A Taste of Past Travel Blogs from Jessica’s Archives

BALI, Indonesia – Saturday, October 24, 2009

Wayan picked us up at ten to visit the Royal Palace at Menguwi.  It is a beautiful compound, long abandoned.  Now it boasts decaying structures and intricately carved statues of gods – photos to follow.  I sprinkled Eberhard with holy water and then myself.  We continued to Bedugul, a lovely mountain lake town, where we had Indonesian tea and visited the Floating Temple called Candi Kuning. Then on to a truly remarkable Botanical Gardens – a spot largely devoid of tourists.  We learned that the wild orchids that beget the lovely flowers we buy are really gnarled and hideous tubers, but without them all flowering species would cease to exist.

In this mountain area, the Muslim minority of Bali seems to reside.  We passed many road side markets selling fresh strawberries (Pick Your Own) and adorable little bunnies in small cages which, we later learned, were sold for eating not petting.  This day is a high holiday for Hindus.  The house staff came to work in traditional dress with rice and flower decorations on their faces and necks, like colorful tattoos.  We gave all but our driver the day off and let Wayan go as early as we could.  We had dinner at The Meridien hotel, on the terrace overlooking the sea and Tanah Lot, a gothic-looking temple on the beach carved from lava stone.  We visited Tanah Lot earlier but found it overrun by holiday visitors and tourists, souvenir hawkers and scammers, such as the man in a cave selling tickets to see the “Holy Snake,” which looked an awful lot like the garden variety we see back home.  The view from the Meredien of Tanah Lot and the sun setting behind its primitive Gothic outline was much more interesting.

There are fantastic kites here, resembling Rama, Sita, The Monkey King and other creatures of Hindu myth plus eagles, bats and other animals.

It is a beautiful Day in Bali.

SINGAPORE – Wednesday, October 26, 2009

OK…I admit it.  I’ve been a very bad blogger.  Despite the much appreciated requests from you for more, I haven’t written since Saturday but it’s been busy over here!  Also, I’ve got great photos but no one seems to be able to open them.  I beg your forgiveness- I’m a beginner at this blogging thing but I’m working at it.

Sunday was a very exciting day in Bali.  We drove to a mountain town with white-water rafting and elephants.  We rode an elephant named Donnie – coincidentally the name of Olivia’s boyfriend and Lucas’ kitten – who then rode us right into the pond he uses as a bathtub.  We came home late to a dinner of beef, pork and chicken satay (no rabbit!). My friend Jeff wrote back that if massages cost $13, rabbits must be really cheap, so I should have bought them all and released them into the wild.  Wish I had thought of that! Just as dinner was served the area experienced a complete power outage. It is an odd feeling to be in an isolated villa in a remote part of Bali without power but Sri lit candles everywhere so we celebrated Halloween a few days early.  Must be getting old…there was a time when I think we would have viewed the circumstances as “romantic.” The next morning, we left very early for the airport.  On the way, we saw the rice paddies full of workers, hoeing and weeding before the island really heated up.

Then we flew to Singapore.

The last time I was in Singapore was thirty years ago.  I came here on a business trip for a couple of days and remembered the Raffles Hotel as surrounded by gardens with a clear-to-the-water view.  Now it is the only Colonial vestige in a sea of skyscrapers, but it is still beautiful and we ate Australian rock lobsters in the courtyard on our first night in town.

There are certain well publicized facts about Singapore, especially about its stringent – for lack of a better word – Parliament.  They have many rules and fines for just about everything (kind of like our condo building at The Ritz).  They stamp your passport to let you know that the penalty for illegal drugs in Singapore is death. It is a progressive and free society, contrary to some impressions and reports by the US media, although they do restrict certain liberties that Americans believe to be their God-given rights.  For example, at least I believed there was no freedom of speech here (frankly, we have a bit too much of it in the US and it is a freedom abused, i.e. Fox news) but this is not correct.  The right to free speech is encouraged with the exception of public speech about race or religion.  Because the Singaporean population is a mélange of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Eurasian practicing four religions, Taoism (Buddhism), Islam, Christianity and Hindu (there is also a prominent synagogue for what I presume is a Jewish minority), the government restricts open criticism of race and religion to protect its people from discrimination and harm.  Sounds like a good idea to me.  If we did this in the US maybe all those heinous hate crimes could be nipped in the bud. Now, of course, I have no idea if this is the true motivation of the Singaporean government.  But what is important to me is that the people who live here believe it is true.  The Parliament is comprised, in representative percentages, of all four ethnic groups.  Although of the 87 members only two are from the “opposition” party.  I guess I’m writing all this to illustrate something I have learned in my travels from Chile to China – just because a government doesn’t function like our own doesn’t make it wrong, especially for its own citizens.  Now genocide is morally wrong and there can be no excuse for that.  But the people here is Singapore are happy and free, prosperous and peacefully coexisting (and assimilating – many new cultural groups of Chinese/Malay, for example, are growing here – without discouragement or bias – creating, in effect, hybrid races) despite what Americans might feel are “oppressive” rules.  I cannot for the life of me understand how our country can support owning guns as a “right” when school children are regularly killed by citizens bearing guns but, hey, that’s me.  Anyway, Singapore is spotlessly clean, completely safe, well-organized, beautiful to look at and the fully-employed people seem happy to me.

