brought him back to his house, the first thing he did was run over to his mother who was lying miserable and sniffly on the couch and proclaim, "Look, Mommy! I brought you something!" And he gave Shara a little stuffed dog he had been given at the party.

So, every now and then, Gabriel and I get together, just the two of us, to go to the movies or to see the sea lions at Pier 39 or take in the aquarium. It's not baby sitting; it's just two old friends spending time together.

As for Shara and Gabriel, they have a close bond that seems very special to me, and I am certain that bond will remain strong and vital throughout their lives. (Though I have a feeling Shara may have her hands full in the teen years!) I can see that Gabriel will grow up to be a strong, compassionate man and a joy to Shara. Together, they embody love.

Culture Shock

I'm now living on once-foreign soil, and I'm in culture shock. Have I moved to Bali permanently, you ask? No, friends, I've done what at one point I would have considered totally incomprehensible - I've moved from San Francisco to East Bay, El Cerrito, of all places. There was a time that my friends and I raised an eyebrow at those who opted to live on the other side of the Bay Bridge. As in "Do you really want to go to that bar tonight? It mostly attracts a bridge and tunnel crowd" Well, the worm has turned.

It was increased space for a cheaper price that called to me, the opportunity to have an office for my marketing and copywriting work and a studio for my silversmithing hobby. Of course getting away from a certifiably crazy roommate might have played a part. Ya think? Anyway, I got to tell you, it is a fabulous space, but there are some cultural adjustments. You wouldn't think a bridge would make that much difference, but nobody wants to cross that bridge once they get home at night if they don't have to.

Here is how my life has changed:

BREAKFAST

SF (San Francisco): Walk to neighborhood coffee shop owned by a French woman for latte. Drink latte and eat bagel and lox amid Parisian photographs and genteel music.

EB (East Bay): Actually MAKE my own coffee, because it's either that or get in the car and drive to Starbucks over at the shopping plaza.

GROCERY SHOPPING

SF: Grocery shopping? I just walked down the street to one of 50 restaurants: Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Greek, Salvadoran, Mexican, Singaporean, Korean, Thai...

EB: Trader Joe's and Berkeley Bowl, home of all fresh produce. (East Bay also has fabulous restaurants, but from where I live, you have to drive to them.)

PARTYING

SF: Cocktail party at home before going on to the "flavor of the week" restaurant followed by dancing at the prime time club followed by dancing at the after hours club followed by dancing at the after-after hours club.

EB: Vegetarian fare at friends' house while watching them try "Supernanny" or "Nanny 911" techniques on their two year old who is standing on top of the table, stomping the serving bowl of broccoli with his small foot and screaming, "No vegables! No vegables!"

EXERCISE

SF: Working out on Nautilus equipment in the gym after work before heading out for cocktails at that trendy new bistro.

EB: Hiking around Tilden Park.

HANGING WITH FRIENDS

SF: Sitting in a hot tub on the deck of a friend's condo overlooking the City with a glass of merlot (Have you noticed an alcohol trend in my SF lifestyle?) while discussing: a) Where to meet before the next anti-war rally, b) Are Gavin and Kimberly off or on? c) Is it wise to add a Nano to one's iPod collection, given its short battery life? d) Any of George W's voluminous incomprehensible antics

EB: Visiting Fairyland, because most of friends bought houses here when they had kids. On the up side, I'm seeing a lot of friends I had almost lost track of when they moved to East Bay.

FASHION

SF: Sleek black lambskin jacket, sleek Prada boots, Armani sunglasses
EB: Either fringed jacket and Indian tunic or a sweat suit

There are no doubt a lot more changes I have not yet faced in moving to East Bay. Anyone out there have any Bay Area culture shock observations of their own? Joyfish?

