Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [16]
“Lighten up,” Cheryl responds. “Deference is part of the culture. The staff seems to me as gentle and gracious as saints in waiting.”
“Yeah, the karma quotient around here must be off the charts.”
We leave the room after breakfast and the first thing we see, about twenty feet directly ahead, is a Hindu shrine, where the employees leave offerings every day. More of these pop up in other areas of the property, which the local owner converted in the 1980s from agricultural use to one of Ubud’s earliest hotels. The shrines, the architecture, the focus in the accommodations on the natural bounty outside, the art and local music in the lobby, all signal a firm intent to remain fully Balinese, rather than to provide a Balinese slant on international style, the route taken by many of the newer hotels in town. This is clearly where we want to be.
“Ulun Ubud” means “on top of Ubud,” an accurate tag. The heart of the town is about two miles downhill along the main street, astraddle the same river that meanders far below our balcony. The hotel provides free van transportation to and fro, which we usually take twice a day, going out in the morning until midafternoon and then again in the evening. On the initial jaunt, we typically wander the streets (only about five square blocks), browse some shops and galleries, have lunch, and check e-mail at an Internet café, since our cell phone/PDA, Mobi, fails to get reception in Ubud. Cracks and potholes make the sidewalks a minor hazard, and many buildings appear rustic at best, but local artistry pops brightly through the blemishes, in a terra cotta basin with floating pink and coral hibiscus blossoms, in stone warriors draped with floral headdresses, in fuchsia daisies tucked behind the ears of statues of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god. At night, when our driver is usually the gregarious Agum, we head off for dinner and often also attend a ceremonial dance and music performance.
Ubud reigns unchallenged as the cultural center of Bali, but it remains relatively quiet and largely aloof from the tourism boom of the last few decades. Most people who visit the island stay in one of the dozen beach areas, passing through Ubud, if at all, only on a bus tour of the countryside. Even the ones who stop overnight in the town generally do it briefly at the end of a beach vacation. Adopting the opposite approach, we spend our whole ten days here except for one six-hour excursion to a few of the beaches, which don’t seem to us to be especially enticing. Lacking in local character, they could be anywhere in the world. The sands in Nusa Dua sparkle brilliantly, certainly more so than those in and around Kuta, but the resort development teems with convention facilities, golf courses, and hotel chains such as Hilton, Hyatt, and Club Med. You might as well be in Cancún.
In Ubud, plenty of shops and restaurants, and an increasing number of inns, cater to the tourist trade, but overall the residents maintain a good balance between commerce and tradition. Whatever they do for income, they tend to adhere to time-honored local customs, values, and beliefs, in ways easily noticeable around town. Every business, from souvenir stands to liquor stores, sets out a fresh religious offering on the front sidewalk when they open daily. Usually small, square woven baskets, they contain rice, flowers, crackers, burning incense, and sometimes more. All students learn Bali’s ceremonial dances at school and are expected to participate in them on a regular basis as adults, one means of earning individual, karmic merit and the main reason for the many nightly performances in and near Ubud. Multiple generations of a family live together as often as possible in the same compound, which always contains a small private temple for worship. Everyone in a village, even if they have genuine conflicts, tries to attend major community functions such as cremations and religious festivals at the numerous public temples. All over Bali, including areas overtaken by tourism, these practices