Tropical Heat Tour: Bali Part 22
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
I experienced deja vu today with another visit to Mojo’s Flying Burritos and another hang-out session in the center of town across the street from Ubud Palace. I heard a temple procession was supposed to pass by at 5:00 pm, so I hung around for a good two hours, from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm, talking to Nur Astika. I was amused at the throngs of tourists ambling by, and the snarling traffic jam, which consisted of motorcycles, cars, trucks and buses…but no temple procession. “Looks like it got cancelled,” I joked to Nur, but she implied that such religious functions could not be cancelled, and that it would show up. Finally, after it failed to materialize, I walked down to its supposed source, Pura Dalem Taman Kaja.
A few people were hanging around out front, and there was a pretty big gamelan there, so I decided to wait around to see if anything would happen. There were a couple of guys up in a tower, pounding out an odd tick-tock rhythm on three huge hanging bamboo rods. I captured a nice field recording and a video of that. A bit later, three big trucks pulled up chock-full of temple goers and their various offerings. I shot some video of them spilling out onto the street and filing into the temple. Then my camera battery started to run out, so I walked back to my room to get it and charged it up at Warung Schnitzel, where I enjoyed a visually stunning plate of vegetarian food. Too bad I couldn’t take a photo of it!
An hour later, I walked back up the hill a half mile toward the temple and I heard the gamelan playing, so I started up some more field recording. When I arrived, it looked like the temple festivities had either concluded or moved into some back area out of view. But, I shot some photos and video of the gamelan, which was composed of a bunch of kids practicing their erratic rhythms. It sounded quite strange and dissonant–more so than most of the music that’s played for tourists. This stuff would fit right in with a Glenn Branca guitar symphony. After a half hour, I was surprised when I successfully managed to hire a motorcycle taxi for $1.00 to ride me over to Bamboo Cafe, where I enjoyed some of their delicious pizza, then I called it a night.
Roll over photos for captions.
Words and photos ©2012 Arcane Candy.
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