Information (Bali)

Getting information when you're in Bali can be a challenge, and getting information when you are thousands of miles away is enough to make you tear your hair out. It is bad enough when I am trying to find out if a silversmith made the specified changes in an order. Did he add the small pearls to the amazonite necklaces? Did he correct the length of the heart charm bracelets? Did he properly close all the jump rings? These communications inefficiencies have probably cost me thousands of dollars over the years, but they are nothing next to trying to get information about 'Tut's prognosis. (See my previous posting, Warmth).

Ketut was in Denpasar when I called him yesterday, as he needs to be near the hospital where medical workers from Singapore are administering therapy. He does not have to stay at the hospital. He is sharing a room in Denpasar with another man who is undergoing cancer therapy from the Singaporean team. I ask him if he is getting radiation treatments following the operation he had for lung cancer in Singapore, and he keeps talking about "massage". But I don't think he really means massage, I think that is just the closest English word he can approximate, massage being seen as such a healing treatment in Bali.

He says he has a letter from his Chinese-speaking doctor that contains a code indicating information about his illness. But he says the code is unreadable and probably would mean nothing to medical professionals I could show it to in the United States. He does not understand why I keep asking for specifics when he feels he has clearly told me he had lung cancer, had an operation and is now undergoing therapy. He tells me he will be completely cured in six months. "They 100% guarantee it," he says. They guarantee a complete cure for lung cancer?

When my friend Lisa saw Ketut a month ago in Bali, she said he looked much thinner and appeared depressed. Her report put me in despair. She met Ketut when we visited her at her husband's family compound a couple years ago when they were in Batuan on vacation. She knows what he looked like before the illness, and she knows his normal joking personality.

'Tut keeps telling me it is raining, and he is cold, even though he has the coat. I am sending some waterproof boots with my friend Aileen who is going to Bali in a couple weeks. What else can I do?

About the Sanctuaries (Kalimantan Part IV)

Previous Related Posts:
Heading for Kalimantan, 12/05/05
The Klotok (Kalimantan, Part II) 12/11/05
Up the River (Kalimantan, Part III) 12/12/05

As you have probably gathered from my previous posts, the focus of my trip to Kalimantan (other than getting out of making offerings 12 hours a day for that upcoming cremation back in Bali!) was to visit Camp Leakey and Pondok Tanguii, orangutan sanctuaries and research centers established by Birute Galdikas many years before in the huge rain forest tract set aside as Tanjung Puting park land. (See the book Reflections of Eden : My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo by Birute Galdikas.) Before Galdikas, almost nothing was known of orangutans. Both their solitary nature and their high treetop lifestyle made them extremely difficult to study. Originally established as a research center, Camp Leakey quickly also became a santuary for orangutans who had done time in activity. At the time I went, there were still wild orangutans in the park, but the ones I met close up and personal were in the process of being rehabilitated back into the wild.

I love apes; I was an anthropology major, and I have followed research about non-human primates for years. In other words, this was a momentous trip for me; I was excited. It did not occur to me until a long time after the trip, that perhaps bringing visitors to the orangutans could put them at risk of disease and make it more difficult to rehabilitate them back into the wild. This, as I understand it, is the view held by Willie Smits, who heads another orangutan rescue organization which is very well respected. (See www.organgutan.com.)

When I went to the sanctuaries in Tanjung Puting, small groups of tourists were permitted, and they still are. Birute Galdikas has come under fire for her methods in recent years. (See Linda Spalding's A Dark Place in the Jungle: Following Leakey's Last Angel into Borneo and The Follow.) I do not take it upon myself to take up those issues here. I will say, however, that I later volunteered briefly to work for an Orangutan Foundation International fundraiser (Galdikas' organization), and I was quickly disillusioned. (For more information on this organization, see www.orangutan.org.) But that does not change the fact that Galdikas was the first. And it does not change the fact that wild orangutans exist only in Borneo and Sumatra (different varieties), and they desperately need our help.

