A bus stop at the first temple we visited.  Bus stops have platforms, not benches.

Goa Lawah Bus Stop

This shrine had bats.  Lots of bats.

Sacred bats at Goa Lawah

People face the bat cave when they have rituals at the shrine.

Praying to the sacred bats

If you take a bat away, you will die, evidently.  This deity guards the entrance to the bat shrine:

Guarding the entrance

Tanah Lot, temple in the sea

Another important temple actually was built centuries ago on an outcropping of rock.  There are some better photos than what I took, if you want to know more.

Monument to victims of Bali bombing

The Indonesian government recently executed the alleged masterminds of the bombing that killed more than 200 people in the heart of the tourist district in 2002.  The tourist district appears to have recovered, pretty much, and so there are lovely sites like this:

Tourist row, near Denpasar

Sign at a tourist bar

On the other hand, you can go to the beach nearby and see:

1) a surfing contest

Surf contest HQ

Surf Board Sign

2) a McDonald’s, with my guide Rangga

Rangga at Mickey D's

also a lovely baby:

Baby at McDonalds

and finally

3) a beach-guarding deity with its offerings

Beach Deity

Offering to the beach deity

And then it was time to begin the 36 hour commute back to the US.

Rangga took me to a restaurant on the beach nearby. There were several touristy places nearby, with oldies bands and wandering singers, but this place was quiet. The deal was, you decide more or less what you want, and then go up to the front where they have the fresh catch sitting in ice—you point to what you want, they weigh it and throw it on the grill. After dinner, we set off for Amed, which it turns out is almost as far away from Denpasar as you can get. Rangga had never been there. I had been pretty stubborn about picking the place because I wanted to go somewhere with live coral reef for snorkeling. Much of the reef in the areas near the more traveled parts of Bali in the south has been killed off, although there is no a movement to preserve the living reef and promote ecotourism. So because of my stubbornness, we had a 2-hour drive in the dark to the eastern side of the island. Thank goodness for cell phones—Rangga had to stop at critical intersections and call to make sure he took the right turn. The last part of the road is basically switchbacks up and down the mountainside, so it was probably just as well that it was dark. We finally got to the Dancing Dragon Cottages at around 11:30.

Rangga hadn’t realized that he was basically going to be stuck there, it was *way* too far for him to drive home. So he made whatever arrangements for himself and Adi, and came knocking on the door to cottage #3 at 8:30 the next morning, clean clothes magically produced. We went to the restaurant for a quick breakfast before the great snorkel adventure:

Here is Rangga with his morning coffee

I looked across the pool area to see one of the staff sweeping off the front porch of my cottage.

The pool looked very nice, and if I had spent any time at Dancing Dragons I would have tried it out.

From the restaurant patio you could watch the local fishing boats drive by

OK, enough lolling around—on to the underwater experience! The hotel recommended a company called EcoDive, which is evidently owned by some Europeans but staffed with local divers. It didn’t take them very long to convince that for only $10 more than a snorkel trip, they would fit me out with scuba gear and a personal divemaster. So here is what happened:

Check out the gear:

Cram the body into a wetsuit and stagger down to the beach

Have my very personable divemaster orient me in the water:

He says it’s OK:

Off we went!

And this is what it looks like under the water (no, I didn’t take the picture, it was enough to actually breathe under water)

When I talked to anyone in Jakarta or Bali who figured out that I was an American, which took them oh about 2 seconds max, they would ask where I was from, and when I said “Chicago” one or two people still said “Michael Jordan,” but now it was “Barack Obama”. When we stopped to visit a Hindu temple on Bali, the ticket-taker asked where was I from, I said Chicago, and we said simultaneously “Barack Obama.” I’ve had other conversations where someone was star-struck when a famous name was dropped—”ooh, you know xxx, what’s she like”—but this was different. A waiter at a beachfront restaurant in Denpasar, on Bali said, “America will be different now I hope.” It is the reflection of the many times here since the election that people have said that now, for the first time (if they grew up under Bush) or for the first time in many years, that they felt proud to be an American. Indonesia is a country of young people. Barack’s election has already had a pervasive effect.

At High/Scope, it was multicultural week:

The country is incredibly diverse. Eko and Poppy, 2 of the principals at High/Scope, gave me a scarf with all the islands and groups:

There are probably 50 languages and dialects scattered among the islands. The country recognizes 5 religions officially—Hindu, Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic, and of course Islam, I wonder if there is a minyan anywhere—and everyone must study their own religion in school. (At the parent meeting, we had to laugh at the distribution of N’s, P’s and H’s for the 10^th grade Catholicism class: there was only 1 student) While it is 80% or more Moslem, and calls to prayer can be heard from any place in the sprawling city of Jakarta, the range of styles of dress and of observance is very wide. One of the most committed feminists and internationalists I have met, the director of the Indonesian International Education Foundation, wears traditional dress outside her home. At High/Scope, the staff is also diverse:

Bali is 90% Hindu. The whole island is filled with temples, shrines, and prayer offerings.

Women on Bali do the hard physical labor of digging, building, and farming alongside the men, (I wasn’t able to take pictures of the many women carrying large and heavy baskets on their heads) and there is little mechanization to help them.

The terraced rice paddies are worked by hand, or by men with water buffalo.

