So after a few months studying abroad in London, on a whim, I applied to go to Bali for 5 weeks. One of my professors that I’d had back in Boston was running the trip and was in search of more people. I hadn’t even looked at it initially because the applications were around the same time as I was getting ready to leave for London but I figured I should go for it now that I had a better idea of what I was doing over the summer. This trip was structured around learning about the performing arts industry in Bali and we’d take lessons to learn to play the Balinese Gamelon.
I arrived in Bali after sooo many hours of travel. The class left NYC at 11pm on Thursday for a 5 hour flight to Vancouver where we stayed on the plane, refueled, and an hour later left for a 13 hour trip to Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a 4 hour layover before the final leg of the trip to Denpasar where we landed and had a 90min car ride to where we’d be staying in Ubud. When we finally arrived, everyone was ready for sleep but first we had to get through dinner at the house of our Gamelon teacher, Alit. His family had cooked us an amazing meal and we sat around talking and getting to know each other until we were brought back to the hotel to pass out.
This trip was similar in size to my prior Dialogue see Trinidad, 12 students and 2 teachers. Six of us are staying in rooms above a restaurant and the rest are staying in the guesthouses down the street. It’s a tight squeeze (3 to a room for 5 weeks) but the view is amazing. We have a balcony overlooking rice fields and there are palm trees everywhere - pretty cool for a girl from NY.
The first day in Bali was great, I was jet lagged so I got up early and sat on the balcony for a while catching up on things. Around 9:30 we went down for our first breakfast which is included with our rooms. We had banana pancakes which were green (the pancake, not the banana), they were really good with a sweet syrup and shaved coconut. Then we met up with the class for a small orientation and learned the do’s and don’ts of Bali. After lunch, we went to the market to buy sarongs and other things we would need for the religious events that we would be attending. The market was totally overwhelming with people trying to sell you everything and I was terrified to barter (I usually leave that to my dad) but I did it! I bought my sarong and slendon (sash) and then we had free time to go to the spa.
Bali has excellent massages which are very very cheap and that was something I got used to very quickly. We started the trip at one of the nicer spas where I got a back massage and mask and felt amazing afterward. The prices were so good that this became a weekly thing (and I was totally fine with that, no guilt). After the massages we went back to the hotel before dinner. Dinner our first night was a mexican restaurant where the food was super tasty and also very inexpensive. I had some chicken quesadillas and we split a couple pitchers of margaritas and my total bill was $5 US. I love my mexican restaurant at home (everyone that knows me knows this) but this place might rival it. I’m very happy that my living expenses on this trip won’t be too high. It was a great first day.
Day 2 started with some scrambled eggs and our first class at 10am on the second floor of the building where we were staying and had the restaurant (so we didn’t have to go far at all). We started off with an overview of the course, what our assignments were going to be like - since I’d had this professor before and she was structuring the class similarly to how her last class was like, I was really happy to know I had a better idea of what to expect. The big factor here was that we’d all be living and learning in a foreign environment and we didn’t have other obligations so things would be a bit more relaxed than in Boston.
2pm was our first Gamelan lesson which I realized early on would be a challenge. There is a very steep learning curve to this instrument and I was just hoping at that point that I’d eventually get the hang of it. Also, in the past I have learned instruments using sheet music only and everything here would be taught orally. Memorization is not my strong suit and apparently this is the best way to get something ingrained in your brain so you don’t forget it…you just have to learn it first. We went straight to dinner after class because tonight would be our first Odalan later in the Sacred Money Forest. Was that a lot to digest there? The Odalan is basically a religious ceremony where we’d be going to temple and the Sacred Monkey Forest is just that - tons of monkies running everywhere. We got dressed in our sarongs and slendons and the boys also had to wear a headpiece called an Udon and then we walked over to the temple. The whole event was unlike anything I had experienced before. After we had been there for a little while, the gamelan started playing and women were entering and leaving with offerings balanced on their heads to be blessed by the priest (usually food). There are three different sections to the temple and as you venture further toward the center it becomes more sacred. We were in the middle section with the gamelan but since we did not have a Balinese person with us like our professor said we would usually have, we did not go any further in. After the gamelan played, there was an improv comedy routine that we, of course, couldn’t understand but it looked like it was probably funny. Overall a good experience, I didn’t feel too out of place but I feel like we got a good idea of the tradition and what these events are normally like.
By Day 3 I felt like I had a good routine going. I was still waking up around 7:30 or 8 each morning and class was going well. In the afternoon, during gamelan class we began learning a long piece (especially long compared to western music) which we will be working on for a while. After class we had a birthday party for one of the girls I was rooming with. We went to a Japanese restaurant where I tried some sushi (didn’t like it) and after dinner we went to a hookah bar. There were a couple casualties of the night (some scrapes and a lost room key trying to navigate the broken sidewalks of Ubud.
Day 4 was business as usual as I was tackling my first case of Bali Belly. Every meal here is one that we have to question and maybe also take precautionary Pepto Bismol. We had to even be wary of the water that food might be cooked in so even if we were eating things in reputable restaurants, this wasn’t uncommon. I started taking things a little easier.
