paradise lost

Life in paradise hurts.

I really thought I'd be spending more time surfing and beach side, but I've found the supposed beginner-size waves at Kuta/Legian/Seminyak just too close together and they dump out too fast for my beginner level. I need slow, fat, and consistent. I went surfing the other morning and over-exerted myself... I'm no longer as young or as fit as maybe I think I am... and then got too much sun in the afternoon. All in all a day of excess... perfect Bali I suppose, but now of course I'm paying for it with a slightly stressed upper back, slight bruises on my chest from smacking against the board, and slightly raw skin.

But then I spent 4 days in Ubud and loved it! I took a full day walk with a local guide in the fields (more green in variations than any manner of descriptive attempt) and river valleys, forded a river waist deep, and saw some cockfighting (bloody, ugh) at a small village temple. I took in the artwork at the museums and galleries... there's an over-abundance of mediocre 'tropical' paintings and wood and stone carvings, all aimed directly at the tourist export market and made in identicle hundreds, but there is at least good skill level in the craft. I found a yoga class, saw a classical Balinese dance performance, and even made it up to see a volcano crater and lava field at Batur on a motorcycle... although I was stopped by the police and had to pay a $10 bribe for not having a license (the guidebook warns you and so I actually expected this), and then I also slid out on the bike on the winding roads around the volcano lake on some sand and flipped over the handle bars and down some 10 feet into a rock-strewn gully landing flat on my back... sorry Mom and Papa. I'm perfectly OK, really! It could have been much worse. I was wearing a helmet and made out with just a few slight scratches to both me and the bike!

I enjoyed Bali, but on the surface it seemed just so overdeveloped for the tourist industry... although I know that's mostly a product of where I was looking and how little time I spent there. I did have a few good experiences with local people and and their lives that helped me connect to the place. But also I think I'm comparing the experience to my time in India where I really shouldn't. Nothing is hidden in India, and an immediate and visceral sense of the people and places is right there in your face, whether you want it or not, without the filter of tourism.

naturish

Yesterday was a day of 'natural' environments and habitats... or at least as much as nature as Singapore can provide. I spent the early afternoon walking around the Botanical Gardens and looking at the beautiful orchids... they've even named a few hybrids after dignitaries and celebrities like Kofi Anan, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Laura Bush, Shah Rukh Khan (my favorite Bollywood actor!) and Ricky Martin. I don't see the resemblances. Then it was off to join the human inhabitants of Singapore in their natural habitat... the high-end shopping malls. They have an amazing Muji (Japanese home goods) store here! I bought an umbrella because it was raining. I can't wait for NYC to get one besides the little area of the Moma Soho store.

Then last night I went to the Zoo to take the touristy Night Safari tram ride... totally amazing! It was a little unnerving... there were few if any barriers between you and the animals and you saw them all in natural habitats, between 3 and 30 feet away from you... I couldn't figure out how they kept many of the animals in their areas, and also kept the people out. I saw all manner of deer and mountain goats and buffalo as well as hyena, rhino, giraffe, zebra, hippo, elephant, tapir, tiger, leopard (so beautiful and powerful, they were just one inch away through the thickness of a pane of glass!), lion, giant flying squirrel, bats (these things were as big as, and flying and eating inches from, your head), tarsier, otter, and owl. These animals are all active at night and they had a moonlight affect on them so you could see, but not enough for pictures and flash isn't allowed. I skipped the crazy animal talent show with the screaming kids and the flaming hoops.

s'pore

Singapore is so clean it's unreal... it feels like Disneyland or something. There's NO trash anywhere on the street, even in Little India! And everyone is SO concerned about hygiene it's a matter of city/national pride, even obsession. I read in the paper the other morning about this World Toilet Organization that was going around S'pore and judging the cleanliness of the public toilets... there was a picture of a guy leaning over a urinal sniffing the bowl. Ugh. Some recent Chinese immigrant woman won for cleanest shopping mall toilet. They interviewed her and she was proud. Not that I'm complaining or anything... I love a good clean public toilet, and I certainly appreciate the amenity after India where it isn't so much of an additional service as just the roadside or an alley way or the sidewalk sewage ditch. There was also an article about the newest, youngest (32?) and extremely well educated... Yale, Cambridge, Stanford... police chief. And also a report about some 22 and 23 year old brothers who received 24 lashings each with a cane in addition to 6-year prison sentences for robbery. Order, discipline, and cleanliness... they are obsessed. I need dirt. There's hardly any bird poop anywhere, no pigeons!, no gum on the sidewalk, no cigarette butts (definitely a good thing), nothing. It's lacking grit and maybe even spirit. However, apparently S'pore was actually really dirty and stinky in the early '80's and they cleaned it up by the end of the decade, so the whole order discipline thing isn't so much cultural as it is a matter of imposed law. There's Malay and Indians and Arabs and Chinese and Europeans and Hindu and Muslim and Christian all together... this is definitely one of the world's great historic and current trading city-states. I can't say I like it but it's interesting from a cultural anthropological point of view.

I walked along the historic river quay's where all manner of import, export, trading, drinking, opium dens, fighting, and dirty living used to occur with the coolies working the docks. Now it's been turned into a tourist drinking and eating spot with a thin band of old warehouses restored and painted in pastels, backed up by the main financial business high-rise towers. I wandered down to the new theater buildings (I think the locals call it the Durian after the spiky Southeast Asian fruit of similar appearance) and the Merlion park for a photo-op along with every other tourist, and then found refuge in the chic Fullerton Hotel Post Bar with a trough of vodka and some bar snacks... my first cocktail in three months, hooray! The next morning I spent a few hours at the Asian Civilizations Museum looking at amazingly intricate metalwork, jewelry, and textiles, learning about this part of the world and Singapore's founding by the British East India Company, as well as following Buddhism's influence throughout the region. Then I meandered through Chinatown's cheap nic-nac's, old men playing checkers (both Chinese of course), saw a Hindu temple, a Chinese Buddhist temple, and had some great noodles and a sweet red bean bun at an outdoor eatery before heading out to take a cable car ride over the sea port to an island of resort-ride make-believe and then swinging back around to a little "mountain" overlooking the cityscape. It was cloudy and rainy but a good view nonetheless. It's raining every day... winter monsoons from the northeast.