Another group dedicated to the preservation of orangutans is the Sumatran Orangutan Society, http://www.orangutans-sos.org. They have offices around the world, including one around the back of Tegun, Megan and Kadek's shop on Jln. Hanoman in Ubud, Bali. I know nothing about SOS personally except they teamed up with IDEP to get aid into Aceh fast after the tsunami. (See my previous post, Tsunami .) Trying to help (i.e., donating to the cause) no matter which group you choose is certainly better than sitting back and watching orangutans become extinct, which is an imminent danger during our lifetime.

Up the River (Kalimantan Part III)

Previous Related Posts:
Heading for Kalimantan, 12/05/05
The Klotok (Kalimantan, Part II) 12/11/05


The Rimba Lodge was rather like those rustic lodges you often find in the mountains of the United States, but instead of snowcapped peaks, the windows opened close up and personal to the tropical rain forest right outside. There were few guests. To get to my room from reception, I crossed a narrow, wooden bridge over rushing water. As I unpacked with the door open, small monkeys edged near my door, and I actually had to shoo them away so they didn't become my roomates. I made the mistake of taking a shower, only to find the water brown and suspect - water from the river. I was probably cleaner before the shower.

As agreed, I met Said back at the klotok at 4:00 p.m. We went further down the tributary and passed more tributaries. We turned down one of them and soon found ourselves staring back at crocodiles watching us through slitted eyes from the shore and macaques screaming at us from the trees. Troops of proboscis monkeys swung from branches; it was hard to believe they were endangered, they seemed so numerous. But I knew they were numererous only in this small slice of Asia, calling to each other, their huge noses giving each a distinctive visage.

And then... and then, I wouldn't have seen it but for Said. There, in the late afternoon, a wild orangutan building a nest high in the trees near the river. I was mesmerized. This was not one of the once-captive orangutans from a santuary. This was a wild orangutan who had so far escaped the scourges of man, and I was seeing it as it was meant to live.

We were extremely lucky; we saw one or two more organgutans that afternoon. More often you can go down this same river and not see any at all, even after several trips. But their land is dwindling, with the farming and the gold mining and the logging. Few humans here respect the orangutans, the "people of the forest", killing them mercilessly when they are driven into the open to the farms due to famine and fires started by humans. The babies are cute, and many people want them for pets. This often dooms the babies to witnessing their mothers slaughtered before the babies are taken into captivity. Of course, as they grow up, they are no longer so cute and risk suffering the same fate as their mothers, or, at best, living their lives in tiny cage prisons, rather than ranging extensively in the trees.

I had seen huge trucks hauling timber in Kumai, proof that greed was stripping the jungle (and the orangutans' habitat). Although I had not yet seen the gold mines that had turned some of the world's lushest forests into wasteland, I would before I left Kalimantan. As I watched the orangutans build nests and the probosiscis monkeys play in the trees, I knew I was seeing a world that likely would not exist in 15 years... almost certainly not in 20.

Sunset approached. Said pulled out his prayer mat, kneeled facing east on the klotok's deck and praised Allah.

The Klotok (Kalimantan Part II)

Previous Related Post,12/05/05: "Heading for Kalimantan"

I lounged in the sunshine on pillows Said (Sah-eed) had set up for me on the deck of the blue, wooden klotok and surveyed the Sekonyer, a vast, muddy river of Kalimantan, a river that had given life to humans and animals alike for time beyond memory. The captain and his two young, shirtless boatmen joked with each other in Indonesian rather than a local dialect, so I understood some of it. Said, my guide, was in good humor, but more serious and proper than the boatmen, even though Said could not have been older than 30.

I grinned as I recalled how I had dreaded the five or six hour ride on a small boat into the jungle to see the orangutan sanctuaries. I was extremely excited at the prospect of seeing orangutans, but the boat ride itself sounded long, boring and uncomfortable. I based this on memories of impossibly crowded Guatemalen "chicken" buses, smoky Spanish trains, suffocating Jamaican taxis, windy Greek night ferries, and the tiring 20-hour plane ride to get to Indonesia only a few weeks before. In other words, the last thing I wanted was another grueling trip. My mood was in no small part due to the horrible fight I had had with Made two nights ago, before leaving Bali. It reverberated in the back of my mind, and I was still upset.

