N-Ubud

The morning sun bursts through the bedroom windows at about 8am, as it makes its way over the shrubs around our house. There's no stopping tropical light and there's no sun as powerful as the Indonesian sun. In the old days my bedroom was shuttered closed and impermeable to light. This bedroom has curtains. I close only the translucent ones and unlike the old days when I loved sleeping in that dark, comfortable wooden chamber, I now love the morning light coming to wake us.

Why miss a Balinese morning? Where else does the sun come through so gently, but energetically? Time is limited this time. Why not feel all the textures.

For Emily, the sun has been a bit of an issue. Not the morning light in the bedroom or its mild disposition in our compound. But yesterday, walking around Ubud it decided to show its might.

The air was particularly humid and the sun particularly determined as we walked down Jalan Hanoman from the Ubud Market at the top of town to the Monkey Forest at the bottom. This is normally an enjoyable 15 minute walk. But in the mid-afternoon sun on a day where air and light conspired against the people, Emily overheated. Just like a Plymouth.

She had to pull over and take a breather twice along the way. Her cheeks turned red and she needed coolant. Despite two bottles of water, she was still running hot and not liking it. It was Antalya, Turkey all over again.

We both sweated a ton then, as we were both sweating yesterday afternoon. We each remembered what happened last time – prickly heat. Emily doesn't have my constitution for heat and worry set in. We've seen enough prickly heat for one trip.

There was only one solution. After seeing the Monkey Forest – where a cheeky monkey grabbed my bottled water, took it a few feet away, unscrewed the cap and enjoyed a refreshing drink – we went to a spa for a massage.

Balinese massage is excellent and I had been waiting as I knew two hours at my favorite massage place could get the knots out of my upper back and shoulders.

They also offer traditional Javanese body scrubs and baths, originally developed and used on Javanese and Balinese princesses to make their skin smooth and give it perfect Ph balance. Emily received a 45 minute massage followed by a mandi lurlur – a yogurt and spice (largely turmeric) body and face scrub concluded with a bath covered in flower petals.

My wife emerged, from her scrubbing after the heat of the day was gone – cooled, refreshed, relaxed and inoculated against prickly heat.

Ubud has always had a few spas tucked away here and there. There have long been some fantastic restaurants. Bali – and Ubud especially – has a tradition of developing unique East-West restaurant concepts. Intermarried couples (usually between a foreign woman and a Balinese man) and a few elite Balinese who have studied abroad use their cross-cultural understandings to create artistic places with creative cuisine featuring gourmet Western food, the best of traditional Balinese and some hybrids. Mix that with some Balinese contemporary interior design and a fantastic view – and you have a dynamite restaurant.

Unfortunately as well as understandably, a good thing doesn't remain unique for long. Any half-way intelligent Balinese businessperson can figure that what works for the dude who married the American chick down the street, can work for them.

Since my first visit to Bali at the end of 2001 to the present, Ubud has slowly, but steadily changed. Now there are more cool looking fusion places than there are traditional Balinese warungs, with their simple designs and cheap, gorgeous traditional foods. While prices remain very good, the days of a meal for $1-$2 are coming to a close as are the days of a place that serves only local food with mom in the back making it.

There are more restaurants that few ever seem full. They all have teams of servers bringing very cool food at $3-$8. For what you get, it remains an incredible value.

Along with this are more upscale shops and more boutiques than you can count. Some name brand stores like Ralph Lauren and Dolce and Gabbana are there for the Japanese and Chinese tourists who love to label shop on their vacations. The places selling Balinese handicrafts, sarongs, batik fabrics and Balinese art remain. Only they aren't the only game in town anymore.

Expectedly, the wartels are all but gone. In the old days…. Bali barely had working phones, let alone cell phones. Locals and foreigners alike went to shops called wartels – a word combining warung (restaurant) and telefon (telephone). A shop was lined with little phone booths with timers that counted the seconds and minutes of your call.

It was from a wartel in the middle of Ubud that at age 24, I called my mother to whine about having an abscessed infection in my heel and ankle drained and mildly surgerized while in a place one would hope not to need medical care, especially then. I'm a complete wimp about medical procedures and no one knows that like my mother.

Today, I would – and do – have an Indonesian SIM card in my cell phone. I would just pay for additional talk-time, dial and whine from the comfort of my bungalow porch. The wussy  kids with unexpected abscessed infections today really have it so much easier….

Back then, Ubud felt like a sleepy village. A block off the two main roads of town, it still does. Ubud is still Ubud, though the last rice paddy in the middle of town is gone and the Starbucks that somehow got around the Ubud village charter of having no chain stores of any kind – being that it's the cultural center of Bali – changes things just a hint. A mild resemblance to Seminyak and dare I say it….Kuta…. has sprung up. Not enough to make it not Ubud….but enough to erase Ubud's sleepy village feel that made it so enchanting and distant from the world.

My friend Chad remains righteously indignant and outraged about the Starbucks. I hope that tourists are smart enough to realize that the most amazing coffee is grown on this island and served in the local style at every restaurant and stand. It still costs 50 cents or less and is better than anything in Starbucks. I don't hold out much hope, though.

With the exception of the Starbucks which should be run out of town the way Balinese warriors kicked the occupying Japanese forces off the island during World War II… part of me embraces the changes. Change is inevitable and Ubud has an international, somewhat artsy-sophisticated feel. It has commercialism, but not the rampant, unabashed pandering to the wild, partying tourist you see near the beach areas.

Ubud restaurants play jazz and latin music. Yoga and spas have sprung up everywhere. The clothing is mostly boutiques filled with classy, locally made apparel. Jewelry shops with silver work made by Balinese craftsmen – as it always has been – are very popular. If Ubud is going to join the race for the mighty dollar, it's at least taking the high-road.

Someone like my friend Leanne who came to Ubud frequently in the late 80s and 90s to study Balinese dance – would never have imagined Ubud moving this way. At the same time, I think she would agree that in a strange sort of way, Ubud is trying to keep its essence.

As with all changes, some of the refinements are really nice. I wasn't complaining about the world-class tiramisu at dinner last night. We enjoyed our dinner salad made with the fresh, flavorful local produce. It's nice.

Although the restaurants are playing live jazz at night – which is kinda' nice too – instead of traditional Balinese music, the incredible demand for the arts in Ubud means gamelan orchestras practicing for the evening performance at locations throughout town. The local music has become an outdoor soundtrack which adds to the enchantment.

Arts are flourishing beyond belief. Artists can be full-time artists thanks to desire for their work. There are more galleries and fewer snack shops with owners who put up a few of their paintings hoping someone might take notice.

There are men and women who make a living – a real living – off being dancers in traditional performances rather than accepting that the love of their art results in a pittance.

The people of Ubud are attempting to cash-in without selling out. It's a dance as tricky, detailed and complicated as a legong dance with no guarantee of applause at the end. Like all the other Balinese dances, it is performed daily in front of the Ubud palace. We have our tickets to watch for the next two months.

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