Bali Luwih

SYUKURAN di Wantilan Balerung, Peliatan for A.A.Mandera

2012-01-18T12:30:00.002+08:00

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VIDEO:

Pernikahan Adat Bali: Elin & Aleksi, Tiing Gading, Tabanan, 6 January 2012

2012-01-17T10:03:00.005+08:00

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VIDEO:

TRAVEL DIARIES: Lake Toba, North Sumatra

2012-01-12T10:36:00.001+08:00

Published in Now! Jakarta, February 2012

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A view of Lake Toba and Samosir Island from Tebe Point.

Lake Toba, North Sumatra

Last month I went to Lake Toba for Christmas and discovered a whole world of all-singing, all-dancing, all-smoking Sumatrans. The scenic splendour of the Lake Toba region and the frantic fretwork of the handsome adat houses were wondrous, but were naught compared to the exuberant character of the Batak people I met there over ten days.

A catholic church on the shores of Lake Toba.

‘Ompu’ Nommensen, the German Missionary who introduced Christianity to the Lake Toba region in 1864.

Batak men wake up barking and yelping, then eat giant quantities of two-tone noodles before changing into urban cowboy outfits and heading for the palm-toddy stall to await the 3 p.m. ‘Sunset Cocktail Hour’ opening.
Batak women wake up and placate screaming and yelping Batak boy-children (“Shut up or I cut you in half”) before diving into laundry cubicles to abuse items of clothing. They then head off to the rice fields or the market, to make it all possible.
It’s as if all the 2,000,000 tough-talking Bataks are apologists for the 180 million back-peddling, super-refined Javanese on the island to their East.

• • •

Balinese Turis Domestic Apel poses on the Lake edge at Balige
	View from the Ompu Kerti, hotel, Balige at dawn.

For my first four nights I stayed in Balige one hour west of Porsea on the crater lake edge. My home was the bizarre Ompu Kerti, owned by Batak superhero General (Ret) T.B. Silalahi. It is “bizarre” only by Balinese hotel standards: tourism in the Lake Toba region is still in its Soviet Era.
Biographies of the great general/former national minister were available at the front desk but I chose, instead, to drive the short distance up the hill, to the remarkable T.B. Silalahi Centre and Batak Museum. There one gets a 3-D experience of Batak culture, might and megalomania. The Silalahi Centre is next to the social-realist style tomb of the last king of the Bataks, Sisingamaraja XII, which is next to a charming colonial era mountain bungalow — the lobby building of the old Swiss-owned Toba Hotel (built in 1927), which is now home to the cemetery ‘s wiley caretaker.

The supreme Batak being at the T.B. Silalahi Centre overlooks the Mayoral complex beyond.

The Lake Toba area is riddled with exotic architectural treats: quaint churches abound as do mausoleum monuments which are always large and fanciful. Graves come as psychelic-coloured adat houses in the sky; big ‘Black Pete’ rajas on ponies with magic wands is hand and pretty ‘ tree of life’ sculptures on Art Deco obelisks.
Basically, one’s daytime tourism choices boil down to two: one can ogle exotic architecture and scenic views all day, or one can go to a Lapo palm-toddy-fueled men’s fight club, or to the market (to buy ulos cloth or great wide-brimmed farmers’ hats), and get one’s head chewed off. At night it’s either the scary discos, the teenage macho Batak cyber arcades or bed.
I took a Balinese friend for protection (Batak men are nothing if not determined) and enjoyed a fabulous week of bizarre church services and family events. My hosts, the Manurung clan of Janjimatugu, were effusive in their hospitality.
I was dragged to church on Christmas Eve for Christian karaoke hour and then lead home like a water buffalo to be fed copious amounts of pork meat while the whole clan gathered around a tiny plastic Christmas tree and sang “Silent Night” as if their lives depended on it (See my video “Christmas with the Bataks” link: http://youtu.be/s1nMpxV_DPM)

On Christmas day, after church, I took the family on a long drive from Porsea to Pangururan on the western banks of the crater lake. We descended the wild- west pioneer-towns of Hutagalung and Harian — which are rife with settlements of Nias warrior-labourers. After 3 hours we stopped at the Department of Tourism-sponsored Tebe Lookout Point and Rusta Shack to admire the view of Lake Toba and Mount Pusuk Buhit, which is considered to be the ‘birthplace’ of the Bataks. In the Sagala Valley below we spotted the settlement of Limbong. On the steep drive down to the lake we went through many pretty traditional villages on the foreshores.
We stayed at the bizarre but comfortable Saulini Inn, opposite Pangururan near the hot springs, as I was keen to stay near the Sagala-Limbong Valley.
Pangururan sits on the west side of Samosir Island but is connected to ‘Sumatra proper’ by a causeway.

• • •

There are two roads heading from the hot springs to Limbong via the tomb of the Batak Rajas. We took the south road which winds along the crater rim shore for 5 kilometres before cutting through a tight river valley.

The steep-sided valley ‘pass’ opened onto a fertile valley which is ringed, on its northern, southern and western flanks by the caldera rim. Traditional Batak villages dotted the valley. It felt like a land time had forgotten, with a people you can’t forget.
At the tomb of the rajas we discovered a man placing mutant lemons on an altar to an animistic deity together with a list of all the “arrogant” family members he wanted cured.
Across the valley we found an ancient megalith praying stone, the Batu Hulon, dating from pre-Christian era of the Batak parmalin culture.
The first missionaries to the Lake Toba region were a pair of Belgians, in 1984, who were scalped and had their blood drunk by the chieftain.
One imagines that the culture was pretty ‘colourful’ back then.

A stylish grannie in Negeri Singkam Village.	Boxing day lunch in the church at Negeri Singkam.
	After lunch at the SYUKURAN at my friends the Manurung’s house.

At the end of the valley, on Boxing Day, we discovered Negeri Singkam Village — a real gem of neat rubble stone terraces and rows of exquisite Batak adat houses. Its pretty church, was having its Christmas Day service, a day late due to agricultural priorities.
Inside the church there was a huge amount of yelping and barking and smoking going on as the pork curry was being divided up from the pulpit.
We stayed for lunch and then roamed the village’s upper terraces.


The water buffalo is a symbol of strength and prosperity for the Batak people.
	Tanjung Bunga Village near Pangururan, Lake Toba West.

• • •

On the last day of our tour we drove around the North Coast of Samosir Island, stopping at Sumanindo for the Song and Dance and Puppet Show (well worth the detour as the atmosphere and the architecture inside the walled compound are magical).
Late in the afternoon we caught a very noisy disco-ferry from Tuktuk to Prapat an old Dutch-era resort town now over-run with the urban sprawl that accompanies mass tourism. Young Batak lovers canoodled on the poop deck.



Dance performer poses after the show at the Huta Simanindo, Samosir Island.

We flew back to Medan on Susi Air from Silangit, 20 minutes outside Balige, in a snazzy Cessna with two pilots but no other passengers. We had all the amazing aerial view of Lake Toba to ourselves.
In Medan we stayed in Jalan Surabaya in the centre of old town, at the delightful new Swiss Bellinn hotel, formerly a trendy boutique hotel called My Place.

Giant Amazon Medan — Chinese waitress at the Jalan ….. food street, Medan.

It has a back door which leads onto Jalan Selat Panjang the famous Hokkien-Medan food street.
I discovered descendants of Kublai Khan's warrior women and Chinese mensch uber-dagang babies manning cash registers. Fierce, giant, Amazon bimbos served perfect Hainan chicken rice and char kueh teow.

Architecture disekitar Danau Toba

2012-01-11T11:43:00.004+08:00

Pemandangan disekitar Danau Toba

2012-01-11T11:43:00.003+08:00

CHRISTMAS, BATAK 2011

2012-01-11T11:42:00.003+08:00

MAPANDES (Pelaksanaan upacara potong gigi 3 bersaudara Bali-Australia di Suwung Gede, 30 Desember 2011)

2012-01-10T09:38:00.013+08:00

Stranger in Paradise: Exotica

2012-01-10T09:21:00.002+08:00

Putra Bagus Putu

Exotica

For me, 2012 started with disasters.
After a dream Christmas break with the fabulous all-dancing, all-singing, all smoking Batak people in North Sumatra I returned to Bali to find that Ngurah Rai Airport had descended into chaos — a version of Delhi train station during the partition of India.
Some enlightened Singaporean project manager had even added a coup de grace in the form of culture-neutral butterfly motifs, my pet hate which had been applied to the new ‘causeway’ floor
It took almost two hours to get from the airport to my home in Sanur (normally it takes 20 minutes) and once there I discovered that the French friends of friends who’d rented my house had stiffed the staff and that my remote controls were no-where to be found; all just as Kim Jung Il’s funeral motorcode was starting.
Once installed at home things rapidly got worse: I took three calls from old Indian clients suddenly in Bali wanting addresses for cut-rate, crappy furniture shops and my domestic tourist house guests just wanted to go to “Jogger”. I was with great relief that I was invited to a tooth-filing — that of my Balinese niece, Desak Duwik, and her three half-Australian cousins.

