Whenever I find myself growing desperately bored with life; whenever there is a bone-chilling Siberian wind descending over Seoul in winter; whenever I find myself involuntarily thinking of buying more camera gear; whenever all this conspires to get the upper hand on me, it’s time to hit the road.
Ah, Melville, that giant of American literature.
If Hamlet had told Ophelia: “Get thee to Bali,” and she had split the depressing scene at Elsinore Castle for the island paradise near the Equator in the Indian Ocean, her life would have been far more cheerful than how she ended floating face down in a brook.
Some things you don’t have to tell me twice.
Plague Year Number Three
After a long hiatus from international travel because of the Wuhan virus, I recently split the scene in Seoul with my wife for a week in Bali. When we left this city of 10 million-plus people, it was -13C (8F), and when we hit Bali about seven hours later, it was 27C (82F).
What’s not to like?
Bali has a two-season climate: hot and hotter. As card-carrying septuagenarians, we are still kicking it, and to walk together along Kuta Beach in sandals on the southern coast of Bali in mid-January made me inexpressibly thankful for the privilege of being alive.
Eat, Sleep and Chill Out
This trip marked my fourth time to Bali since 2013, yet the most recent occasion was a decade ago. In the interim much has changed. Some of this can be attributed to the natural march of time. Then there is the ongoing plague and how this has impacted the world, especially international travel and tourism.
To visit Bali means an arrival and departure from the Denpasar International Airport on the southern coast of the island. Most tourists stay in hotels or private villas around Kuta, about 10 minutes from the airport – depending on traffic. There are also choice places in nearby Jimbaran and Seminyak, considered the best neighbourhood in Bali to stay for a vacation.
Since I’m part of an international couple, the approach to leisure travel centers on language. Neither one of us is truly bi-lingual, though my wife comes genuinely close because she was a longtime high school French teacher in Seoul who can hold her own when we are in Paris. She has an interesting grasp of English – though with many “lost in translation” moments, and a pattern of sentences that begin in English, slide quickly to “Konglish” and finish in Korean.
My grasp of foreign languages is absolutely pitiful, and barely covers some basic salutations and menu items in Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Yiddish. That all sounds better than the reality because I have a greater command of vulgar obscenities in these languages – perhaps excelling in Chicano Spanish.
Over our 10-year history, we have collected a few travel experiences on Korean Tours. While I understand more of the language than I can speak, I’m decidedly an outsider and tend to stray from the group with a camera, wandering about like a curious Beagle.
Most of the time we go it alone, and arrange for day trips through the hotel. The idea of Bali this time, any time, all the time …. is to relax.
What distinguishes Bali from other travel destinations, especially in Southeast Asia and parts of the Orient – like Hong Kong and Macau, is the lack of hustlers.
Men who are ready to be a driver for the day are in abundance. Yet a simple: “Thanks, but I’m good,” and end of conversation. None of that: “My friend, I offer you best price. I take you anywhere.”
For the longest time, Nathan Road was the heart-and-soul of Kowloon in Hong Kong. This may have changed by the end of 2019, after Chinese leader Xi Jinping wiped his feet on The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that formally returned the city to the Chinese in 1997 – with the pledge that the city would retain its high degree of autonomy, rights and freedoms for 50-years after the handover.
Jinping crushed the student-led Pro-Democracy Movement in August, 2019 and started jailing people by the dozens without trials.
Yet – up to that point, as I was on Nathan Road for the last of the Pro-Democracy demonstrations, I was prevented from leaving Hong Kong for an extra day because demonstrators shut down the airport with a classic sit-in strike … Pakistani hustlers were stationed all along Nathan Road trying to sell cheap knock-off watches from China. Sometimes the hustle did not end with a simple “no,” and it seemed like one of the desperate men would clutch your ankle for the hard sell.
Bali is a breath of fresh air, and people leave you alone on the streets.
