My first two jbrs were a while ago - sorry it's taken so long to put the third one up.
We travelled from Ubud to Permuteran in the extreme northwest of Bali because we wanted to snorkel Menjangen Island. We'd booked Taman Selini (Garden of the Moon) which is right on the beach front near Taman Sari.
The countryside around there is fascinating. A spine of rugged triangular green mountains rise up behind the road. They look like the mountains in Chinese brush paintings. Apparently there are still leopards and other wild cats in there, though alas the last tiger was shot decades ago. The mountains are so rugged we were told that the Indonesian army trains there. The beach is still black sand from the eruption of Mt Agung in 1963 but the sand is much finer than further south.
The population of this area, so close to Java, is less friendly, we felt, than in Ubud.
When we got to Taman Selini the place was so beautiful in the tropical rain, with its lush grass and profusion of hibiscus, spider lilies, frangipani and other colourful flowers. Whoever designed this place has exquisite taste; they'd found gorgeous carved Balinese doors painted and gilded. These doors formed the entrance to the shop at the front of the resort and to the bar near the beach. There were antique carvings and paintings everywhere. But we were a little put off at first because the staff seemed so grim. None of the women smiled and we were horrified when a heavily pregnant young woman took our heaviest bag before we could stop her and set off towards our bungalow in the pouring rain. We weren't surprised the women weren't smiling if that was how they were being treated!
We followed through grounds so beautiful that it was like walking through a private park or botanical garden to a lovely bungalow, again all done in exquisite taste. There was a little verandah with a pretty daybed under a mosquito net, flowers scattered across the white linen and a little table and chairs. Inside was a king size bed (two beds pushed together, I think) under a mosquito net, the bed also scattered with flowers, a pretty baby cot draped with mosquito net, a bed on the floor for Sam, a writing desk with flowers and through a set of wooden double doors at the back, the most gorgeous outdoor bathroom I've ever seen. It was walled in beautiful smooth grey pebbles (I do wonder where all these beautiful stones in Balinese hotels come from and whether a single river in Bali has any pebbles left in its bed) with green vines and flowers hanging over the wall and crotons and other bushes and flowering trees planted in the courtyard. A pretty terracotta brick pillar supported the shower and there was a brick gate with wooden doors so that you could enter the bathroom from outside, without going through the bungalow. The brick pillars were covered with emerald moss. The floors were smooth pebble, with a path of tiles to the gate surrounded by crushed coral.
All the furniture in the bungalow had an elegant antique quality. The rain stopped and we headed straight for the gorgeous pool - like the pool in Tegal Sari it was tiled with green stone. We were practically on the beach, with the restaurant to our right and the beach bar to our left.
The restaurant at Taman Selini is well-known as it serves excellent Balinese/Indonesian food and excellent Greek food (one of the owners is Greek). I had a delicious taramasalata and moussaka that night and the servings were larger than I could eat. So not only is it a good restaurant but you meet lots of people from the other little resorts and timeshare villas along the beach.
The one negative in the restaurant (besides the grim waitress) was a local dog which came in and wandered all over the restaurant. I wish stupid sentimental tourists who feed dogs in Bali would think about what they're doing and what a bad effect it has. Not only is it something most would never do at home - encourage a mangy disease-ridden stray to wander all over where they and their children are eating but they don't think about people who are frightened of dogs and how, by feeding them, they are leaving a problem behind for others. Poor Sam was in tears he was so terrified of this dog. It was hard to shoo it away though - Balinese dogs are half-wild and don't scare easily and we didn't want to disturb the other guests. I noticed in the paper a few days ago an item about dingoes on Fraser Island (dingoes look very much like dogs in Bali - they're both variants on the basic Asian wild dog) and how dangerous they are to children. There have been over 345 attacks, including at least one fatality, by dingoes on Fraser Island on children and authorities are now saying these dingoes regard children as prey - as they can bring down a 20kg wallaby they are a significant danger. And why are they so dangerous - that's right, because idiots feed them!
There weren't many other guests but they were interesting. There was an Australian lawyer from a community legal centre in Melbourne, travelling on her own. There was a party of pleasant middle-aged American women on a yoga retreat/holiday with their teacher James. This was quite a funny setup. James was a very fit and handsome American in his thirties or forties who was the charismatic focus of this group and took the homage of the women as his due.
