Not Your Average Honeymoon

Without any conscious effort to do so, we had spent our entire honeymoon in countries that drive on the left. Also, each place we visited (other than a brief layover in the Narita airport) was new to both of us. On first-time visits, I tend to get a bit antsy like there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish everything there is to do. Not this time, however, and that has to do with the nature of how we "planned" the trip. We sort of chose Bali as our focal point of the honeymoon, but the dilemma was how to get there.

There are no direct flights from Los Angeles, so we bookended it with Singapore and Sydney, cities which don't have copious museums or attractions like a Paris, a Tokyo, or a Rome. I mentioned in a previous post that the mass transit system somehow made the top 10 on TripAdvisor for Singapore. And having rode aforementioned transit system, it's nothing to write home about. It's clean and efficient, but if you're going to have credit card and mobile pay options at the ticket kiosks and then only accept cash, the bugs have not been completely ironed out.

Point being, Singapore and Sydney have one or two "must-see" attractions, but beyond that it is whatever you make of it. For Singapore it was Gardens by the Bay, and for Sydney it was the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. This made it easy to find time to relax because after seeing these "must-sees," we could just see where the day would take us. I was relaxed, Nicole was relaxed, and as a whole, the trip was stress-free, in spite of six different flights being involved and some standby ticket woes.


I want to ensure that I do not sound like I'm picking on Singapore and Sydney. They are, in fact, very interesting cities, which turned out differently than expected. Singapore, which calls itself, "Asia's World City," was an interesting mix of old and new -- heavily favoring the new. And due to its small size and geographic location, it has a unique culture that is really a blend of multiple cultures -- Chinese, Malay, Indian, and even a small European faction. The food reflects this, and every meal is some kind of fusion. Nicole kept pointing out Italian restaurants and saying, "Look!, Italian is really popular here, so if you want an authentic meal, we should get Italian!" Clearly, this is nothing more than Nicole up to her old tricks. She surprisingly did not join me in eating Hainanese chicken rice with curry.

Singapore is often talked about as being one of the cleanest cities in the world. Nicole did remark on how her pack of gum mysteriously vanished after processing through customs. I was reading that the cleanliness of Singapore is almost a necessity due to its muggy tropical climate. Any garbage left stagnant for any length of time becomes a health risk. Steep fines are imposed for littering, and they are enforced. The punishments for crimes in Singapore do seem a bit much for the crime committed, but perhaps it is working. Our customs forms to enter the country said, "Possession of illegal drugs is punishable by death." And that's no joke. At a minimum, one can face some good thrashings by caning (a bit archaic, but perhaps preferred to life in prison or . . . death). They have used the death penalty on more people for drug offenses than murder, and this includes drugs like marijuana, which is now viewed in the U.S. with the same reaction as Diet Coke. It does all seem a bit harsh, but then again, the policies are working. Crime, drug use, and even smaller offenses like littering are extremely low. I also saw no homelessness. A lot can be learned from Singapore, but maybe the caning shouldn't be one of their exports.

With Sydney, we found familiarity -- a virtual Los Angeles down under, but somehow friendlier, more accessible, and disturbingly more expensive. The food was almost exactly the same as our systems were accustomed to eating back in LA. We ate burgers, pasta, waffles, muffins, and pancakes . . . basically the main staples of my diet. Surely things outside Sydney change a bit, and the Outback/Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, and other sites would make our to-do list on the next excursion to Australia.

But as previously mentioned, Bali was the center point of the trip, a place where we felt we could spend a lot of time relaxing and recovering from the chaos, stress, and people-pleasing that consumed our lives for the past year. We did not want to be at the beaches, which seem to be the more popular destination in Bali by far. They just seemed to be a little trashy, crowded, and had a weird vibe. . . not to mention a fairly high rate of crime. We chose Ubud as it seemed (on paper at least) to be more relaxed and removed from all of that. Our hotel was amazing with a bathroom alone larger than a good number of hotels I've stayed at. It was immaculately landscaped and decorated to look like an aged temple. Going to the pool felt like an Indiana Jones adventure. Once leaving the property, however, the town of Ubud is perhaps not what either of us was expecting. One, the sidewalks are extremely narrow, so this results in walking in the street a lot. Two, the streets are not particularly safe due to pretty erratic driving -- the worst offenders being western tourists who mistakenly believe they can ride a motorbike. Three, white/hippie/dime-store yogi/instagram tourism has completely taken over the town of Ubud and it is just the worst.