If the tourist experience in Bali involves a stay at an affordable four-star hotel, with breakfast included, there is always a poolside lounge chair calling your name. Cast off your worries and forget about the wage-slave routine. Relax in the sun with palm trees coaxing a temperate breeze from the Indian Ocean that is never far away.
There is a fair chance by mid-morning of being flanked by a tourist from Australia on one side, and a Chinese tourist on the other side. No conversations; at least nothing beyond superficial pleasantries. And no politics.
Everyone wants to sidestep the atrocities in Ukraine, the impending invasion of Taiwan, and America’s descent into madness with mass gun shootings every other day.
I will always be American wherever I may live or travel, but I can’t explain the trainload of Spam-sucking white trail trash that just showed up to serve in the U.S. Congress. How can one explain professional ass-clowns like Matt “I want to date your daughter” Gaetz, Marjorie “Jewish lasers fried my brain” Taylor Greene, and Lauren “motor mouth” Boebarf, who allegedly talks like a gerbil on speed during orgasm.
Didn’t See You in Ubud Yesterday
Ubud is a laidback art colony about 35 kilometers – or 22 miles north of Kuta Beach, and costs around 350,000 rupiahs one-way – or $23 in a Bluebird taxi. Through the hotel around Kuta Beach, it’s easy to arrange for an all-day driver to take you to most of the traditional sites - and linger in Ubud as long as you like. The fee is around 520,000 rupiahs – or about $34 for everyone.
To say “all day” implies at least 10 hours. Some of the stop-off points are free; others charge a modest fee, which by both Oriental and Western standards is not much more than tip money at a neighbourhood restaurant back home.
For people from Japan and Korea, North America and most of Europe – these societies put a high premium on public education, funded by property taxes. It’s easy to take this for granted, yet most people in Southeast Asia – and other parts of the world, are lucky to graduate high school and they remain a distinct minority. Most people have nothing more than a fourth or fifth-grade education and ride the train to nowhere every day for the rest of their lives.
On the first time classic tour of Bali, between Kuta Beach and Ubud, it is standard to see a traditional dance performance enacting some of the origin myths of the culture, handed down through the generations. There are options to visit a Batik workshop – a literal workshop where clothing is hand-painted to reflect Balinese tradition – and not some quaint Kumbaya feel-good meeting of educators or musicians.
There is also the option of visiting a coffee farm to see how the Balinese plant, cultivate and roast the beans – offering, if you like, a pricey coffee based on beans digested by monkeys that have – to put it delicately, passed through their intestines and out the last exit.
All of this is worth mentioning as a reminder that for all the people playing these different roles, this is as good as it gets, and the work week is seven days long, and no holidays. No vacations. No health insurance. And no retirement.
In places like Bangkok and Manila, it’s routine for young women – who often look a decade older than their birth certificates, to sell themselves around Nana Plaza or Makati Street for the price of a trashy McDonald’s Happy Meal.
There is something about the Balinese that elevates most people from being the “Wretched of the Earth” that French West Indian Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) wrote about with such heart-aching eloquence.
Whatever collective force marks the Balinese as inspirationally proud – without arrogance is truly remarkable.
I stayed outside Ubud when I last visited Bali in 2012. At the time, the town had a very special charm that set it apart from that strip along the ocean that stretches westward from Jimbaran
Beach-to-Kuta Beach, with a lively nightlife between both points A dozen years ago, Ubud folded by 9 p.m. and shop owners returned home to be with their families.
This time Ubud had changed so much that everything I had previously told my wife no longer applied. The place seemed completely re-made with a huge nod to tourism. What once served as the traditional market in the center of downtown had been erased. Now there were the sights and sounds of serious construction, with new office buildings and hotels rising up to overshadow the cityscape. Busses filled with Aussie and Chinese tourists navigated through narrow streets as a small army of people on Japanese motorbikes manoeuvred through this scene with nonchalance.
It takes a lot of pluck to get across the streets around the Old French Quarter in Hanoi because of the torrent of people zipping by on motorbikes – a family of three in some cases.
This is not the case in Ubud, or anywhere else in Bali.