But the gods smiled on us that night. As we walked away from the restaurant with Sam and Sophie, feeling a bit fed up as Sophie had been difficult at dinner, we passed an older couple heading for the restaurant. One of them must have said something to us about Sophie and I said something like "be glad you didn't have to sit through dinner with them." Well, that did it. They immediately told us that they had a Balinese granddaughter in Ubud about Sophie's age who they were missing terribly and that they would love to spend some time with our kids. And that was how we met John and Vicky.
John and Vicky, originally from England, were from Canada and had been coming to Bali for 19 years. They'd lived a long time in BC (Vancouver Island) and had recently moved to Nova Scotia. One of their sons had married a priestly-caste Balinese woman in Ubud and they had a two-year old daughter. They asked why we were in Permuteran and we explained we'd come to do some snorkelling. Vicky said we should snorkel off the beach in front of Taman Sari first over the coral restoration project and that they'd come over in the morning and stay with the kids in the shade on the beach. As if that wasn't enough, not only did Vicky have crayons and other things to amuse Sophie with, but John was a very good, serious amateur magician - he belongs to the International Brotherhood of Magicians or similar organisation. So Sam was in seventh heaven about this.
We had asked Made, at the front desk of Taman Selini, to help us organise a snorkelling trip to Menjangen Island and also to help organise some babysitting but while Made was a really pleasant person he didn't come back to us with any arrangements. Taman Selini doesn't seem overly set up for families with little kids though they had cots and high chairs- at least when we were there the staff didn't know any babysitters. So finding John and Vicky was extraordinary luck. We could see them all on the beach while we were snorkelling over the coral. The snorkelling wasn't bad - there were lots of colourful fish.
The water was clear and warm and the view spectacular when we looked up to the mountains looming behind the beach. The kids were happy as clams when we got out - Sam loved learning magic tricks from John. I talked to Vicky while Jules and and the kids and John played in the pool at Taman Sari and the adults ordered drinks from Taman Sari's pool bar. There was a sign in front of the pool saying that people who swam in the pool who weren't guests of Taman Sari would be charged five dollars but this was never enforced while we were there.
John and Vicky were a fascinating couple - Vicky was an artist and among many other things John had been a jeweller. His most recent incarnation was making extraordinary miniatures, such as complicated objects for dolls houses, including complex machines such as tiny lathes that actually work. John commented as a professional jeweller that he was in awe of how good the Balinese jewellery is, made using such primitive, simple equipment.
Vicky was particularly interesting in talking about some of the issues with having a Balinese granddaughter. She was distressed about the difficulties with some of the different child-raising practices - for example, she was very upset that her granddaughter was fed five bottles of milk at night but no solid food except white rice that had had the life boiled out of it. Needless to say the girl became sick frequently on a diet like that. My dentist commented, when I mentioned this to her, that such a diet would be extremely bad for the girl's teeth, among other things.
Vicky gave insights into the darker sides of Balinese life that are not obvious to tourists - she talked about Javanese gangs holding up tourists in their villas and about how hopeless the local security around her son's living quarters was. She was furious with the Indonesian govt for not protecting Balinese culture more from immigration of Muslims from Java. She said they subsidised the building of mosques but don't subsidise anything to do with Balinese culture. She said that Ubud is it, the very last stronghold of Balinese culture, and I think that's true.
Vicky said her granddaughter was never allowed to play around by herself for a moment as the family were terrified she might be kidnapped.
Vicky also talked about the amount of DDT used on the rice fields and how this contaminated all the duck, pork, beef and chicken (and their eggs) in Bali because these animals are used to clean up the husks in the harvested rice fields. The DDT accumulates and she said Balinese often have sores on their skin and are scratching constantly because of it. She said in vulnerable people, such as children, the first sign is having an itchy bum. This alarmed me because Sophie had been complaining of just that. So, trouble in paradise. Vicky said as a traveller who'd been coming to Bali for nearly twenty years she felt it was her duty to try to agitate politically to do something about the use of DDT. Something all tourists to Bali could consider, I think.
That afternoon as we were playing in the Taman Selini pool with the kids, the yoga group came past. They'd snorkelled Menjangen Island that day so we asked James how they'd organised it. He didn't really want to talk to us about it but then amazed us by saying that a Wayang performance was going to be held later (we presume he organised it) and to be sure not to miss it. So Jules went off to talk to Made about us snorkelling Menjangen the next day (we had to be persistent and follow everything up as he never got back to us).