I had not seen Eat Pray Love, prior to our trip to Bali, but having seen parts of it the other day, it is pretty accurate. While the viewer of the movie is supposed to take away that Julia Roberts character is becoming enlightened, centered, and balanced, one cannot ignore that the only people she speaks to in Bali are all white people looking to find the same things (whatever those even mean). It is extremely disingenuous and hypocritical for these hippie conquistadors to just march into a country, claim an area as their own and then act like they are part of a culture they never knew anything about. In fact, they have essentially influenced Ubud so much that the town now revolves around white people pretending to be something else. Nowhere was this more evident than Zest, a vegan restaurant with rave reviews and terrible food. The clientele dress in sarongs as their token nod to Indonesian culture, and wear jewelry or do their hair in such a way to look different than one would walking through the streets of America or Europe. There are two problems with this. In their quest to all look different, they all end up looking the same. The second issue is that it's all an act. They pretend to be zen, take a selfie, check how many "likes" they receive on said picture, and plot out their next fake "experience," such as visiting rice paddies that are no longer in use for making actual rice.

They have, in a sense, created an entirely fake life in which they have devoted all time and effort to their pseudo life that exists on the internet, where they try to impress people they will never meet. And it's not just the tourist crowd that rubbed me the wrong way. The hypocrisy continued with religion. There are numerous Hindu temples around Ubud, many which are closed to the public. The few that are open to visitors have a strict dress code . . . sometimes. It is inconsistently enforced because at night, there is money to be made in the dance shows. If you turn someone away for baring too much shoulder, that's 800,000 rupiah ($50) of revenue lost. I understand money talks and all that, but if it's ok at night, it should be ok during the day. You cannot be both welcoming to all, and hours later turn away a woman for menstruating because they're considered too "dirty." The entire local population has been reduced to assimilating into perpetuating a myth that was created by white western tourists for white western tourists. It is as real as Morocco in Epcot or Paris Casino in Las Vegas. It was once a beautiful area with rice paddies that reflected the sun's glow without some guy from Montréal wearing a rice hat for a photo op or some woman from Portland hosting yoga retreats for other western tourists.

Many people come to live in Ubud because they have been led to believe that it is free-thinking, artsy and carefree. This is true on the surface. Ubud is where one can swing toward the heavens without a care in the world ($35/Limit 12 swings). The traffic is bad (and frankly dangerous) for a town of its size. The newspaper reported on two men being arrested for running a Facebook page as a means for gay people to find each other. Had I not met up with one of my Indonesian students from flight school, I wouldn't have had a single authentic Indonesian experience during our stay. The restaurant he took us to was the only one during our visit where Indonesians outnumbered western tourists. So, Ubud is polluted, intolerant, and simulated. If the westerners who flock to Ubud wouldn't stand for these kinds of things back in London or Marseilles or Seattle, why are they ok with them thousands of miles away in another country? It is simply one big lie that people simply fail to realize or choose to ignore.

When we stopped short of taking a United flight home and instead hopped on a flight to Fiji, we
thought we were being a bit crazy. And yet, there we were on our own island in the middle of the South Pacific, watching the vibrant and clear blue waters from our hammock. But it wasn't real. I mean, yes the ocean was real. The hammock was real. But I have the sense to know that this is not daily life on Fiji. It was delightful and relaxing and all those wonderful things, but I am not going to move to Fiji tomorrow and pretend that the Fijian way of life is all coconuts and paddle-boarding. Having visited and lived on Hawaii, I know that there is a pretty significant difference between perception and reality. When I lived on Oahu, I never drank a Mai Tai, only surfed twice, and subsisted on SPAM and plate lunches (none which included pineapple).

The point is this...in spite of what it may sound like from this post, we actually had a fantastic time on our atypical honeymoon adventures. The point is to use caution when evaluating your experiences as a traveler. There is a growing trend of people my age pursuing an "authentic" experience without much regard to what reality actually is. People can go to a place like Ubud and take a cooking class to make Indonesian food! Super authentic! Or is it? . . . Did these overpriced cooking classes exist before the influx of western tourists? Methinks not. I am reminded by a quote from fake movie president Andrew Shepherd in The American President:



Lewis: They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Andrew:...People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.



