“Stop, stop,” I yell. “This is our place.”
I know Rudy is grasping his wallet but I am unmoved. I know I may be eating rice all week but I cannot care. We have arrived. I begin what millions of Americans would term a “vacation.” My schedule is rigid: up before the breakfast buffet closes at eleven o’clock, swim, walk the beach, lunch before the lunch buffet closes at three o’clock, nap, read, finish drinks and dinner before the candlelit restaurant closes at midnight. Rudy, surprisingly, spends some time relaxing and eating with me, in between his language and flower arranging lessons.
AS we pack for our flight to Bangkok, Rudy begins to tell me about the hotel he has booked.
“It’s a real deal, hon.”
“Cancel it.”
“Cancel it?”
“Cancel it. I have something else in mind.”
A few hours later our airport taxi (yes, taxi—I have also chosen the transportation) reaches an American chain hotel, the one with extravagant rooms overlooking River Chao Priya. This is what Rudy has feared, that a week at Ko Samui’s top hotel has corrupted me.
This hotel, however, has something for everyone—a massage for me and a twenty-cent boat pass for Rudy. I join him on a river excursion to the Royal Palace, with its massive Emerald Buddha and Reclining Buddha, and visions of brilliant gold leaf, spires, cloisonné, and enamels—artistry that overwhelms us. At one temple I donate coins and the monk offers me an amulet, a gift of good luck, with the image of Buddha engraved in light metal and strung on a beaded chain. I slip it on rapidly. One never knows when one will need extra protection. In the meantime, Rudy sets two birds free to thank the Buddha for taking care of us thus far. We think we have all bases covered, but touring downtown Rudy realizes we have left a stone unturned.
In the center of bustling, chaotic, commercial Bangkok, the Erawan Hotel site is under construction again, this time destined to become a luxury hotel with an adjacent, essential Hindu shrine. In the 1950s, the Thais tell us, hotel construction at this site became a series of nightmares: workers suffering critical injuries, cost overruns delaying the project, a shipload of Italian marble ending at the bottom of the sea instead of the hotel lobby. An astrologer employed by the government to divine the situation concluded that the bad karma began when an unfavorable date was chosen for laying the foundations. Clearly, the only remedy was to erect a Hindu shrine countering the negative forces. As the building of the shrine began, the hotel construction proceeded peacefully.
The Erawan shrine, we note today, is no ordinary shrine. The Brahma and his good spirits are entertained as well as appeased. Dancing girls perform around the clock, a large elephant greets visitors, and trays of fresh food and floral offerings adorn the entry. We hear two explanations for the pile of pornographic magazines in a back corner: in one version, the night guards need something to read, and in another, the good spirits themselves enjoy the collection.
Normally, Rudy at home in California is by no means a religious person, and certainly not a superstitious soul. I am startled at his conversion in Thailand. He has set several birds free over the past few days, dispatching them for a variety of good works—retrieving a lost wallet, helping his tummy digest a challenging meal, bringing world peace. I am getting used to this new man and rather like him. As a sign of that affection, I never share my suspicion that, somewhere down the road or up behind the hill, there is a man with a large cage catching Rudy’s birds and returning them for another paid flight.
As we leave the Erawan, Rudy knows what we must do. “We have to think of the future. We need to take a spirit house home with us.”
We have seen spirit houses outside most homes and businesses throughout Thailand. A miniature temple mounted on a pillar, each features a replica of a Buddha or Brahman, plus a variety of objects designed to appease the spirits—armor, food, candles, flowers, and plastic animals. In return for a furnished home in a desirable location (preferably amongst large trees), the spirits offer protection to a place and its residents.
But Rudy has a rule about souvenirs and today it is making sense to me. In his edict, souvenirs are confined to small, lightweight objects such as earrings, Christmas ornaments, and scarves. Anything bigger or heavier is banned. I am confused about how the spirit house fits the small, lightweight definition.
“Just exactly how does this spirit house get home?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll sit on my lap.”
“For about twenty hours, the little house sits on your lap?”
“Well, it can’t go in cargo.”
“Even wrapped up well and crated, it can’t go in cargo?”
“I don’t think that would be right. It’s like I’m entrusted with something.”
