My luck continues to hold on neighborhoods, as I’m once again in a great spot. I wanted to stay right in the Old City, but I also insisted on a pool. So, close to the Old City also works.

I’m on the edge of the Nimmanhaemin neighborhood, or Nimman for short. It’s the artsy, boutiquey part of town, so there’s plenty to see strolling of a sultry evening. Which is all of them. I have the best of both worlds.

It’s certainly nice to have access to culture and some of the big city amenities that weren’t available in Krabi. Of course, the trade is that there’s no ocean here. But there is a water feature! The perimeter of the Old City is delineated by a perfectly rectilinear moat, making it very easy to tell if you’re in the Old City’s one square mile or not.

The moat and fortifications date all the way back to 1296, so they truly mean Old City. Although I’m sure that name made no sense in 1296, when Chiang Mai was founded. “Don’t worry, someday…”

The Apartment

I’ve definitely noticed that Airbnbs seem less quaint since we’ve set up a home base in Chicago. It was one thing when we were unhomed, but now that we have a sanctuary I’m acutely aware of its absence. Our apartment is comfortable and delightful, and Chicago, on the last leg back, started to feel like home.

So my Airbnb is fine. I’ve just had to accept that Southeast Asian residences only have hot water in the shower. At least in this apartment there’s a faucet. My last couple of apartments have only had hot water out of the shower head, which is awkward. I’m pretty sure this is not an Airbnb trick for farangs, but how Southeast Asians live. I don’t let dishes sit and I’ve mastered the art of the cold water shave. We adapt.

Here’s another Southeast Asian oddity. What’s up with duvets instead of top sheets? Who fucking sleeps under a duvet in this heat? I’ve shopped for sheet sets in every country we’ve been to here and top sheets just don’t exist. I stooped to buying an empty duvet cover at the Ikea in Bangkok and pretending it’s a top sheet.

This would be easy to solve by cranking the AC up to ten, except for this notice left sitting on a bureau:

I reached out to the host to help me decode this cryptic message. 600 units per… what interval? Day, week, month? Month. OK, where can I monitor usage? Not possible. She has to come to the unit and read the meter after I’ve left and tell me if I’ve gone over. So, you want me to manage consumption of a resource without giving me any information as to how much of it I’m using? Well, as long as you don’t run the AC 24/7 you should be fine.

So I’m living like a monk, running the AC about ten minutes a day. Which should be fine? I’m certainly not going to run it while I sleep so I can warm up under their fucking duvet. That’s crazy.

Other than that, it’s well appointed and clean, with enough hangers (!) and a full complement of cookware and dishes. There’s plenty of cabinets and drawers, so I’m moved in nicely for my month in Chiang Mai. And there’s that pool…

The Hood

The area around my apartment is chock full. There’s shopping, dining, entertainment. I’m a fifteen minute walk from a mall with a hypermarché in the basement. It’s not like the Bangkok malls, which all seem to feature a host of small vendors doing interesting things. This mall, the Maya, is strictly chain stores, like American malls. But mighty convenient to have the hypermarché walking distance. It makes everything easy.

One lovely thing about the neighborhood is that the closest laundry service only charges 30฿/kg, which is about 94¢. Bangkok was 100฿/kg and even the hinterlands in Krabi was 50฿. It’s good to be king.

I’ve also been able to get back into my weekly massage protocol. My bout of food poisoning in Krabi left me unwilling to be operated like a bellows, the hallmark of traditional Thai massage, so I stepped away. Under the best of circumstances I struggle to avoid farting during a Thai massage, and those were hardly the best of circumstances.

Among other wonders, Chiang Mai offered my first massage by a ladyboy masseuse. She was unusually tall for a Thai woman, and was also in possession of unusually large hands and an unusually deep, gravelly voice. To top it off, she was the only one on staff at the spa wearing a mask, which conveniently hid her Adam’s apple.

All signs point to, but short of dispositive. The actual tell was hysterical, though. At one point she was manipulating my legs and told me to relax the muscle, that she didn’t want me to help. A little later this admonition was apparently necessary again, when she lightly slapped my thigh and said, “Don’t help! I don’t need your help.” No further questions, your honor.

As to whether the large, strong hands were a net benefit, I’d say yes in a regular massage and no for a Thai massage. Thai massage is like someone using you as a Yoga prop. “Hold still and I’ll put you in Downward Dog.” It’s about leverage more than pressure. In this case, I think she leaned on her strong hands too much, as there was more kneading and less stretching than I associate with Thai massage. What with me being an expert and all.

Night Markets

I think Chiang Mai might be Thai for Night Market. You can’t throw a lemur in this town without hitting a night market. Don’t ask how I know that.

For just one example, the Weekend Night Market butts right up against the Every-Day-Of-The-Week Night Market in an Ouroboros of trinkets and street food. Ubiquitous doesn’t begin to cover it.

