Dave Hulsman | 6th January 2011
BEFORE we start, let's get a few things straight. I'm no food connoisseur.
I'm no Gordon Ramsay, I'm no MasterChef and I'm certainly not a pretentious fine diner who will only eat if the food sits proudly in the centre of an oversized plate.
But I do like a good feed and often base my travel plans around this daily activity. I reckon I've got a fair understanding of what constitutes a good meal.
But the older I get, the closer I drift towards favouring a meal of better quality.
Fortunately, one of my favourite holiday destinations, Bali, has mirrored my gastronomic journey.
No, I'm not kidding. Just a few kilometres up the road from Kuta, in Seminyak, are travellers who are happy to forgo the economical advantages for a more comfortable holiday.
In Seminyak, the dining is centred on Jalan Laksmana, which is often referred to as Eat Street.
At first glance, it's really not a lot different to most of Bali's other streets: it's not neat, the footpath is uneven, the ever-present scooters still line the street and you could argue it still has that feel of seediness so familiar to a lot of other Asian tourist destinations.
However, stepping into the middle and high-end restaurants is like falling into a parallel universe.
They have an exquisite ambience that we never see here. Mass arrangements of fresh frangipanis and tuberoses, sweet incense, fairy- lights in the trees, tea lights flickering, clouds of fine table linen and overcloths, tinkling water features and cool cocktail tunes.
The dining options lining this street were certainly not what I was used to on my previous Bali trips.
It was goodbye to nasi goreng and hello to black truffle risotto, beef rendang envelopes and soft-shell crab.
On our first night, we chose the highly regarded Chandi (www.chandibali.com).
We waltzed in about 7pm and assumed we'd have the pick of the best tables.
However, we then became aware reservations were the norm and had to choose the best spot out of the last two tables available.
We emerged 90 minutes later with a belly full of spicy tenderloin lettuce cups, black pepper crab dumplings with sugar snap peas in a soy butter cardamom vinaigrette, lemongrass-steamed red snapper, and grilled, sliced tenderloin with herbed mashed potatoes and sweet soy galangal broth.
Satisfied. Surprised.
For the next week, we sampled everything from duck breast with caramelised nuts, crispy pastillas, spinach, braising turnip and orange sauce (The Living Room) to homemade Bircher muesli (Bali Bakery); pasta dishes at La Trattoria and club sandwiches and fish and chips at Gado Gado, which is undergoing a major renovation). But for every restaurant we tried, there were five others we didn't get a chance to try.
The pick was undoubtedly The Living Room restaurant because of its garden setting and quiet ambience.
Dave Hulsman is from Ucango Travel and Cruise Centre.
http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/story/2011/01/06/wined-and-dined-in-bali/
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
U.N. group warns of potential 'food price shock'
Network News
X Profile
LONDON - The Food and Agricultural Organization said Wednesday that the world faces a "food price shock" after the agency's benchmark index of farm commodities prices shot up last month, exceeding the levels of the 2007-08 food crisis.
The warning from the U.N. body comes as inflation is becoming an increasing economic and political challenge in developing countries, including China and India, and is starting to emerge as a potential problem in developed nations.
Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the FAO in Rome, said that the increase was "alarming" but that the situation was not yet a crisis similar to 2007-08, when food riots affected more than 30 poor countries, including Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt.
"The world faces a food price shock," he said, adding that a prolonged spike could lead to a food crisis.
The FAO said that its food price index - a basket tracking the wholesale cost of commodities such as wheat, corn, rice, vegetable oils, dairy products, sugar and meat - jumped to 214.7 points, exceeding the peak of 213.5 set in June 2008.
Abbassian said that agricultural commodities prices would probably rise further. "It will be foolish to assume this is the peak," he said.
But the FAO and food aid agencies noted the relatively stable prices for rice, one of the two most important agricultural commodities for global food security.
But the cost of wheat, the other critical staple, is rising quickly after poor harvests last year in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Corn, meat and poultry prices are also increasing.
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Agricultural officials and traders are worried that agricultural commodities prices could rise further as the weather phenomenon la Nina intensifies. The pattern usually brings dryness to key growing areas of the United States, Argentina and Brazil.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said that the current la Nina system would last at least three more months.
Neil Plummer, a climatologist for the bureau in Melbourne, said that the latest phenomenon looked set to be the most powerful since the mid-1970s, when droughts ravaged crops and pushed the world into the most extreme food crisis since World War II.