Phillip, Peter & Putra

30th December 2011: To Jero Dewa Bagus, Suwung Gede — the family gathers for a puberty ritual
At Dayu Rai’s home I find three Melbourne teenagers — Peter, Philip and Putra — in my brother-in-law’s bed in full Balinese prince outfits, hair and make up. They look like Christmas bon-bons.

TOOTH-FILING AT JERO DEWA, SUWUNG GEDE
Phillipa and Dewa Bagus Putu	Desak Duwik

None of them knew what they are doing or what for. Not that it’s important: the wondrous thing about being Hindu Balinese is that angelic Brahman ladies just drag you through rituals without explaining anything.

Dewa Ayu Heni Yusnita and Son

The star of the morning proceedings is the boys’ mother, the elegant Deborah Kerr-like Jero Melati (Ibu Philipa) who poses herself, on queue, in various demure attitudes around the courtyard. Her husband Pak Dewa is a true gent: theirs is an enduring love story, with three perfectly behaved Balinese-Ozzie boys to prove it.

4th January 2012: To the Balerung Stage, Peliatan for a night to honour the late great musician A.A. Mandera of Peliatan’s 2012 Hindu Youth Award
I have been invited three times via SMS. I accepted with apprehension as I was attacked in print recently, on a Facebook page (Bali Simple Living) for being a lackey to the Balinese royals and a bragger to boot. I told that Nanny-boy, surfie, tree-huggers to get real: being a conservative monarchist groupie in Bali is the best occupation: Think magnificent Hindu rituals, fancy dress and fine palace food!!! I told them that they could stick their rusty bikes up their bottoms.
Anyway, I digress.

To return to the wondrous Gung Kak Mandera who was the toast of Paris and Versailles in 1936 with his Peliatan Dance troupe, and his legacy. Two of his sons became superstar dancers: one the star of Guruh Soekarno Putra’s Busby Berkeley-style dance spectaculars, and the other the greatest TEROMPONG dancer of his generation.
I arrive a tad late to find a hall packed with Balinese dancers and musicians, all watching John Coast’s 1952 film of the Peliatan Dance troupe in Paris.
This is the first time I’ve seen the target audience at a film night in Bali — usually it’s the expat rent-a-crowd and Balinese VIPs.
As chief bule-poobah to famed Gung Bagus, the maestro’s heir, I am lead to the royal box where a handful of great mates are knocking back local cocktails.
Amongst the mildly-inebriated is Sebatu’s answer to Ali G, Mangku Nyoman Suar, lead dancer of that village’s Wayang Wong (sacred mask dance) troupe who are off to Europe and America in September.

The evening’s guest of honour finally arrives and the mystery of the “Royal Media Centre, Ubud” on the invite is finally solved. The awards scheme, and the Hindu Youth Brigade (Shiv Sena meets Suara Mahardika) and, one imagines, the Soekarno Centre in Sanur itself are the brain-child of the self-proclaimed ‘Raja Majapahit Bali’ Dr. Shri I Gusti Ngurah Arya Wedakarna Mahendratta Suyasa III who has the longest name and the best stylist in Bali. His golden “tongkat pecut” staff and Hindu sporran-doozie were dazzling.

Gung Bagus introduces the guest of honour not as a ‘raja’ (It’s a controversial self-appointment) but as “Dr. Gusti Karna”.
Dr. Karna gives an impassioned speech mostly about the need for the Balinese to respect each other and the need for us all to respect Balinese dancers, which we do.
He makes some erroneous claims about the lack of young talent in the Balinese art world today (I suspect he’s a bit out of touch with the art world) and about Peliatan being more vibrant, culturally, than Kuta (a spurious claim considering how remarkably Hindu Balinese Kuta is, underneath, in all respects) and about “foreigners” bringing performing artist to hotels in trucks (which is the way gamelan groups have always travelled).
The royals are all beaming in the front row — bathing in the reflected glory of the born-again ‘Raja Majapahit’. In the back stalls, we all remember Gung Kak Mandera and his legacy.

Bungklang Bungkling: Panes (Panas) oleh Wayan Juniartha

2012-01-02T16:06:00.001+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Gengsi oleh Wayan juniartha

2011-12-20T13:31:00.001+08:00

Travel Diaries: INDIA - BHUTAN

2011-12-15T10:24:00.002+08:00

Published in Now! Jakarta, January 2011

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Early morning, Kovalam Beach, Kerala: Fishing boats return.

Last month I travelled to Kovalam, in deep South India, in search of the perfect garden design moment.

I had lunch at the wildly popular new ‘Bait’ seafood restaurant, which over looks a fisherman’s bay teeming with despondent if perfectly-formed fishermen. The back waters there looked so dreamy that I commandeered a buggy from the delightful Taj Vivanta, the former Taj Green Cove, who operate the ‘Bait’ restaurant and made a short video (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuOcP3rXC0I) which has now gone viral on You Tube.

Views of the dreamy backwater lagoon from “Bait” restaurant at Taj Vivanta, Kovalam, Kerala (garden design by Bali-based PT. Wijaya).

From Kovalam I travelled north to Keppel Beach — near Fort Bekal, in far North Kerala on the Karnataka (Mysore) — border where a team of garden magicians (lead by Made Sucipta and Wayan Legawa from Timpag, Tabanan, Bali) have created a sensational parkland and water palace at the Taj Bekal. The collection of Hindu-Balinese-Modern garden art, by Made Cangker of Keramas, Bali, is particularly note-worthy.

The gardens of the Taj Bekal (Planetarium Bar by Noleen of Grounds Kent Architects, Perth and Bali).

The backwaters of the Taj Bekal, North Kerala, soon to be the site of the All-Punjabi swan-boat gymkhana.

It is not easy to create great garden art in India: the British colonials having left a legacy of municipal potscapes; and no-one seems to have worked out how to keep water in the ponds since the Moguls left.

The savoring of garden design success is often fleeting: resort managers invariably come in and start pretty-littering with incongruous garden furniture and festively funny lighting.

Star gardener Rajan poses with his 2012 calendar month at Taj Bekal, North Kerala.

• • •

My last work-stop was Delhi in the far north — deliciously dry and cool (18 degrees) after steamy Kerala — where revisionistas are poised to move a marble pavilion into a major view corridor on my marquee project there.

The price for peace maybe eternal vigilance ………… but one is forced to conclude that there is a lack of respect for negative space across the sub-continent.

• • •

From Delhi I flew to Bhutan, for a second dose of the elixir of life they serve there; and also to buy Bhutanese brooches for Balinese brides (jewelry mule being my latest encore career).

I also wanted to make a short documentary on the Thimpu Centenary Farmer’s Market which I had only glimpsed during my last visit to Bhutan, in October 2011.

Offering ‘top knots’ on an altar in a farm-house chapel near Paro, Bhutan.

Visiting local markets is a great way to meet local characters who seem to converge in the meat section. There, much ribald humour can be heard over the body parts of dead animals. This has been the case in Balikpapan (Kalimantan), Kendari (Southeast Sulawesi, but with fish) and Tanjung Pinang, on Bintan Island off Singapore. Stories on all these markets have featured in this diary.

In Bhutan I stayed again at the enchanting Uma Paro.
This trip, a group of well-heeled communist Chinese had just flown in from Kathmandu in a private jet.

They strode into the dining room like the SS into that opening scene in the café in “Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.”

“Today they want breakfast,” I warned the trembling Bhutanese staff, “Tomorrow they’ll take the lot.”

In fact the Chinese were very nice and only shouted a lot between courses.

The Bhutanese are refined and demur by comparison.

• • •

LEFT: Bhutanese beauty on the main stairs of the Thimpu Centenary Farmers market.
RIGHT: The author in Bhutanese costume outside his favourite farmhouse, near Paro, Bhutan.

The next morning on the way to Thimpu we stopped at a farm to watch my guide Tsheway engage a young heifer stud bull in ‘shadow boxing (an old trick to amuse the tourist performed with curled D tongue, posturing vocal dynamics and we happened upon an exquisite series of temple rooms inside the farmhouse. The lady farmer-priest told us that the deity there was pre-Buddhist (Bonism) era and was very powerful. So many of the power objects (water buffalo horns) above doors, and the rituals, she and Tsheway described were like those found amongst Indonesia’s Batak and Toraja people today.

I also discovered stashes of very graphic woven woolen blankets from Eastern Bhutan which took my fancy.

The exquisitely-designed Thimpu market straddles the Thimpu River which runs along the west side of the nation’s capitol. The two storied main section sits on the eastern bank while the handicrafts and Bangladeshi apparel sections are reached by an ancient roofed, pedestrian bridge, which has views to snow capped peaks in the distance.

On the handsome granite steps of the bridge’s eastern entrance the prettiest girls in Bhutan buy beef and mustard seed leaf momos (Tibetan dumplings) from mausoleum vendors with a basic chili sauce. One can sit here and watch the entire youth population of the magic kingdom go by.