We would only have four day school weeks so on the last day of classes for the week I had a presentation. After gamelan we went to happy hour at a thai restaurant for cocktails before returning to our favorite Mexican place for cheap dinner. We spent the night in at the hotel with my current normal bedtime of 10pm.
The week ended with a wedding and tooth filing ceremony. We were invited by one of the locals that our teacher knows that also helps with our gamelan classes. We didn’t get there early enough to see the wedding but they were doing the teeth filing when we arrived. This where children that are about 18 years old get there teeth filed as a right of passage. They went two at a time and it was so far from western dentistry. It was exactly how it sounds, files scraping away and I hated every second of it (and I was just watching). After the filing we went over to another friend’s house where they were making Lawar (a large meal). Some of the students were already there helping out and we hung out there for a while and some people tasted the food when it was ready. Then we headed back to the hotel to finish our papers that were due later that evening. In my non-typical fashion, I had gotten a head start and finished early so my roommate and I went for massages.
Our first weekend in Bali started with us getting up early for a bank opening ceremony happening down the road. At this ceremony they did a traditional Topeng dance. This dance involves one man that switches between different masks, voices, and characters. Whie we couldn’t understand what was being said, it was interesting to see the different masks and hear the gamelan accompaniment. When the ceremony ended, half the lunch went for some Babi Guling (suckling pig), I went for the experience and had myself some plain rice and vegatables for lunch. After, the rest of the girls went back to the market to shop and, not eager to go back there, I went with the boys to find a nature trail. It was very hot out, I didn’t wear enough sunblock (will I ever learn?) but it was gorgeous. We walked for about 25 minutes before getting to some rice fields and a little shop. The shop was priced very low because it was in the middle of nowhere but I found a painting that I decided to go back and get (no shopping yet for me, it’s the first week!) Just past the shop was a small restaurant where we stopped for some Bin Tang (beer). We sat down inside a little straw roof bungalow over a koi pond, talking and drinking for a few hours. It was so relaxing and calm because we finally had nowhere to be. We watched the sunset and then headed back to town for dinner. We had an early morning the next day with a group morning.
The morning started in the jungle where coffee beans are harvested and made. Kopi Luwak, a very expensive and special type of coffee that is made from beans that are passed through an indonesian cat called a Palm Civet. Some of my classmates tried the coffee, I’m more of a tea drinker myself but overall pretty cool to see this phenonium in person. Then we headed to the meeting point to begin the bike ride with some amazing views. We would be starting at the top of a hill and mostly riding down. For the most part, I really enjoyed the bike ride. Some of the uphill knocked me out and I was definitely ready for the great lunch we received at the end. The only part I didn’t enjoy was the in addition to taking us through traditional small towns, part of the “tour” was also going into a families home. I’m sure the family needs the money they earn for opening their doors but it felt very weird being a westerner coming through these homes that are SO much different than our own and looking at them as outsiders. I felt very out of place there and it made me think a lot about how different our lives are from other cultures and our ways of life.
The week continued with some more traditional ceremonies before we then journeyed up north for the weekend. We’d be staying in a hotel and would get a little taste of the vacation part of the trip. The trip was beautiful but in order to get there, we had to drive through the mountains which was a lot of up and down (and a lot of feeling car sick). Our first stop was to see a traditional dance set up by our teachers. Then we arrived at the hotel and had dinner before an early morning to see some dolphins and snorkel. Unfortunately this was a total tourist trap, we were in a tiny boat, chasing dolphins with about 50 other tiny boats. By the end of it, I was seasick, and definitely not interested in snorkeling. I went back to the room before hanging out at the pool in the afternoon. We had dinner on the beach, went and saw a gamelan rehearsal, and then spent the evening at a beach bar with another study abroad group from our school that was based nearby in Bali. The next day we would head back to Ubud, on the way we stopped at some temple gardens that were really pretty (and packed full of people).
The next week we got to see our Gamelan teachers group perform in a sort of “Gamelan off.” A huge competition that they would face off other groups for a prize. It was hectic and loud and awesome all at once. We spent more time hanging and drinking with our teachers and the gamelan members and since it was our last week, I brought the girls back up to the secret cafe on the hiking trail because I wanted to go back one last time. (I bought some art to bring home which still hangs in my apartment to this day).
We also did a hike that was WAY harder. We climbed Mt. Batur which is one of the highest (though not THE highest) mountains in Bali for a sunrise hike. When I say I hiked, I more mean that I was dragged by a very kind man up. This was WAY steeper than anything I’ve ever climbed before and I twas way more out of shape than I expected. When we got to the top, I thought I was going to be sick….but the views were insane and there were monkeys so I guess this was worth it?
The last night was our performance evening. The four girls that opted for dances lessons began we what they had been working on and then the rest of the class (with some professional help) performed our musical piece. Learning this new instrument was not easy for me at all and I felt really accomplished after our performance. I loved being totally immersed in such a foreign country, trying to new things every day, and meeting new people. This dialogue was totally different than the last one, I don’t think I made any best friends, or did anything that I would say that I’m dying to do again, but as always, my eyes were widened a little more. I feel like I came back with experiences that inspired me to keep traveling and keep exploring.