We fly toward San Francisco, our connecting city, the spirit house with its resident Buddha safely covered and sitting on Rudy’s lap. The stewardess serves my meals on my tray, then Rudy’s on my tray. It works.
Rudy carries the Buddha and its house through American customs, lifting its cover so the agent might admire the carving. The officer looks a little curious, but not curious enough to spend a lengthy night hearing Rudy’s explanation. He shrugs his shoulders and points to the domestic terminal where we will catch a small plane to take us home to Northern California’s agricultural valley.
We wait in the crowded lobby, the spirit house on Rudy’s lap. Among our fellow passengers is a family of six dressed in embroidered brown wool jackets, pants, and cloth slippers, each clutching a small plastic bag. Every so often one of the children sits on the floor and dumps the contents out, the better to inspect each item. There is a toothbrush, samplesized toothpaste, a comb, one pair of white socks, a nightshirt. The family has an American escort, a young man who says to us, “You cannot begin to believe the village life they came from. Southeast Asia. You just could never imagine. Talk about culture shock—they’re going to be Californians by morning.”
THERE is no time for jet lag or even unpacking when we arrive home. The spirit must be made welcome at once. Rudy builds a wooden pillar for the little temple, facing it to look out our floor-to-ceiling glass windows, into a forest of tall pines. He spends two days in craft shops, finding tiny plastic miniatures that mirror our own belongings—a spotted dog and little white cat, a tray of tropical fruit, a plate of vegetables, and an elephant for transportation—to give honor to the Buddha. In his newly furnished home with a view, the good spirit is settling in.
One night a week later, Rudy and I are asleep in our downstairs bedroom when the phone rings. I am tempted to ignore it, but it rings and rings. When I answer a neighbor is crying, yelling into the phone.
“Get out. Get out. There’s a fire in your woods, a fire right behind your house. Hurry.”
I rouse Rudy and open our drapes. The fire is tall and crackling in the trees, ringing our home, within feet of our wooden deck. The rest is a blur. I remember corralling our dog and cat to drive down a fire-bordered driveway, returning to beg Rudy to abandon his hose and hopes, at last finding a volunteer fire unit that had time for our home.
Hours later, the fire apparently extinguished, Rudy and I, the German Shepherd Beau Jensen, the little white cat Liza June Jensen, and three firemen rest on couches and carpets while we take turns watching for stray embers. As does the good spirit.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THIS IS THE STORY ABOUT HOW WE COME TO VISIT TWO BALIS. “Are you finding it harder to make plans that please both of you?” the cover of the women’s magazine asks. Inside, it poses the follow-up question: “Is compromise a dying art in your marriage?”
If so, the remedy is: “Turn-taking.”
Marital harmony from turn-taking. I propose that instead of struggling to agree on an itinerary in Bali, we each design one half of our days on the island. Rudy cannot contain a wide smile. As we know, he is not by nature a planner, but then he rarely gets to envision a trip without some of my, shall we say, assistance. He strips our public library of texts on Indonesian arts while I
study slick travel magazines with articles that favorably compare new Balinese resorts to four-star, world-class hotels. We are the ideal couple to test turn-taking theory.
In the 1990s, the Western world knows little about the Shangri-La that is Bali, but major hotel chains export to its shores a few multi-story hotels, harbingers of development to come. From the airport, we enter a gated beachfront compound secreting away the resort I have selected. The hotel is as advertised: isolated, elegant, built of native woods amidst manicured lawns, both Western and Eastern menus in its restaurant. It also offers mounds of luggage in the lobby, a paging system that calls shrilly for tour group members, and rows of weathered tourists wearing, at best, far-too-small bikinis on the private beach. Securely fenced off from Bali residents, the beach has mutual benefit. Tourists want “protection” from locals, and locals want not to view topless sunbathers, an affront to their sense of civility.
Nightly entertainment is on a massive stage in a vast tropical garden. Seated in upholstered lounge chairs, we are served by cocktail waitresses in elaborate native costumes. An announcer with a British accent narrates a short dance story, one Rudy recognizes as loosely based on a traditional Balinese legend.