• • •

LEFT: Head brooch-seller at the Thimpu markets, Bhutan.
RIGHT: Colourful character sells momos on the steps of the Thimpu market bridge.

Inside the market I roamed about searching for antique Bhutanese brooches and textiles for the interior for an architecture of ASEAN project I am involved in on Bintan Island, near Singapore. Many Bhutanese textiles seem the source for many of the textile styles of Southeast Asia.

I had a field day amongst all the temple paraphernalia and ethnic artifacts for sale: the stall keepers the very picture of poise and politeness.

Back in the main market — a masterpiece of traditional-modern architecture, bathed in natural light — I discovered row after neat row of glistering mountain vegetables and lovely local ladies, who all spoke good English, cheekily. They were all dressed in colorful versions of Bhutanese dress.

After the markets I had lunch with H.E. Benjie Dorji the former Minister for the Environment and his glamorous cousin Dashi Kundum Dorji, the Thimpu Valley’s answer to Helena Bonham-Carter. Both had been involved in Mala Singh’s recent book on the King of Bhutan’s photographs. Both were extremely urbane, amusing and sophisticated, like many of my Delhi friends, but fresher. They introduced me to the architect of the brand new 900 student Royal College of Thimpu who took me on a tour after lunch.

Bhutanese schools and universities are all brilliantly designed: complexes of traditional buildings arranged in large parklands. This new college sits in a pine forest just above Thimpu and has extraordinary views from every level.

The students were all in traditional dress and had ultra-modern hairstyles: the Justin Bieber-Pscycho-Korean crooner look for men; the girls had more Hollywood glamour coifs.

Royal Thimpu College students sporting popular “Korean-crooner” hairdo.

One holds great faith in a country with such well-designed and funded education institutions and such saucy society ladies.

Upacara Piodalan di Rumah Putranya Cokorda Pemecutan XI, 10 Desember 2011

2011-12-12T12:12:00.009+08:00

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V I D E O

Bungklang Bungkling: Tapel oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-12-09T10:37:00.004+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Bisama oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-12-09T10:28:00.001+08:00

Stranger in Paradise: OCCUPY MILO’S ANCESTOR SHRINE!

2011-12-09T09:58:00.007+08:00

Abe (Alberto Putra Migliavacca), Milo’s nephew, backstage at his tooth-filing.

I have known Milo my entire adult life.

We both came to Bali as drop-outs — he from the world of ‘haute-schmuttah’ in Milan; me from architecture school in Sydney — and we have both stayed on, for almost 40 years, as ‘New-Balinese’ converts.

He rules the West Coast rag-trade spiritualists and I am the East Coast’s answer to Billy Graham, with a dash of Eddie Izzard. We each have our own favourite priests and ecclesiastical foibles (weaknesses for pretty faces and strong thighs among them).

Milo has ended up with a circle of born-again Hindu angels, a mixed-bag of gorgeous nieces and nephews (courtesy of his brother Ezio, a Legian lothario) and a band of merry men (his Seminyak banjar and attendant priests).

I go to palace cremations and make videos.

Now read on…

Milo in the rainbow warrior boat during Dr. Mario Veglia’s ashes dispersement in Sanur Bay, on 27th November, 2011.

4th December 2011: An Italo-Balinese dynasty is born — Major Hindu Ceremony at Seminyak Home of Bali fashion Giant

Today all the players in Milo’s life in Bali to date are gathered to celebrate the consecration of the kemulan shrine in his new family house temple. The shrine will become the earthly abode of his father’s recently Hindu-ized soul.

Milo has for decades been a devout Hindu — often traveling to India with his beloved guru, Pedanda Gunung and a contingent from Seminyak, his adopted hometown.

By consecrating a ‘family’ house temple — which involves the Hindufication of his late fathers ashes (Balinese religion is nothing if not infinitely flexible) — Milo’s entire family will be officially entered into the the Hindu-Balinese faith, full-time.

I arrive to find a garden full of glitterati and cogniscenti and fashionista — veritably le tout Seminyak.

It is a solemn occasion and the celebrity high priest Pedanda Gede Made Gunung is wearing a special Siwa-ite moon crescent tiara and pearls.

Milo for his part has turned a gold- trimmed South Indian ‘sari’ into a sporty twin set. I am in vintage Milo, wearing my order of the Shocking Pink Heliconia. The house is draped with orchids (Milo’s passion) and eye-candy, in the form of Abby, Putri and Luna, Milo’s nephew and nieces, who are having their teeth filed tomorrow, once the glitter-dust has settled.

At the end of the rituals, Bali TV interviews Milo and the high priest as today is something of a novelty in Bali — the internment of a spirit of (‘Bhatara Kawit Italia’ as the high priest calls Milo’s father) into a family house temple.

I am so proud of Milo for taking such a big step — Balinizing his entire family, and his ancestors, for that matter, back to the days of Lucretia Borgia (an ancestor, on his Mama’s side). It is admirable also that Milo has kept together such a disparate bunch of expats and helped lead them towards a lighter reality.

Bravo Milo!

26th November 2011: Poet-Filmmaker-Painter John Darling dies in Perth after a long illness

‘Ketut’ John Darling was Bali’s most devoted poet-filmmaker. He produced a dozen gems in a career tragically cut short by illness. His ‘Lempad of Bali’, made with the late Lorne Blair in 1980, opened the world’s eyes to the wonders of the Balinese culture. ‘Ketut’ John covered the mammoth cremation of the last great Raja of Denpasar (Cokorda ‘Gambrong’ Pemecutan X), the aftermath of the first Bali Bomb, and the great Inter-Hash piss-up held in Nusa Dua in 1997, amongst other less sensational Bali subjects.

I posted the following obituary on Facebook today.

• • •

20th December 2011: Bali is my Homo

Last month bulldozers moved in on Bali’s only gay beach bar as young homosexualists were seen nailing themselves to the future Alila hotel’s timber screen façade samples in protest. The trendoid ‘New Asian’ architect of the future Alila Pooftah has already decreed the once hallowed pansy park a “no flower” zone. A few miles away Bali’s most celebrated Arja dance drag performer, Ni Liku, was swiveling her hips on the lap of warrior princes at a police brigadier’s wedding.

The Balinese, and the Indonesians for that matter, adore girly-boys, but the territorial prerogatives of developers take precedence over heritage homosexualist sites, it seems.

The thick pandanus-fringed shores of the beach between the new ‘W’ hotel and the Bali Oberoi — once the sacred noontime turf of nimble-footed sexual predators — is now almost devoid of pandanus bushes.

The paradox is: New Asian, Muscle-Mary resort architecture — that strain of the applied arts that has lots of brown things in straight lines, equally spaced — is now the favoured style of straight fashion-victims worldwide.

Perth-born, porn-film-star Widjie Weinberg — who now operates a time share business out of Seminyak — was last year roped in to star in “Cowboys in the Pandanus”, a homage to the heydays of the gay beach.

Amazingly a Singapore production company then made an ugly copy-cat production starring Janet De Neefe and Wham-Bham Tengkiu Nyoman entitled “Cowboys in Paradise”, which caused quite a stir.

• • •

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Images from the PENILEMAN for Ida Ayu Kompiang Oka Sutarti and the
tooth-filing of her grandchildren, Puri Bongkasa, 24th, 25th November 2011
Photos by Made Wijaya and Tim Street-Porter

VIDEO: Ni Liku (I Made Samartha), famous Balinese Arja drag dancer (Arja Akah Canging), at police Brigadeer's wedding, Kepaon, 30-11-2011.

2011-12-08T16:12:00.001+08:00

Gedebong Goyang Comedy Group in Sanur Village Festival

2011-12-08T14:47:00.002+08:00

RUMAH IBADAH DIBAKAR, Sukabumi

2011-12-08T10:07:00.004+08:00

UPACARA PERNIKAHAN KEPAON, Brigadeer A. A. Ngurah Made Sutanaya dengan Ketut Marsiniasih, Jero Lanang Tanjung Kepaon, 30 Nopember 2011

2011-12-05T11:45:00.002+08:00

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VIDEO

TAJ BEKAL GARDENS OLEH PT. WIJAYA

2011-12-02T15:10:00.000+08:00

Upacara Nganyut Dr Mario Vega di pantai Batujimbar, Sanur

2011-12-02T15:04:00.000+08:00

Wajah-wajah dan gaya berpakaian dalam upacara di Puri Bongkasa, 24-26 Nopember 2011

2011-12-02T15:02:00.002+08:00

BALIGIA Ida Ayu Kompyang Sutarti Oka, 24-26 Nopember 2011

2011-12-02T14:56:00.002+08:00

FACES, FASHION, ARCHITECTURE, INTERIOR— BHUTAN, NOVEMBER 2011

2011-12-02T14:54:00.000+08:00

Stranger in Paradise: Denpasar’s Radical Prince

2011-11-21T10:42:00.002+08:00

Portrait of the Prince of Kesiman by Wedha

Things are heating up on Facebook’s Bali Cultural Group Discussion page: the Balinese are tired of being told that they are doing nothing to protect the island’s delicate ecosystem.