Then we had another delicious dinner and then wandered over to the area in front of the beach bar. A wayang screen had been set up, with the gamelan orchestra to the side, and the yoga group were having a banquet. There were comfortable cushioned benches and James kindly ushered us over to sit there in front of them. At first Sam said "I don't understand what's going on," not surprisingly. I tried to explain a bit about the wayang but then James amazed us by getting up and taking both kids with him around to the side of the screen so they could watch the puppeteers. He could not have been less interested in the children before this so we were surprised and very grateful that he did this. We were probably overly respectful of the puppet master and it would not have occurred to us to go over and look at the performers. The assistants to the puppet master were so lovely; they took the kids up onto the platform with them and they watched the show from behind the screen. They loved this.
We'd watched the wayang for several hours by the time we got too sleepy to continue but it went on for hours after that. And what a setting in which to see the wayang and hear the music - outside in the balmy night, under the stars, within metres of the calm night sea with the lights of the fishing boats close and bright like stars fallen on the water. Bliss.
The next morning, (Sunday morning) we'd finally organised our trip to Menjangen Island. Made hadn't been able to come up with a babysitter so suggested his wife, Kadek. She seemed very sweet but didn't speak much English. Vicky and John had come over after breakfast however, and said they would stay with the kids too. We couldn't believe our luck. Kadek was glued to Sophie's side and we had Vicky and John to amuse Sam and keep an eye on everything. So we felt very comfortable about leaving the kids, knowing they wouldn't just be safe but happy.
When we reached the Island we could see the green hills of Java behind it. We slipped into the water with our guide and the divers went off with the dive master. The Island drops off to a wall which is where all the coral and fish are. We swam along the wall with the Island to our right. There was a cliff of bright coral with brilliant clouds of fish floating over it and down along the wall. I think I even saw an octopus before it hid itself - a brief flash of velvety red-brown. The fish and coral were as good as some of the sites we snorkelled in Fiji but the water was not as clean and there were some plastic bags floating around.
There were quite a few stinging cells in the water from jellyfish ('sealice') and some of them were quite painful, especially when you'd get it somewhere sensitive like your lip. I noticed some snorkellers were wearing gloves which looked odd. One of the most spectacular elements of the swim, which I hadn't experienced before, was swimming through the curtains of silver bubbles sent up by the divers below us. It was like swimming in spa water bubbling around us and great shining curtains hung in the water.
We must have snorkelled for 90 minutes - 2 hours, then came out of the water at the main beach where groups of tourists, including Indonesians, were eating their lunch. I thought the Island was a bit depressing because it was covered in rubbish. We were given some good Indonesian food for lunch on the boat on the way back. We were told we were welcome to stay and have another snorkel but we felt we should get back to the kids.
They were very happy when we got back. After lunch with the kids (we were still hungry) and a rest in the bungalow, we decided to walk up the beach in the cool of the afternoon. We'd heard there was a dive place ('Reef Seen') that had a turtle hatchery/restoration project. As we walked up the beach we were happy to see a very lively scene of local families playing on the beach and enjoying swimming in the water. We hadn't noticed this in other parts of Bali - it seemed that mostly Balinese didn't like swimming in the sea that much but these families were enjoying themselves.
When we got to Reef Seen we were fascinated to see that Balinese dance classes were being held for the local kids (these are held on Sundays). Boys and girls, some only five or six, were learning traditional dances in a covered area right by the beach.
We paid a small donation for the turtle project and were taken to the hatchery, which is just a few small pools. One big turtle was swimming around and around one pool and we were told his name was 'Boomerang' because they'd tried to release him about six times and he kept coming back. We saw some tiny hatchlings - very sweet.
The next morning Jules took Sam back to Reef Seen for the pony ride we'd booked. That didn't work out well because the pony was too frisky and Jules had to cut the ride short. I stayed in the bungalow with Sophie and packed. Our driver was due to pick us up at midday to take us down to Seminyak.
I knew trouble was brewing on that front because I'd rung him about the villa we'd booked to stay in in Seminyak and he'd said that he'd emailed me in Australia to let me know that the owners had decided to renovate the villa and that he'd take us to another place. I wasn't happy about this but decided we would look at it and make a decision when we got there. So at midday we were packed, we'd paid (Jules coming back from the front office shaking his head in wonder at how inexpensive it had been, considering all the beautiful meals we'd had, etc) and we were ready to leave. Made's wife, Kadek, showed up to say goodbye to Sophie. Made had not asked for any money for the babysitting but we'd left a fair amount for him and Kadek anyway, of course.
I should mention that we made sure to take our heaviest bags ourselves up to reception when we left as our poor young pregnant woman turned up for the luggage - we made sure she only had to wheel a cabin bag.
And off we set for the four or five hour drive to Seminyak and the next part of our holiday. That day was the single most disastrous day of our trip but that will be covered in the next instalment...