Once I got on that klotok (named for the sound it makes going through the water..."klo-tok, klo-tok"), I wasn't upset for long. Soon, we left Kumai far behind and saw only tropical jungle and occasional small settlements of wooden houses on stilts along the shore. I watched vendors in boats offer produce and goods to villagers, men pull fish from the river and families flit here and there on the river on domestic errands. People guided their boats on missions large and small, as they had for centuries on this ancient causeway. Birds such as I had never seen took flight from the shore, and small monkeys chattered at each other in the trees.

Said heaped my plate with mie goreng, and I luxuriated in my good fortune at finding myself on this amazing river. Now I understood why Said had insisted we buy all those provisions before leaving. He cooked, the boatmen played cards and laughed, and I sipped tea and enjoyed a view I knew I would probably never see again. I practiced my Indonesian language skills with Said and the boatmen, and Said really was a wonderful teacher. Turned out he had taught Islam in Surabaya before an economy downturn closed the school and forced him into the guide biz.

Riding up the river on the klotok was lovely and romantic; too bad Made was back in Bali and probably planning never to speak to me again. Oh, well. From beautiful sunshine, rain threatened, filling the atmosphere with primitive anticipation. When it began coming down in earnest, we scurried down the four-rung ladder below deck. Said quickly dropped the canvas at the open windows. We pulled out cookies and peanuts and made tea. When the rain lifted enough to lift the canvas, we watched the rain fall on the river from below deck.

After some time, the boat traffic dwindled and we turned down a tributary. We arrived at Rimba Lodge around 1:30 p.m. The Rimba Lodge was pretty much the only place we could stay here in the middle of the jungle of Indonesian Borneo near the orangutan sanctuaries, aside from sleeping on the boat. We would sleep on the boat the next night. We made plans to meet at 4:00 p.m. for a ride up the river to see proboscis monkeys. It was too late to go to the orangutan sanctuary that day.

The Noodle Village (Vietnam)

"My uncle was executed here before the American war. He was spying for the French, and they decided he was a double agent, and they killed him." It seemed a story out of the distant past, though it had happened not so long ago. The sun shone brightly outside the open room where we lounged in the shade, the girl, her grandmother and me. I sipped my green tea and set the cup down, forgetting the girl's grandmother would refill it immediately.

Because I had an afternoon to fill before I left Hanoi for the Hill Tribe country the next morning, I found myself on a solo tour to handicraft villages outside of Hanoi on the back of this 20-year-old woman's motorbike. It was the hot season in Vietnam, and I had never experienced any heat like that of Hanoi, not in Bali, not in Thailand, and certainly not in the West. It was good to get to the outskirts of Hanoi and into the villages, despite Hanoi's old French colonial charm.

After visiting villages where silk was made, the girl took me to a village that specialized in making noodles. Her mother was from that place, and many of her relatives still lived there. She was a born story-teller, and she told tales of intrigue, desperation and war as I watched the sweating women cook the noodles in huge vats and cut them on giant screens.

As a dog wandered past, the girl said it was the kind eaten in Vietnam. I could tell she relished pointing this out to me; she knew it always got a rise out of foreigners. "American type dogs are too greasy to eat," she said.

