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Author Archives: theprofessorandtheprivateeye

Shadow Puppets and Silversmithing

There’s a long list of artistic and cultural places we want to go and things we want to do here in Ubud: art classes, dance performances, museums, and more. The Private Eye has, since her making a large parade-style puppet last year, been very interested in puppetry. Shadow puppetry is an art form here, called Wayang Kulit, so we made Sunday night’s venture to go to a show. There was a simple sheet, with a torch behind it. You could see where, over decades, the torch has sooted the ceiling black and eroded the plaster a bit. The puppetmaster was 80 years old, and had several assistants. The show we saw told the story of the Sacrifice of Bima, where Bima offers himself as a sacrifice to a demon to appease it and save a kingdom, then defeats it in battle.

We met an expat art teacher (from British Columbia, now teaches in Turkey) who comes to Bali every few years to learn some new arts. We chatted for a bit and might meet up tomorrow for a walk around the city.

On Monday, 2/4, we woke up and made our way to the small private library that is seemingly becoming our base of operations. We’d scheduled a silversmithing class for 10AM: 3 hours cost R200k/person ($25), including up to 3 grams of silver, you pay for the extra silver if you want to use more. After a bit of discussion, we decided to make rings, similar in shape (both ringed bands with designs within), but different in style. Our teacher, Anna, has been a silversmith all her life, and her entire family are silversmiths.

First, you decide how big a ring, and cut a piece of silver (92.5% silver, 7.5% copper) plate of the right width and length. You then solder (with silver solder) the two ends together, and shape it into a circle. You then add the wires that form the rings on the edges of the band, and solder them on. At this point, you have two simple silver rings, and you need to add the decoration.

I chose a design that I’d never seen before, but in my typical style is much easier to do than it looks. You take a thin piece of silver plate and crinkle it up, heat it, and crinkle it up again. You cut the plate to the right length and width to fit between the rings, and solder it in.

The Private Eye chose a beaded design with curls. To do this design, you take thin silver wire and bend it into the desired curls, then glue them to the face of the ring. Using tiny bits of glue, you then affix tiny silver beads; she also affixed some small disks.

You then dab some solder around the pieces and heat the ring, replacing the glue with metal. To heat the rings, Anna had a foot pumped propane torch. Very simple, but it works!

After the rings have cooled, you polish them, inside and out. We used an oxidizing solution to darken recessions in our designs, then polished again to make the raised regions shiny. Two hours later, we had silver rings made by our own hands.

We are trying to keep to a R500k/day ($60) budget, which would be easy except for all of these artistic ventures. To attend a Kecak dance tonight we’re going to cheat and borrow from tomorrow’s finances. Food isn’t too hard — you can get a tasty meal of noodls or fried rice with vegetables for R15k. Of course there are also super-fancy places here with R60k desserts, but we’d rather spend our money on art and save for diving and other adventures.

We haven’t quite figured out our schedule yet. It turns out that Life is Too Short (whom we met in Luang Prabang) has been distracted by Myanmar, so might not make it to Bali until the 16th. We definitely have a few more days in Ubud, but don’t know how many. I don’t know if we are going to try Kuta (the Bali foreigner party city) at all, or just avoid its western stuff and skip directly to Gili Air.

(this post is a bit brief and choppy because I’m trying to finish it quickly before The Private Eye returns from the spa!)

— The Professor

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 3, 2013 in art, Bali, Indonesia, Ubud, Uncategorized

Ubud and Art

03 Feb

Well before we arrived in Ubud, we were struck by the immediacy of Balinese art. The goggle-eyed faces peering out at us around Denpasar evoked both fear and laughter, as though every face was a laughing face lit by firelight from below. Scary. Funny. Somehow part of some full-bellied, cosmic joke. Even the sculptural decoration of columns and walls seemed so aggressively three-dimensional as to be extra-dimensional.

So when we saw a dance performance at the palace last night, all that imagery came to life for us. The Professor and I disagreed about the performance quality – I found it solid but not brilliant, in part due to a lackluster audience; he found some of the performers amazing – we did not disagree about the strong performances among the troupe and the transfixing nature of the dance period.

The evening featured an assortment of traditional dances. I liked the Kebyar Dudak, which “depicts the infancy and adolescence in the life of a young prince”, which featured a young, heavily made-up man with very sharp and precise movements, as well as a confident sneer and a great eye roll.

I also enjoyed the Topeng Keras mask dance, which featured a tough, red-faced man who moved like a video game villain from a late-80s Nintendo game, all sideways menace and sudden movements after periods of quiet.