Young Ngurah Oka Putra says that us ‘olds’ — that would be me, and the three career bisexuals from greater Javanese universities who also contribute — should pull in our heads and let the young intellectuals have their say.

Meanwhile the destruction of the urban environment by municipal planter boxes and cheesy Malaysian modern potscapes continues apace, as does the ‘restoration’ of ancient Majapahit temples — many restored to within an inch of their lives with thick black Star Trek-style andesite ‘face lifts’.

Tourists, meanwhile, have deserted the temples and are flocking instead to shows like Dev Dan in Nusa Dua — the polished dance spectacular — and to the laser shows at drinking holes along the coast.

Good luck to them.

20^th October 2011: A visit to meet the Prince of Kesiman

Denpasar has three palaces — Pemecutan, Satria and Kesiman.

Puri Agung Kesiman is in East Denpasar, in a district famous for its nice people and handsome red brick architecture.

In history, the palace is famous for the magical powers of the 19^th century Kesiman prince, Cokorda Sakti Kesiman, who would often commune, divinely, with the God of Pura Luhur, Uluwatu.

Over the last 30 years this column has often featured stories of the Kesiman warriors at the fabled Pengrebongan trance dance festival, of the palace’s exquisite royal chapel, and of the palaces connection to the 19^th Century Kuta-based Danish trader, Mads Lange.

Puri Agung Kesiman ceremonial gates

• • •

The Kesiman palace sits on a ‘plateau’ inside an impressive thick, brick-walled compound on a busy corner of the Denpasar–Gianyar road.

Sadly, little of the original classical palace survives — only the thick compound wall, ceremonial gates and a moated ‘royal chapel’. In the 1960s the original palace was torn down and replaced with a fashionable ‘office type’ (rumah kantor) home.

• • •

The main gate of the Pura Pengerebongan, Kesiman

This morning I enter the complex via a towering split gate.

I find the Cokorda (prince) at his desk in an open, ‘lean-to’ garage just inside the entrance to the first court, he is surrounded by his paintings and books and cigarette smoke.

He proudly shows me the palace magazine “PURI AGUNG KESIMAN — Meaning, Value, and Self Pride Restoration” that he and a group of local chaps have put together, and explains how the palace has just restored two of the palace gates.

I am impressed — the gates have been sensitively restored, which is rare, and the palace is looking better than ever, give or take a few suburban bungalows.

I have known the prince since the early 1970s when we were the ‘Bright Young Things’ on trail bikes; of East Denpasar we used to meet at dusk at Meme Disco’s turtle satay stand near the main town square.

Unlike the other (9) royal princes of Bali who tend to be refined and ‘regal’, the Cokorda Kesiman is a bit of a wag. Once a motor-cross champion, and a member of parliament, he is today what you would call a ‘political agitator’.

His conversation is spiced with diatribes against corruption and greed.

His face is highly animated and he works his bulging eyes like a circus clown.

“Lovable rogue” is an expression which comes to mind when being entertained by him.

• • •

After coffee he drags us off to see his ‘studio’ which is 200 hundred meters west of the palace, on the same road. The Cokorda’s Penggak Men Mersi (“half past crazy” collective) studio is a hodge-podge affair in a style part disco-palace part officer’s mess from the film “Bridge over the River Kwai”. It is the sponsor and patron of many local dance and gamelan groups.

Displayed inside, on the main gallery walls, are a dozen, large satirical protest paintings by the prince; they depict various scenarios involving corrupt courtrooms, the wholesaling of Bali and the oppression of the people.

Cokorda Kesiman’s ‘Penggak Men Mersi’ (half past crazy collective) Gallery and his paintings.

An old yellow Mercedes (his father’s first car) is parked in one corner and has been painted with ‘Planet of the Apes’ type monkeys.

It is all very creative and artistic and revolutionary and one hopes that the prince can one day stir up a reformist movement or two, before it’s too late.

Together we bemoan the recent destruction on a nearby corner of Denpasar’s most famous kulkul tower — the fabulously Rococco-Balinese Abian Kapas Kaja kulkul (see photos this page and video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hffe0o2Ngx4

22^nd October 2011: To Puri Banyuning Palace in Bongkasa for the royal cremation of my old friend Ibu Ida Ayu Kompiang Sutarti Oka, widow of the ‘Raja’ Bongkasa, a former Minister for Sport in Indonesia

I arrive at 9 a.m. and find a hive of activity: the local high priestess is consecrating the funeral bier and black bull sarcophagus parked in the street outside the palace. Serfs are busying themselves putting finishing touches to the ramps being built over the palace walls for the bearing of the coffin and processions later.

Inside, the deceased’s thee daughters and chief daughter-in-land Lucy are sitting in the golden ceremonial pavilion, demurely, in matching purple sarong, at the foot of the deceased’s coffin.

• • •

During the morning, family and friends and dignitaries file in; the more ‘senior take their place in the large, princes’ pavilion cum verandah that forms an eastern side to the large court. Gambang (wooden xylophone) music plays gently in the background.

It is a garden party atmosphere — unlike the pompous, bun-fight feeling that sometimes prevails at other Balinese royal houses — and the girls are looking GORGEOUS.

At noon we are all — all 500 of us — invited to the back of the palace for a sumptuous sit-down lunch before the mad dash to the cremation ground.

=============================================================

Faces & Fashions
at the Royal cremation of Ida Ayu Kompyang Sutarti Oka,
Puri Banyuning Bongkasa, 22nd October 2011

At one, an honor guard of Baris Tekok Jago warrior dancers forms at the feet of the first ramp (tragtag) and the coffin is born down and out, preceded by a line of princesses bearing spirit effigies and offerings.

The procession to the cremation is a magnificent affair; the bleganjur marching gamelan band from Br. Kutuh Sayan (see video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyuepI1fY-8) has never been more theatrical, nor more outrageous. The stately tower, bull and gilt palanquins are all glistering in the mid-day sun; the lush green villagescape is a perfect backdrop.

At the entrance to the cremation ground the Kapok trees unleash a shower of seed pod packing which ‘snows’ down on the procession.

It is a fitting send-off for a great lady.

28^th October 2011: More Bali-bashing in the Australian press

The WHY BOTHER article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald has put the boot into Bali again, via the pen of journalist Carolyn Webb.

The article includes paragraphs such as the below:

“In short, Ubud would be a great holiday destination, if they removed the frankly terrible street touts, and the tacky souvenir shops. I am not exaggerating to say that vendors of transport and souvenirs harass tourists from morning to night. Single women, especially, cannot walk more than 10 metres without being shouted at, approached, pleaded with, harangued and harassed with the words, “miiissss, miiisss, transport, taxi, where you going….miiiissss?” I thought my name had been changed to Miiisss”.

• • •

The next day, I am asked, indirectly, by the Age of Melbourne to defend Bali against such claims, but I can’t.

"The piece is perfectly well-reasoned and written,” I write. The girl has a point; no “counter-attack” needed. Just, perhaps, a letter saying how Bali's tourism zones have become more ‘commercial’ due to the blight of mass tourism. Point out also that, miraculously, the real culture still survives and that, behind every “transport, Miss”, is a real person. If one chooses a 'hardened' tourist destination — such as Venice, Paris, Rome — for a holiday one has to be prepared to work harder to keep one's personal space personal.

But, truly, why bother? Do us all a favor and go to Noosa.”

• • •

The Sydney Morning Herald is the same rag that distinguished itself the morning after the recent 6.8 level earthquake. If one googled ‘Bali Earthquake’ that morning from overseas, as I did from Bhutan, one got, first up, the Herald’s headline “Pot Boy survives horror quake in Denpasar jail.”

Travel Diaries: KENDARI

2011-11-18T10:26:00.005+08:00

Published in Now! Jakarta, December 2011

==============================================================

The sign that helps sailors who may be lost.

I have always been intrigued by the lost kingdoms of Indonesia — of ancient kingdoms such as Kutai, Pajajaran, Daha and Sriwijaya.

Last month I visited Kendari, the capital of Southeast Sulawesi, and discovered that the region’s Tolaki people — from the Konawe valley, 60 km south-west of the capital — were descended from the Padangguni kingdom that had flourished as early as the 2^nd century A.D. It could even have preceded Kutai, Taruma Negara in West Java and Sanjaya in the Dieng Plateau, and be Indonesia’s oldest. In the first millennium, influence of this ancient kingdom spread to the islands of Muna and Buton Islands. In the 14^th – 15^th century the kingdom adopted the Siwa-Budha faith. Eventually, in the 16^th century Padangguni, became Islamic, under Raja Lakidende, whose magnificent grave I visited in Unaaha, the Tolaki people’s capital.

LEFT: The ‘Unity’ monument that towers over downtown Kendari.
RIGHT: Swan paddle-boats frame the Ferry Disaster Monument in Kendari Bay.

A depiction of humane whale-culling found at the Kendari Museum.

The Tolaki remain today as a fair-skinned, gentle and gracious people — quite unlike their dark, less-refined cousins on the islands.

