India!

Hello from New Delhi! It's so good to be back in India. Love it here.

I've done a lot since the last time. I spent my last few days in Bali hanging out in Ubud eating organic food, drinking juice, playing guitar, reading. A couple nights I went to nearby villages to see Indonesian dance and music performances. The first one had am orchestra of gamelans and drums with a group of dancers in front of a temple. There were a couple rows of plastic chairs set up for us tourists to watch and after a while it seemed like the whole village was there standing behind us. The other one I went to featured bamboo gamelans which sounded so nice. The costumes and set up were beautiful though the dances were pretty intense.

On my last day in Bali I went to see Ketut Liyer (a Balinese medicine man) and sat with him on his porch as he told me I would live to be 100 and that I am very very lucky. He was a happy old man missing most of his teeth and he had a bunch of tourists there coming to visit him and i had to wait about an hour to see him. He delivered all good news however he seemed to be telling everyone the same thing and asked for quite a bit of money as a donation (230,000 rupiahs). Though he may have just been saying whatever he was a nice presence to be around, and taught me a meditation to open my heart. I spent the rest of the day preparing for India and that night a storm came in (many storms came through during my time there but they pass quickly) so i just hung out at Teba House and my my 19 year old mohawked buddy Gede (pronouned like Good Day as in G'day mate) who works there joined me on my balcony with his guitar and we played music together through thunder and lightening. He barely speaks english but I was able to teach him Three Little Birds and I'm Yours. He played me some songs he wrote too and it was so great even though neither of us has a decent sounding guitar. His refused to stay in tune and mine only has five strings.

The guitar i brought was the one I bought in India last year and on my way to Bali the tuning peg to my D string broke off so i couldn't tune the string and i couldnt find anywhere to fix it. So I took off the string which makes it sound so incomplete and the guitar itself is really cheap and i dont think it would have lasted the rest of the trip. So I decided to leave it in Bali. I also decided to completely change the way I'm traveling and bought a backpackers type pack. I mailed back a 5 kg box to myself and brought to india only what I coud carry on my back. I left my little suitase (the one that took me around Europe, Southern India, Alaska, Oregon, and Hawaii) and a bunch of clothes at Teba House. Incuding my favorite long tye dye skirt but it was jsut too much material to mit in my backpack. It was a bit sad to let these things go but the hardest was handing over my guitar to young Ketut right before leaving. He was shocked and so grateful when I told him he could have it and promised he would practice what i taught him.

So I left Bali with much less than i came with but felt much more prepared for India and a little more liberated in movement. I also left with mixed feelings about Bali. While I did enjoy it there, I think the expectations I tried not to have were a little to high. It turned out to be too commercial for me and much more hassle than necessary. Towards the end travel weariness started setting in and the constant appraoch of people asking if you want transport or a massage or whatever got really annoying. Just walking down the street you get asked the same thing by everyone. There is even less hassle here in India. I also felt at times that the Balinese are selling out their culture to tourism and it's hard after a while to tell what is genuine and what is not. I did see beauty out in the countryside and mountains where I like to think their culture is being preserved without a desperate dependance on tourist's money. But then again one thing I do beleive is that you should make a living on what you love...but i'm still conflicted about it all. Bali was beautiful though. But I was glad to move on.

And move on I did to SINGAPORE! I LOOOOOOOOOOOVED it there. I spent 2 nights there because it was cheaper than flying direct to India. So glad i did. In all my travels it is one of my favorite cities I have ever visited. It was a beautiful, safe, clean, efficient, and friendly. I'll write about my 2 enjoyable days there later. I am hungry for some Indian food now. Yum.