Living for Disco

I’ve never been to Bali before. I’d heard great things about places that are not Kuta, and determined to go to a couple that have been on my ‘must go’ list, primarily Ubud. Ubud, for those not in the know, is the cultural capital of Bali. Home of the best cooking, wood carving, batik, weaving and painting (more of this later) and perched amongst the lush rice paddies and jungles, it is somewhere I imagined wafting around dreamily while watching butterflies at play, and picking up treasures for buttons.

I was particularly looking forward to our room at our hotel, the Bali Spirit, which, on its website, looks like a veritable Eden. I can only surmise that their photographer was extremely talented. The hotel is, however, aptly named. Like Bali, it puts you in an environment of unsurpassed beauty, and then proceeds to fleece you of every penny you ever have, and ever will earn.

Ubud is insane. It’s a shrine to Mammon. I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never been anywhere so completely, mind-bogglingly packed to the rafters with stuff. If you ever want the real secret to the world’s deforestation, go to Ubud. I can’t imagine that there are enough people alive in the world that could use all of those carvings. If you ever want a statue of Father Christmas, portrayed as a cat, go to Ubud. Care for an unrivalled collection of really BAD paintings of frangipani flowers? You know where to go. Enough sarongs to start a decorative yurt business? Yup, Ubud’s yer man.

The only really successful way to bargain for something is if you actually, genuinely don’t want it. I learned this from the distressing experience of being chased down the road by a frail looking old woman, who was hanging onto Gordon’s shirt and shouting a series of random numbers at him. She chased us for ages – further than an old woman should rightfully be able to chase a couple in their early middle age. I speak a bit of Indonesian, and begged her to stop, but she was still whacking Gordon’s elbow with an ornately carved wooden box half a mile down the road. The next day we hired a moped, although to be honest, I’m fairly sure she could have chased that with some alacrity also. Daily I dreaded turning round to find her hanging onto the tailpipe as we zipped down the frangipani-lined road, but fortunately, this did not happen. We considered having t-shirts made that said “No Thank You” so that we wouldn’t have to say it any more.

Unfortunately, everything we did like seemed to cost the earth. We discovered a beautiful piece of Ikat weaving that looked as if it should cost around £20. The actual price knocked me over the road into the nearest bar, where I failed to purchase a gin and tonic, due to the mysteriously patchy availability of hard liquor in various drinking holes in Ubud. 23,000,000 Indonesian rupiah, which is what the item cost, is almost £1500.

Overall, I wasn’t sure I cared much for Ubud, but the place grew on me, rather like a favourite scab that is satisfying to pick. While it wasn’t the peaceful haven of culture I’d envisioned, it had a liveliness and rough charm that gets under your skin. When I heard about the increased security and travel warnings due to the execution of the Bali bombers on Saturday, I wanted to phone someone and condole, but of course, there is no-one there that I actually know.

We were repeatedly suckered and fleeced, and daily were parted from our cash so quickly that we barely blinked before our wallets were empty. However, when I read about the warnings for tourists to stay away from Bali in the light of possible retaliation from Mujahid, I couldn’t begrudge any of the money we spent. It promises to be a very quiet Christmas for the Balinese.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.