As a people, they seem to have lost touch with their history: no-one I asked in my two days there knew anything about their glorious past; most thought that they were “descended from the Japanese.

Tragically, the present government is building Kendari in a mindless modern style — replete with the requisite Social-Realist and Atomic Age monuments — with no cultural reference to the region’s Padangguni era. Only in the ‘Kota Lama’ (old town) have rows of early 19^th century Chinese-timber shops survived the relentless march of tasteless municipal modernism.

LEFT: Tolaki beauties in village home.
RIGHT: Animal prints are all the rage amongst the local Chinese supermodels.

Kendari does have a fine airport and a few good hotels. I stayed at the pleasant Swiss Bel-Hotel, which is a good base for trips to the islands in the Banda sea — Buton, Muna, Wanahelu — and for excursions into the hinterand, where the villages and the scenery, including some dramatic water falls, are a delight.

• • •

A colourful Bugis fishing vessel at the Pasar Kota fish market.

The highlight of my trip was my expedition, early the first morning, to the harbor-side fish market, the Pasar Kota (Pelelangan). Daily, a fleet of picturesque Bugis fishing vessels disgorge their catches onto the jetty, where they are weighed by a gaggle of loonies and then conveyed to the shore market, which is a melee of consumers (see my video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoA2BRdrRaM

The scene at the weighing-in station on the fish market’s wharf.

After the market the truly chic go to Ibu Monica’s Pangsit Mie café, ‘ Aroma Sedap’ on Jalan Soekarno, in China town, where perfect roast-chicken noodles can be enjoyed in a gay party atmosphere.

Ibu Monica’s Pangsit Mie café

Another highlight of my trip was the valley of the ‘verge virgins’ — a 5 km strip on the Kendari–Makassar Highway, about 15 km outside Unaaha, where pretty Tolaki maidens sell corn on the cob from well-designed lesehan food stalls.

It is Gods’ gift to truck-drivers.

• • •

Rows of corn vendor stalls line the highway outside Unaaha.

8 November 2011: A trip into the interior

I take a local taxi 80 kilometres out of town to Unaaha (Rp. 500,000 for four hours, includes tip) via the valley of the verge virgins, in search of any evidence of the past, great Padangguni Kingdom. The road is well paved and the villages that line it — neat rows of Eastern Indonesian style box-huts with pretty gardens — are well maintained.

The first sign of ‘civilization’ are the roadside stalls selling smoked fish. The remarkable produce — eels, snails, swamp mollusks, river and sea fish — is exquisitely displayed and the vendors as polite as any in Central Java. The stalls themselves are elegant thatched huts, with roofs fashioned out of sago leaf. In fact sago is a staple for the Tolaki ; Papuans many farmer’s hut and houses are built solely out of sago palm timber.

LEFT: Smoked fish hanging in Tolaki stalls along the Kendari–Makassar highway.
RIGHT: Star-sex-kitten corn vendor, Inul.

The corn on the cob vendors’ stalls have sago palm roofs too, which look wonderful all in a row in the broad shade of the Temesu and Mahagony trees that line the road.

At each stop, however, my quest for information on the history of this remarkable fertile plateau loaded with exquisite people is met with blank stares.

• • •

In Unaaha, I find Raja Lakidende’s grave quite near the town’s centre : it is a magnificent, 5-tiered ziggurat funeral mound affair within a largish walled park. Just across the road, next to an obscenely ugly concrete balai adat community hall, is the grave of his Queen, which sits under a giant Ficus elastica tree.

Raja Lakidede's grave in Unaaha

Each year the governor of Southeast Sulawesi sacrifices a white water buffalo at the grave. The royal tomb keeper tells me that the descendants of the last Raja hold regular rituals here too.

What a shame the ancient local culture can’t be included more into the fabric — physical and otherwise — of this fast-expanding town.

• • •

9 November 2011

I make two cultural probes inside Kendari town on my second afternoon.

I visit the Museum, an ugly two storey office building designed to rival the Soviet Era’s worst and the marketing and tourism complex, which is a big theme park entered through a gate/portal resembling the Portuguese/Dutch fort on Buton Island. The park has a number of poorly design and badly maintained rumah adat (traditional houses) of various suku (tribes) of the region. The Buton traditional house was the only one worth visiting: the two storied (Balinese wantilan style) structure was well built and had some beautiful carved detailing, including a Chinese naga on the ridge of the kitchen’s roof.

Typical country village house near Unaaha

LEFT: Model of a Buton house at the Kendari Museum.
RIGHT: A Tolaki ‘traditional’ house in downtown Kendari.

It is only back in my hotel room at night that I discover, via Google, the rich history of the Tolaki people on a website of the same name, hosted by local historian Sabry Matasala.

• • •

In two days I could not find one good example of a traditional rumah adat though I have sent a scout to take a photograph of one which I believe is at P2 I.D. in Kendari.

• • •

Pulau Buton Island, which I will visit on my next trip to this region (stay tuned) still has a kraton (palace) and strong links to its rich past apparently.

I long to go there now and help unravel the mystery of this ancient culture. (It’s easy on Express Air, via Makassar. Ed).

Bungklang Bungkling: Mudah oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-11-18T10:12:00.002+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Raja oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-11-09T12:07:00.000+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Wayang oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-11-09T12:03:00.001+08:00

Travel Diaries: BHUTAN

2011-10-28T14:53:00.002+08:00

Published in Now! Jakarta, November 2011

==============================================================

The official wedding photograph of the King and Queen of Bhutan.

Bhutan

Bhutan is heaven on earth — a non-smoking section of the planet with a medieval God-King system and restricted tourism.

The mountain kingdom’s only airline, Druk Air, is run by goddesses in pink ikat sarongs; in every major town men do archery in Argyll socks; and the national spot is flirting.

I was on cloud nine for the five days I was there.

• • •

Getting to Heaven on Earth is only easy if one goes through Hell on Earth, the new Bangkok airport.

The clever Thais decided to ignore the South Asian trend for spacious, light-filled airports and built one inspired by ‘Blade-runner’.

It’s as if they took South Asia’s gift to modern urbanism — the dark, dust-coated, no-go zones under elevated concrete highways — and used it as a theme for the airport’s design.

One wanders around the airport — lost like a rat in a maze — until one sees, in the far distance, the side of a multi-storey carpark painted purple.

Left: A gracious Druk Air flight attendant at 30,000 feet.
Right: Welcoming committee from the fabulous Uma Paro hotel.

For my transit there I stayed at the swank new Novotel Airport hotel (available by the hour via the gate 4 counter but not on-line) before catching a 0415 flight to Paro, the only airport in Bhutan.

Airbone, the small Airbus wove through the misty Himalayan valley skies and set us down gently at 6.30 a.m., just as the first rays of dawn were illuminating Dzong Paro, the fortress-like citadel that guards the town.

The airport building is Bhutanese style with elegantly decorated timber framed windows and a handsome tiered roof. The airport road is lined with cone-shaped conifers, reminiscent of the alleyways at Fontainebleau Palace, near Paris. Outside the airport, the main trans-Bhutan Highway runs along one side of a wide river.

A series of enlightened Bhutanese monarchs have managed to keep out the urban sprawl which has ruined Darjeeling and Sikkim, on the Indian side, and on the other side, the Chinese progressives who they hate since they annexed Tibet, Bhutan’s motherland.

We are now up to monarch number five from the one dynasty formed since the country was ‘united’ in the early 1900s. He is known as K5 and due to great fortune, not planning, is to take his queen on the last day of my stay. Bhutan is a devoutly Buddhist country with underpinnings of Bonism, the ancient animistic culture.

• • •

Dzong Paro, on the northern slopes of Paro Valley.

Left: Stupa in a ‘town square’ at the eastern approach to Paro town.
Right: Local lasses stroll past the Dzong Paro fortress park wall.

Left: Interior of Uma Paro
Right: With my butler Pema on our way to the Royal Wedding breakfast at Uma Paro library.

After breakfast I roll down the hill to Paro, the capital of the tiny (pop. 700,000) country’s western-most province.

The township is ‘announced’ by a ‘square’ of painted brick stupa — squat, handsome, pagoda-like structures — adjacent to an archery field straight out of Robin Hood.

I spend the afternoon visiting temples and farm houses in the Paro Valley.

By late afternoon I am head over heels in love…….with everything and everyone Bhutanese. I feel like a big pink lotus finally emerging form the mud into the sunlight.

It was the same feeling I had when I first arrived in Bali in 1973 but with the menacing under-tones of the Soeharto regime replaced by beaming biksu monks and contented cattle.

View of Paro Valley from the Uma Paro dining hall, Bhutan.

Left: Monks and a local Thimpu Abbot perform rites in a farm house prayer room outside Thimpu.
Right: Well-preserved republicans at the monastically-exquisite Amankora.

Left: Shopping arcade architecture, downtown Paro.
Right: Vendor in the handicraft market, Thimpu, Bhutan.

My driver, Ghopal, a Bhutanese of Nepali descent, channels John Galliano in a Paro fabric shop.

Dour chanting fills the air.