- Financial Times
X Profile
LONDON - The Food and Agricultural Organization said Wednesday that the world faces a "food price shock" after the agency's benchmark index of farm commodities prices shot up last month, exceeding the levels of the 2007-08 food crisis.
The warning from the U.N. body comes as inflation is becoming an increasing economic and political challenge in developing countries, including China and India, and is starting to emerge as a potential problem in developed nations.
Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the FAO in Rome, said that the increase was "alarming" but that the situation was not yet a crisis similar to 2007-08, when food riots affected more than 30 poor countries, including Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt.
"The world faces a food price shock," he said, adding that a prolonged spike could lead to a food crisis.
The FAO said that its food price index - a basket tracking the wholesale cost of commodities such as wheat, corn, rice, vegetable oils, dairy products, sugar and meat - jumped to 214.7 points, exceeding the peak of 213.5 set in June 2008.
Abbassian said that agricultural commodities prices would probably rise further. "It will be foolish to assume this is the peak," he said.
But the FAO and food aid agencies noted the relatively stable prices for rice, one of the two most important agricultural commodities for global food security.
But the cost of wheat, the other critical staple, is rising quickly after poor harvests last year in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Corn, meat and poultry prices are also increasing.
ad_icon
Click here!
Agricultural officials and traders are worried that agricultural commodities prices could rise further as the weather phenomenon la Nina intensifies. The pattern usually brings dryness to key growing areas of the United States, Argentina and Brazil.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said that the current la Nina system would last at least three more months.
Neil Plummer, a climatologist for the bureau in Melbourne, said that the latest phenomenon looked set to be the most powerful since the mid-1970s, when droughts ravaged crops and pushed the world into the most extreme food crisis since World War II.
- Financial Times
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Letter: New Year’s Eve in Bali
| Wed, 01/05/2011 9:24 AM | readers forum
A
For many of the residents in Bali the uncontrolled and indiscriminate use of fireworks was extremely disturbing. The noise started some two weeks before New Year’s and by the time they had their crescendo on New Year’s Eve it was not only pretty fireworks but also bamboo cannon and explosives that sounded across the south of Bali.
Many residents spoke of feeling like they were in a “war zone”. Those of us who lived through the Bali bombing found it traumatic. Balinese and Western children and babies were fretful and fearful. Pets took refuge. I heard cows crying behind my house. I cannot imagine the money spent by people on the fireworks not to mention the injuries. I saw a girl standing in shock after a bottle rocket backfired in her hands while her friends laughed.
The 14 injuries reported by Sanglah hospital (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 3) is an underestimate. The pollution created was also of concern not to mention the fire risk. I heard of two houses that burned down on New Year’s Eve.
The Bali Post reported on Jan 3 that flights were unable to land and several flights were forced to circle until the fireworks subsided. I am not suggesting there not be fireworks. I am however suggesting that there be control. The sale of fireworks to the general public and minors needs to be controlled. The time and place where fireworks are allowed to be used needs to be controlled.
My suggestion would be to set up public fireworks displays in each district controlled by the authorities with the fireworks in the hands of those who know what they are doing.
That way, every one could enjoy by choice and not feel as if they are in a war zone.
Michele
Bali
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/01/05/letter-new-year%E2%80%99s-eve-bali.html
| Wed, 01/05/2011 9:24 AM | readers forum
A
For many of the residents in Bali the uncontrolled and indiscriminate use of fireworks was extremely disturbing. The noise started some two weeks before New Year’s and by the time they had their crescendo on New Year’s Eve it was not only pretty fireworks but also bamboo cannon and explosives that sounded across the south of Bali.
Many residents spoke of feeling like they were in a “war zone”. Those of us who lived through the Bali bombing found it traumatic. Balinese and Western children and babies were fretful and fearful. Pets took refuge. I heard cows crying behind my house. I cannot imagine the money spent by people on the fireworks not to mention the injuries. I saw a girl standing in shock after a bottle rocket backfired in her hands while her friends laughed.
The 14 injuries reported by Sanglah hospital (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 3) is an underestimate. The pollution created was also of concern not to mention the fire risk. I heard of two houses that burned down on New Year’s Eve.
The Bali Post reported on Jan 3 that flights were unable to land and several flights were forced to circle until the fireworks subsided. I am not suggesting there not be fireworks. I am however suggesting that there be control. The sale of fireworks to the general public and minors needs to be controlled. The time and place where fireworks are allowed to be used needs to be controlled.
My suggestion would be to set up public fireworks displays in each district controlled by the authorities with the fireworks in the hands of those who know what they are doing.