Buildings are constructed by hand, with men and women carrying bricks on their heads, and using bamboo to construct scaffolding as they go.

It’s hard to know what the future will mean for such a place. Muslim extremists set off a huge bomb in the middle of the tourist district several years ago, and the leaders were executed only a few weeks ago. There is a memorial at the site of the explosion. As jarring as the tourist district is, and as obnoxious and oppressive as the party crowd of westerners undoubtedly is as they lurch from bar to bar, I can’t believe that there was much sympathy for either the men or the act on an island which is so given over to the ongoing celebration of the many Hindu deities, and of course the Balinese workers were blown up along with the backpackers. I hope that the era of the global robber barons is waning, and that the Balinese will find a way to live easier lives without trashing their souls or their island.

Bharata editing outcomes

Jossy was editing outcomes, too:

Jossy working on outcomes

And here are some more hardworking staffers:

More outcomes posters

I hope that Eko and others who took pictures at the parent meeting will send them along so we can post more.

Of course, there was food after the talk–nasi goreng (fried rice, the national dish), satay, all that good stuff. And some little cakes too.

Now I am in the domestic waiting area at Soeharno-Hatta airport, waiting for my Lion Air flight to Denpasar in Bali. I will upload pix later as the bberry doesn’t know how (or I haven’t figured it out). Stay tuned…

Jossy, one of the High/Scope staff who went on the museum jaunt on Sunday posted some pictures to her facebook account.

pb at the nat

also at the national museum, both photos by Jossy

You can see more about Jossy on her facebook page.

We also cooked up some Bali plans, as Vidy, my Sunday tourguide and chief High/Scope admissions person, has a brother who is a tourguide for real on Bali.  We agreed that he will meet me at the place I’m staying on Saturday morning and take me snorkeling and to see some of the nearby temples.  They all think I’m a little crazy to stay in Amed, 3 hours away from the main tourist area near Denpasar, the airport, but I think the non-tourist areas will be much nicer, and now that I have a known person to keep an eye on me I am totally up for the adventure and even the driving.

But in the meantime I will be earning my keep, with a meeting with all the high school teachers tomorrow along with a special training for the 3 EASE coordinators.  Thursday night will be a parents’ meeting.  I’d better get some rest.

Today two wonderful High/Scope staff, Jossy and Vidy, came to the hotel and took me to Indonesia’s National Museum.  They are great tour guides.  Before the country became Muslim in the 1200′s there was Buddhist and Hindu influence.  (Bali is still largely Hindu).  Here is a picture inside the museum of a large statue.  There were many statues of the shared Hindu and Buddhist deities, and also lots of Ganesh figures.

family looks at buddha at national museum

There were some terrific maps which showed all the different language groups on the island chain, and a huge wooden model with the terrain and climate zones in relief.  Jossy pointed out that people who live in Jakarta have the tradition of returning to their families’ home villages during holidays, and that means going over mountains and carrying gifts and of course everything they need with them, often on motorbikes with two small childrens riding along with their parents.  Seeing the map made it clear why there are still so many ethnic differences among the people who are separated by many natural boundaries.

Here are Jossy and Vidy in front of the elephant statue that was a gift to Indonesia from the King of Thailand, Chulalongkorn (he was the one Yul Brynner played in the King and I)

Jakarta being Jakarta, it was quite hot.  We drove to the National Monument, which my guides pointed out was explicitly designed to represent the male genital, in contrast to the parliament building which represents the female (I haven’t seen that one yet).  I stopped to take a picture, and we saw a lot of families visiting the monument.  This picture gives some idea of the scale.  Note the row of lovely palm trees leading down the highway.  The people in the foreground are probably a quarter of a mile from the monument.

This young man was walking past me, and I didn’t turn quickly enough to get the whole front of his shirt in the picture, but maybe you can see who it is:

young man w/ picture of Che Guevara on his shirt

It was fascinating to think that Che is a fashion statement in Indonesia now, when probably he could have been arrested for wearing that shirt only 2 presidents ago.  A young country, and an interesting young Asian democracy.

If people wanted to get a closer look at the monument, or to take a ride up and down the wide avenue in the area of the monument, families could pile into the back of a pony cart like those shown below.  The ponies looked so hot!

We decided that rather than drive around in the heat and traffic, we would go to lunch at a restaurant near the tourist district that serves both traditional Indonesian and Chinese food–the style is called peranakan.  You can read more about the restaurant here, and of course there is more about it but the pages are in Indonesian.

Here is what some of our lunch looked like:

Meal at Kedai Tiga Nyonya

and here are Jossy and Vidy pickout out the choices:

Jossy and Vidy studying the menu

After having lunch, I was pretty much done for the day.  Back in the hotel room, I could see the afternoon storm coming in, and watch the lightning strikes in the distance.

rain coming in, from the hotel room window

We got on the boat

It was chock full of people, but we were in the after area and it was amiable and not crowded. The young woman who was crewing on the Rover said that we had probably encountered a combination of sea lice and dismembered jellyfish. We hope they will be gone in the morning.

Here are some pictures.

How ’bout those old salts. Then we had to get a little something to eat and even though they were out of softshell crabs we found some other fish and consoled ourselves with the homemade key lime pie.

Mostly we have been at the beach.

On the other hand, it isn’t all about the food, we saw this line-up of charter boats back from a day off of Hatteras.