More on Elephants

Wow.  After thirty hours in the limbo-land of planes and airports, I'm back in the land of drinkable tap water, 60 degree weather, and socks. It was hard to leave the other women from our group, at various points along the way--we'd become family for each other. Anne Mansfield and Kate Schuyler went on to Cambodia, Kristi went back to Bali for a month, Ruth stayed in Thailand.  Kate Munger, Anne Allen, Lynn, Carol (Tuffy), Stephanie and I got as far as SFO together. I staggered on to Portland, Kate went home to Inverness, the others stayed overnight in SF.

There is much still to report on our time in Thailand, and I'll keep adding pictures from earlier days.  We stayed three nights at the Elephant Nature Park, deep in the banana-teak forest, singing to elephants. We sang to the baby in the evening, and also to a few elephants in the big fields as we walked around, learning their names and stories. Some of the stories were very sad--Jokia, for instance, was blinded by her owner when she refused to work after a miscarriage--but there is such a sense of sanctuary about the life they live now.  Each elephant has a mahout, a man (most were about 20 years old, Burmese) who looks after her and makes sure she's where she is supposed to be. All the mahouts have been trained or re-trained in kind methods of managing their elephants.  Lek, the tiny, dust-covered "elephant whisperer" who founded the park, is an extraordinary presence. Each night that we sang to Faa Mai, Lek sat underneath her in the dirt and hugged the baby's tree-trunk leg and slapped the flies away.

When Faa Mai finally fell asleep (elephants lie down to sleep, about four hours a night), one of her aunties came and stood over her--to protect her from us, I think. We kept singing, another half hour.

Here we are singing in the pen:

Photo taken by Jerry Nelson of The Elephant's Voice

The pretty woman in the gold shirt in one of those pictures is a Chinese TV producer making a 7-10 minute film for CCTV about elephant conservation in Thailand. She's going to use footage of us singing to Faa Mai as the finale of her program, she said. We hope she will send us a link to it; she said she would.

There were 400 dogs at the park (most stayed in a compound across the road), rescued from the floods or the street, and all seemed to adore Lek.  They slept on the tables and wandered around. 

The park is not oriented to the comfort of people but to animals. The power went out every afternoon, the water stopped mid-shower, the mosquito netting over my bed was full of holes and bugs fell through it (no mosquitoes, though).  Being with the elephants, and meeting Lek, was worth it, of course. And the food was astonishing. Long fresh abundant Thai buffets every day, for the many volunteers, most of whom came for the day.  Fresh mango! Eggplant curry, pineapple curry, potato curry, stir-fried greens, several kinds of noodles, squid, noodle soups, mysterious gelatinous desserts.  I loved the fire-coal toaster (not enough electricity to run an electric toaster). My dad collects old toasters and they said I could buy a toaster like this--basically a big clay pot--for 70 Baht, about 2 dollars. I didn't have room in my suitcase. 

Here we are, just before we go into the pen to sing:

Photo taken by Jerry Nelson of The Elephant's Voice

On our last day at the camp we went over to the local village and visited their school. On Thursday mornings they have activities, many of them entrepreneurial. They gave foot massages and sold Thai iced tea and sat at short tables with us and giggled.  What a delight. These girls were nine and ten years old:

We sang to a class of kids and did some sign-language with them as well. All the Thai (and Balinese) kids wear uniforms to school. Shoes outside the classroom:

One more pic to finish this entry--my little buddies the Totoros, who had their picture taken wherever we went.  Here's their station on the airplane, on the seat back in front of me. 

Anon!

Elephant Nature Park

Tina feeding an elephant

After a full rich day in Chiang Mai (Hmong village in the mountains, gold Buddhist temple, last-ditch shopping at night market), we have been transported by mini-bus to the Elephant Nature Park, about 50 km from Chiang Mai, up into the teak forest.  There are about 31 female elephants, a couple of males, some babies, and 200 acres of sanctuary for them.  They are rescue elephants, mostly from the logging trade (logging was outlawed here in 1989 I think).  What a haven.  A river to swim in, a lot of day visitors who come to help feed them bananas, watermelon and pumpkin twice a day, big savannah to graze in--water buffalo grazing there as well--and quite a number of dogs who were rescued from the flood.

We are using the internet here on the open verandah in sight of many elephants. Wi-fi in the jungle!  Now that I know I can get pictures into the blog, for the first time in a couple of days, I am going to back up.  Here is a little girl on the alley in the Hmong village from yesterday:

And here are a few images from the very-high-up Buddhist temple, where we were blessed by a monk (who had been fooling with his phone when we got there), and several of us bought brass bells to hang around the stupa in memory of friends or relatives who had died.