Like gymnastics, this dance performance mostly featured mature men and tiny little girls. The girls did a butterfly dance that I quite liked, but I couldn’t get into the more traditional Legong dance. I did like the Puspa Wresti dance, which was performed by women and led by a woman in her 30s or 40s who had the most astonishing facial expressions. I don’t know if her eyelids ever touched her irises, she was that wide-eyed.

Afterwards, we went out on the town looking for action, which is apparently hard to come by in Ubud. At my insistence, we went to a jazz bar for dessert, but got there just as the band was packing up, and soon realized that the place was full of other couples, most of whom seemed older than us by a good deal, which was not important, but all of whom seemed uninterested in meeting new people, which was an issue.

We left and started walking down the street, and passed by an art gallery in which six or eight 20-something longhairs guys were sitting around a low table, drinking beer and smoking clove cigarettes. One of them called out, “hey, come in!” and after a quick huddle the Professor and I did so.

I’ll confess now – I smoked a few cloves with the guys, breaking my new year’s resolution for an evening. Two of the guys were the gallery’s artists, and their art wasn’t like anything around, not Balinese-iana at all. It featured scary/funny faces (that thing again), girls, text, objects from a bar, local dogs, and pure abstraction. Vigorous young-man stuff. One of them explained to me that he grew up in Sumatra, and had studied art in Jakarta, but had come to Ubud because artists can make a living here, even artists who don’t make the stuff tourists expect to buy.

Not that things weren’t thin for them as they are for young artists everywhere. One guy, an artist and a former boxer who dropped fighting after being put in a coma, explained that he grows his hair into long dreadlocks to sell once they reach a certain length.

We talked about living far away from home, the phenomenon of short hair on women and long hair on men, politics, economics and art. They shared their beer with the Professor.

So today, after touring a big and gorgeous museum, we bought them a big beer in return, and they invited us to come see their studio. We might see it tomorrow, after taking a silver-smithing class or touring the ARMA museum and the monkey forest.

– The Private Eye

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 3, 2013 in art, Bali, Denpasar, Indonesia, Ubud, Uncategorized

Denpasar to Ubud

03 Feb

One thing is different about Bali for sure: people here are much more aggressive in trying to sell you things. As soon as you exit customs, men start approaching you. “Taxi? Cheap cheap,” accompanied by a gesture of hands outstretched like on a steering wheel. Most of them aren’t really taxis (well, taksis), just people with cars who will charge you an arm and a leg. There is one reputable taxi company in Bali, Bluebird, who actually have meters and charge reasonable rates. To get one, you have to walk through the airport parking lot to an actual street. We flagged one down. The driver was from Tabanan, a town to the north and west of Denpasar. We talked about how he has had a long day, starting work at 6:30 AM. His shift is supposed to end at 12:30, but since he’s already reached his target for the day, he’s going to quit early, after only 13 hours. The ride costs R77,000, or about 10 dollars. We tip him R8k, which is generous, because he has to drive back through the traffic to drop off the taxi before riding his motorbike home, and he was very nice and conversational.

Denpasar is not a big tourist destination, which is why we thought spending a night in it would be nice. It takes us 20 minutes to find our homestay, which thankfully has space. Here in Bali, families don’t live in individual homes. Instead, a family has a plot of land that has multiple buildings within its walls. So many of the cheaper places to stay, rather than separate guest house buildings, are homestays, or rooms in a building in the family compound. We drop off our things and head to Pasar Barung, the largest market in Denpasar, for dinner.

But markets here are different. In Thailand, day markets are a mix of groceries and street food, while night markets are often mostly street food and sometimes some trinkets. Here, it’s all produce, meat and spices. The Private Eye starts to lose confidence we will find anything to eat and suggests we just go to a warung (street food vendor) outside the market, pointing a direction. Of course, it happens to be at that particular exit there is an elderly woman serving some kind of soup and a few fried vegetables. We have no idea what it is, but sit down and have some. It’s different than anything I’ve eaten before, a thin, slightly sweet coconut soup with lentils and a few small balls of sticky rice that she adds. The vegetables are some kind of sweet potato and we think cassava. She’s also making some kind of coffee drink with fresh egg, which the locals seem to like. In our half hour in the market, and since getting out of the taxi, we have seen two other white people. Three bowls of soup (The Private Eye had seconds), two bottles of water, and four fried bites is R31k, or about 4 dollars. We wander back to the homestay, rinse off the sweat (sitting in front of a soup pot in the tropics is hot!), and sleep, thankful that tomorrow is the first day in a while that we don’t need an alarm.

