hi there.
ashley and i have moved away from the garbage-laden party beaches of kuta and into the more tranquil, hippiehaven, artists community of ubud. ubud is known as bali's cultural mecca, and with good reason, it seems. every street is strewn with galleries, artists workshops, performance centers, and so on. unlike many other "cultural meccas" we've visited on this trip, where gangs of art students pump out the same recreations of van gogh's starry night, or dime a dozen buddha paintings, there actually appears to be a sense of true art and individuality here in ubud. which is not to say that one can't find those same buddha paintings here, but not solely. i might have a hard time not dropping some moneys here.
our first night, after exploring the town, we went to a temple to see a traditional kecak dance. if you have the time, i would strongly recommend looking this up on youtube. it was incredible. the performance consists of a chorus of 50 men, rhythmically chanting in a circle around a massive candelabra, while characters from the ramayana (an elaborate hindu/ buddhist story that has come up repeatedly on this trip, from temple murals, to names of restaurants) take turns dancing and acting out battles. the show ends when a man dressed as a golden deer dances wildly through a large pile of burning hot coconut shells, sporadically kicking them towards the terrified crowd (cause it turns out they really are hot!). the music was incredible, the dancing was incredible, and even the story was compelling and easy to follow, considering it was all done in bahasa.
overall, the kecak dance was a far more enjoyable show than, let's say, the shadow puppet show we went to last night. a good idea in theory, the shadow puppet performance is an hour plus show of one puppeteer (with assistants) moving the arms of some leather cutouts in front of a flame-lit screen to the accompaniment of gamelon music. if you put an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of xylophones, eventually you would have the entire score of last night's puppet show. i'm sure that before television, watching sillouhettes move their arms around to the clamour of clanging bells was as good as it got, but i just couldn't take it. don't bother youtubing this one.
one highlight of ubud has been our trip to the sacred monkey forest in the middle of town. for a dollar fifty you can walk through a dense pocket of jungle, riddled with monkeys, and for an extra buck, buy a bunch of bananas to entice the little guys to be your friend. our bunch of bananas was short lived, as the second we took them out we were swarmed by monkeys, several of whom climbed onto my back and head, at one point, actually getting a foot into my open mouth while reaching for a banana. i know. disgusting... but awesome, nonetheless.
yesterday we rented bikes and tooled around the countryside, hitting up a few temples along the way and commingling with the natives. people love to find out that we're american, because it gives them the chance to tell us that obama lived in indonesia, and i would say one in six claim to be a personal friend of the president-elect. along the way we also saw a couple of snakes, one enormous but very dead, and one alive but manageable in size. as a result, i conducted my first under-the-bed-snake-search for ashley's benefit, with a 0% or 100% success rate, depending on how you look at it. the rest of our ride took us through rice paddies and over steep river gorges covered with jungle, and by the backstreet workshops of local artisans. we spent sunset at a ramshackle bar in a rice paddie, watching thousands of white egrets return to their nests in the trees right above us. we both felt lucky to not be shit on.
today i think we'll loaf about, read, and amble in and out of art galleries. there's a yoga class later for which i may join ashley, followed by a meditation class at sundown. tomorrow our plan is to head north to lovina, where i think we'll spend christmas watching dolphins swim from a black sand beach.