Banjar Penestanan Kaja, Indonesia Travel Journals & Blogs

Traveler Funemployment - Part I
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- Aug 9, 2017, 1:00pm
- ⛅ 27 °C
- Altitude: 208 m
- Indonesia Bali Banjar Penestanan Kaja -8.503208, 115.2506568°30’12” S 115°15’2” E
Day 22
Penestanan & Ubud
August 9, 2017 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C
Arriving at Santra Putra, I was warmly welcomed back by Karja and Made. I was saddened to learn that their dog Neko has been killed by a motorcycle. In his place was a skittish black dog named Baca; Made was nervous about me making friends with him. Made (of Made's Warung opposite Santra Putra) happily welcomed me back too. Karja sat with me at breakfast several times. It felt like coming home.

Ubud has a way of sucking you in, and before long, you're immersed in it. Since I've already been here three times, I didn't really have a list of things to do and places to see other than Pura Lempuyang in the eastern part of the island. I was happy just to be here and to experience things as they unfolded. I did seek out yoga classes, though (I've been casually doing yoga at my former workplace) and so I scheduled a lot of my activities around the daily 2pm or 4pm yoga class near my accommodation.

A typical day would be: wake up, eat breakfast at Santra Putra (prepared by Ketut), wander somewhere, eat lunch (sometimes at Made's Warung, sometimes not), chill, yoga, relax and watch the sunset from my verandah, dinner at Made's, chill and eat some fruit, sleep. The days melded into one another.

It is easy to romanticize Bali. I try hard not to compare the Bali of today with the Bali I experienced in 1993. But, it is clear that the influx of tourists and development has strained Bali's infrastructure. Traffic is noticeably worse - it takes ages just to exit the airport. My room at Santra Putra looked directly into rooms from two new developments next door. They were so close I can hear the other guests showering. Many of the new villas and guest houses are more upmarket and almost all of them are foreign owned. Migrants flock from other parts of Indonesia to partake in the tourism and construction boom. It goes without saying that these new arrivals are culturally dissimilar to the Balinese.

Mercifully, the trash problem has improved greatly compared to my last visit in 2013. I learned from Karja that many of the villages have taken steps to tackle the problem. At Penestanan, Karja had been elected village head. Under his leadership, the village now disposes trash in a central receptacle for a private contractor to remove. There is no central municipal authority for management of trash in the Ubud area. In Central Ubud, I now see trash bins everywhere, and signs urging people to sort between organic and non-organic trash. Karja says that the villages haven't quite reached the stage where they are willing to sort their recyclables. Hopefully that is the next phase.

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Traveler Funemployment - Part I
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- Aug 10, 2017, 11:00am
- ⛅ 26 °C
- Altitude: 189 m
- Indonesia Bali Banjar Penestanan Kaja -8.505594, 115.2543648°30’20” S 115°15’16” E
Day 23
Blanco Renaissance Museum
August 10, 2017 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C
Often described as the Salvador Dali of Bali, the flamboyant Antonio Blanco lived on a grandiose property next to the Campuhan Bridge. The museum housed his paintings, many of which were of female nudes, his favorite type of muse. Some were also overtly sexual. The museum also had a giant squatting man sculpture at its front entrance which I absolutely loved. There is a collection of exotic birds in the garden.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/blanco-rena…

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Traveler Funemployment - Part I
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- Aug 17, 2017, 1:00pm
- ⛅ 26 °C
- Altitude: 210 m
- Indonesia Bali Banjar Penestanan Kaja -8.506406, 115.2516718°30’23” S 115°15’6” E
Day 30
Independence Day Celebration
August 17, 2017 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C
I remained near Santra Putra on Indonesia's Independence Day, August 17. The highlight of the celebration was the villagers (and a Caucasian tourist volunteer) climbing two greased poles to get goodies at the top. The team that climbed the shorter of the two poles was made up of mostly teenagers and it was fun to watch them work together. The other team was dominated by an experienced pole climber and once he was hoisted up to a certain height, he pretty much did everything himself. It was far less fun to watch him. Of course, nothing beats the time Jeff volunteered to help at a similar celebration during our 2013 trip.

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Traveler Singapore, Bali & Hong Kong
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- Jul 21, 2011, 8:00am
- ☁️ 23 °C
- Altitude: 208 m
- Indonesia Bali Banjar Penestanan Kaja -8.503209, 115.2506568°30’12” S 115°15’2” E
Day 8
Penestanan
July 21, 2011 in Indonesia ⋅ ☁️ 23 °C
Landing in Denpasar in the evening, I immediately ran into a problem... the driver Rae sent to pick me up was not there. This is why I avoid arriving in unfamiliar places at night if I can help it - it is so much easier to solve problems such as these during daylight hours.

Fortunately, there was an internet cafe next to the meet-and-greet area. I paid 8,000 rupiah for 20 minutes of access, emailed Rae, got the address of his guesthouse and went to the car service counter.

I had previously been to Bali in 1993 on an extended island hopping trip. At that time, Bali was already touristy (at least in the beach areas) but still relatively sleepy. Upon leaving the airport en route to Ubud, I immediately saw numerous Korean and Chinese restaurants - many with tour buses parked in front, signboards advertising nightclubs and a large duty free emporium. Yup, mass package tourism had arrived in full force. Although I wasn't surprised, I was still disheartened.

The driver who took me to Ubud was a chatty guy and thank goodness I got him. Not surprisingly, the address provided by Rae was imprecise - just a street name and no house number - and so when we got to the general vicinity of the guesthouse, the driver stopped several times to ask for directions. This guy was persistent and he genuinely wanted to make sure I got to my destination safe and sound, despite my telling him that I was perfectly okay plonking myself at an internet cafe, emailing my location to Rae and waiting there for him to come get me. Anyway, he stuck with me for well over 20 minutes while we located the guesthouse, and he deposited me safe and sound at Santra Putra Guesthouse where a visibly relieved Rae welcomed me. I was touched by this driver's sincerity. We also arranged for him to come to Ubud to bring me back to the airport two days later. For the record, he made the offer - I wasn't comfortable asking him to come all the way from Denpasar to Ubud just for a one-way fare.

As I was hungry, Rae and I immediately went out to dinner. Not many places were open at that time, and so we headed to the upmarket Bridges restaurant next to the Campuhan bridge where I had my second incident of Bali sticker shock (the first was the 250,000 rupiah fixed price taxi service) when the bill came. Bali has gotten expensive! A large part of this was, of course, due to the fall in the Indonesian rupiah relative to the US dollar, but the price inflation was still a surprise.

Waking up early the next morning, we went on a little jaunt around the rice fields of Penestanan village before heading back to Santra Putra for a hearty breakfast. There, I met Karja, the owner, his wife Made, and Ketut who prepares breakfast for guests.Read more
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