We sleep in and have a simple breakfast in the public area. I’m up first, so over my toast and coffee I have a long discussion with a woman from England about whether western culture is destroying Bali. I mention Ubud and she says she was disappointed. “It has a Starbucks. And a Polo store,” she says. We talk about why this might be bad (or not), finding common ground that if only tourists go to the stores then that’s problematic, as they indicate making a place less challenging and more comfortable as well as less unique. I argue that if locals want a Starbucks, though, they should be able to have it. We veer off into consumerism, capitalism, and other ills. She doesn’t agree with me, but also doesn’t disagree.

We decide to get a SIM card for our phone and to go to the nearby museum of Balinese art. On our way, we pass by a grimy concrete structure that says “Art Market” outside. Inside, it’s basically large, open concrete floors with men and women selling wood carvings. Since business is slow most of them are working on new ones to pass the time. Demon faces, Komodo dragons, Buddhas, monkeys in lewd poses, dragons, chess sets, and boxes dominate. We haven’t even been in Bali for 24 hours so shy from buying anything at first, but then The Private Eye finds a unique carving, a very simple, unfinished one of a rabbit. The woman seems surprised that we like it. She looks at the bottom and names her price: R50k. I bargain her down to 30 (~$3.75), which she accepts pretty easily but seems reasonable to me. After, we look at the bottom and it says 25; we paid a little more than we could have, but still a fair price. The woman stains it for us and wraps it in newspaper.

After the market, we head to the museum, which we have to ourselves. The most interesting exhibit is on Balinese dance, showing some costumes and describing the different forms of dance.

It looks like rain, so we catch a bluebird taksi back to the homestay, pick up our bags, and ride to the terminal where bemos to Ubud leave from. We debated back and forth about whether to take a taksi or a bemo. A taksi would probably be R160k, while a public bemo would be 30. Bemos are basically vans that run certain routes. They are small and kind of cramped. Foreigners don’t ride them much – one issue or complaint many travelers raise with Bali is its lack of a transportation infrastructure. But I figure we should ride one once, and this one is a major route.

Once we get to the terminal, there’s a bunch of discussion with people there. The long and the short of it is that we don’t catch a public bemo. Instead, a grizzled old man with a very beat up van agrees to take us to Ubud for R70k ($10). He won’t go lower. I figure since it’s a charter with no other stops, and it won’t be crowded, it’s worth it.

When we arrive, and I try to pay him, I realize I think I did the right thing. I don’t have correct change: we have only 50k notes and then 19k in other notes. So I give him 100k and ask for change. He looks at the bills, and pulls out a wad of bills from his pocket. He looks at them, leafs through them, and stops. They are mostly small bills. I realize that he probably can’t add them up in his head – he can’t make change. Generally speaking, nobody does arithmetic in their head here, it’s always with a calculator. I offer to make the change for him and realize he doesn’t have 30k – he has only about $3 on him. So I give him the 69k we can give him, counting it very slowly so he can see we are not cheating him. The look of relief and happiness on his face when I give him the money gives me a glimmer of how much harder his life is than mine and how valuable this money is to him. The idea of bargaining for a price you are both happy with does make more sense when there are such disparities.

We get out of the bemo outside the palace in Ubud, find a bookstore/library and a place to stay. I’ll leave our nighttime adventure involving Balinese dances, a jazz bar, and sharing beer with a half dozen artists in their studio for another post.

— The Professor

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 3, 2013 in art, Bali, food, Indonesia, Uncategorized

To Bali

02 Feb

Our flight out from Phuket airport was at 10:30AM. There’s a taxi mafia in Phuket Town, who charge ridiculous prices, so we decided to take the B90 ($3) bus instead. The official schedule says the bus leaves at 7AM to arrive at 8:20, but a sheet of paper taped to the schedule claimed it wouldn’t arrive until 9 (120m), while all other departure times still only took 80 minutes. As the bus indeed arrived at 8:20, and many taxis tried to convince us they would only take 45 minutes, I think this was the taxi mafia at work trying to scare farang away from the bus.

We flew from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia. Imagine a shiny, new, clean airport (e.g., the international terminal at SFO), filled with luxury goods, but the throngs of passengers are from corners of the world an American rarely sees. Women wearing everything from tank tops and shorts to Muslim women covered from head to toe in black, only their eyes visible, women wearing suggestive, tight, outfits in bright colors that leave no skin revealed and cover the hair, with bright makeup, like from an early Star Trek episode, a man wearing a fluffy white skirt that looks like a thick towel, reaching below his knees, with a bright green belt, and a shirt that reveals the bottom of his belly, cyber Japanese women in leather and huge sunglasses, and many more. It felt like the future, not just in terms of the architecture and shining metal of the building, but also culturally, given the recent and future rise of Asia.

