Kids in Bali...

Bali vs. Oakland

How is Bali different from Oakland?

Lilah: No Walls. No windows. And no doors.
Otis: Pet monkeys and monkeys in general.
P: Bamboo grows to over 65 feet.
P: A lot more roosters in Bali.
Lilah: There’s wild roosters.
E: Way more Germans.
P: Not much hiphop here.
L: There are Gamelans and Balinese flutes.
Otis: You go to the bathroom in a thing of rocks.
E: Sodas come in bottles.
L: There are Fantas.
E: Women do the heavy lifting here - bricks carried on the head.
L: Way more bamboo.
P: Way more tourists.
O and P: Ice cream is better in Oakland. We miss Sketch!
L: Milkshakes are better in Bali.
L:They speak a different language.
P: There are active volcanos in Bali.
P I’d say there are a lot more bugs in Bali.
L: I get more bug bites than Otie in Bali.
P: It’s way greener here. No freeways.
L: Way more motorbikes here.
L: Warm nights in Bali. Cold in Oakland.
O: Playgrounds in Oakland not in Bali.
P: School is done at noon here in Bali. 6 days a week.
E: Ceremonies. Ceremonies. Ceremonies.
P: Everyone in Bali seems to smile.
L: Kids are treasures here.
O:Leaches in Bali.
O: Kids have motorbikes.
L: I wear tanktops everyday.
O: People eat way more rice in Bali.
L: Ricefields everywhere.
P: Oakland has Mexican food.
L: There are skyscrapers in Oakland.
P: Sun sets at 6 pm EVERY day.
L: There are tree ferns.
E: In Bali, almost everyone is named Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut. so simple.
L: Coconut trees. Papaya trees.

Turning 40 in Bali

I figured my fortieth birthday (today!) seemed like a perfectly good reason to do a post on this blog. We are now fully engaged in this trip. Far from the planning and the stress and anticipation associated with actually making it out the door of our house on time, now we are just on the road. I sent an email out with some details about the adventure involved in getting here. What a trip. I will shorten the whole description to what I think are the two key details. Otis and Lilah are amazing travelers (41 hours put them to the test and they were brilliant), and do not ever try to book a single day's worth of travel on three different airlines. You savvy travel geniuses may think that second detail is obvious. Well, now, I do too.

Bali is so beautiful and crowded with kind people that it evades proper description.


(Yeah, that is a cool picture, by Erin, or course. She's the bomb)
For some evidence on the nice people, here's two pictures of the crazy fruit sculpture this cook at our place made for me when he found out it was my birthday.


Every time I try to write about it in my journal, I go all cliched, resorting to deeply intoned aphorisms like "Expectation shapes experience," before turning back to the misty sunrises or the scent of sandlewood or the ancient wisdom of Gunung Agung. I think I will never produce the great American travel novel. Mine would be way too purple. When Erin and I traveled here eleven years ago, we grew fond of thinking that the Balinese manage to keep the world spinning, and I still think that is true. I've no idea how they do it, but I maintain that they do.

The real story from my perspective are the kids. They have adapted to this new life with incredible speed. My bones (and cartilage and stomach and muscles and brain) are all feeling their forty years out here so far from familiar food and my beloved bed, but the kids are just rolling. From the double marathon of travel to get here, to the crazy sounds and smells and temperatures, to the whole concept of living out of a little bag, Otis and Lilah are just, "Yeah, let's try that, too." I should not be surprised, and, in a way, I'm not. I am just thrilled to watch. They pull my butt out the door and into the world.
For instance, today, we went sailing out a little outrigger canoe, just because they thought it would be cool. We had planned to go early, at 7:00, but when we woke up it was pouring rain. My instinct would be--CANCEL--take a day with the books. They were up at 7:00 and ready to go, and saw any talk about cancellation as high treason. "We'll just go later, when the rain stops." At 8:00, we hit the beach, ready to jump in the boat. Then, the skies absolutely opened up. I have never seen so much rain fall in 5 minutes. We ran no more than 10 feet to find cover and I was as wet as if I'd taken a nice, long shower. That's it, I'm thinking--CANCELED. "No way," said my intrepid sailors. "This will blow over." Sure enough, 9:30, we are out on the outrigger, cutting through the wine dark sea, the sun blazing, the big volcano in view. It was awesome, and they were behind it all.

More and more, it feels like the adventure is theirs to share with Erin and me. They are open wide to it all, and they share without hesitation or regret. I get to hear the frogs differently, feel the rain differently, even the traffic or the floating plastic water bottles seems different because they are here to show me how they see it.
Erin and I are on the road with them, facing forward, drinking it up.