The Beast (Bali, 1998)

I was sitting sideways behind Made in my best yellow silk sarong and handmade lace kebaya when it became apparent that Made’s ancient beast just couldn’t make it up the hills leading to Pejeng. That motorcycle was 50 years old if it was a day. It was a miracle that nuts and bolts still held it together, but it was our only transportation to the night-time ceremony. When we reached a hill, the beast balked and sat down until I got off and tottered up the hill in my tightly wound sarong. We knew perfectly well at the time how ridiculous we looked in the twilight, me dismounting and hiking up the road between the rice fields to meet him and the bike at the top. We laughed everytime we reached a new hill and had to repeat this maneuver. That's when I started to fall for Made, because he wasn’t embarrassed, just amused. Before I knew much Balinese or Indonesian, I could always tell when he was retelling this story because I would hear the word “jalan-jalan” (literally “walking-walking”) and then everyone would turn to me,laugh good-naturedly and commiserate with me.

Leaving Bali for Kalimantan (Indonesia, 1998)

I went to Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, in August, during the primary cremation season in Bali. I wanted to visit my friend Made in Bali after the multiple cremation of the remains of 22 people was over in his village, so we could travel around Indonesia together. (See my previous posting, "Ghosts".) It is common in Bali for the dead to be buried and cremated later, even years later, to share the cost of expensive ceremonies among several families. I knew Made would be too busy in the months preceding the cremation to spend much time with me. But as usual in Bali, everything shifted, and it was impossible for him to nail down the date. Despite all my planning, I arrived in Bali when his village was still deep in the midst of intensive cremation preparations.


Made's village was tucked away in the hills northeast of Ubud. Though not that far from Ubud, it is a village you would not have heard of, for it is never found by tourists. (Heck, even Balinese born and raised in Ubud haven't heard of it!) At first I hung out in the village and helped make offerings, my clumsy efforts vastly amusing the old ladies. "How can a woman reach her age without learning to do the most basic tasks?" they laughed and asked each other. (For some things you don't need an interpreter.) My ineptness at constructing little straw offerings and properly shaping pastry dough was clearly incomprehensible to them. Made and all the other village men were busy building the huge, brightly colored, wooden bulls and lions in which the dead would be cremated. He rarely had a spare minute,and we didn't have a lot of time together.

It became apparent if I was going to do any traveling around Indonesia, it would be alone. Made's savvy half-brother, the village priest, warned me that the political climate in Sumatra would be a bit dangerous for me at that time, so I decided on Kalimantan. I tried for weeks to get a ticket to Kalimantan, but all the travel agents kept telling me my return fight could not be confirmed. I asked if we should perhaps just call the airline office in Kalimantan and was told “No.” In desperation I tracked down an old acquaintance, Mahfoud, who, before he opened a shop, had worked as a travel agent. Of course, Mahfoud said we should call Kalimantan, as I had suggested all along. He made the call and the arrangements as a favor, and within a day after contacting Mahfoud, I had a ticket in my hand.

I landed at the airport in Pangkalan Bun and caught a ride with a guy on a motorbike to the Blue Kecubung (blue gemstone) Hotel. My friend Sara had stayed there once, and it seemed a place where I could probably find out how to make arrangments to go upriver to visit the orangutan sanctuaries established 30 years before by Birute Galdikas, one of Louis Leakey’s so-called three “angels” (Goodall, Fosse and Galdikas). I felt the difference from Bali in the same way it hit me when I first went to Java - the large scarves covering the hair of many of the little school girls. Of course, women wore these too, but I thought how restrictive they must feel to these little girls as they ran and played.

The Blue Kecubung turned out to be a hotel used primarily by Indonesian business people, and though it was not what I would call fancy, it was a luxury to me to stay for a night in a place with air-conditioning, particularly after weeks of staying in the family compound in Bali. Before I even registered, I had hired my guide, Said, who was standing at the front desk talking to the clerk when I arrived. He took my passport and went off to book the boat and get the necessary police permits to visit Tanjung Puting, the large section of park land that contained the orangutan sanctuaries. We would go the next day; it was almost evening and too late to head upriver into the jungle.

PHOTOS
1. Fanciful animals the men built to house remains for the big send-off
2. Made and some of the guys taking a break from cremation preparations
3. Me, amusing the women of the village with my incompetence at making offerings

To be cont...