We arrived with about an hour until our gate opened. Entry into Indonesia requires a $25 visa, exact change required. So we took a train to another part of the airport to change some baht into dollars. The visa is only for 30 days, something every guide book says is too short, given the size, scope, and diversity of a country spread across literally thousands of islands.

We found out that there’s a big dance party with music we like on Gili Air, a tiny idyllic island east of Bali, very close to Lombok (the next island over), tonight. We thought that landing and immediately heading to Gili Air for dancing sounded like a lot of fun, but given our flight arrives at 6:30 it doesn’t look feasible. We would have to make it about 50 miles from the airport to a north eastern coast town (e.g., Amed), then catch an expensive speed boat. The seas can be rough at this time of year, and making the trip at night given the warnings we’ve heard about boat safety seemed like a bit too much like danger rather than adventure.

So we are going to stick in Denpasar tonight, maybe head to Ubud tomorrow.

Right now we are on the plane from Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar, a 3 hour flight. The Private Eye is figuring out which part of town we want to look for a guest house, probably near one of the bemo (think bus) terminals and markets.

— The Professor

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 2, 2013 in Bali, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Travel, Uncategorized

A Perfect Two Days

31 Jan

We departed Ko Phagnan on the 7AM boat. Sadly, the only pink dolphin we saw was this one:

We transferred to a bus to Surat Thani then a second bus to Krabi town, arriving around 4 in the afternoon. We played a bit of Ticket to Ride on the bus, read about Krabi and Bali, and generally relaxed.

Krabi town has a lot of tourists, but it still felt like real Thailand. By that, I mean there are industries and lives that don’t involve vacationers. Among other things, this means there is much better food. We immediately made our way to the day market, with its butchers, vegetable stands, food stands, and other merchants, ate some tasty street food, found a guest house, cleaned up, ran a few errands, ventured out to the night market for dessert, had a drink at a bar where a complete character –red-faced, red-haired Richard from Alabama, with a growly voice– invited us to play pool. He was as bad as us. We had a grand time. Then we noticed it was the type of bar where old white men sit with middling-young Thai women, and left.

The next day, the 30th, we woke up at 6AM to catch a 7AM bus to Ao Nang beach, then take a short boat ride to Ton Sai, just a few coves over, which is the gritty, backpacker beach next to Railay, which has some fancy resort beaches.

The notable feature of Krabi, Railay, and Ton Sai are karsts, dramatic limestone cliffs that jut into the sky. They are spectacularly beautiful, riddled with outcroppings, caves, and sheer faces of white, brown, cream, and grey stone. Their tops and some of their sides have trees and vines, giving contrast to the rock underneath. Some are inland, some rise out of the sea, and some are on the edge, surrounded by water at high tide and by sand or rocks at low tide. The Private Eye commented, as we approached Ton Sai on the longtail, that it might be the most beautiful place she has ever seen, vying with Yosemite.

And so what do you do in a place with these magnificent limestone cliffs rising from a clear and warm sea? You climb them, of course.

We climb a bit, but really only indoors, at a gym. The Private Eye has been climbing outdoors once, The Professor never. We know it’s a bit different (e.g., you have to set up the top rope at the top of a climb), and so figure we should take a class to learn. Basecamp was the one climbing place that answered the phone, we found out their classes start at 9. Hence the waking up for a 7AM bus to Ton Sai.

We pull in to the beach at Ton Sai, and there’s a map of the town. There are four roads, making a box shape. One of them is the beach. Basecamp is at the opposite corner of town, so we head in. There is no pavement here, just dirt, with lots of ruts. But it’s clean. Here’s a dive shop, there’s a bar, that’s a pancake place, over there is a minimart. Walking through the jungle, seeing lean backpackers on their way to the beach or to climb, and it feels like the backpacker utopia. Our excitement grows as we make the 3 minute walk across town, especially after the monkey drops onto the telephone wires a few feet from our heads.

We arrive at Basecamp at 8:40, excited. We leap up the stairs and ask if they have a class this morning. “Yeah, sure,” the very dark skinned Thai man with a beard and long hair says. “Great! Because we want to sign up! We want to climb with you!” The man smirks, looks at his watch, and says, “OK… But you want some coffee? Go get some coffee.” He points to the restaurant next door. Clearly we are working at too fast a speed here. We will climb, yeah, no worries.

