Aug 112 min read

Denpasar

We've been enjoying a couple easy days in Denpasar/Sanur adjusting to the time change (12 hours ahead of CST!) and waiting for our friends Martha, Ben, and Sam to arrive tomorrow. We'll all then head up to Pemuteran in NW Bali for snorkling and rainforest.

These first few days in Bali have really mark for me how much the world has changed in our lifetime. We all know it, but by visiting a place infrequently but somewhat consistently over decades, one really notices. Bali, and S.E. Asia generally has been one of life's touchstones for me in that way and being here again at this point in life - a lot of memories and perspectives pop out.

The first time I was here was in 1982. And it was my first trip out of the US and my little culture within it. The place I stayed in Ubud didn't have electricity. Light in the evening was by petrol lamp. Water for washing was with a mandi (tub of water and bucket for scooping water over your head) was provided by the women who's family owned the place, carrying it on her head. And one routinely lit a mosquito coil before bed to keep malarial mosquitos away, and slept under netting. It was a beautiful setting place. It cost roughly $2 per night. And every night up Monkey Forest Road through gecko ponds near the crossroads, there were dance performances for tourists. Transport was on bemos - covered pickup trucks with benches along the sides and full of passengers hanging off the back (and often me as well).

I then visited again in 1986, with Teresa after we had met and were married. She of course, was taken with the culture and it caused her to study Indonesian dance when back in Chicago all these years with our lifelong friend and teacher I Gusti Ngurah Kertayuda ('Pak Ngurah). Ubud had changed quite a bit then since my first visit, but nothing like when we retured with our children Julius and Sereana in 2008. Monkey Forest Road was then solid shops and gelato.

We haven't yet been to Ubud on this trip, but of course we book our flights, hotels, and taxis from our phones and note their ratings. This neither a lament or a celebration, just really noticing what has transpired in many ways, more easily than at home. And reflecting how one sees changes more clearly across temporal discontinuities than in what we normally do with everyday.

A theme on this trip, I'm sure.

Street scene in Denpasar from the back seat of a car.

Sunrise in Sanur. That volcano to the left is Gunung Agung, on the slopes of which Teresa will paint a mural for a school near Besakih Temple in a couple of weeks.