My guides drop to their knees to perform suppliances while I case the farm house for further treasures.

In one bedroom wing I find a huddle of monks playing “Hulk Hogan” play-station on a wide screen television.

In a communal kitchen daughters-in-law are preparing a feast.

Later, after butter tea and rice snacks, we are let loose back into the rat race.

It is an experience I will never forget.

Day 5: The Royal Wedding
Most of a day four is spent at the tailor getting fitted for my Gzo costume/dressing gown (see Youtube: http://youtu.be/Uedrh3ITkUM) and today I wear my light grey chequered outfit and long black socks.

Thus attired I hit the hotel library at 7 a.m. to watch the royal wedding before my flight to Bangkok leaves at 1 p.m.

A crowd of employees has gathered. On Bhutan TV, we see processions of princes, monks and the glamorous future queen arriving at the magnificent Dzong Punakha two hours East of Thimpu.

In the broadcast we see that the vast central court of the Dzong fortress — itself the size of Buckingham Palace — is completely ever shadowed by a five storey high Buddhist Thangka, a religious painting in front of which the preliminary rituals will take place.

Later in the morning the newly-wed King and Queen move to the royal chapel for a formal ‘crowning’ ceremony and then out into the park to meet the people.

The popular King and his ravishing new Queen are feted with dances from all over the country including one Gzo-clad break-dancer who wins the newlyweds hearts.

Stranger in Paradise: Expats and the Arts

2011-10-28T14:51:00.001+08:00

Dance Nyoman Sura of Kesiman at Sir Warwick Purser’s 70th birthday in Ubud, 28 September 2011

Expats and the Arts

Bali’s fame as the ‘Island of Artists’ was in no small part due to its promotion, during the 1930s, by a small band of European and Mexican artists — Covarrubias, Spies, Niewenkampt, and Hoefker. In their work, they all portrayed Bali as an idyll for artists.

Today, despite inroads by sexpats, villa people and real estate developers into the island scene, it is still international artists, writers, dancers and photographers who make the biggest contribution, of all the foreign sectors’, to the continuation of the world’s most gorgeous culture.

Every year more and more top-rank Indonesian artists and writers make Bali their home too, which enriches the island’s reputation as a haven for creative people.

Last month saw the launch of many books by prominent expatriates and Indonesians.

Leading the pack was Jamie James’ sensational micro-buster ‘Rimbaud’ in Java’ published by Editions Didier Millet of Mertasari, Singapore and Paris (see excerpt from Zadie Smith in box).

Out of the same Mertasari, Sanur compound came long-time resident Leonard Lueras and Yayasan Purnati’s ‘The Art of Ogoh-Ogoh’, a sensational photo album of images of the Island’s demon effigies.

In the same month photographer Andrew de Jong of Canggu and Woolongong released a bouquet of beefcake beauties called ‘Men in Indonesia’, which is flying off the book shelves in gay saunas and select bookstores around the world.

The Island’s most prolific publisher, Sarita Newson, of Kiwi-Kintamani extraction, also published a book on ‘Ogoh-Ogoh’; and Ubud-based anthropologist Jean Couteau launched a book on the art of a Sanur-based Dutch painter. Celebrity furniture designer Carlo Pessina also had a retrospective of his distinctive designs at the GANESHA gallery at the four Seasons in Jimbaran.

"Far too much creative endeavour" as Noel Coward famously remarked in his 1930s ditty on the island's culture.

Meanwhile the Balinese have been busy 'raising the bar' with ever more extraordinary temple dance performances, festivals and cremations. Creativity in fashion is peaking too, with the Balinese women taking floral applique and saucy mules to new heights of extravagance in their temple dress (see photos following pages).

I had to travel as far afield as Gunaksa, outside Klungkung, to find a good, old-fashioned, all native Barong Dance.

4th October 2011: Back to the magic hill outside Gunaksa village, Klungkung to film a repeat of last month’s amazing Barong Masolah dance for the Cinémathèque Francaise de la Danse.

As no-one seems to want wants my romantic- poetic gardens anymore — the clever New Asian architects have succeeded in brain-washing developers and the public alike in the belief that minimalistic, formulaic gardens are next to godliness — I have had to retrain 30 or so of the tropical world’s best gardeners, as mosaic artists, decorative paint specialists and cinematographers.

This would be impossible anywhere but Bali, where artisans are ultimately flexible.

I have almost completely deserted garden design for ethnography and show business: my encore careers as film-maker, exotic dancer, and soft-porn star (less of that later. Ed.) has taken over.

As barefoot/Facebook film-maker I have now made over 70 short films and documentaries, most about Balinese rituals, but also films on famous Indonesian fish markets, Independence Day on Bintan, and Cougars from Coolongatta.

Truly inquisitive minds can go to Wijaya Pilem2 on You Tube to see the results.
Others can wait for Alam TV or Fox News to discover me.

I have a loyal Facebook following for my films which includes specialists from the Paris Cinemateque (the world’s oldest repository of films on ethnographic dance), the former head of the Indian National Trust and Logie award-winner Lissa Coote.

Tonight I take my field unit and a borrowed camera to Pura Bukit Puluh to reshoot, properly, the amazing Barong Dance I saw at the neighboring Pura Mastapa last month.

• • •

On arrival the grand temple is bursting at the seams; pilgrims are flooding in from as far away as Negara, Lombok and Singaraja.

In a back room, off the main wantilan hallI, I find the dance troupe of trance-masters getting dressed, but the charming corps de ballet dancers are not there.

"The main Telek dancer is menstruating" my friend, I Barong (his real name) screams across the dressing room, pulling a face.

Last month I filmed Wayan’s father, the troupe's lead Barong Dancer, ‘flip out’ when, at the end of the performance, hen emerged from the Barong — wild-eyed and fancy-free -- to eat a live black chicklet in one gulp and flail around (in a nice not a nasty way). He was then served arak in a cup by his doting, dancing priestly son, also somewhat away with the pixies.

Earlier tonight I had greeted Wayan Barong as he arrived at the temple , looking like the young Tony Curtis in Prince Valiant — white teeth and long perfectly-formed fingers and gold rings flashing — and now I document him getting dressed into his Barong costume with its his hairy goat-skin leg-shields with their attendant bells and striped trousers.

• • •

(Later the same night. Ed) 9.30 p.m. : The Barong Dance is in full swing on the terrace below the long stairs and the towering gate that leads to the temple

After an hour-long overture the gamelan starts to play the trance-dance, melodies as Rangda, the Evil White Witch, taunts Barong, the village mascot, by slapping his mask with her spooky white head scarf (see “Barong Masolah” http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=usMZ7DfdJeI on Wijaya Pilem2 on You Tube).

My driver of 35 years, Grandfather Made Kader, is shooting with the big camera. He reminds me of Leni Reifenstal shooting ‘Triumph of the Will’ in Berlin, in 1936. All the dancers and the Barong seem to be playing to the camera.

Suddenly the star dancer Barong emerges from the hairy beast’s bodice and starts a frantic kris-dance (ngurek) of such intense beauty that one can hear the collective clank of a thousand jaws dropping.

• • •

The speech that I should have given on 1st October at Warwick Purser 70th Birthday Party:
"We are gathered here tonight, again, in white, looking our best for ‘Tuan Lurik’, the indefatigable hostess with the mostess of Jogjakarta, Ubud, Jakarta, Mt. Masedon, Portsea, Port Douglas, Batujimbar, Menteng, Tembi, Chiang Mai and Toorak fame.

Our Warwick has many talents — as a father; a homeware, home, and hotel- designer; philanthropist, lech and decorator — but he is most famous for being famous.

How does this happen? Well, one needs a good start, like the above talents, and one has to be charming and witty and have a well-born Melbourne wife.

Left: Sir Warwick Purser, and Susanna Perini from Biasa Artspace.
Right: Writer/Photographer Leonard Leuras at his Sanur book Launch

Left: Paul Ropp, fashion Designer
Right: Anthropologist and Comedienne Rucina Ballinger and author Jamie James

Melinda and Arthur Karvan at the Ogoh-ogoh book launch at Wantilan Lama Batu Jimbar.

Left: Tati Waworuntu
Right: Bulantrisna Djelantik and Rio Helmi

rom his earliest days with the much loved Lissa Purser — as managers of the legendary Hotel Tandjung Sari on Sanur Beach in Bali (1969-71)-- and through his years in Jalan Penarukan Jakarta — when he was building up Southeast Asia’s biggest travel agency PACTO — and a decade later as Minister of Tourism in Vanuatu...... and now as the white Raja of Tembi, South of Jogjakarta — the high and mighty and talented of Jakarta and the world have beaten a track to his glamorous and culturally-refined homes with the best-looking staff money can buy.

Long before it become fashionable, Warwick was professionally non-judgemental, blasé even, about life’s trials and tribulations.

While perhaps not a great conversationalist, nor even a good listener (he, he), Warwick sure knows how to put together people who are, and he has always done this with great generosity of spirit and verve.

He is also a master of ‘keeping things to himself, and he’s had a lot to keep! Ha!

