On to Ubud

Our next stop after Bali’s official capital, Denpasar, was its cultural capital, Ubud. What should have been an easy trip was slowed to a crawl by traffic jams (at one point the road was blocked by preparations for a cremation ceremony outside a temple). In the end, it took us more than an hour and a half to go the 30 miles between the two towns, with the taxi meter running the whole time.

We got to Ubud at lunchtime without having lodging arranged. The place we’d hoped to stay was full, so while Melissa sat on a stoop with the luggage, I set off down the street looking for alternatives among Ubud’s many accommodations.

After half an hour and a couple of disappointments, I struck gold: a brand-new block of rooms in the green, leafy backyard of a family compound. The rooms are clean and bright, with high ceilings, air conditioning(!), beautiful bathrooms, and little verandas on which to sit and write web posts. The family are batik artists, so their new guesthouse is called Batik Segur (Flower) Bali. We initially planned to check out other lodging options in a few days, but then we realized that we have it really good here.

Ibu Putu, daughter-in-law of the family that runs the Batik Sekar Bali Guesthouse, sweeps a courtyard in the family compound with a broom made from the spines of palm leaves

Ubud is a strange place. Originally a small town with a strong art and craft tradition, it was discovered by New Age Westerners—abetted by the book and movie “Eat, Pray, Love,” which were partly set here.

Today, it’s like Bali meets California. The streets are lined with coffee shops, boutiques selling funky clothing, day spas, and cafes where you can get wheatgrass shots and vegan versions of Indonesian food (or tapas or pizza or cupcakes,  if you’d prefer). It’s also crammed with visitors and with touts trying to sell them taxi rides, tours, or beer.

If you get tired of fresh Balinese fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, and noodles, in Ubud you can find such exotic fare as mayonnaise, sunflower seeds, falafel, pesto, goat cheese, and olive tapenade
A spa treatment in which fish nibble the dead skin off your hands and feet

It’s a multifaceted place, but none of those facets seem particularly Indonesian—at first glance, anyway. But like our guesthouse, the Balinese parts of Ubud reveal themselves through gateways or down paths, away from the thronged streets.

For instance, as I sit here on my veranda among the green leaves 50 meters back from the road, the sounds I hear are someone in the household sweeping with a palm-tree broom, tinny gamelan music being practiced next door, a rooster crowing in a neighbor’s yard, and a strange cicada-like hum produced by a circling flock of pigeons whose owner has attached small bamboo whistles to them, presumably to produce this interesting effect when they fly.

And this morning, before visiting the local art museum, we followed a path that wound between walls behind the museum and emerged a quarter mile later in a scene of undulating green, as rice fields spread in all directions. Suddenly, we were among ducks and farmers and the occasional cow in a place of great rural beauty, and the tourist-choked town felt far away.

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