Cows meander aimlessly through the streets of Pushkar in India, shitting and pissing all day long.
This is not the case in Ubud, or anywhere else in Bali – which is also a Hindu culture.
Bali By The Numbers
Between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and directly over the Equator, is the nation of Indonesia, considered the largest archipelago in the world to form a single state.
Based on 2021 figures, Indonesia has a population of 273.8 million.
The country consists of five main islands and some 30 smaller archipelagoes, totalling about 18,110 islands and islets of which about 6,000 are inhabited. The five biggest islands are Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, and New Guinea.
Bali doesn’t make the cut as one of the bigger islands in Indonesia, yet it is by far the most well-known because it is so beautiful and enchanting.
Islam is the main religion of Indonesia, and with its nearly 274 million people, this makes it the largest Muslim country in the world.
And then there is Bali, with a population of 4.3 million people that is unique for its adherence to the Hindu religion. Allegedly, 87% of Balinese are Hindus.
Hinduism stands among the largest world religions alongside Buddhism, Christianity,
Islam and Judaism. Combined, there are over one billion followers of Hinduism in the world with more than 97% per cent living in India.
The other countries with large Hindu populations include Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and … Bali, which features numerous temples, and sculptures depicting scenes from the Hindus' famous myths, and deep-rooted Hindu traditions across the majority of the island's native population.
For those American students who first learned about world geography in fourth grade during SY61-62, a common reference was the East Indies and the West Indies. This was how Columbus’ blunders finding his way to India were explained. Of course, Columbus never made it past the modern day Gulf of Mexico, and yet his misnaming of the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere as “Indians” has screwed with us all ever since.
At one time, the East Indies were regarded as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysian Borneo, and New Guinea. The West Indies included Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico; the Lesser Antilles, including the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe.
American writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is noted for the phrase: “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Perhaps Stein had too much wine that day and was riffing off Juliet’s swooning over Romeo with that famous adage: “A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” The story behind this is probably far more interesting.
The point is the currency of Indonesia is the rupiah, and whether the spelling is more commonly rupee in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Mauritius, The Seychelles, and Sri Lanka – it is still coin of the realm in each location – with different valuations. These countries act as if they’ve never heard of the European Union, and the ease of using the euro in all member countries.
The term “dollar” is hardly exclusive to the United States, and is the name of official currency in too many countries to mention – though Australia and Canada are certainly prominent examples.
Under the category of FYI for older Americans who feel they are living the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956): “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked …” El Salvador, Panama and Ecuador use the U.S. dollar as their official currency. These three countries attract more and more American Gray Panthers who feel safer in these locations for retirement than in the U.S. without the worry about currency exchanges.
Yet the rupiah is the official currency of Indonesia, and the exchange rate against the currencies of travellers from the Orient – China, Japan and Korea, and down under in Australia, make for a very inexpensive vacation in Bali, which attracts the bulk of tourists to the country.
Passports, Politics and Visas
If leisure travel involves a passport, the issue of visa requirements cannot be ignored – especially since there is no uniformity. My wife and I have different nationalities, so this frequently adds to the mix because of politics.
As a Korean, my wife can visit China for 30 days at no cost. As an American, it costs $140. The Grand Game is still on, and the Chinese get soaked on tourist visas at the same cost to the U.S.
As a Korean my wife can visit Vietnam for 30 days at no cost. As an American, it costs nearly $87 and involves pre-approval paperwork.
Someone has to pay for the Vietnam War and 50 years on an American is a choice candidate.
It is a fairly standard policy that no international travel can occur on a passport that is set to expire within six months of arrival at the destination point. There are a few exceptions to this policy, yet these countries are an extreme rarity.
A former colleague was prevented at check-in from departing from Seoul for a one-week vacation with his wife because his passport expired four months later. He had to eat the cost of two round-trip plane tickets and hotel costs.
Ten years ago, a traveller to Bali paid about $25 for a 30-day tourist visa upon arrival at the Denpasar International Airport. And then paid about the same fee to depart. When I left Bali in the spring of 2013 to return to Seoul, the airport was a quaint affair. Now known as the Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport, it was rebuilt in the same location shortly after my departure and it is world-class.