And that, ladies and gentlemen, is really the point I'm trying to drive home. You can have a great time on vacation, but recognize that your experience may not reflect daily life. I really liked Cuba. Cuba has a history of human rights violations. I liked Israel. Israel is always involved in some sort of controversial settlement dispute or military action. I have always enjoyed Japan. Japan refuses to accept responsibility for the war crimes it committed in the past and has a habit of ignoring its own faults. I am an American. America favors special interests, enjoys putting people in groups for electoral gain, and is somehow simultaneously free, welcoming, and forward-thinking, and yet incredibly backward, racist, and misogynistic. Any country has the potential to be great, but every country is not without its own problems. And for one's honeymoon, one is supposed to sit back and relax. We did just that, but we did something else. We questioned things. And that's ok too.

Night into Day

We ventured out in the evening for two reasons. One, I knew they lit up some of the temples and wanted to get some pictures, and Two, our hotel grounds were being smoked for mosquitoes. It was not yet dark enough for the lights to come on when we walked by, so we ended up getting dinner at the 3 Monkeys, the same restaurant as the previous night. One cannot go wrong with some pasta and pizza. After dinner, we worked our way through the chaotic crowds of central Ubud until reaching Saraswati Temple, the one next to the Starbucks.

The unfortunate thing about this town is that it doesn't really cater to photographers. The only reason the temples are illuminated at night is because many of them play host to a dancing show. Luckily I was able to sweet talk the people selling tickets into letting us snap a couple quick photos before going on our way. We later ended up back at the Pura Dalem Temple, where we had previously worn special attire so as to not offend. Now, however, these strict rules were no longer required as they too had a show. I took one picture from just outside the entrance and called it good enough. We walked back to our hotel a bit annoyed.

It is incredibly hypocritical to require specific attire during the daytime, when no ceremony is occurring, and simply not care in the evening because more money can be generated if they just let anyone in. We Herschers have a long history of being annoyed by nonsensical religious dress codes. 20 years ago, my sister had to buy special pants to get in to the Vatican because she was deemed too skanky in her nearly knee-length skirt. My mom had to put on some kind of shawl/dress over her pants while visiting a monastery in Greece because apparently women shouldn't wear pants. And at the Pura Dalem Temple, it is strictly forbidden for a woman to enter while menstruating. It's really tough being a woman. Though, at 7:30pm, all bets are off as long as you have 80,000 INR.

Perhaps it was all the walking we did throughout the day, or the heat, or a combination thereof that led me to fall asleep around 10pm. As a result, I woke up around 7am, and decided to take advantage of the situation by doing a bit of exploring before the crowds of tourists consumed the town. I first walked down the hill toward the ridge hike where we saw our first temple a few days ago. A pair of young women were laying out offerings in front of the temple. These types of offerings are all over town and it's hard not to accidentally step in one.

After my brief stop at temple #1, I thought I'd try and go back to Saraswati, the Starbucks Temple, as it will forever be remembered in my mind, and power-walked into town in hopes of grabbing a couple shots before the selfie takers started to arrive. I had the place to myself and was able to enjoy the solitude of it in spite of the constant drone of motorbikes in the street just meters away.

Today we must check out of our hotel, but our flight (or any flight going to Sydney for that matter), doesn't leave until 1030pm. This makes for one of those awkward days where we are kind of stranded in Ubud for about 6 hours. We've been told we can still use the hotel facilities, just not our room, so we my spend some time at the pool, and Nicole may get a massage as they are quite inexpensive here. I think we are both ready to leave Ubud. While our hotel is very relaxing, the town is a little wild for our tastes. On to the next adventure . . .

Cultured

After our breakfast, we walked into town to see if we could get closer access to some of the Hindu temples. The rules were a bit daunting as you can see by this sign, so we weren't entirely sure as to how all of this would work. Fortunately, the guy collecting money was able to provide us with some proper coverings so as to not upset anyone. The gentleman providing the scarfs and such could have a career in fashion. He color coordinated our scarves with what we already had on. Nicole got red to match her stripes. I received blue that matched my t-shirt and flip flops.

The best thing about the Pura Dalem temple in Ubud was its lack of visitors. For whatever reason, Nicole and I had pretty much full unobstructed access to the temple without ever having to worry about someone getting in our photos.