We eat our obligatory pancakes and drink our coffee in the wooden open-air cushion-seating hippie restaurant with the shelves and shelves of comic books, and then return to the climbing shop, where we meet the mellow guy who told us to get coffee. His name is Meen. Meen is our guide, and we like him so much we turn a half day of climbing into a day and a half.

Our routes are graded on the French system rather than the American, and the furthest we get on either day is 6a or 6b, but that doesn’t matter. We have such a wonderful time, ascending routes for a sweet payoff of views of the karst castles on the water, and chatting up our fellow climbers.

Climbing outdoors is quite different. In a gym, there are only so many holds, and it’s pretty clear which ones to take. Here, there are holds everywhere. Move your hand three inches in a direction, and the rock can go from a two finger, jagged hold to a smooth and soft bucket for your entire hand. So finding the holds is as important as using them. Being in a stable and easy position is important so you can search if you need to. And the rocks can be sharp – The Professor has scrapes on both knees, a tear on his left pinky, and generally sore hands.

While waiting her turn, the Private Eye drinks strong coffee from another climbing shop/cafe, conveniently located next to the Diamond Cave rock face. For lunch, we eat with the climbing guides. We have noodles in spicy broth with vegetables and meat prepared by Muslim women; we notice that there are a lot more Muslims here than in the Gulf of Thailand islands. We move to a new cliff face after lunch, the 1-2-3 wall on the east side of the Railay peninsula. The views at the top here are even more astounding. We climb until twilight comes, just catching the last sliver of the pink sun setting into the Andaman Sea as we return to the western shore. Meen pushes us at the end, giving us a 6b. He seems happy that we were the last to leave.

We book a cheap bungalow and eat a quick dinner, and retire to the Rasta-Thai styled Sunset Bar, where we chat with other climbers and with Ip, another climbing guide. Then Ip leaves us to play guitar with the startlingly good Bob Marley cover band. “Where did Ip go?” asks The Private Eye, and The Professor points at the stage.

The Professor lounges in a hammock in the bar. The Private Eye takes a stroll along the beach, looking at the karst silhouetted against the stars. We go to bed very, very happy.

The following day the climbing is harder, because we are more tired, but it is still amazing. At 1:15 pm we bid Meen farewell and a very grateful thank-you. We take a longtail boat to the Ao Nang Princess inter-island ferry, for a 1.5 hour boat ride to Phuket. Tonight we are in grungy but pleasant Phuket Town, readying for our flight to Denpasar via Kuala Lumpur.

– The Professor and the Private Eye, tag team.

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on January 31, 2013 in Krabi, Railay Beach, rock climbing, Thailand, Ton Sai., Uncategorized

Sail Rock to Ban Tai

28 Jan

Yesterday was one of those days of misses that don’t add up to anything too bad, when you try to enjoy the lemonade made from the lemons. If I wasn’t that successful at doing that yesterday, rest assured that I feel better today!

We arose early and went to the front desk at Bottle Beach 2 to check out. Nobody was there right at 7, and neither was our boat that was supposed to bring us to the dive outfit we booked to take us to Sail Rock. But shortly, the manager shows up and says the boat may not come, because there are big swells on the water. He also tells us that, much to our surprise, though we paid for the room in advance with a credit card, we cannot settle our bill that way for meals and such – it must be cash, and more than we have, with no ATMs for miles.

Fortunately, our boat did make it, and the old captain agreed to wait for us to run to an atm when we arrived at Chalok Lam and bring our cash to the bungalow manager the next time he went to Bottle Beach, later that day. Problem solved.

We then were treated to an excellent display of seamanship. The old boatman could not cut his tiny long tail boat through the waves, as they would swamp the little craft. Instead, he surfed the giant swells, riding each until the boat could be delivered safely to the start of the next swell. The boatman had a wide frog-like mouth with no chin to speak of, and wore fisherman’s pants rolled up to his hips, an open button down shirt and a small shoulder bag with an elephant motif and gold thread. He was, in short, everything you could ever imagine in such a boatman.

We arrived in Chalok Lam and were picked up by our dive instructor, who looked an affable blonde Viking, and is Belgian. Like most dive masters here, he inexplicably smokes cigarettes. He and a compatriot took us to the dive shop on motorbikes, and soon we were on our way to Sail Rock, widely regarded as the best dive site in the Gulf of Thailand, home to the mighty whale shark, a plankton eater that grows from 3 to a whopping 12 meters.