“This must be some kind of Cliff’s Notes production,” he whispers.
In the interest of enjoying my turn, I concentrate on massages, yoga classes, room service breakfast, and happy hours on the beach. Rudy buries himself in his art books. He knows the ground rules of turn-taking and exerts great energy to stifle his disappointment at this too-polished hotel.
It is, though, clearly time for a compromise. I do not admit it aloud, but after a week I am beginning to feel resort life borders on the boring. Perhaps I am over-pummeled by masseuses, overstretched by yoga masters. Frighteningly, I realize there is a chance I am converting to Rudy’s Rules for Travel. This marriage may be losing its delicate balance.
He and I agree to spend time at neighboring Sanur, a quiet public beach and small town a few miles away. Each day we walk up the road, past the taxis lined up in front of our resort, and flag down a modest cab, or occasionally one of Rudy’s preferred bemos. These old vans have seats removed and two long benches installed along the sides so that passengers face each other knee to knee, securing ducks or other food sources between their limbs. Even in the broiling, sticky temperature of the afternoons, there seems no limit to the number of human and livestock passengers that can be stuffed onto the benches. When necessary, assorted arms, legs, and cages hang out either side of the groaning vehicle.
At Sanur we walk the quiet beach, with our same daily routine of following behind the kite man with his huge, brilliantly colored box-shaped kites flying high, meant to reach the gods. Rudy spends hours wondering how a kite might come home with him.
“There has got to be a way . . . I can see it flying from our deck at home.”
I am getting ample entertainment just from picturing him moving down the airliner aisle with his five-foot-square maroon box kite. We are gearing up for one of those flights home when I will agree not to complain about his souvenir if he will agree not to tell anyone I know him.
The Balinese we meet on the beach or in the small town, young and old, ask the same questions in the same order and rhythm. It’s clear some kind of Tourist Bureau is augmenting their gracious nature with a little formal English training.
“Allo.”
“Why come Bali?”
“How long you be in Bali?”
“You like Bali?”
“Where you stay Bali?”
There is no pause between questions in the drill, no time for us to answer. I can understand, as it is harder for me, too, to receive a foreign language than speak it.
We find a beachfront open-air children’s dance school, and an instructor in ceremonial dress gestures for us to take seats on a bench amidst a dozen young—perhaps eight-year-old—boys. Rudy has a terrified look. As a school principal, he knows a lot about eight-year-old boys. But in moments, we see there is a difference. For over an hour, the little buddhas on the bench soundlessly, intently study dance moves of their classmates. Behind us, slightly older children practice over and over the sounds of the flute, gong, and xylophone. As each small group of dancers completes their routine, little ones observing bow their heads toward them in respect. This is not the American playground.
RUDY’S turn. It is time to head to far simpler lodging in the village of Ubud. While I pack for the trip into the hills of Bali, Rudy sets out to find our ride. There is never a shortage of tour buses, passenger vans, and taxis lined up in the driveway of the resort, but still I sense a need to set ground rules:
I make sure I have Rudy’s attention, look him in the eye, and say slowly and clearly, “Promise me you won’t load me into a bemo.”
“Not a problem,” he says. “No bemo.”
(Sometimes you have to repeat.) “Promise me you won’t load me into a bemo. This is a long trip up into the hills, and we have luggage to bring.”
He is disappointed. Clearly, he has already struck some deal with the local bemo driver.
He sighs and looks down. “I get it. No bemo.”
An hour or so later, while I am standing at the hotel desk counting out traveler’s checks to pay our bill, I hear the first sounds, a combination of wheezing and metallic scraping with occasional screeching. They grow louder. The desk clerk can see the fear in my eyes, if not sense my racing pulse.
He tries to explain. “Dee-livrey. Old truck. Dee-livrey road no.”
I understand that he thinks an aged delivery truck has missed the hotel’s delivery driveway and is now heading unbidden toward the serene portico, the resort entry. I know it is an aged truck, and I know Rudy is bringing it for me.
He has walked out of the resort and up to the main road, flagged down an ancient one-ton truck with mud-stained, battered wood paneling and flatbed, jumped aboard, and returned to gather our possessions and me.