Making Offerings with Lilah

Paul and I loved Bali when we came here 11 years ago. We were blown away by the beauty of everyday things. Offerings seem a perfect symbol of the Balinese aesthetic approach to life. These little arrangements of vibrant flowers, simple food, and sweet incense housed in a palm leaf basket are everywhere. I mean everywhere: the dashboard of a taxi, in front of every stoop, in roadside ditches, perched in trees. Knowing what a fan Lilah is of treasure and flower collecting, I knew she would love this Balinese tradition. Our first day in Ubud, Lilah counted more than 157 offerings.

As the cultural center of Bali, Ubud has access to classes in dance, batik, kite making, wood carving, cooking and offering making. Lilah and I went to the ARMA museum and learned a few basics. Making the palm leave baskets was difficult for my clumsy weak fingers. But Lilah seems to be suited to the task.

We are still jet lagged and fall into our beds at sunset and find ourselves awake at 6 am with the roosters. But we so glad to be here. I am most amazed at how the kids have adapted to life on the road. They eat new food with enthusiasm, cozy up with the sweet locals, and don't seem to mind breaking a sweat.

We are happy a happy clan!

Bali!

We're here. We made it. Bali is beautiful and after forty hours of traveling it is the best place to be (other than home). I took some pictures of our cottage in Ubud.



This is the pool from the second story porch.

This is the water fall in the pool.

This is the smaller cottage and the vegetation between the cottages.

Bali is awesome so lots of people should come here who don't even know about it.

Getting Ready

It is a whirlwind around our house as our departure date approaches at warp speed.

Details. Details. Getting the house ready for our Finnish renters. Painting, fixing random things around the house.

Otis says....."Can't wait!! It is going to be awesome! A year off of school - yeah."

Lilah says..." I'm sad because I'm going to be leaving my friends. But I'm happy because it is going to be awesome."

P could not be happier.

We leave next Friday. I feel like I am floating around in a dream state. Our trip is really happening.

Let's go!

Roots

In the early winter of 1970, my family embarked on a year-long trip around the world. We went in search of adventure, perspective, and perhaps a new place to live.

The war in Vietnam had my parents in a genuine fit of despair about the state of the nation; my father, who is a potter, was thinking he might be able to find a teaching job abroad in a completely different setting, opening a new door for his family of five. My brother was eight when we left California for the South Pacific and my sister was six. I was only three months old, the family wild card. What was it going to be like traveling with an infant? Would I get dangerously sick? Would I be too much of a pain in the butt for a family on the road.


We were not planning a year in Europe; we were going to the southern Pacific and southern and eastern Africa, many places where there was essentially no travel infrastructure. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides did not exist, and I doubt the Blue Guides had a volume on French Polynesia or Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was called in those days) or Kenya. The doctors my parents consulted about the trip did not really think much of the idea of taking an infant to most of the places on our itinerary, but the house was rented, the tickets bought, the trip planned. We could not turn back.


We managed to travel for eleven months in total, before our money ran out and we had to return to California. I did get sick, but not seriously. My mother, on the other hand, contracted viral meningitis in Fiji and nearly died in a hospital in Auckland. She recovered, after days in a dark room, and we got back on the road. My dad did get a job offer, to teach ceramics at the University of Nairobi, but he did not take it. We were a family of naive Californians, to be sure, but my parents certainly could see that we were not going to escape the stain of American neo-imperialism, by moving to the University of Nairobi. The trip was filled mostly with incredible highlights, moments of family transcendence that we have treasured ever since. We had an incredible family adventure, pursuing a path that few of our fellow Americans at that time were willing to investigate.



Obviously, I have no actual memories of the trip; yet, that does not mean it has not played a critical part in the development of my identity. All my life, I have been proud that I went on such a trip: I learned how to walk in Madagascar, a traditional healer fixed up my stomach flu in Tahiti, I spent time alone in a Masai village while the rest of my family went off to look at game. In a sense, I always felt worldly, though I knew I did not exactly deserve the moniker, since I could not remember any of the actual adventures I claimed as my own. While part of my reveled in my adventurous first year of life, part of me was a bit resentful that I had traveled the globe, amassing only photos and no memories of my own. I always wanted to return to these places of family legend, with incredible names like Huahine, Antananarivo, and Mombasa.
I have been so very lucky.

In 1998, two years after we got married, and several months after both of us had reached logical stopping points on our career paths, my wife and I boarded a plane in Los Angeles bound for Papeete. We had decided to take a trip of our own. Inspired by my stories of a year on the road, we had said good bye to friends and family, put our house up for rent and our savings on the line, and bought a string of open-ended tickets that would essentially take us from the South Pacific to Southeast Asia to southern and eastern Africa and all the way home, via a short stop in Europe. That trip offers, of course, a whole new story to tell. Maybe I should save that one for later.
Now, with the addition of two children, we are trying to plan a new and even more audacious adventure. Four of us on the road together. We are not going to circle the globe but the Pacific this time. What an amazing concept.

My next post will be about some of the details involved in planning such a journey.