Do Not Distrub!

It is now time to go swim in the river with the elephants--so have to sign off!  How can I keep from crying??

Love, and more anon--
Tina (with Anne's great pictures)

--now on Thursday, a moment to add a few more pics.  Yesterday was a deep, extraordinary highlight of the trip: singing baby elephant to sleep.  Faa Mai, 3 years old. She put her trunk in her mouth and closed her eyes and then lay down, after about 40 minutes of singing, in the dusty pen.

Faa Mai going to sleep

Kate Schuyler and Tina with an elephant in the field

Pooping elephant

Two good friends

Hi Ho from Singapore Airport- (photos added)

Dear friends--\

We made it out of Bali alive, with hugs for Made Surya at 0-dark-30 this morning from Candidasa under the night-windy coconut palms and brilliant stars, a fast drive through busy, KFC and McDonalds-infested Denpasar, and passage through the myriad gates and sentries and officials at the airport. Easy flight to Singapore and now have a couple of hours. Free internet here, and who knows how the wi-fi will be in our hotel in Chiang Mai (2 nights) and elephant camp (3 nights).   I got all kinds of great pics from Anne and we'll see how good our tech skills are for getting them downloaded onto this public computer in Singapore.

Not good enough, I guess.  We'll try from Chiang Mai. Wish us luck. What we have are many pictures from Tenganan, of the letter-writer and his wife, the pink rooster, the weaver, Surya dancing, and some from the water palaces.  We will send them anon. 

What a great group of women to travel with. Relaxed, friendly, all with fascinating lives that emerge in little flickers of light as we converse. We all love to sing.
More when we can.

Okay, updating here with a few pictures. Here is Surya dancing with an 'old man' mask he made.

Here he is showing us how he practiced getting to know the character of the mask:

The Totoros being brave once again, in an ogre's hand at one of the water palaces...

Blue flower at the Lotus Bungalow:

Finally-- a beautiful moment in the pool where one of us (it's me in this picture, but most of us got to do this) is held and and sung to in the water. Healing and heavenly. They sang to me the Hollow Bamboo song:  We are hollow bamboo; Open up your heart and let the light shine through.

One more day in Bali!

Think today; speak tomorrow.

To side with another makes war. To struggle with oneself makes peace.
--two Indonesian proverbs from Stephanie's dictionary.

We continue to have a wow time here.

It is our last full day in Bali. We leave tomorrow morning for Thailand and the elephants.  Today we go with Surya up to see two 'Water Palaces' (beautiful old houses with pools lived in by the former kings of this part of Bali) and tonight have a rijstaffel feast as a farewell dinner.  Surya doesn't go to Thailand with us but will stay to work on a book about traditional Balinese medicine.

 I love being at the beach and spent most of the first day we were here moving between the blue infinity pool and the ocean, both the same cool-warm friendly temperature that we never get in Oregon. It is hard to blog here, not much internet access!  I'm in the hotel office, using their office computer which is sticky with the humidity and salt air. Walking from our air-conditioned room into the open-air bathroom (so pretty, with frog statues wearing flowers and a shower underneath the stars) is like walking into a  steam bath. Hot hot hot and humid.  But who cares, since the ocean is here and everything has been blessed a thousand times and the stars are bright at night.  Here are some local bathers next door to the hotel.

Yesterday a snorkeling expedition out to an island where we hoped to swim with Manta Rays --!!!!--but they weren't there so we went to Crystal Bay and did ordinary magical bright-fish snorkeling. The 45 minute bright, bouncing boat ride over open sea on the way back was bliss. All of us had fun snorkeling; the divers from the hotel were very helpful, holding life-rings we could look through if we weren't comfortable in the deep water.  I swam around until I had swallowed my share of seawater and seen a hundred kinds of fish.

In the afternoon we went to Tenganan, a village near here that some call an 'aboriginal' village although I'm not sure that's quite the word. It's built and run in a very old style, older than the rest of Bali. Water-buffalo patties in the street but I didn't get to see a real buffalo.  Lots of cocks in woven cages, some dyed pink. What was powerful about this village for me was the quality of the craftsmanship.  They still do double-ikat weaving--one of three places in the world (Peru and Nepal being the others?) where this very very labor-intensive kind of weaving is done, with intricate dying of the warp and the weft beforehand. We visited a weaver and watched her work, in her house hung with fabulous, museum-quality fabric. We also visited a famous letterer, a man in his 80's with big white eyebrows, no glasses, a huge smile and easy laugh, who makes lontar books (look this up in Wikipedia, says Surya), in the old Balinese script, on palm leaves using a knife and candlenut soot.  The books are so elegant, and of course are rendering of sacred stories. We sang to him and he laughed with pleasure.  We were singing in Indonesian but he thought we were singing in English. His wife, silent, also in her eighties, was still a striking beauty.