Sadly, we did not see leviathan. One may have been there, or not, but our visibility was severely compromised by the same rough seas that showed us the quality of our morning boatman. The dive involved a long (for me) surface swim over some pretty big waves, and it was hard for me to relax after that – so much so that my normally decent air consumption rate went out the window, and I spent part of my dive sharing air with the dive master so we could stay down longer. That said, it is a magnificent site. We went to the eastern pinnacle, where we were surrounded by schools of big eyed trevaly just inches from my own eyes. There were also schools of the biggest fusiliers I have ever seen, and huge chevron barracuda, and the occasional giant grouper, and schools of smaller, sadly doomed baitfish, ringed by the big predator schools. At the end, we swam up through a chimney that started at 18 meters and opened up at five meters, with a charming pair of very large boxing shrimp inside.

But few were up for a second dive in those conditions. One by one, the dive boats left before their second dive, and we were the last. We went to a few different calm shallow water sites, each rejected for lack of visibility after we couldn’t see the dive master if he was more than one kick-cycle away. Finally, we found a slightly calmer site among some lovely coral reef near Haad Salad, and spent our time looking at rare nudibranches and other small scale life.

Our dive came with a free ride to anywhere we wanted on the island, and so at the end of our dives we did not return to Bottle Beach, but went instead to Ban Tai on the south coast.

I barely have the words to describe this trance music Mecca. But let me try. All the clothing stores sell clothes suitable for festivals. Half of the bars have evocative names. Music that would be considered very, very niche in the US blares out from nearly every bar or store. Yoga-healthy, dreadlocked, clean thirty-somethings seem to dominate the white population, and party fliers paper the entire exterior wall of the 7-11, as well as the inside of the Sicilian pizzeria and I imagine most other businesses. But there are still lots of Thai people here, and the area seems quite wholesome, perhaps lent that air by the organic coconut-palm and lime orchards and the water buffalo in the yards.

Our dive master had recommended a place to stay, so we proceeded there. But it was beyond our price range at 1500 baht a night. Happily, just nearby was a place prominently billing itself as for backpackers. After waiting for about half an hour for the front desk clerk to return, while happily reading Roald Dahl in a hammock in the front desk, a lovely hippie woman from Illinois booked us in to a happy little bungalow with shared bath for 150 baht. Though it could be locked up if you wished, when we entered the room had its windows wide open, with beads hanging over the windows and doorway. There was a mosquito net over the bed, with sheets that read “for the love” over and over again. The floor was rough slats with gaps in between, but the bed was firm and comfortable, the lighting was surprisingly good, and the shared bath had plenty of showers and a full length mirror, and a tapestry advertising the Blackmoon Culture festival. In short, the place had soul, and was in our top two places we have stayed on this trip.

We were very beat, though, and booking into this place was the last good decision we made. We decided to go to the herbal sauna at the nearby Wat. But we were distracted by shopping for trance clothes, of which we bought a few, and then dinner. When we got to the Wat’s sauna, it looked wonderful, but was within 10 minutes of closing and denied us entry. A patron, however, told us of another one 20 minutes away that was open an hour later, and was near the evening’s moon-set party besides. We seized the opportunity for adventure and jumped in a sorrng-taa-ou. It took us to the bar with the party, and we jumped out and looked for the sauna. We couldn’t find it, and were told we had actually passed it some kilometers back.

Because we were stinking and desperate to wash, we jumped in another pickup truck and drove to that place. We got out and looked around, seeing unspecific signs for it, but not the place itself. Finally, I called a number on the sign, and learned we had been ill-advised: the sauna had closed two hours previous, though sometimes it stays open later to accommodate patrons already present at the closing time. To make matters worse, we realized we had left half of the clothes we had bought in the back of the second taxi, with no way to recover the items. We felt wretched, and went back to our room without visiting the party, showered, and went to bed. We decided to take the early ferry off the island.

But today is a new day. We slept beautifully in that rustic little cabin and woke to a gorgeous moonlit predawn. We are on the Raja ferry to Don Sak, on the end of which journey we are likely to see the pink albino dolphins(!) that frequent those waters. I plan to take pictures of them to share with our guide in the Amazon. And then we will bus to the Krabi region, Railey in particular, where we will see the fabled Andaman sea and climb rocks over turquoise waters. And then, on to Indonesia.

– the private eye

PS- It’s as good a place as any for me to spill the ugly truth – Lonely Planet really isn’t for backpackers anymore. I cannot see why it lists so many higher-priced accommodations but fails to talk about the remarkable budget deals in this region, unless they either no longer care about these customers, or deliberately leave these gems off the pages so that they are not swamped, the same as you would not post the location of a remarkable but unprotected tree for fear that someone would fell it. In either case, my advice at this point is to use their guides as a marker for where accommodations are clustered, but to look around at the unpublished offerings for better deals. Which is sort of sad, as we’d already written the restaurant sections of the guides off as not being foodie enough to our taste – we pretty much prefer eating at the markets to just about anywhere else. The books are useful for general planning, but your own groundwork when you arrive is the best option.