That way, every one could enjoy by choice and not feel as if they are in a war zone.
Michele
Bali
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/01/05/letter-new-year%E2%80%99s-eve-bali.html
Govt to raise cigarette excise up to 10 percent
Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sun, 11/28/2010 8:30 AM | Business
The government has said it had planned to raise a cigarette excise by up to ten percent next year.
"The new excise will be imposed by January 2011. The excise adjustment is made based on the inflation rate estimate in 2011," Finance Ministry’s Customs and Excise director general, Thomas Sugijata said on Saturday.
According to Thomas, the government targets to net more than Rp 62.7 trillion (US$ 6.96 billion) from excise in 2011, higher than Rp 60.7 trillion as proposed in the 2011 state budget.
"The new cigarette excise will help us raise additional revenue of Rp 2 trillion," he said.
The government has said it had planned to raise a cigarette excise by up to ten percent next year.
"The new excise will be imposed by January 2011. The excise adjustment is made based on the inflation rate estimate in 2011," Finance Ministry’s Customs and Excise director general, Thomas Sugijata said on Saturday.
According to Thomas, the government targets to net more than Rp 62.7 trillion (US$ 6.96 billion) from excise in 2011, higher than Rp 60.7 trillion as proposed in the 2011 state budget.
"The new cigarette excise will help us raise additional revenue of Rp 2 trillion," he said.
Denpasar allocates Rp 1.7b to renovate houses
The Jakarta Post | Mon, 01/03/2011 11:22 AM | Bali
DENPASAR: The city administration says it will allocate Rp. 1.7 billion (US$188,700) in 2011 to finance the renovation of homes owned by residents living in poverty.
“We will prioritize houses which do not meet safety, health and living standards. The administration will cooperate with village chiefs and hamlet heads in identifying and registering such houses,” Denpasar Housing Agency head Kadek Kesuma Diputra said.
The administration said it would provide Rp 20 million to individual homeowners to purchase materials and hire laborers for renovations, up from Rp 10 million provided under a similar program in 2010.
“We have to take into consideration the increase in material prices and laborers’ wages,” Diputra said.
The city administration said it planned to renovate 80 houses with a budget of Rp. 1.7 billion in 2011, down from 190 houses in 2010.
The renovation program was initiated by Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika.
“Healthy people are more productive and better able to pursue their professional work, with a good probability of improving their economic condition. How can people stay healthy when they have to live and sleep in unhealthy homes?” he said. — JP
DENPASAR: The city administration says it will allocate Rp. 1.7 billion (US$188,700) in 2011 to finance the renovation of homes owned by residents living in poverty.
“We will prioritize houses which do not meet safety, health and living standards. The administration will cooperate with village chiefs and hamlet heads in identifying and registering such houses,” Denpasar Housing Agency head Kadek Kesuma Diputra said.
The administration said it would provide Rp 20 million to individual homeowners to purchase materials and hire laborers for renovations, up from Rp 10 million provided under a similar program in 2010.
“We have to take into consideration the increase in material prices and laborers’ wages,” Diputra said.
The city administration said it planned to renovate 80 houses with a budget of Rp. 1.7 billion in 2011, down from 190 houses in 2010.
The renovation program was initiated by Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika.
“Healthy people are more productive and better able to pursue their professional work, with a good probability of improving their economic condition. How can people stay healthy when they have to live and sleep in unhealthy homes?” he said. — JP
Noisy, wet New Year in Bali
Noisy, wet New Year in Bali
The Jakarta Post, Denpasar | Mon, 01/03/2011 11:22 AM | Bali
Heavy rain and thunder on New Year’s Eve failed to stop Denpasar residents from celebrating the festivities by gathering with their families and lighting firecrackers.
The cracking sounds were heard incessantly across the city as children and adults enjoyed the mood.
“We joined the New Year euphoria with these few firecrackers we bought, and that’s what our neighbors did as well,” said Ketut Rika from Tabanan, who gathered with her family in the Sanglah area.
The sound of firecrackers stopped for a while as a downpour showered the capital around 9 p.m., but resumed as soon as the rain ceased and proceeded until dawn.
Culinary enthusiasts flocked to dozens of restaurants along Jl. Teuku Umar, one of the famed food centers in the downtown area.
“Having dinner together has been our routine agenda every New Year eve. Either we cook at home or go out to a restaurant,” mother of two Ni Wayan Herawati said while buying cakes at a bakery.