“Hi, honey!” he waves and shouts out the window, grinning widely, eyes flashing. “We’re heeere!”
I approach slowly, attempting to collect a variety of thoughts.
“You think we’re riding up the mountain in this, this thing?” I grit my teeth and speak quietly, not wanting to offend the beaming, proud truck owner. “Just exactly where do I sit?”
“Right up front. The driver’s bench will do if we all cozy up.”
“With the driver?”
“Well, yes. Hadi is a very nice man, a good friend. And I’ll sit over the gear box if you want.”
My astonishment is nothing compared to that of the resort staff. A small crowd gathers around us—housekeepers, gardeners, and the desk clerk. In unison, they shake their heads and roll sad eyes. I understand little of what they say, but I hear a few English words, like “brakes” and “tires.” In a country accustomed to all forms of public vehicles, this truck apparently sets a new low.
Hadi, a short, thin man, perhaps thirty or forty years old, climbs down from the high seat of the truck and with a big smile, extends his hand to me. “Friend,” he says, “friend.” I have a feeling he has just now learned that word and that this is his first venture as a tour guide. I also have a feeling Rudy is his new business manager.
The ride up the sculptured terraced hills to Ubud is an even mix of physical torture and visual enchantment. Rudy and I lock arms, hoping to compensate for worn-out, stretched-out seat belts, using the weight of our bodies to stay closer to the truck’s bench than to its roof. Hadi is in fact a nice man, swerving to avoid the largest of potholes, slowing whenever I scream, and pointing out the most beautiful of rice fields. He is, if anything, too solicitous, turning to console me after each hairpin turn.
I seek Rudy’s help. “Can you please ask him to look at the road?”
Hadi does indeed get us safely to Ubud. Rudy has chosen a simple bungalow in the compound of a well-known Dutch painter who moved to Indonesia, converted to Hinduism, married a Balinese woman, and became an Indonesia
n citizen. I know from the moment we alight from the truck that Rudy has found his role model. We are in the outskirts of the village, next to rice fields and a ravine, here before tourism will discover the hills. The property is simple, serene. Our neighbors also live in compounds, with high walls encircling generations of families, common kitchens and living areas, shrines and gardens. I have to admit I already like this setting even more than the beaches.
After bowing his head before the small shrine on our bungalow porch, Hadi stays to sit with us, drinking a cup of welcome tea served on a rattan tray by a young woman in ceremonial dress. He and Rudy, with a combination of sign language and some sort of pidgin, plan trips to places where, guaranteed, no other tourist will be found. I hesitate to interrupt their reverie, but the survival instinct rules.
“Rude, we aren’t going on these trips in that truck, are we?”
“Well, yes. That’s Hadi’s truck.”
“But . . .”
“Turn-taking, remember? Turn-taking.”
I quieted. He is, after all, the man who at the resort paid five dollars for a cup of coffee, and who sat with a wide collection of tourists through dance program after dance program without a complaint. I tell myself that I will be more cautious in the future—no more trusting the slick magazines for travel or marital advice.
We settle into a routine, waking at dawn each morning to find trays of cakes and coffee and black rice pudding on our doorstep, along with a fresh offering for our shrine: a thin palm frond interwoven with tropical flowers into a square-shaped, flat bouquet. Rudy has never understood why travelers waste their time in meditation when there is a world to see, but here on the porch he sits each morning and studies the offering, turning it from side to side, holding it to the sunlight. “I need to learn how to make these at home,” he says.
On day one, Hadi finds a festival at a small temple high in the hills. Police have closed the road, allowing a spectacular procession of villagers that stretches as far as we can see. With Hadi, we join them, staying at the far edges of the path that will take us to the sacred site. Women of the village, attired in vibrant, gold-threaded ceremonial dress, glide, rather than merely walk, beside us, balancing tall headdresses of carefully stacked layers of fruits and cakes. They look straight ahead, their steps measured, hand motions perfectly keeping time with strains of the gamelan’s bamboo and bronze instruments. Reaching the temple gates, the women kneel slowly, carefully removing and leaving on the steps their headdresses, bountiful gourmet offerings to the gods. Even in the midst of tradition and elegance, it is hard to not be a pragmatic American.
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