For those of you waiting for the travelogue-blog, here you go:

Chinatown is by far the most interesting neighborhood.  It retains a lot of the original colonial buildings, although completely renovated and clean.  77% of the Singaporean population is Chinese, so Chinatown is more of an attraction and historical site  – where the original immigrants settled – than functioning ethnic neighborhood.  But the markets and small streets are fun to see.  Little India is similar as a cultural district.  The smell of jasmine flowers and curry powder is intoxicating.  There is Arab Street and a Malaysian district but I haven’t been to those yet.

200 years ago only 500 people lived here.  These were Malaysian.  The British explorer, Sir Stamford Raffles, cut a deal for a British trading post (great excuse for colonialism) within a month of his arrival in 1819.  He was a naturalist and planted an experimental garden, mostly of spices, a lucrative commodity in England.  Of course, he was successful but the site of this original spice garden is now one of the most gorgeous botanical gardens in the world.  The orchids are amazing.

Also world famous is the Singapore Zoo set in a natural rain forest.  I enjoyed it, especially the exotic animals indigenous to the region, but I guess I’m spoiled by both the Bronx and San Diego zoos back home.  However, tonight, we are taking a guided tour through the Night Zoo – a zoo that exists only for nocturnal animals.  I’m really looking forward to that!

Singapore is surrounded by the South China Sea and the beaches are built around a lagoon.  Sentosa beach is lovely and the water is warm.  In the distance, everywhere, are container cranes and lifts reminding us that Singapore is a crossroads, especially for shipping to and from Asia.

Near the beach is Underwater World, where I particularly enjoyed the Pudong , supposedly nature’s inspiration for the fictional mermaid, and the leopard ray.

I had five suits made by one of those famous Singaporean tailors (Eberhard said:  Couldn’t you have done with just three?) for the price of one in Italy.  And it took me days to figure out what was striking me as most peculiar about Singapore all along – no ads!  Yes, the buildings are branded with a tasteful sign or name.  But no, billboards, neon signs, graffiti, posters – how pleasant!  Actually, there is one wall near Chinatown where posting is allowed – but why, I ask, would any one bother?

SEDONA, Arizona – June 11, 2010

So many of you have commented on how much you enjoyed my bloglet from Singapore and Bali last year  that I’ve decided to continue it if and as inspired.  I write to you today from Sedona, Arizona.  The Red Rocks are famous so we decided to pass through on our way from Santa Fe to La Jolla, where we will be celebrating Lucas’s graduation from UCSD.

Maybe all of you know this already but I finally found the answer to a riddle that has teased me for decades:  Why do we have four time zones (Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific) but only three times?  It’s because in Sedona and, presumably, the rest of the Mountain Time Zone they don’t change their clocks!  Sometimes (like now) they’re on Pacific Time and sometimes on Central time.  How cool is that?  None of that annoying changing of all those timepieces. I love anything that refuses to conform.

The famous red rocks line the canyon roads along the last 17 miles or so on the approach to Sedona.  They look more like sugar sculptures colored by iodine than cooled molten ore.  The formations appear to have been dripped from the sky, leaving peaks and vertical towers resembling New York’s skyline as if viewed through a kaleidoscope.

We’re staying at a place called L’Auberge de Sedona, in a cabin set amid lush and varied vegetation.  We dined last night al fresco by a creek.  I wish I could eat every meal for the rest of my life in the open air.

The sun rises here at 4:30 AM (due to the not changing the time thing), which gives the locals a head start.  Many of them use the time for journaling, or yoga, and I’m thinking maybe herein lies the answer to finding that extra time we all wish we had!

Of course we brought Daisy, our Jack Russell terrier, along for the ride.  She sat under the table last night mesmerized by the life on the creek.  The hotel had a dog bed and bowl waiting, along with a picnic basket filled with biscuits and a roll of those little blue plastic bags.  It seems like yesterday that instead of Daisy, it was Lucas and Olivia the hotels were fussing over with their names in sponge letters lined up on the bathtub ledge or an invitation to the hotel’s Kid’s Club.  We took them everywhere, too…and now they embark on a journey of their own.  Sigh.