It is still possible to pay a tourist visa fee upon arrival in Bali, yet the Indonesian government strongly encourages travellers to satisfy this policy online. A cost of about $34 includes both entry-and-exit fees. Health-related policies for entry to Bali are easily satisfied with an official record of COVID vaccinations at the point of origin airport.
Since we always use Korean Air for international travel, check-in was a matter of ticket, valid passport and an official record of COVID vaccination. Without all three documents, we would have been turned away immediately.
Did Bruce Chatwin and all the other great British travel writers of the 20th century – to include Somerset Maugham, Robert Byron, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Patrick Leigh Fermor – have to endure all these hoops? Whatever they endured, the journey is what matters. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
The F-Stops Here
During my misspent youth, I briefly pondered what seemed like the big questions in life. For instance: Why am I here? What’s the purpose of life? Why did I get stuck with my goofy parents? Why can’t I have the talent of Jeff Beck on guitar? These questions only produced existential angst and made me neurotic.
My Beagle had a cool Zen acceptance about life that I envied. No reason to waste money on a pipe-smoking shrink just to kvetch about the cards a celestial totalitarian had dealt me. The fact that this deity had a thing for a Jewish woman married to a carpenter never made sense to me.
So, when I picked up a camera for the first time at age 22, I didn’t get bogged down by reasons. It was simply liberating, and that feeling has never left me after a half-century.
I never leave home without a camera. For my recent trip to Bali, I relied on a nearly 10-year-old black Fuji X-E2 camera – with either a 27mm pancake lens with an aperture ring, or a 16mm wide-angle for a photojournalism approach. The range-finder body makes for an easy fit in almost any pocket.
On the Fuji X-E cameras (both the E-1 and E-2) I leave the ISO float as high as 3200 and do not shoot anything under 1/500. I keep the aperture at f 11 and exposure compensation usually at -1 and a third. I ride the shutter between 1/500 and 1/2000 depending on the light - and I do prefer bright light, protecting the highlights and letting the shadows plug-up if necessary.
Ritchie Roesch, of Fuji X Weekly, is the guru of Fujifilm simulation recipes, and he does a masterful job of both creating new effects and sharing them with one and all. Check him out.
However, I use only one film simulation recipe (the Q Menu) that is meant to approximate a Joel Meyerowitz look. I use a back button approach to establish focusing, but work the lens for the ultimate composition. For post-production, I use LR because I’m lazy and stick with a Pro Negative High look. Any other modifications in LR are exceedingly rare.
I try to keep things simple. I’ve known since a very young age that multi-tasking is not my forte. Besides, as the one-time Poet Laureate of LA Charles Bukowski told me in correspondence: “Don’t ask me too many questions. Hell, I still have trouble finding my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”
Regarding the X-E2, the old X-Trans Sensor II is so damn good that Fuji is wasting its time trying to re-invent the wheel.
This helps explain why the interruption in supply chains for brand new Fuji models has made the used market price for an X-E2 jump by $150 over the past 18-months.
But disregard this information, and stay away from the X-E2 camera because I want to buy one or two more as backups.
The fact that I shoot exclusively in color makes no sense, since I spent 20-years as a B&W newspaper photographer using Tri-X, developed in D-76. The truth is I’m slightly color-blind – yet not enough to qualify for special parking at Costco.
The motivation for working in color is the result of Batsceba Hardy. She made the suggestion in the fall, 2017 – as I was on my way to India for the first time. As a result, I changed and have not done any B&W in over four years. It just doesn’t appeal to me anymore.
The mark of a good leader is the ability to bring out the best in us, and to make us believe in a vision that makes this world a better place. She is a very fine photographer. Yet her greatest talent is bringing people together and joining in her vision of exciting visual creativity that celebrates the human experience across borders and cultures and race.
Have passport, will travel.
Have camera, will celebrate life.
Kuta