The festive New Year mood filled the air beginning Friday morning, especially at the Denpasar Festival, held in at the heart of the city.
Throngs of residents visited every booth presented at the festival while waiting for a cultural parade in the afternoon during the “Bid 2010’s Sun Farewell” event.
“This event successfully attracted residents, despite the poor weather. They were very enthusiastic to see the sun’s farewell ritual,” said festival steering committee member IGN Eddy Mulya.
Unlike previous festivals, this year saw a greater variety of traditional dance performances from all over the archipelago, including the Mandau dance from Kalimantan, Piring from Sumatra and Ronggeng from Betawi.
“We presented more traditional dances to attract visitors and appreciate the nation’s culture,” Eddy said.
As the cultural parade ended, a string of shows were presented to entertain visitors, ranging from Calon Arang, leather puppet performance and live music that lasted until the final seconds of 2010.
Some residents were stunned, and some laughed while observing photographs depicting memories of the capital in a photo exhibition held by the Denpasar Photographers Community in one booth at the festival.
Around 15 photos were displayed in frames in the “Beauty of Denpasar” exhibition, most of which were about the city’s cultures and natural beauty.
Among the cultural theme photos was one displaying the Ogoh-ogoh festival held on the Hindu’s Day of Silence, as well as another depicting the annual Omed-omedan ritual.
Another photo displayed an offerings vendor resting against the wall of an old building in the heritage area of Jl. Gajah Mada. The photo was framed in a tin and equipped with a light bulb.
The Lingkar and Lubang Jarum communities exhibited their photos in a unique way, including black and white pictures hung like laundry.
Dozens of other photos were inserted in plastic bags filled with water, resembling ornamental fish usually sold in plastics, giving the photos a dome-shaped effect.
The photographers recorded the city’s daily hustle and bustle, such as vendors in traditional markets and children playing on public fields.
Bali police chief Insp. Gen. Hadiatmoko stated that the New Year’s Eve celebration in Bali went smoothly with only minor security disturbances. “Several crimes indeed took place, yet the number of crimes was minuscule compared to the nearly four million inhabitants of the island. Generally speaking, we had a very safe and peaceful New Year’s Eve celebration,” he said Sunday after giving a report through a teleconference facility to the Indonesia National Police chief.
Bali Police recorded 19 cases of criminal activity on the night of the celebration, leaving eight people dead and 11 severely injured.
The Jakarta Post, Denpasar | Mon, 01/03/2011 11:22 AM | Bali
Heavy rain and thunder on New Year’s Eve failed to stop Denpasar residents from celebrating the festivities by gathering with their families and lighting firecrackers.
The cracking sounds were heard incessantly across the city as children and adults enjoyed the mood.
“We joined the New Year euphoria with these few firecrackers we bought, and that’s what our neighbors did as well,” said Ketut Rika from Tabanan, who gathered with her family in the Sanglah area.
The sound of firecrackers stopped for a while as a downpour showered the capital around 9 p.m., but resumed as soon as the rain ceased and proceeded until dawn.
Culinary enthusiasts flocked to dozens of restaurants along Jl. Teuku Umar, one of the famed food centers in the downtown area.
“Having dinner together has been our routine agenda every New Year eve. Either we cook at home or go out to a restaurant,” mother of two Ni Wayan Herawati said while buying cakes at a bakery.
The festive New Year mood filled the air beginning Friday morning, especially at the Denpasar Festival, held in at the heart of the city.
Throngs of residents visited every booth presented at the festival while waiting for a cultural parade in the afternoon during the “Bid 2010’s Sun Farewell” event.
“This event successfully attracted residents, despite the poor weather. They were very enthusiastic to see the sun’s farewell ritual,” said festival steering committee member IGN Eddy Mulya.
Unlike previous festivals, this year saw a greater variety of traditional dance performances from all over the archipelago, including the Mandau dance from Kalimantan, Piring from Sumatra and Ronggeng from Betawi.
“We presented more traditional dances to attract visitors and appreciate the nation’s culture,” Eddy said.
As the cultural parade ended, a string of shows were presented to entertain visitors, ranging from Calon Arang, leather puppet performance and live music that lasted until the final seconds of 2010.
Some residents were stunned, and some laughed while observing photographs depicting memories of the capital in a photo exhibition held by the Denpasar Photographers Community in one booth at the festival.
Around 15 photos were displayed in frames in the “Beauty of Denpasar” exhibition, most of which were about the city’s cultures and natural beauty.