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on January 28, 2013 in dancing, Ko Phagnan, mistakes, Music, scuba, Thailand, Uncategorized

Full Moon Party!

26 Jan

Sometime in the late 80s, somebody on Ko Phagnan decided to move away and all of his friends threw him a big going away party on Hat Rin, a beach on the southern tip of the island. They rented some bungalows and put on thumping dance music. It happened to be a full moon that night, and everyone had such a good time that they started throwing these parties every full moon. Or at least that’s the story our taxi driver (born and spent his entire life on the island) told us.

Nowadays, a full moon party has anywhere from 5,000 in the off season to supposedly 70,000 this past Christmas. The entire island gears up. Taxi drivers get a good night of rest and try to line up rides. Boat tickets sell out as people converge from all over the Gulf of Thailand. Resorts line up travel arrangements for their residents. The beaches that day are deserted as would-be-partygoers catch afternoon naps. As the sun sets, soorng-taus (taxis) start streaming south and east, to Hat Rin. Vendors set up booths to sell glow necklaces, neon clothing, neon body paint tattoos, food, and buckets.

Buckets? What’s a bucket? It’s a way for partygoers to get around the very high per-drink prices ($4-5). For $7 or so, depending on the quality of alcohol, you get a small flask of liquor, a mixer, straws, and a small bucket filled with ice. So rather than plastic cups, partygoers wander around with little pails filled with liquor. There’s lots to share – just hand your neighbor a straw! Those who know us well can guess that we did not buy a bucket; The Private Eye does not drink and liquor puts The Professor to sleep, which isn’t helpful if you want to stay up until 6AM for the return taxi ride. We stopped by a minimart on the way in to pick up Red Bull, little coffees, and water.

The monthly shindig has had a profound impact on the island. Thais here are not modest, reserved people; everybody wants to know if you are ready to party-party. Our “taxi” driver (it was a plain pickup truck and the Professor and I beelined for the cab in selfish prudence) was a plain local guy who had grown up the next bay over from our bungalows, has a family, and played very very hard trance music the entire bumpy, rutted, steep-dirt-road ride to Hat Rin. “It’s good for driving late at night” he said; indeed. “It is great to have the three islands,” he said. “Samui, you can shop. Ko Tao, you can chill out, dive, water things. Ko Phagnan? You can party!”

So there you are, dropped off by your taxi on this street with people walking and milling, scooters honking, and everyone heading in one direction: Hat Rin. You pay a B100 entry fee ($3.50), step out on the beach, and… are greeted by bedlam. A calm surf stretches about a half mile, with 10 or so bars, each of which has set up its own music stage. The beach curves, so you can see from end to end – the northeast end has Kangaroo Bar and Mellow Mountain bar, perched up on the rocks so you can see out over the entire bedlam, to Paradise Bungalows at the southwest, where the whole thing started 25 years ago.

The crowd is a real mix – mostly foreigners but some Thais among the party-goers. All ages, from 15 year olds who maybe shouldn’t be there to 60-somethings with a well honed taste for the nightlife. More black people than we have seen anywhere else in Asia, predictably better turned out than the sloppy majority. A few little children; we saw one four year old Thai boy helping a twenty-something white man build a small fire in a sand pit. Here’s a blurry picture of one bare-chested Thai man with glow-stick glasses, dancing his heart away:

We walked the length of the beach, then headed up to the Mellow Mountain bar with its de rigeur view of the scene. We enjoyed seeing the craziness below and chilled out with drinks, but ultimately the bad house music drove us back to the sand. We wandered through a breathtaking press of people to Chicken Corner to try to meet up with the Other Burner from SF, but it was a missed connection. So we settled in for a good long while at Tommy Resort, clearly the best funded of the dance offerings – they had lasers projecting rotating pictures, dj names, and “Welcome to Koh Phagnan Full Moon party January 2013” onto the Mellow Mountain. Aside from the window dressing, they has a busy trance stage and a busier house stage, both with solid music. we danced to trance for a good long time, venturing to the other stage when the house veered into the electro.

When we needed a change, we wandered over to Hansa Beach bar, which had quite good minimal techno, some fire dancing displays ( we saw better at Maya Bar on Koh Tao), and a smaller, friendlier crowd. We made friends with a young Dutch man who had done some really laudable volunteer work with orphans in Ghana, and who had traveled widely. We also hung out with a German man who liked our dancing: “You have a lot of energy!”

