Bila Village

When SR and I went on our daytrip around southern Bali during our fancy hotel time, our driver for that day was this incredibly sweet guy named Widia, who speaks terrific English. We plied him with questions during the entire outing, and his casual invite to come visit him in the village where he's from in the north turned into a conversation about how he was actually renting a car to take his wife and son up there in a few days, which turned into him picking us up in Ubud on his way north so that we could go up there with him to visit his village. There are "homestay" opportunities galore in a lot of parts of Bali, as there's a very effective tourist market for letting people see "the real Bali." Unless he's a master actor, I don't think Widia has ever brought any tourists to his village before, but he is a total natural and I think would be extremely successful at the homestay thing. If you ever get a chance to go to Bali, let me know and I'll give you Widia's number. You won't regret it, as you'd get to have an experience something like this:

 

When we first arrived at his village, Bila (very easy to remember, since you just reverse the vowels in "Bali"), Widia took us to the home where he grew up. His family's compound has clearly benefited from the tourist industry salaries he and one of his brothers draw, as there was a dramatic mix of bright white shiny new rooms and the older, much more modest rooms of the house that he was raised in. His wife, Putu, dashed across the street and brought back an overwhelming selection of traditional Balinese treats for us to try.

 

Widia, opening the dried-leaf wrapping of a black rice sweetroll:

 

There was a lot of sugar involved in most of these things (except for the extremely spicy noodle-meat-veggie dish, which it was clear I would not be able to handle). My sweet-tooth loved them all, but my brain, knowing it's so bad for me, preferred this one (below). It looks like algae or seaweed, but it's actually this kind of jello-textured stuff in a mildly sweet broth. Most of these traditional Balinese treats seemed to revolve around gelatin of some kind or another. Looks weird but tastes great.

From the village, we went out into the rice fields, into what Widia called his "garden." It was kind of a family compound planted (ha, ha) among the rice fields and dry land that his family owns and cultivates. One of his brothers actually lives full-time at the garden, and it's clear that it's where Widia's heart lives. His dream is to save enough money to buy a dozen pigs and a car, and then to live up here in Bila raising pigs to sell to local restaurants (which specialize in suckling pig delicacies) but also to be able to easily drive down to southern Bali and do some tourist guiding when the opportunity arises.

His mom had cooked up some rice and beans for lunch--my idea of heaven. Though what looked solely like green beans on the side had sneaky green chilis mixed in. I would have a hard time living full-time in Bali, with how spicy most of the traditional dishes here are!

After lunch, Widia took us on a little fieldtrip. Less than 10 km away is the north, black-sanded coast of Bali (we were vaguely near the Lovina coast). The boat on the right side of this picture is a traditional Balinese-style boat.

After an extremely refreshing swim at a public fresh-water pool in town, Widia made another stop at a traditional fish market. (Either to capitalize on the tourists' love of anything "traditional" or (less cynically) to make a point of separating the Balinese cultural heritage from the constant encroachment of western goods and ideas, they seem to attach the word "traditional" to everything, here. I finally figured out that "traditional market" just means that it's vendors on the sidewalk rather than an indoor supermarket.) There, he bought the makings for dinner for us and many members of his extended family.

Then it was back to the garden for the evening for cooking and eating under the Balinese stars.

This kid, Widia's nephew, I think, shimmied right up this coconut palm tree, plucked and threw down a few coconuts to his friend waiting below...

And then they opened them so we could drink the freshest coconut water I've ever had in my life. After we finished the water, they split the coconut open, hacked off a little fragment of the outside shell to use as a "traditional spoon," and then gave both back to us so we could scrape out the meat. YUM.

In the meantime, Widia's adorable mother was making a "traditional griller" out of the spine of a palm tree frond for the chicken we'd just purchased (at the time, alive; here, no longer) from a nearby hamlet.

By the time we actually ate, it was too dark to really take pictures, but the food was delicious, as Widia worked for awhile as a chef, and actually tried to start his own restaurant at one point.

It was a really beautiful, interesting day/evening, and it felt good to feel more like I was back in Peace Corps, in the middle of it all, rather than just one of the throngs of gringos (SR wants to try to introduce the word gringo to Asia; I have a feeling they already have a similar word, though I haven't pinpointed it yet--Widia just adorably calls us "foreigns") in southern Bali or Ubud. Such a great experience.