Among the cultural theme photos was one displaying the Ogoh-ogoh festival held on the Hindu’s Day of Silence, as well as another depicting the annual Omed-omedan ritual.
Another photo displayed an offerings vendor resting against the wall of an old building in the heritage area of Jl. Gajah Mada. The photo was framed in a tin and equipped with a light bulb.
The Lingkar and Lubang Jarum communities exhibited their photos in a unique way, including black and white pictures hung like laundry.
Dozens of other photos were inserted in plastic bags filled with water, resembling ornamental fish usually sold in plastics, giving the photos a dome-shaped effect.
The photographers recorded the city’s daily hustle and bustle, such as vendors in traditional markets and children playing on public fields.
Bali police chief Insp. Gen. Hadiatmoko stated that the New Year’s Eve celebration in Bali went smoothly with only minor security disturbances. “Several crimes indeed took place, yet the number of crimes was minuscule compared to the nearly four million inhabitants of the island. Generally speaking, we had a very safe and peaceful New Year’s Eve celebration,” he said Sunday after giving a report through a teleconference facility to the Indonesia National Police chief.
Bali Police recorded 19 cases of criminal activity on the night of the celebration, leaving eight people dead and 11 severely injured.
Monday, January 3, 2011
In the footsteps of Julia Roberts
In the footsteps of Julia Roberts
"SO you come to Bali for the loving and the eating and the praying, OK?" asks my driver, a savvy young Balinese called Ikomang, as we prepare to set off for our daytrip into the mountains.
So, here it is, the conversation I've been dreading. I try to head it off with a who-me-absolutely-no-idea-what-you're-talking-about-mister-you-must-be-on-crack eyebrow-raise. I fail. Well, that is a lot to ask from an eyebrow.
"The praying and the loving and the eating!" he persists. "You not see the movie?!"
Grudgingly, I concede I have seen the movie Eat Pray Love. Oh, all right, and I've read the book. But, I assure him, I'm not here because of that. It didn't even cross my mind.
"So many people come to Bali now to be having the eating and the praying and the loving," persists Ikomang. "Having the meditating, having the yoga, having the seck . . ."
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Related Coverage
* Kangaroo Island of plenty Adelaide Now, 24 Dec 2010
* Kerry Armstrong discovers the delights of Byron Bay Adelaide Now, 4 Dec 2010
* Natural remedies for hangovers Herald Sun, 27 Nov 2010
* Stretching in scenic surrounds Adelaide Now, 20 Nov 2010
* Beckhams 'become one' with yoga Herald Sun, 19 Nov 2010
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Err, the seck?
"You know the seck. The boom-boom." Ah.
"So, you want to go where Julia Roberts go?"
I swear it, I wasn't thinking about Eat Pray Love when my friend Katie suggested we go to Bali in October and do a retreat together. It didn't even enter my mind.
Which, in retrospect, is baffling. After all, along with pretty much every other Western female 30-something with an even vague interest in her sacral chakra, I've read the (seven million copy-selling) book and seen the (Julia Roberts-starring, more than $50 million-grossing) movie version. Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of how she fled her marriage and roamed for a year - to eat pasta in Italy, pray in India and, as it turned out, find new love in Indonesia - long ago blossomed (some may say metastasised) into a bona fide pop-cultural phenomenon.
If you haven't read it, someone you know almost certainly has. Probably the one sitting cross-legged in the corner right now saying "Om".
If Italy is the stomach of EPL and India its soul, its heart is Bali, the beautiful Indonesian island where Gilbert concludes her pilgrimage and regains the emotional equilibrium upset by her ugly divorce.
Specifically, she winds up in Ubud, the fantastically lush, absurdly scenic hill town an hour or two's drive from Denpasar's international airport. As a result, Ubud has become metaphysical central for the hordes of EPL fans flocking to Bali.
And flock they have. In the first three months of 2006, the year the book came out, 237,260 foreign tourists visited the island, according to Time.com. In the first three months of last year there were 551,186 - mostly women aged between 35 and 65 - and visitor numbers are on track to hit a record 2.5 million for the year, with EPL given credit for the boom.
There are indications even the hospitable Balinese are wearying of their popularity, with reports of restaurant signs exhorting patrons to "eat pay leave".
For the most part, though, enterprising locals have embraced the opportunity, with EPL travel packages allowing soul-searchers to tick off a checklist of spiritual experiences (massages, meditation sessions, palm readings) as assiduously as they do the tourist spots (monkey forest, hot springs, gamelan orchestra).