And no visit to a new locale is complete without enjoying local packaging and design.

I know I complained that my Bangkok apartment only had hot water coming out of the shower head. As it happens, that’s one more hot water source than my current lodgings offer. I am retroactively grateful.

To be fair, I’m not truly in an apartment. I’m in a hotel room with a refrigerator, so I don’t need hot water to cook or clean. I only have breakfast and snacks en suite, which is easy to clean up. And the climate doesn’t exactly argue for hot showers.

Still, some hot water, anywhere, kind of feels like table stakes for housing. Like you shouldn’t have to check with your outcall beforehand that she boasts a full complement of limbs. You just assume some things. At your own peril, apparently. It makes for an awkward greet.

Krabi is both the province and the nearby town. I’m staying in Ao Nang, which is a little beach town, not unlike our location in Bali. The beach in question is Khlong Muang, which is a convenient fifteen minute walk from the hotel. I’m even closer to the Main Street for shopping and eating, although there are good eats right nearby. The hotel is called Amanah Mansion, so I can only assume that Amanah translates as Gilding the Lily. It is a mostly serviceable hotel room, which may be the definition of mansion here.

Per my host, the disco light machine was the room’s highlight, and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment.

The Neighborhood

Like Bangkok, there are a wealth of weed shops here. I don’t know if Thais are smoking all the weed or if the clientele is primarily farangs. There seem to be too many to be supported by farangs alone.

My host pointed out where I could rent a scooter nearby, and I actually considered it, as the traffic here isn’t like Bangkok. There were tons of farangs on scooters, so that made it look plausible. Although that’s the clever observation that got me stranded on top of a pyramid. Twice.

Then I took a ride on, or clung to, a Grab scooter, which picked me up and delivered me to the supermercado in Krabi Town. And I have to say that nothing about that experience made me think, “You know, this would be way better if I was in charge.”

Then there was this sign, which was all over. The authorities seemed to feel that this message was important, which gave me pause. Although I can’t for the life of me figure out why it’s only in English.

Hilariously, this sign was always on the left side of the road. So if you were driving on the wrong side, you’d never see it.

Another reason not to rent a scooter, as if I needed one, is that the whole gas situation here is opaque. I’ve seen one actual gas station, but mostly it’s this:

These are just scattered about. It seems straightforward, but that’s what I thought about the Bangkok train system’s ticket machines. First you had to find your destination on a touchscreen interface that assumed you knew how the different lines were structured. When I finally worked my way through that, I stumbled through to payment to learn that it wouldn’t take a credit card or bills. Coins or a local payment app only. Leaving me reasonably confident that I’d never figure out how to make the gas pumps work.

This guy was just a few doors from my lodgings. I’m not out all hours soaking up the nightlife here, as if there were any, but I have yet to walk past this business when they weren’t actively processing coconuts. All day and all night. The mound never seems to get any smaller. I think they add to their stores at about the same rate as they process them.

Or they’re witches.

Shopping

The only stores right in Ao Nang are convenience stores. There are, unaccountably, multiple 7-11s. There are supermercados in Krabi Town, a short but harrowing scooter ride away. The other shopping venue is the Ao Nang Landmark Night Market, which is open every day of the week from 5:00 – 11:00, and completely lives up to its name. No groceries, but everything else your little heart could desire.

If you’re a farang, that is. I’d say 90% of the clientele was farang. That’s OK, it’s our job to contribute to the local economy.

There are sit-down restaurants, but also a dense warren of takeout stalls offering a mind boggling selection. There are clothing shops and kiosks, handicraft stalls, and every form of entertainment known to man.

When it was my turn to tip this delightful creature I handed my 100฿ note to the little girl in the clip, so she could deposit it for me. And I wasn’t arrested!

There was even a poorly regulated Muay Thai bout, with mats for the ring and no referee. This lent the affair even more of a street fighting ambiance than the arena bouts I saw in Bangkok.

The Beach

Of course, my entire point in being in Ao Nang is the beach, and it did not disappoint. It’s not one of those tropical beaches that travel writers lose their shit over, but it has everything you’d want. Clean white sand, warm, calm, turquoise water, colorful teak longtail boats, cheap delicious food from stalls lining the beach, and no crowds. It’s perfect. I’ve been swimming (bobbing, to be more precise, since swimming is actual work) twice a day.

So I’m waiting for a smoothie at one of the stalls, in a line that’s not moving very quickly, to be fair. Just ahead of me is an Aussie who can barely contain himself. Finally, he walks up to the front to inform the proprietress that she should hire another juicer, as it’s taking so long that people are leaving and she’s losing business.

