Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

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Yudo Matsuo's website

I found Yudo Matsuo's website just now. Yudo is a close friend from when I lived in Kumamoto, Japan, for a year. We played Beatles and Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel together. I wish I could read the text on his website. It looks garbled in Firefox 1.0.6.
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Kweilin recording Wayan Betra playing tingklik with Wayan's younger son looking on 
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Catherine and Li spent the weekend with Catherine's parents in Reno, Nevada. 
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Steve, Li, Kweilin, Wan on Ikan Terbang in the Labuan Bajo port on the island of Flores, Indonesia 
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Li, Steve, Kweilin, Wan on beach in Labuan Bajo, Flores, Indonesia 
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Li, Wan, Kweilin, Steve on beach in Labuan Bajo, Flores, Indonesia. 
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Wan, Kweilin, Steve, Li visiting Amandari Resort outside Ubud. 
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Li, Wan, Steve, Kweilin in Ubud with rice paddy terraces in background. 
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Kweilin, Li, Steve, Wan in front of handicraft shop outside Ubud, in Bali, Indonesia. 
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Stephen, Kweilin, and Li in Kuala Lumpur, on our way to Bali. 
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Kuala Lumpur: Popo in hospital

Popo fell this morning and fractured a vertebrate so we took her to the hospital. She was looking for money to give to us (as she generously does whenever we visit), and she lost her balance as she bent over to look in a box. One of the vertebrates in her spinal column, brittle from osteoporosis, collapsed on impact. Her back hurt too much to walk, so my dad carried her downstairs and Second Uncle drove her to the hospital. The nurses should have sent her home after taking an X-ray, but they instead admitted her for a day.

I'm sure Popo is frustrated that she's bed-ridden for a week. She can return to her daily exercise of riding a stationary bike in three weeks.

I'm returning to the States in a few days but my parents and sister are traveling in Tibet for the next month with Fifth Aunt. This morning Fifth Aunt took us to buy airplane tickets to Kathmandu, Nepal, from whence they'll depart for Lhasa.

We ate Mouse Tail Noodle and chicken rice at a hawker center for lunch. We took some extra food and pastries to the hospital for Popo.

Fifth Aunt took Kweilin and me home so that we could pack, since Kweilin is flying to Kathmandu tomorrow. We saran-wrapped the tingklik box and packed our souvenirs for me to take back to San Francisco.

We again experienced horrible KL traffic. What should have been a 15-minute drive to the hospital ended up taking an hour and a half.

We ate an excellent dinner at a hawker center near the hospital. I love eating at Malaysian and Singaporean hawker centers: the shops offer a wide selection, they prepare food quickly, and they charge little.

Auntie De Xia and her son Didi kindly brought over durian at midnight. They had just closed their hardware store and came to say goodbye before my dad and sister left. We ate the durian together.

posted by Li at 5:56 PM

 

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 Li at 6:02 PM

 

Lovina, Bedugul, Ubud: Breakfast; tourist traps; police

We had a hard time finding breakfast in Lovina this morning. The baker tried to sell us yesterday's bread at yesterday's price. The only other shop open was a convenience store where we bought cornflakes and milk. We ate the cereal with bananas and milk.

We left the hotel for Ubud after a swim. We rode our scooters up a windy road over a mountain pass.

On the way down the mountain, we stopped at a touristy overlook to view rice paddies near a lake. Vendors sold peanuts and bananas, which monkeys ate from tourists' hands. We broke out some Sultana crackers that attracted a monkey. When my dad chased it away, a vendor said, "Please leave the monkey. If you chase it away, I won't sell anything."

We stopped at a terrible tourist trap named Bedugul at the lake by the rice paddies. Motorboats pulled parasailers on a lake and vendors sold souvenirs and snacks. Everything looked tacky and commercial. We had bakso (rice noodle soup) near the trap.

As we descended the mountain, we passed bus after bus of Balinese tourists climbing to Bedugul. I later learned that many passengers were children on school trips.

Police stopped us and demanded our license and registration at a road block outside their station. The officer didn't know what to make of my California driver license but he waved me through after seeing my license and the motorcycle registration. My sister didn't show her license or registration. She drove through the road block, stopped when an officer whistled to her, then inched forward until the officers lost track of her.

We asked for directions at almost every major intersection but we still managed to take the long way home. We meant to enter Ubud from the north but we somehow drove around Ubud and entered from the south.

We napped upon arriving at Nyoman Sandi's bungalow. This bungalow feels like home since we keep returning to it on this trip.

My dad and I rode our scooters through the rice paddies at sunset. We saw a man herding a group of ducks. I didn't know that ducks are amenable to herding. I laughed when I saw them waddling nervously along the road.

I downloaded Picasa onto my laptop and spent the evening organizing this trip's photos. We viewed a slideshow of the photos and discussed the trip.

posted by Li at 6:00 PM