However, as it happened, when Katie sent me the details of the (let's call it) Spirit of Saraswati Retreat, five days and six nights of yoga, meditation and inner-self work with a group of about a dozen women, EPL didn't, really did not, even cross my mind. Which is just as well or else I might not have gone.
There can be a certain snobbishness among retreaters, you see, and the more original and rigorous the experience the greater the bragging rights. Given that the essence of any kind of retreat is to seek truth, deeper consciousness and enlightenment, and generally become a better being, you may not imagine anyone being able to turn it into a competition.
But you would be wrong because human beings can make anything, anything at all, into a competition. Even hotdog eating. Even growing their hair long. Even childbirth.
So as much as mention you're about to go on a retreat and someone is bound to start telling you all about this amaaazing meditation wall cavity they were once immured in where no one was allowed to speak, make eye contact or register a measurable pulse for 10 days, after which half the group achieved nirvana and the rest probably got carted off to a mental hospital.
My favourite war story involved a highly charged weekend group retreat during which we felt our auras, identified our inner animal (I would like to report mine was a lioness but, no, it was a monkey) and spent a few traumatic and cathartic hours in a sweat lodge from which we eventually crawled on our hands and knees and staggered naked, exhilarated and most likely dangerously dehydrated in the moonlight down a frost-covered hill somewhere near, I think, Murwillumbah in NSW.
Obviously, I knew nothing was going to top that for fun, but I was perfectly willing to spend a week in a tropical paradise to try. I just didn't want anyone thinking I was only doing it because of Eat bloody Pray Love.
IT is my third full day in Bali and Ikomang is driving Katie and me to the hot springs, the volcanoes and the Kintamani temples. Later in the week we have booked him to take us to Tampak Siring, the holy spring water temple.
Yep, all of the EPL locales. As much as I try to avoid it, it's impossible not to wind up following in Gilbert's footsteps, or at least those of Roberts, who shot the movie's Ubud scenes on location last year.
If you want to go the whole hog, it's apparently even possible to visit the real people in the book and eat a "vitamin lunch" made by healer Wayan and have a palm reading from ancient medicine man Ketut.
A woman in my group tries to get a consultation with Ketut but he's busy every day.
However, my friend Lisa, who happens to be doing a retreat just up the road from my retreat, does get in to see another, equally revered medicine man, known colloquially as the Stick Man, who feels her skull, pokes the pads of her toes with a Y-shaped twig and diagnoses stress in her solar plexus.
"Follow your bliss," he tells her.
As Lisa tells me this story over dinner I realise I am feeling what is arguably one of the most ignoble and unenlightened emotions possible: retreat envy.
Whereas her retreat is pretty strict, with hours of yoga and lectures in Ayurvedic philosophy and Vedic astrology, mine is turning out to be undeniably soft, with yoga for inflexible people, meditation for people with short attention spans and inner-self work for people who think a clear spirit is Tanqueray No 10.
Plus lots of time off for massages and visits to tourist spots. On hers, you get in trouble if you're late. On mine, you get to cut out early to go to your 2 1/2-hour chakra dhara massage. This time, it is obvious, I will have no retreat war stories to tell.
Yet, despite my considerable ego and resistance, Bali and the retreat are working their magic. Ubud is a sensory feast. It sounds like roosters, feels like a warm sponge bath, tastes like smoke, looks like the Garden of Eden and smells like Nag Champa.
At the water temple, Ikomang shows us how to rinse our hands in incense before we swim in the holy spring and drink from the row of gushing spigots, carefully avoiding those reserved for cremation water.
The retreat leaders are cherry-picking religious rituals and cultural practices from all over the shop: a bit of goddess worship here, a dash of Bali's Hindu Buddhism there, a sprinkle of Mayan flavour on top.
I adore this, being in complete agreement with Gilbert when she writes: "Take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and keep moving toward the light."
We use cards to try to find different ways into our unconscious and mine say, in order, one a day: "Spend some time in silence." "Be still." "Find your centre." "Heal." "Connect." "Go outside."
I hear what the universe is trying to tell me: calm down and get over yourself, girlfriend.
Every day we meditate on one of the seven chakras and their associated colours and characteristics: basal (red; rootedness), sacral (orange; sensuality), solar plexus (yellow; strength), heart (green or pink; the emotions), throat (blue; expressiveness), third eye (indigo; inner wisdom), crown (violet; spirituality).
