RN with friends on "Imlek" or Chinese New Years Day. We went to our friends'Pieter & Lisa's house in the village of Belong. Lisa is a world-class cook & their house is high up on a hill overlooking the jungle.
Close up of the Canteen.
Our cousin Pipit, oldest daughter of Ibu Supri who came to America two years ago. Pipit is now attending university in Yogyakarta, Java.
Onion fields up in the highlands where our friends farm we call "The Pondok" is located.
First person we meet every morning is Kadek the Fruit & Balinese Goodie seller. She, who is about 4'8" & about 14-16 yrs old, is brought with a group of other girls and boys from East Bali to work the streets of the tourist areas. She spends 7 days a week carrying a heavy tray (30lbs) of miscellaneous stuff(boiled corn, boiled bananas, boiled sweet potatoes, balinese cakes, fruits) to sell, walking perhaps 10 miles a day. Her boss houses all the kids in a room in Denpasar, brings them up to Ubud in a truck, collects them at the end of the day. He keeps all the proceeds, paying them a flat salary of about $1.50 a day. On a good day she might sell 10-15 dollars worth of stuff. She gets up at 4am to prepare the food, they arrive in Ubud by 7 and she gets picked up around 4pm. Never mind what you've read about Bali in the guidebooks and silly books like "Eat, Pray, Love": this is the way most people in Bali really live.
Wayan's brother Kadek and Grandpa carving wood for someone's temple. This is the family business though Kadek doubles as a chef at the Grand Mirage in Nusa Dua, Bali's equivalent of Disneyworld, where the Global Warming Conference took place. Speaking of which an interesting note probably not reported in the New York Times: all the speeches and meetings took place not only in air-conditioned 5-star hotels but they even used air-conditioned tents for the overflow...hmmmm
One of the better T-Shirts we've seen
One of the bright lights of Bali, Kadek, a basket weaver from way up in the highland area of Bali where tourists never go. We found Kadek and some other weavers there 3 years ago while researching for Hancock Baskets. The girls, all around 16 then, claimed I was the first "bulay" (white man) they'd ever seen. There are still areas of Bali untouched by the outside world. We've stayed friends with them ever since.
We live next door to the public elementary school. Every morning around 7:30 the kids gather in the courtyard next to school and chant a mantra. We love this sound.
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