Villagers also make the baskets and basketwork we see everywhere, and some of it for sale was the finest, tiniest basket weaving I've ever seen.  Almost everyone in Bali has a craft, evidently.  If you don't carve masks, you paint or make baskets or dye fabric or weave or carve stone or do lettering or something!!  but in this village the traditions of craftsmanship were beyond what I had seen before.

We had dinner by the sea at a Hindu ashram in Candidasa, with two little brown cows grazing on the lawn nearby. I petted the cows but they had food on their minds.  We came back to get a mask and dance presentation by Surya, where he turned into some other people: an old man and a storyteller, in masks he had carved.

Is that enough for one day? 

I don't have pictures yet from yesterday (and Anne didn't go snorkeling, as she didn't feel well) but here is one of the painter we visited on our way here.  It is time to give the computer back to the office staff and eat breakfast.  Love, love, Tina

Candi Dasa-Update w/ photos

It's been a couple of days since we posted--on Monday the bloggers were sick, and then yesterday we spent the day on a long expedition down to the ocean and to Manjangan Island to snorkel. It took all day and the internet was down when we got back.

Here I am at the Monkey Temple, en route to the snorkeling, with the two little Totoros who have been traveling around with me. At this temple I watched a monkey dart across the road, grab a bottle of water from a snack cart, run back, twist off the top, drink the water and throw the bottle away. He did not pay for it.
Kate Munger, our truly fearless leader, is behind me. Thanks to her, and to Made Surya, we do not feel like tourists here, but like guests--sometimes like visitors. It is their hope that we travel as "diplomats of the heart."  They model this, and their generosity and sweetness to all the people who help us--drivers, divemasters, staff at hotels--is joy, joy, joy. 


Another picture of the Totoros (who are having quite an adventure!):

Today we had another long drive from Munduk to Candi Dasa, stopping at a temple, a fruit and flower market, and the home of a well-known woman painter.  Anne bought one of her paintings. She is 82 years old, I believe.

We are now in the Very Glorious Super Peaceful Lotus Bungalow Hotel by the sea...the infinity pool looks like it flows right into the ocean. Tomorrow we will be relaxing and can post again.  It is lovely to be back in the sun. In Munduk we were living in a sponge--though it was wonderfully strange and beautiful as well.  All of our clothes are damp and some rather smelly. Here is one of the cottages we stayed in:

Our trip down to West Bali yesterday got us into the sun too.  Here's what the little boat looked like on our half hour trip to the island.

 This was our dive master, Wayan, with Ruth.  He had the world's most delighted smile. He referred to himself in the third person, one of the many lovely things about him.

Snorkeling was incredible--I loved swimming out into cobalt space as the island fell steeply away into darkness below, past the slices of light that were zebra fish, out into the silent, blue unknown. Wowzer.

Misc:
One third of Bali--most of western Bali--is a national park.

In Bali you can't build a building higher than a coconut palm.

There is a government commitment to plant one million trees here every year, and each Friday all the government officials go out and plant trees.

There are only four first names on Bali--firstborn is Wayan, then Made, Ketut, and Nyoman. Same names for both girls and boys. If you have more than four kids, you start over. So, you immediately know someone's birth order when you meet them. We call our guide Surya, to distinguish him from the thousands of other people named Made. 

It's time to go to bed. I'll be back tomorrow. My dear, dear longtime friend Fred passed away yesterday, back in Portland, and I've been singing for him in my heart all day.

In the Clove Forest

We've moved to Munduk, a small town in N. Bali, to Puri Lumbung, which has bungalows and organic gardens and an Ayurvedic spa and a place to watch the sunset...it's more remote, quiet, jungly and high than our place in Ubud.

One last picture from Ubud--Anne saw kids throwing sticks at a hornet's nest and then running away when the hornets woke up. The hornets were huge, an inch long at least!

We had a long winding drive up yesterday. It was not that far but it took about five hours, with a stop at a big, ancient temple in Mengwi...

