Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [17]
One night when Agum ferries us back from dinner to the hotel, he explains the difficulties he’s having in rearranging his work schedule to participate in a semiannual event in his nearby hometown. “This is the biggest feast day of the year, when all families prepare food to share and decorate the temple together. I will feel disgraced if I can’t participate, but so far I haven’t found anyone to trade days off.”
The spiritual underpinnings of this way of life leap out vividly in the dances and art we see. Most of the inspiration for the creative work comes from two epic Hindu poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which portray the everlasting struggle between good and evil to illustrate the virtues the faithful need to advance toward holiness. In the kinetic Kecak dance—especially enjoyable on the terrace of the temple in the hamlet of Junjungan, where members of all 150 resident families participate in the performance—the hero and heroine, Rama and Sita, face incredible tribulations in maintaining their commitment to each other and vanquishing the wicked giant Ravana. In a climactic battle, an army of monkeys provides the decisive edge for the forces of good, unlike in the case of poor Flat Stanley.
The Sunda Upasunda dance relates the attempt of two giants to usurp the power of the gods and conquer their paradise of Swarga Loka. To thwart the takeover, the king of the gods sends a beautiful goddess and her heavenly nymphs to seduce and deter the schemers. Leaving this show in a driving rainstorm, we add some drama of our own to the plot: Cheryl trips on a slippery step and falls. Ahead of her and unaware, Bill keeps going until one of the nymphs taps him on the shoulder, eliciting a moment of surprised anticipation. His pipe dream crashes quickly, of course, as she points back to indicate the problem. Luckily, Bill, feeling the pain of the confounded giants, is more hurt than Cheryl, who’s still sitting in a puddle when he rushes to help her up. She asks, “How did you figure out what happened?”
“A heavenly nymph chased after me,” he says, getting Cheryl laughing so hard she loses her grip and splashes down again.
Later in the same storm, when we stop to pick up some cash, drama turns into disaster as Bill leaves his ATM card in the machine in a rush to get out of the rain. Not carrying old-fashioned traveler’s checks or any American dollars except for emergency purposes, we’re relying on our two ATM cards as a lifeline to our money supply for the whole trip. The next morning, gathering stuff for a return to Ubud, Bill realizes the magic plastic is missing. “Shit, where’s my bank card?”
“Did you get it back last night?”
“Oh my God.” Bill hustles into town ahead of Cheryl to the scene of the debacle, finds nothing, and e-mails our Santa Fe bank to cancel the card and issue a new one. The bank, in its typically clumsy fashion, never responds to the message, and on our departure from Bali a few days later, Bill uses a credit card to call from an airport pay phone about midnight our time after the bank opens back home, incurring a bill for almost U.S.$100. “Yes, we got your e-mail,” the clerk says, surprised that someone thousands of miles away wouldn’t just trust that, “and we’ll send a new card and PIN to your home address in a week or two.”
As soon as you wake up and go to work, Bill thinks but doesn’t say. Our house sitter e-mails us the new PIN and forwards the card by FedEx to the friends we’re staying with in China several weeks later, but in the meantime Cheryl’s ATM card offers our only access to cash.
If you lose it, she tells Bill, “You can swim home to get more money.”
The art tour provided in our honeymoon package focuses on the importance of painting and wood carving in the culture, taking us to galleries and co-op studios in villages such as Batuan and Mas. The hotel sends us out with I Nyoman Rusma as our driver and guide, a good choice since he’s an artist himself. When he stops in Celule, a town known for metal craftsmanship, Cheryl almost