Once, semi-hypnotised during an evening meditation by tiredness and a wavering candle, I have a fantastical optical illusion that the tiled floor is billowing up and down on my breath. My cynicism sloughs off me like dead, unwanted skin.
Early each morning we do yoga in a sun-spilled, marble-floored space above a cooking school, and aromas blend with asanas as we breathe our way through the gentle Swara Cycle, led by an exotic Gypsy yogini called Cara.
"Every breath is a fresh start," she says. "Every breath is a new beginning."
Each day also, held in the safe, secret space of the women's circle, there are confessions, admissions, revelations and transformations. Some of them mine. But I can't talk about any of that here. What happens on retreat, stays on retreat. At least until I write my own book.
"SO you come to Bali for the loving and the eating and the praying, OK?" asks my driver, a savvy young Balinese called Ikomang, as we prepare to set off for our daytrip into the mountains.
So, here it is, the conversation I've been dreading. I try to head it off with a who-me-absolutely-no-idea-what-you're-talking-about-mister-you-must-be-on-crack eyebrow-raise. I fail. Well, that is a lot to ask from an eyebrow.
"The praying and the loving and the eating!" he persists. "You not see the movie?!"
Grudgingly, I concede I have seen the movie Eat Pray Love. Oh, all right, and I've read the book. But, I assure him, I'm not here because of that. It didn't even cross my mind.
"So many people come to Bali now to be having the eating and the praying and the loving," persists Ikomang. "Having the meditating, having the yoga, having the seck . . ."
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
Related Coverage
* Kangaroo Island of plenty Adelaide Now, 24 Dec 2010
* Kerry Armstrong discovers the delights of Byron Bay Adelaide Now, 4 Dec 2010
* Natural remedies for hangovers Herald Sun, 27 Nov 2010
* Stretching in scenic surrounds Adelaide Now, 20 Nov 2010
* Beckhams 'become one' with yoga Herald Sun, 19 Nov 2010
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Err, the seck?
"You know the seck. The boom-boom." Ah.
"So, you want to go where Julia Roberts go?"
I swear it, I wasn't thinking about Eat Pray Love when my friend Katie suggested we go to Bali in October and do a retreat together. It didn't even enter my mind.
Which, in retrospect, is baffling. After all, along with pretty much every other Western female 30-something with an even vague interest in her sacral chakra, I've read the (seven million copy-selling) book and seen the (Julia Roberts-starring, more than $50 million-grossing) movie version. Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of how she fled her marriage and roamed for a year - to eat pasta in Italy, pray in India and, as it turned out, find new love in Indonesia - long ago blossomed (some may say metastasised) into a bona fide pop-cultural phenomenon.
If you haven't read it, someone you know almost certainly has. Probably the one sitting cross-legged in the corner right now saying "Om".
If Italy is the stomach of EPL and India its soul, its heart is Bali, the beautiful Indonesian island where Gilbert concludes her pilgrimage and regains the emotional equilibrium upset by her ugly divorce.
Specifically, she winds up in Ubud, the fantastically lush, absurdly scenic hill town an hour or two's drive from Denpasar's international airport. As a result, Ubud has become metaphysical central for the hordes of EPL fans flocking to Bali.
And flock they have. In the first three months of 2006, the year the book came out, 237,260 foreign tourists visited the island, according to Time.com. In the first three months of last year there were 551,186 - mostly women aged between 35 and 65 - and visitor numbers are on track to hit a record 2.5 million for the year, with EPL given credit for the boom.
There are indications even the hospitable Balinese are wearying of their popularity, with reports of restaurant signs exhorting patrons to "eat pay leave".
For the most part, though, enterprising locals have embraced the opportunity, with EPL travel packages allowing soul-searchers to tick off a checklist of spiritual experiences (massages, meditation sessions, palm readings) as assiduously as they do the tourist spots (monkey forest, hot springs, gamelan orchestra).
However, as it happened, when Katie sent me the details of the (let's call it) Spirit of Saraswati Retreat, five days and six nights of yoga, meditation and inner-self work with a group of about a dozen women, EPL didn't, really did not, even cross my mind. Which is just as well or else I might not have gone.
There can be a certain snobbishness among retreaters, you see, and the more original and rigorous the experience the greater the bragging rights. Given that the essence of any kind of retreat is to seek truth, deeper consciousness and enlightenment, and generally become a better being, you may not imagine anyone being able to turn it into a competition.
But you would be wrong because human beings can make anything, anything at all, into a competition. Even hotdog eating. Even growing their hair long. Even childbirth.