His even temperament is his defining trait: Warwick is basically unflappable (though he folds neatly)

In almost 40 years of friendship I can’t remember him ever losing his block. He has , on occasion, lost the shirt off his back, his marbles, his sense of reality …. but he rarely succumbs to the vilest of vices ….. lip-curling petulance.

He was my first boss, and has mentored many careers including those of Agung Prana, Mendez, John Panca, and that of his daughter, Polly’, who is now marketing whizz at John Hardy Jewellery. Unknown numbers of other artists, dancers, musicians, masseurs and satpam have benefitted from his largesse.

We shine in his company.

In the words of the fabulous singing Farmer’s: “God Save Our Gracious Warwick”.

Bungklang Bungkling: Yeh oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-10-18T15:18:00.000+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Media oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-10-18T14:05:00.000+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Mabayuh oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-09-30T12:10:00.000+08:00

Pakaian Adat Bali Utara

2011-09-21T10:09:00.008+08:00

TRAVEL DIARIES: Malaysia-Tanjung Pinang-Bali

2011-09-21T09:53:00.000+08:00

Published in Now! Jakarta, October 2011

==============================================================

Malaysia’s larget Buddha statue, outside the Chin Swee Caves Temple.

In 1969, the late Malaysian businessman Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong had a dream that he would build 10,000 hotel rooms and six casinos in the cool hills outside Kuala Lumpur.

With the help of the nation’s first Prime Minister, Tenku Abdul Razak, his dream was realized. To thank the gods he built a magnificent temple on the approach road to the casino, dedicated to the Chinese Thunder God Lei Kung.

Even if you don’t like losing money hand over foot in a circus setting, the Genting Highlands is well worth the detour from Kuala Lumpur. There are 100 restaurants (Gamblers have huge appetites) and Asia’s best less-sugar moon cakes for sale, and lots of invigorating mountain air.

I had come from a gastronomic tour of Surabaya — where warung-themed cafes are all the rage in the new mega-malls — so was well-primed for Asian-dining experiences in a Las Vegas setting.

LEFT: Pagoda at the Chin Swee Caves Temple in the verdant valley east of Genting Highland Resort.
RIGHT: The altar to the God of Thunder, Lei Kung, which sits in a large prayer hall adjacent the pagoda.

From Kuala Lumpur I went to Bintan Island, the ancient capital of Malay culture, to cover Independence Day for Alam TV.

Like nearby Belitung and Bangka, Tanjung Pinang is an old Hokkien and Hakkah Chinese trade entrepot. Here the Chinese have been completely assimilated into the Malay/Indonesian culture (readers should remember that the cradle of Malay language and culture is actually in South Sumatra and Riau, and not in Malaysia, although the Sultan of Johore did control Pulau Penyengat, near Tanjung Pinang, for 200 years before Raffles moved in).

Sadly, the Sultan of Johore’s palaces of the 18th and 19th century are all gone: just a few tantalizing pavilion bases and mausoleums, and the old mosque remain.

View of the Genting Highlands Resort from the approach road.

The real charm of the port, and the nearby islands, are its people — a mix of Melayu, Sumatran, Javanese and Malay Straites Chinese. The food available is equally ‘cosmopolitan’.

One reaches Pulau Penyengat Island from a jetty in the main port — “Alim’s” seafood restaurant and the Pasar Baru ‘floating’ morning market nearby are not to be missed — where one can charter a cigar boat for Rp.150.000 for the return trip, and the boat will wait for an hour or two at Penyengat jetty.

Once on Penyengat island, tuk-tuk auto-rickshaws are waiting at the wharf; for Rp. 50,000 one gets a quick spin around the island. In an hour one can experience the unique ambience of this historical Malay settlement.

The Chinese quarter is still intact as are the perma-smiles on the faces of the friendly islanders.
After the gamblers’ faces of the Genting Highlands it’s a welcome contrast!

See my Independence Day video on Tanjung Pinang video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nEaJCQRrOw

LEFT: The 10th century Masjid Raya Sultan Riau on Pulau Penyengat, Bintan.
RIGHT: Gateway to a Royal Tomb (for members of the Johor Royal family), Pulau Penyengat.

18th August 2011: To an Indonesian culture free-zone
Form Tanjung Pinang I drive 90 minutes through some charming rural country side to the Bintan Resort Development zone, which is a gated community.

Inside there is no sign of life as we know it but the road verges are well maintained and everything drains perfectly.

All prices at all retail outlets are in Singapore dollars.

A generic tourism mall rises from the sand on Lagoi Beach.

Giant animal cut-outs are applied to high voltage electricity towers.

The beaches: stunning with large boulders are scattered everywhere, with the occasional Jurrasic-era cycad growing in between.

I am designing an ASEAN architecture-inspired hotel on Lagoi Beach and have collected a gang of local merry men to assist me.

Rinto is my Padangese driver with six inch fingernails: he rules the night market at Puja Selera, a little patch of Indonesia with a local life style (messy, vibrant, warm and friendly). Kerabat is my one-eyed bulldozer operator from Central Java: he is the project hottie. I have twenty bushmen with machetes, from Papua: they can clear scrub like nobody’s business.

At my home base, the Nirwana Garden Resort, a team of ‘nancy-boys’ in the coffee shop keep me amused with island gossip.

LEFT: Revellers in regional costumes for the Independence Day celebrations at the Gedong Daerah, Tanjung Pinang.
RIGHT: A member of the elite Bintan honour guard before the raising of the flag ceremony at the Gedong Daerah, Tanjung Pinang.

One feels that this Singaporean government-backed tourism solution — a solution with its own harbor and jetty to Singapore service, and its own immigration (and soon to have its own international airport) — will be a huge success, particularly for Singaporean tourists scared of real Indonesian.

One has to experience the Emerald Class on the Bintan Resort Ferry service to believe it! It’s seamless, from kerb to kerb, with Tom and Jerry cartoons all the way.

The island offers banana boat rides, mangrove tours, jungle trekking and, for the truly intrepid, ‘Heritage Tours’ are available to deepest, darkest Indonesia, outside the gates.

Helmets, tazers and mosquito sprays are ‘issued’ at the gates but many teenage girls return with carved souvenirs, jungle fever, and hickies on their necks.

An attentive Batavia Air steward.

Batavia and Sriwijaya fly direct to Tanjung Pinang which is just outside Tanjung Pinang town.

The Bintan Resort experience is easier to access via the ferry service from Tanah Merah Singapore.

Surabaya’s most famous food stall ‘Si Mbok’ at Central Mall.

30th August 2011, Idul Fitri: To Batujimbar, Sanur, for Halal Bihalal at Tatie Waworuntu’s dream home

Bali is 50% Muslim, but only part of the time.

Just before Lebaran the island’s mostly Javanese Muslims return home for two weeks ‘home leave’.

The island becomes eerily quiet, but just for three days. On the fourth day the island fills up; domestic tourists arrive en mass, having fled their servant-depleted homes because they can’t find the air conditioning switches, or can’t get foot massages on demand.

Kika, Annisha and Nanda Waworuntu at their grandmother Tatie Waworuntu’s’s Halal Bihalal.

Every year, on Lebaran, Bali’s most glamorous Javanese lady, Tatie Waworuntu traditionally holds a Halal Bihalal open house for her large family, and for her Bali friends.

As doyenne of Bali’s now burgeoning community of Jakartans, Tatie is the hostess with the mostess. No-other matriarch can compete with the Indonesian treats that grace her table, and her exquisite garden.

This year there is a bouquet of daughters, daughter-in-laws and granddaughters flittering around Tatie Waworuntu’s garden like exotic butterflies.
Alhamdulillah!!

Stranger in Paradise: Women in Bali

2011-09-15T15:22:00.003+08:00

Sang Hyang Aji (Saraswati), the Goddess of the Arts, is the island’s top deity.

Behind every successful Balinese prince — or priest or real estate baron —is a strong woman.

For centuries, Bali has been symbolized by a big-featured, broad-shouldered, topless woman, wearing a crown of fragrant sandat flowers.

While not a matriarchy — the Balinese men being too chauvinistic to allow that — Bali is a fair place for the fair sex. Women make the offerings, the children and the rice. In general, they survive their spouses, by a decade or so, which is why most courtyard homes have lots of wise and benign grannies, and why, at any moment, there are more priestesses than priests on the island.

So popular are Balinese women that many foreigners fall in love in with them in Karaoke lounges and massage parlours; this tradition started in 1560, when two sailors from the Van Houten expedition jumped ship in Klungkung.

Throughout Bali’s modern history, the few western artists who were not infatuated with the lean torsos of male rice farmers have had wife-muses; one thinks here of Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprés’s wife and the Juno-seque Ni Pollok, and Antonio Blanco’s wife Ni Rojik, another statuesque beauty.

In the expatriate world the women are the prime force.

Last month saw the 20th anniversary of Seminyak’s most celebrated restaurant and dance hall, Warisan, for example, which was founded by three talented ladies (see photo below).