Pura Dalem Hindu temples are "death" temples, so the statues are pretty interesting to look at. Everything is a bit spooky and we were there during broad daylight. It would be interesting to return at night since there seem to be some small floodlights, but I don't think the public has access after a certain time.

Following our short exploration of the temple, we continued to another temple called Saraswati. It was somewhat difficult to locate and had kind of a hidden entrance, accessible next to, of all places, a Starbucks. This one did not have as much access, and you could really only see it from the outside, but the lotus flowers and pond leading up to the temple made for a decent view, at least before other tourists found it and started doing selfies again.

It was getting to be quite hot and oppressive, so we made our way back to our hotel, where we returned to see our room was being worked on. To kill time, we wandered around the complex where we discovered a pathway leading to an open door, which led to further pathways which we had never seen before. We weren't sure if this was part of the hotel, but decided to do a bit of exploring. Every time we thought we had reached the end of the path, there would be another gate, a bridge, or some stairs leading in yet another direction. It was very interesting to see this sort of hidden world right underneath our hotel. Our room was ready after we returned from our exploring, and we spent most of the afternoon just relaxing on our porch area with a beer in hand.

A Bit of Exploring Around Ubud

We had a good night's rest that was interrupted only by weird creaking noises that led me to believe a monkey had broken into our room and was dead set on robbing the place. This is the only possible explanation for such noises. After breakfast, we went for a hike along Campuhan Ridge, which is right next to where our hotel is located. The best part if the hike was actually before it even stqrted. There was a small temple adjacent to the trailhead that had some nice statues. Unfortunately it was closed, so we could only observe from the outside, but it was kind of neat to see a little bit of actual culture. Then we began the hike up the ridge. The views were ok, but it doesn't really warrant the title of most popular hike in Ubud.

After getting quite sweaty and sticky from the hike, we got some drinks at a mini-market and walked into town a little ways where I had seen a path that went through some rice paddies. The path was very unassuming at first, cutting in and out of alleyways, but eventually opened up into an expanse of rice paddies. We only encountered two other people during our walk, and in my opinion the trek through the rice paddies was 100x better than the ridge hike. Eventually the trail made a big loop and we found our way back into the chaos of central Ubud. By now we felt fairly expired, and we needed to get some food.

We ended up going to a place called Zest, which specializes in vegan fare. Normally I would scoff at such food blasphemy, but I have had chicken in pretty much every meal since I first landed in Singapore. I've even had chicken for breakfast and I was ready for a change. I ended up ordering Nasi Campur again (sans chicken), but I can't truly confirm what I was actually eating. What I can confirm is that the clientele was . . . different. First, everyone seemed to know each other, while at the same time not really know each other at all. Example conversation: "Oh my gosh, it's you! We need to catch up some time, I'm just up the road." "Yes it's so nice to meet you finally." Apparently the two were facebook friends, but not friends IRL (in real life). This was not the strangest thing observed. Everyone was dressed exactly the same. The women wore flowing sarongs. The men wore plain t-shirts and sported man buns as the hairstyle of choice. Now, I personally find such a hairstyle to be quite silly, but I won't judge someone solely on their haircut or clothing choice. What I will judge is the sheer hypocrisy of this whole culture of white people finding themselves in Ubud. The two people across from us at our couch table were busy taking selfies and keeping tabs on their social media accounts and saying things like, "Look how many likes this has already!" The pictures might have portrayed a care free lifestyle that might accompany a click-bait blog post that says something like, "5 Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job and Move to Bali (#3 gave me the runs)" But the people across from us were not the easygoing, fun-loving hippies they (and presumably everyone else in the restaurant) were pretending to be. They were terrible social media whores. And they weren't very nice to the server, either. They kept complaining that their pizza was taking too long. So next time you see a picture on social media of people looking like they're having the most blissful and peace-loving life abroad, just picture those same people complaining about a pizza.

Sigh. Lunch exhausted me. It only seemed fitting that we go to the pool to relax for a spell. Our hotel is like a protected retreat. Unlike someplace like Cancun, where all-inclusive resorts act as boundaries between tourists and the local population, I feel like our hotel is a way to escape the other tourists. It's quiet, unpretentious, and welcoming. It is what people on the outside pretend to be and then yell about their pizza taking too long. On that note, we ventured out to hire a taxi to drive us to Tegallalang Rice Terraces. Nicole and I both knew we were essentially venturing into some kind of tourist-trap hell, but the pictures we had seen online looked nice, so we gave it a shot.

