Ubud, Kuala Lumpur: morning rice paddies; tingkliks; haircut
We rode our scooters through the rice paddies at sunrise one last time. Early mornings are cool and quiet along the rice paddy road.
We stopped at the morning market in downtown on our way home. We bought milk, bananas, and cereal for breakfast.
We spent the day with the tingklik man and his family. We recorded some songs and packaged the tingkliks and I got a haircut.
The master patiently played song after song while my sister and I taped him with a digital video recorder. He changed into formal concert clothes for the recording and even called over one of his students to play with him. I'm going to learn the songs from the recordings when I return to the States.
After the recording, Wayan (first son) and the tingklik man and his wife packaged the two tingkliks that they made for us. They disassembled both tingkliks and wrapped the frame and bamboo in newspaper inside a wooden box that we later checked on the airplane.
Wayan took me to get a haircut once the tingkliks were packaged. The barber shop was extremely simple. It was a road-side stand just big enough for a wooden chair, a table, and a pair of mirrors. The barber used a scissors and an old-style razor--nothing electric. The razor scared me: it was sharp, of course, and the barber used the same one on every customer and wiped it on a rag between strokes. The barber did a great job: for 5000 rupiah (50 cents), he gave me a natural-looking haircut and a close shave.
Nyoman Sandi drove us to the Denpasar airport this evening and we flew to Kuala Lumpur. My cousin Kam Seng greeted us at my grandmother Popo's apartment and we had a late-night snack with him before sleeping.
posted by Unknown at 6:02 PM