So as much as mention you're about to go on a retreat and someone is bound to start telling you all about this amaaazing meditation wall cavity they were once immured in where no one was allowed to speak, make eye contact or register a measurable pulse for 10 days, after which half the group achieved nirvana and the rest probably got carted off to a mental hospital.
My favourite war story involved a highly charged weekend group retreat during which we felt our auras, identified our inner animal (I would like to report mine was a lioness but, no, it was a monkey) and spent a few traumatic and cathartic hours in a sweat lodge from which we eventually crawled on our hands and knees and staggered naked, exhilarated and most likely dangerously dehydrated in the moonlight down a frost-covered hill somewhere near, I think, Murwillumbah in NSW.
Obviously, I knew nothing was going to top that for fun, but I was perfectly willing to spend a week in a tropical paradise to try. I just didn't want anyone thinking I was only doing it because of Eat bloody Pray Love.
IT is my third full day in Bali and Ikomang is driving Katie and me to the hot springs, the volcanoes and the Kintamani temples. Later in the week we have booked him to take us to Tampak Siring, the holy spring water temple.
Yep, all of the EPL locales. As much as I try to avoid it, it's impossible not to wind up following in Gilbert's footsteps, or at least those of Roberts, who shot the movie's Ubud scenes on location last year.
If you want to go the whole hog, it's apparently even possible to visit the real people in the book and eat a "vitamin lunch" made by healer Wayan and have a palm reading from ancient medicine man Ketut.
A woman in my group tries to get a consultation with Ketut but he's busy every day.
However, my friend Lisa, who happens to be doing a retreat just up the road from my retreat, does get in to see another, equally revered medicine man, known colloquially as the Stick Man, who feels her skull, pokes the pads of her toes with a Y-shaped twig and diagnoses stress in her solar plexus.
"Follow your bliss," he tells her.
As Lisa tells me this story over dinner I realise I am feeling what is arguably one of the most ignoble and unenlightened emotions possible: retreat envy.
Whereas her retreat is pretty strict, with hours of yoga and lectures in Ayurvedic philosophy and Vedic astrology, mine is turning out to be undeniably soft, with yoga for inflexible people, meditation for people with short attention spans and inner-self work for people who think a clear spirit is Tanqueray No 10.
Plus lots of time off for massages and visits to tourist spots. On hers, you get in trouble if you're late. On mine, you get to cut out early to go to your 2 1/2-hour chakra dhara massage. This time, it is obvious, I will have no retreat war stories to tell.
Yet, despite my considerable ego and resistance, Bali and the retreat are working their magic. Ubud is a sensory feast. It sounds like roosters, feels like a warm sponge bath, tastes like smoke, looks like the Garden of Eden and smells like Nag Champa.
At the water temple, Ikomang shows us how to rinse our hands in incense before we swim in the holy spring and drink from the row of gushing spigots, carefully avoiding those reserved for cremation water.
The retreat leaders are cherry-picking religious rituals and cultural practices from all over the shop: a bit of goddess worship here, a dash of Bali's Hindu Buddhism there, a sprinkle of Mayan flavour on top.
I adore this, being in complete agreement with Gilbert when she writes: "Take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and keep moving toward the light."
We use cards to try to find different ways into our unconscious and mine say, in order, one a day: "Spend some time in silence." "Be still." "Find your centre." "Heal." "Connect." "Go outside."
I hear what the universe is trying to tell me: calm down and get over yourself, girlfriend.
Every day we meditate on one of the seven chakras and their associated colours and characteristics: basal (red; rootedness), sacral (orange; sensuality), solar plexus (yellow; strength), heart (green or pink; the emotions), throat (blue; expressiveness), third eye (indigo; inner wisdom), crown (violet; spirituality).
Once, semi-hypnotised during an evening meditation by tiredness and a wavering candle, I have a fantastical optical illusion that the tiled floor is billowing up and down on my breath. My cynicism sloughs off me like dead, unwanted skin.
Early each morning we do yoga in a sun-spilled, marble-floored space above a cooking school, and aromas blend with asanas as we breathe our way through the gentle Swara Cycle, led by an exotic Gypsy yogini called Cara.
"Every breath is a fresh start," she says. "Every breath is a new beginning."
Each day also, held in the safe, secret space of the women's circle, there are confessions, admissions, revelations and transformations. Some of them mine. But I can't talk about any of that here. What happens on retreat, stays on retreat. At least until I write my own book.
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