 ...and lunch at a restaurant on the way--rain blowing in the window on us. But the view out the restaurant window was mind-blowing: rice-green terraces and bungalows far below, with the fog and rain over all.  

Last evening the rain broke, briefly, as we were singing out on the stone steps, and a grand sunset took over the sky for most of an hour. Hard to catch with a camera, but Anne did catch us doing a dance by the sunset light. We could see out over the Java Strait to the volcanoes of Java, and it was just magical watching the sky change from subtle to glorious, getting wilder and more enthusiastically red and gold until Venus came out with her steady silver eye and we finished singing. The Balinese massage therapist sang a song about a cat and a fat mouse which he promises to teach us tonight.

Today, Mother's Day! Currently it's thundering and raining, middle of the afternoon. We had a long walk this morning, through streams and along a tiny canal, picking up trash all the way. We were headed for a waterfall, through the clove and vanilla forest.  Everything grows here, it is so warm, wet and alive.  Two kinds of coffee --this is the place where the coffee that Made Surya calls Weasel Coffee grows (the coffee that civet cats eat and poop out, the most expensive coffee in the world. Also called Lowak.). Nutmeg, cocoa, guava, giant bamboo, mangosteen, banana, pineapple: all growing by the side of the slippery path. It doesn't look like US of A farming. It looks like the Goddess is spilling plants out of her hands. A few of us weren't wet enough with sweat and mist and got in the pool under the tremendous power of the falls.  I did. It was such a powerful experience, standing together under the thundering water. It washed away all the effort of the hike. Joy. Could not stop laughing. Kate Schuyler says: it was so refreshing to be out in the forest, and Anne says it reminded her of hiking in the Columbia Gorge.  The water in the falls was warmer than Oregon falls water, though.

Some of us (not me)  went to a lesson in making bamboo gamelan this afternoon.  We hear gamelan all the time and the teacher will be performing this evening. 

We get dinner every night at this place, ordered for us by Surya and manifested by magicians in the kitchen.  Last night's dinner was grilled fresh tuna, shallot and chili sauce, corn fritters, rice of course, avocado salad on banana-leaf plates, peanut sauce, kidney bean soup (better than it sounds), and then fancy little rice-pandanus coconut balls with palm syrup inside, for dessert. Good thing we went hiking today. 

Here is Kristi in her natural umbrella, from our hike this morning.  Tomorrow is a free day for us.  Who knows what will happen?  Blessings coming your way from the green world.

Last Magic Day in Ubud

In my morning journals I've been describing Bali as a green-winged fairy--some kind of goddess with a huge heart and gossamer green wings. And here is a photo that Anne took today of a dragonfly:

What to say about this last marvelous day in Ubud?  Half the group went on a nature walk through the rice paddies to look at birds, butterflies, insects, plants, lizards and the agricultural life of the people. Anne went on the nature walk.  Some pictures from that 3 and a half hour adventure: a woman in her temple sarong, doing a blessing in the rice field...

A hut in the rice paddy:

A red hat in the middle of the rice field:

I'll have to write about the visit to the healer another night. It is worth an entire blog entry, more than we have time for tonight.  It was a remarkable event for everyone. A remarkable man, Cakordirai (means 'respected elder'), and each of us has a story to tell.  The healer in Eat, Pray, Love lives in the same area, and the status of healers in Bali has gone way up since that story came out.

An aside: it's about 8:30 at night here, warm with crickets and frogs singing, and on the hotel sound system they are playing Christmas carols--Jingle Bells and Silent Night--played by a gamelan orchestra. Yikes!

After the walk, the healings, a swim or lunch or another walk through the monkey forest, most of us

 went back to Senang Hati, the marvelous village/family/school for the disabled that the Threshold Choir has a deep relationship with. We sang with them again, made a donation, bought a few more handicrafts and art pieces from their gallery, cried, kissed, hugged, and marveled at their spirit.

Anne took a couple more pictures that illustrate just how beautiful everything is here, and how every house, every family compound, has the same layout that includes a threshold with greeters from mythology that welcome visitors and guard the door against bad spirits. 



 So...tomorrow we pack up and move to a new part of Bali.  We'll be a few days in the one-water-buffalo town of Munduk. Along the way we're going to stop at a flower and fruit market and another temple.  Munduk is up higher, closer to the volcano.  We'll keep you posted. This hotel, Saren Indah, off on the outskirts of Ubud, has been so gracious and full of smiling faces. Here is the link to the hotel website: http://www.sarenhotel.com/

Anne and Tina signing off. Thank goodness they've turned off the Christmas carols.