A lot has been written about the insanity of the Full Moon party, perhaps even more since the one in December, when a British tourist was killed at the event. But, to us, it didn’t seem that insane. Was there wanton excess, drunkenness, and an occasional flagrant disregard for decency? Yes, of course. Was there anything that I found unconscionable? Yes – someone threw a bottle out a window and it nearly hit a drinks vendor, and there was a shocking amount of litter despite large, clearly marked and regularly emptied trash cans.

But things seemed mostly under control. There were police everywhere. The preponderance of Thai food vendors, drinks vendors, taxi drivers and taxi touts meant that there was a large population of sober people and general order. Most people just seemed to be having a good time dancing with their friends, and for those who had the bad judgement to drink too much and walk barefoot with their flip flops around their ankles in a place with glass litter, there were at least a dozen well marked and open medical clinics and pharmacies. Mid-evening, we saw one man on his side, near the surf, dead to the world as his girlfriend tried to rouse him and a half dozen Thai police shined their flashlights in his face. A little later, we saw him in the same spot, but sitting upright on a stool put there for him, still quite unconscious but seemingly alright. Partygoers patted or rubbed his bald head as they walked by. And with that image in mind, we headed back to our taxi just as the sky lightened to be in bed by 7AM.

— The Professor and The Private Eye (tag-team!)

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on January 26, 2013 in dancing, Ko Phagnan, Thailand, Uncategorized

Bottle Beach

25 Jan

We are staying on Bottle Beach, at the north side of Ko Phagnan. It is idyllic and quiet. There is a road, but it’s rough, so generally the way in and out is by boat from the next cove over, which is much larger and an active fishing town. The Full Moon Party is on the opposite side of the island, so we are taking a big group taxi (B500/person, round trip).

The bungalow is 20 yards from the surf, and we bought a hammock to hang outside. I slept 11 hours. I’ll need the rest for tonight! The Private Eye woke up around 4AM to wander down the beach and hang out with some very late night people at Cheeky Bar (the beats summoned her) for an hour or so. Today is a day to swim, lie on the beach, nap in the hammock, and read.

— The Professor

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on January 25, 2013 in beaches, Ko Phagnan, Thailand, Uncategorized

A little street in Luang Prabang, and leaving Koh Tao

24 Jan

I should have written about this when I was actually in Luang Prabang, but we stayed on the most marvelous street for getting a slice of the local life. It was just across a major street from the morning produce and meat market, and appeared to be a prep kitchen for both that and for the outdoor cafeteria next to the night market.

Every morning when we woke up and ventured out, there was a new scene there. One morning, more than a dozen men were butchering chicken carcasses, guts in one giant tub, meat in another, cleaving away into piles of thigh and wing quarters. It was gruesome but sort of workmanlike and comfortably plain, and I didn’t see any actual killing. Another afternoon, a man had a live bamboo rat (it looks like an albino capybara baby, but uglier). He was dangling it on a string by one of its feet; the next day, the Elegant Frenchman told us he saw roast rat for sale in the market.

Other days, I saw masses of vegetables being chopped and steamed. And sometimes we would come back past the midnight tourist curfew, and see the alley crowded with card tables and cards, people eating and playing and smoking with happy late-night faces. then the professor and I would have to climb the fence back into our guesthouse out of their sight.

I will say here that the only time I ever got food poisoning in Luang Prabang was from a fruit juice in a relatively fancy bar. No problems with the street food ever. Unlike Koh Tao, where my stomach wasn’t right for much of our stay. Now that we are in Koh Phagnan, I am hoping that improves.

I will give a shout out to one restaurant in Koh Tao, though: Boomerang. When the lovely proprietress learned that I was feeling ill, she made me a special “boomerang stir fry” of vegetables with fried rice to settle my stomach. They may have been the most delicious vegetables I have ever eaten, which if you know me is saying a LOT. The fried rice was also amazing and so soothing. the professor also said his dish was perhaps the best Thai food he has ever eaten. We also liked Su Chili, though it wasn’t as astonishing.

We are presently in Ban Chalok Lam, a little fishing village on the north coast of Koh Phagnan, eating a little lunch before heading to Haad Khuat, aka Bottle Beach. We’ll be staying there for the next few days. I am imaging it must be very,very quiet there, because it is already small and drowsy here. Which sounds great!

– The Private Eye

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on January 24, 2013 in Laos, Luang Prabang, Uncategorized