We went later in the day, close to sunset, so we figured things would have calmed down. It is possible that it was worse earlier in the day, but there were still far too many people for my liking. And it's not just the numbers of people there, it was what they were doing. Bearing in mind that these are rice paddies and have potential for mud, slippery surfaces, and uneven pathways, there were women in fancy dresses putting on their best instagram poses. It all seemed criminal...and stupid. Nicole and I saw a small pulloff where we wanted to take some pictures of you know...the terraces, but we had to wait while a group of grammers took turns making sexy poses with the rice paddies (as one does). There are about 3 poses that the grammers like to do. 1) The back to the camera, arms spread wide as if to say, "I don't want to seem totally vain by showing my face, so I'll just turn around and obscure your view of this interesting thing in front of me." 2) The sideways, toe-pointed, hand on face, mouth slightly open as if to say, "I wore a dress to a hike because you never know when a photo-shoot will start, and phew I'm glad I did" pose. And finally 3) The hand behind the back, fake-walking away, while holding the camera phone user's hand is if to say, "Follow me to exciting adventures!" I imitated this yesterday in a picture I took of Nicole, but I don't think we executed it entirely right. Conclusion? All of our photos are crap.

Now I feel I must reiterate, my gripes are not with Bali or Ubud. My complaints are geared toward a large swath of people who are coming to Ubud. As a whole, we have found our time here very relaxing in spite of other people who are working really hard to show their followers that they are busy relaxing too.

Bricole's Day In

After the chaos of yesterday evening, we had a relaxing day at our hotel in Ubud. It has a very exotic look about it and walking around the grounds is like walking through Adventureland at DisneyWorld. Our hotel is not actually that large in terms of rooms, however. It has only 17 rooms or something like that, so it was easy to walk around without running into other guests.

Later on, a former student of mine from my flight instructing days had gotten on a flight from Jakarta to visit me just for lunch before heading back. He and his wife treated us to one of his favorite places nearby. We sat on pillows on the ground. After about 20 minutes or so, Nicole and I kept fidgeting in an attempt to get comfortable. I had Nasi Campur, a rice dish with a smattering of other things like chicken, egg, and peanut encircling it. Nicole had chicken satay. My student managed to eat half  a duck.

Back at the hotel, Nicole and I scoped out the pool area which looks nice for later relaxation. It has been overcast all day and seemed to be threatening rain, but the most it ever did was very lightly sprinkle.

As it came close to dinner time, we ventured out a little bit into town, which consisted of some craft stores, hotels, spas, and lots of white people. You see, Ubud is an interesting place because Nicole and I can't really figure out why it is even a tourist stop other than the fact that it is a tourist stop. But how did it become such a stop is the question for the ages. Perhaps Instagram is partially to blame. If you see any promotional materials hawking Bali, you may have seen a young woman on a swing blissfully swinging above the jungle canopy as if she did not have a care in the world. This is actually a thing one can do, and is apparently so appealing to instagram people that it costs $35 for about 12 swings, or almost $3 per swing if you do the math.

So that care-free image that someone posted on social media is in actuality very forced. If the camera had zoomed out, it would reveal a line of people ready to spend way too much money on something that is, in effect, a lie. Now, having said that, I do not want to imply that Ubud in Bali is a miserable place. In fact, quite the contrary. We are feeling very relaxed here. The point of my rant is to show the kind of people that are drawn to this place. And as your favorite snarky blogger, I'm not going to lie about what I do or what I see. Ubud is not some kind of cultural mecca for Indonesia and I am not going to pretend that it is. It's a relaxing place for tourists such as myself, and a healthy reminder that what's important in life is actual experiences that don't always have to be shared with the rest of the world. I could post this picture of Nicole on Instagram and do all kinds of ridiculous hashtags about being inspired to be like Indiana Jones, but in reality we are like Marcus Brody and just lost at our own hotel.

On that note, I leave you with a shot of the Blanco Museum, just a few blocks from our hotel. What's at the Blanco Museum you ask? I haven't a clue. I can only speculate that it documents the rich heritage of the white, western, tourist in Bali. It most likely begins around the release of "Eat, Pray, Love," and continues up to a $35 swing.

Tomorrow we plan to leave the safe confines of our hotel, and really explore. #blessed