(Left to right): Founders Mary Rossi, Susanna Perini, and Simona Casellini at the WARISAN 20th Birthday party.

The other great institution dominated by women in Bali is the Corner Warung (see Stranger in Paradise, “Bali’s Corner Warung”, July 2011). Even Mama’sans of Mixed Rice become legends, in Bali: one thinks here of the curly-mopped sisters who run Babi Guling Gianyar, Mak Beng of ‘Grand Bali Beng’ in Sanur, Ibu Wardani of Denpasar and Ibu Oka of Ubud.

The Waworuntu clan of Batujimbar — a secret ‘coven’ of society beauties and their female offspring — control the Café Batujimbar, Tandjung Sari, and Jenggala Ceramics empires.

And near all of Jakarta’s top-notch ball-breakers now have villas in Bali.

On the art scene, Janet De Neefe runs the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival; Deborah Gabinetti the annual film festival; and Kiwi-born Sarita Newson runs the island’s best publishing house. A host of other expat ladies keep themselves busy saving the island from stray dogs, waste and second-hand smoke.

All in all it’s a Women’s World in Bali, with the men playing an important, but essentially decorative, role.

30th August 2011, Idul Fitri: To Batujimbar, Sanur, for Halal Bihalal at Tatie Waworuntu’s dream home.

Bali is 50% Muslim, but only part of the time.

Just before Lebaran — the Muslim holiday which celebrates the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan — the island’s mostly Javanese Muslims return home for two weeks ‘home leave’.

The island becomes eerily quiet, but just for three days. On the fourth day the island fills up; Javanese-Chinese tourists arrive en mass, having fled their servant-depleted homes because they can’t find the air conditioning switches, or can’t get foot massages on demand.

• • •

Every year, on Lebaran, Bali’s most glamorous Javanese lady, Tatie Waworuntu traditionally holds a Halal Bihalal open house for her large family, and for her Bali friends.

As doyenne of Bali’s now burgeoning community of Jakartans, Tatie is the hostess with the mostess. No-other matriarch can compete with the Indonesian treats that grace her table, and her exquisite garden.

This year there is a bouquet of daughters, daughter-in-laws and granddaughters flittering around Tatie Waworuntu’s garden like exotic butterflies.

1st September 2011: To Puri Bongkasa Palace, West of Sayan, to ‘melayat’ after the death of another great lady (see box).

There are only a handful of Balinese palaces left which still have spacious well-maintained courtyards and purely traditional pavilions. ‘The Bongkasas’ have lived in Sanur for most of the past 50 years in a large compound next to the Segara Village Beach Hotel; despite this they have managed to keep their home palace in top working order.

‘Melayat’ is the Indonesian custom of visiting the house of the deceased in the hours or days after the death. The visitor usually gives an envelope of cash or gifts. In Bali it is mandatory to give a length of white kasa cloth, and some rice and sugar, as a sign of solidarity and respect.

Today I sit with the deceased’s sister-in-law, as lines of nobles from Bali’s first families — from Puri Klungkung, Puri Sukawati and Puri Sayan — file past the ceremonial pavilion where the body of the late matriarch lies in state, and take up honoured positions in the high pavilions, where high tea is served (See my video “Melayat” on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5v57Ualr0g and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5VHksdbmJY

This will go on for the next 6 weeks until the cremation on the 22nd October.

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VALE: Ida Ayu Kompiang Sutarti Oka
(Wife of the late Raja Bongkasa Drs I Gusti Gede Agung Oka)

Ibu Kompiang died peacefully in her Sanur home on 3rd September 2011, aged 79. She had been playing cards with friends in the morning and was gone (lebar) by lunchtime. If any lady deserved a peaceful transition, after a full life of service to her family and community, and to the Indonesian Republic, it was Ibu Kompiang. Her popular husband, ‘Bapak Oka’, had been head of Depdikbud (Dept. of Education and Culture) in Bali for almost a decade and went on to be head the National Sports Council in Jakarta, always with Ibu Kompiang as head of the Dharma Wanita Ladies Auxiliary.

Born into Denpasar’s brahmana house, Geria Tapakgangsul, the daughter of Pedanda Gede Karang — and sister of the well-known boulevardiers Gus Pang, Gus Pong and Gus Pung — she was part of a generation of smart, uber-elegant ladies which included Ibu Ida Ayu Diwangkara, owner of the Diwangkara Hotel next to the Grand Bali Beach.

I first knew Ibu Kompiang when she was secretary to (the then) Hotel Bali Beach G.M., Siegfried Biel, the German visionary who first gave Ubud-based artist Hans Hoefer a leg up in 1970, as publisher of the first APA GUIDE, “The Guide to Bali” — on his way to becoming South-east Asia’s most successful travel book publisher.

Ibu Kompiang was my first ‘mentor’ in Sanur society (when I was a tennis coach at the Bali Beach). I learned at this time that she had had to deal with all the 50s and 60s legends — including President Soekarno, artist Le Mayeur, antiquaire Jimmy Pandy, Cultural Tourism pioneer Wija Waworuntu, Diparda head Pak Riyasa and artists Donald Friend and Ari Smit — and would have had a pivotal role in stabilizing society, with her young husband, post the tumultuous and bloody era of the Communist Insurrection.

She ran an artshop in the Bali Beach arcade and hosted gatherings of the legendary Chicago Group of upper echelon local government officials — the ‘club’ of royals who loved Charlie Chaplin movies, Frank Sinatra music and Balinese Culture of which she was the last survivor. She raised five perfectly-mannered children who all married children of other first families (Puri Agung Sukawati, Puri Agung Karangasem and Puri Carangsari, amongst them) and was a loving grandmother to 15 grandchildren.

In later years she was a permanent court fixture at all royal weddings and cremations and guided her home palace, Puri Bongkasa, into its position as a popular, classic venue for lavish Balinese feasts and dance performances.

She was a peoples’ princess in the true sense of the expression, and a great lady.

She was as egalitarian as she was royal — her smile and trademark giggle could warm a courtyard of stuffy courtiers from 50 paces.

She is survived by her seven children, her brother Pedanda Gede Ngurah Karang known as Gus Pung and three other siblings.

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9th September 2011: Seminyak’s oldest eatery celebrates 20 years in the business

In 1991 a few Italian friends and a Balinese starlet started Seminyak’s first fine-dining restaurant with a view over the rice fields.

Husbands came and went but these ladies stuck together, despite age and cultural differences. Simona was a third generation hotelier, and Mary Rossi an aristocrat from an ancient Sicilian family of meat-packers. Dayu Sri is an Ubud Brahman with an hour-glass figure. She is widely regarded as the Paulette Godard of Batu Belig.

The rice fields have long gone but the restaurant remains, as a base for expat sun-lovers and theme party enthusiasts.

Despite stiff opposition from other big eateries — local restaurants with similar clientele such as Sarung and Metis among them — it is really only Made’s Warung Seminyak which rivals Warisan as a banjar for boisterous buléand their local friends.

Bravo Dayu Sri, Marie Rossi, Jean-Paolo, and Simona and may Warisan help the high-kickers and high-rollers for another 20 years

29th August 2011: To Pura Dalem Kawi, Sayan, near Ubud, for a mass tooth-filing ceremony

The puberty ritual of mepandes — when the top six teeth are filed down — is often held in conjunction with the exquisitely refined series of rites held for the purification of departed souls.
The offerings for both sets of rituals are similar; both involve the gathering of all family members.

Multiply that by 100 and you have an idea of the scale of the mass events popular in the highland villages of Bali these days.

Today I arrive in an outer temple court as the famous albino water buffalo from Taro village is getting a load of offerings; the ceremony is taking place next to the grandstand of the soul effigies, all glittering with gold leaf crowns and rice pastry towers

Inside the temple, the celebrants are dressed as angels — the boys with rouged lips and artificially arched eyebrows; the girls in classic Balinese ‘bon-bon’ confectionary.

In the morning light, with the angklung gamelan playing and the priest’s bell ringing, it feels like the prettiest place on the planet.

The local prince — lead-drummer in the gamelan — and is scheduled to ride the magnificent ‘float’ to the cremation ground at noon.

He tells me that the gamelan is a gift of ‘Tuan’ Colin McPhee, author of ‘Music in Bali’, in 1936.

At noon, pre tooth-filing, the angklung starts a haunting processional tune; and the 100 celebrants and 150-odd spirit effigies plus one albino water buffalo then process three times around the tight outer court.

It is the most beautiful ceremony I have ever seen.

See my video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_BEvh1893E and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEYetJConCE.

Upacara Penyiraman Layon IDA AYU KOMPIANG SUTARTI OKA , Puri Bongkasa, 12 September 2011

2011-09-14T10:06:00.014+08:00

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VIDEO

Upacara Pelebon di Jero Lanang Pemeregan, Denpasar 5 September 2011

2011-09-14T09:31:00.018+08:00

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VIDEO

Bungklang Bungkling: SEGER oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-09-08T14:52:00.002+08:00

Bungklang Bungkling: Moksah oleh Wayan Juniartha

2011-08-26T09:34:00.001+08:00