You can’t avoid it. You feel like money, as if the bills are dropping from beneath your skirt, as if the change is rattling as you walk. It’s true. I felt that way in Niger. I feel like that sometimes as I walk through my own Washington, D.C. I was that way in Jakarta. I still feel as if I am flashing rupiah signs everywhere I go among the Balinese. Although the Balinese are spiritual, kind, maybe the kindest people I’ve known, they still have to think about money.
Up and down Ubud’s streets (you’ve heard of it if you’ve read the over-hyped “Eat, Pray, Love”), you would be confused and overwhelmed by the hundreds of boutiques, restaurants, and art galleries, set aside local shops trying to sell “typical” Balinese crafts, like beaded purses, beaded belts, beaded sandals, Batik dresses and lots of art. It is a high-class sensory explosion. And they all want your business.
“Taxi, miss. Transport.” “I have a special price for you miss.” “Massage?” Yes, I fell for that one. I picked the most unassuming little boutique I could find in this strip of spas, restaurants, temples -- and indulged in a massage. A young woman – maybe of 16 or 17 years old – spent an hour massaging every part of my body. It was brilliant, wonderful. At three o’ clock, I was Tadik’s first customer of the day. She got in at 9 a.m., and will leave at 9 p.m., as she does every day. Her manager, short, stout, maybe about 20 years of age, with long, colorful toe nails, tried to sell me a pedicure. Of course, I acceded and had the first foot treatment of my life. I paid them $8 for the services, and left a 60 percent tip. I am still admiring my feet, after the removal of my decade-old calluses.
I didn’t bargain for it. In fact, I did the opposite. And I didn’t follow the Balinese rules, according to one Canadian woman I met yesterday soaking in the pool outside my door. In Bali, you bargain, she said. “You start 50 percent below the asking price and then you argue.” I saw this in action, when Ms. Canada and I went to a traditional Legong dance last night. A young boy was trying to charge us 75,000 rupiah, or $7.50 for the tickets. She thought they should be $5. She fought with him, until it got uncomfortable. Then she paid the asking price. Didn’t go so well, huh, Ms. Canada?
Bargaining with the locals sounds like hell -- arguing over pennies, dollars. If you are in Bali and you are a tourist, you have more than the local people selling you their goods. Most of them have never left their beloved Bali, not even to go to Java, or their capital city, Jakarta. Shame on you, I thought. The Canadian had been globe trotting all over the world, and then she haggled over $2. Is this tourism to the Balinese? People haggling over pennies? I hope not.
But maybe I am wrong and this is the Balinese way. Among the hundreds of temples, as women lighted incense and wafted it over religious offerings filled with flower petals, banana leaves, rice, were they worrying about how much money they could make that day? It seems ironic, doesn’t it? So much spirituality, and fine, old Hindu architecture splattered with mass consumerism. I guess this is the way of the world. Spirituality only gets you so far. You have to live, make money where you can. In Bali, making money means serving people like me.
But maybe I am just feeding into the stereotype, the reality – the Western cash cow. I hate that. But I can’t avoid it. This is the grand conundrum: how to do good by the places we visit – how to give back to the locals, gracefully -- and how to make friends.
Brown (pronounced “Bron”) who drove me here, has now named himself as my “driver,” and my friend. Brown is currently in his home village – not where he lives now, but where he lived as a child. Why? Because Brown got me to Ubud from the South shore and now he wants to drive me back. He wants to serve me in this way. He says it is because we are friends, and he wants to see me safely through Bali. But I know he needs cash. His rent is $70/month in Denpasar. Sometimes, he brings home little more than $100 to $150 during the low season. So my $30 for a full day touring around Bali is like gold for him, and his family. He didn’t charge me $30. I made him an offer. He said because we are friends, he would not charge me. I had to give him my own price. I can only hope I was fair. Mulling the payment through my head, I became the typical tourist, distrustful, and tried to discern whether he was using another technique to rip me off. I can afford the $30, I reconciled. His mobility filled my trip with soul and spirit. Brown now wants to take me to meet his family in his village tomorrow. I feel like I can trust him. I have to go with my feeling, or else I’ll crack.
I have made the authoritative decision to believe that Brown and all of the Balinese are not cheating me. I have to believe this to enjoy where I am, climbing through rice fields, sitting in absolutely austere beauty, with only the sharp scent of the Durian fruit checking me back into reality. But even as I climbed through the rice fields, and crested the hill to my first village, there were shops. Artists’ enclaves were poised among the irrigation ditches, the long, green grass and the luscious surrounding forests. If you think the people in downtown Ubud are crying out for tourists, imagine the people at the tippy top of the hill. This is why I caved, and even within the serenity of my hike, bought two intricately detailed Hindu paintings from an old man sitting there, decorating wooden eggs on the hilltop. He was forever grateful. He charged me $10 each, for something that probably took him days to create with a fine tipped brush. I saw him painting the eggs. It’s not easy work.
In Bali, they say this desperation has flourished because of the world financial crisis. You don’t hear many people talk about Obama here – although he grew up in Indonesia – but you do hear about the crash that has taken away their tourists and left them crawling, crying out for more. This has been the slowest year in a very long time, according to the lovely ladies at the boutique. They struggled to ask me about my family, where I came from, but they easily explained that their struggles were because of the financial crisis.
So, again, I encourage you, if you want a sensory spiritual experience dashed with the comforts of home, if you have money to spend, come to Bali!
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