That is wrong on so many levels. First, you’re waiting for a smoothie on a beach in Thailand. Dude, it’s ok if the operation isn’t running at peak Western efficiency. That’s almost the point. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Second, White Savior much? Do you honestly think that without your prompting it would never have occurred to the owner to explore the pros and cons of scaling up? Thank goodness you were there to calculate her run rate, factor in the cost of a new hire, and assure that the marginal revenue increase produced a positive ROI. All that, just from standing in line. Thank goodness the poor dear had you there to rescue her.

I was praying he’d turn to me for farang solidarity, but, sadly, I had to keep my opinions to myself. Like you’re supposed to.

The only thing missing from my perfect beach is snorkeling. That requires boat trips, and boat trips there will be. In the meantime, there are other interesting things to do here besides swimming, and I intend to do them. And write about them. I have two weeks to fill, and don’t think I won’t.

Maeklong Railway Market

Our story starts, as all good stories do, at the Maeklong Railway Market. Specifically, on the train that goes through the market. We took a bus to the train station. Which was this:

I am reasonably sure that when I am happy or amused I smile like a normal person. At least no one’s said anything. But when I am asked to smile for a photograph, that thing where you don’t know what to do with your hands happens to my face.

I may need to practice smiling in the mirror, so I can learn to simulate a human expression. This is why, despite the clamor for more selfies, there are so few pictures of us on the blog. In my case, at least, it’s because smiling makes me look like I’ve had a stroke. Dorothy, on the other hand, has lots of practice smiling and reliably crushes it. I just think she considers it none of your business.

The market is known locally as Talat Rom Hup, meaning the “umbrella pulldown market.” That’s because the market spreads out right to the train tracks, and everything needs to be pulled back when the merchants hear that lonesome whistle blow.

It’s remarkably similar conceptually to Hà Nội’s Train Street, where a train goes through a canyon of cafes built right up to the tracks. Nothing needs to be pulled back there, however, so long as you keep your hands inside the cafe at all times. Even though we were walking distance to Train Street in Hà Nội’s Old Quarter we affirmatively declined to visit, as it seemed like nothing but a mindless Instagram opportunity. Absent Dorothy’s more rarefied perspective, I appear to be precisely the kind of schmo who does stupid tourist shit. Who knew?

Pulling into the market was, I have to admit, pretty entertaining. People crowd the tiny space left between the tracks and the shops to wave at the train. We on the train return the gesture by crowding at the windows and waving back. It is silly fun.

Here’s what it looks like after the train pulls out: Awnings are dropped over the tracks, and merch is moved right back up to the brink.

While I found the setup adorable, the market itself was meh. The larger market, away from the train tracks, is one of Thailand’s largest fresh seafood markets, but the market right on the tracks is clearly meant for the train tourists. It’s full of the same goods you can get in any market in Bangkok, a mixture of food and tourist schlock. Since we were discouraged from bringing fresh seafood onto the bus for the next leg, there wasn’t much on offer that was of interest.

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

Next up: A floating market. We’d been to Kompong Khleang in Cambodia, which is a floating market on a lake, served with a side dish, like all of Cambodia, of genocide. Damnoen Sadauk is in a canal system, more like the one in Xochimilco just outside of Mexico City. The canal system in Xochimilco was built when artificial islands, chinampas, were created by piling mud on top of rafts, letting them sink, and doing it again until the rafts became anchored by the trees growing on them. This system is over 1,000 years old, and is why Xochimilco is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Damnoen Sadauk, on the other hand, was manufactured by decree. The 20-mile long main canal was built in 1868 to connect up a pair of rivers. Locals dug about 200 extra canals for fun, creating the Floating Market district. By the mid-60’s the market had largely been replaced by roads and stores, but it lives on. Damnoen Sadauk was built in 1981 specifically as a tourist attraction. It is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Typical Thai traffic, even on the water.

You should notice something right away. This is the opposite of what you think of as a floating market. You’d expect that boats will be plying the waterways hawking their wares to tourists on other boats. Here, the goods were all on the land side of the canal and the floating part was the customers in boats. See something you like and your skipper will pull over for you.

The weird side effect of this was that the shops were actually all on land that just happened to front the canal. So while you feel like you’re in the middle of this entire aquatic experience, just behind the Potemkin facade of merch booths is a parking lot with buses and roads and shops that don’t front the canal. It was disorienting to walk to our bus and feel like we were going behind a movie set.

A panoply of tourist goods.

Proof positive that I’m just another fucking tourist. I had my picture taken holding a lemur named Mai Tai.

The best part of this is that when I saw the lady with the lemur (and the man with the enormous albino snake, which I was not motivated to hold for a photo op) I texted one of our guides to ask whether it was ok (I know, for example, that you’re supposed to leave the elephants alone) and how much I should expect to pay for a photo?

She answered that the lemur whisperer would ask for 200฿ (about $6 USD), but I should bargain her down to 100฿. I had no intention of bargaining over a couple of dollars, so this is how the negotiation went:

Me: How much for picture? Her: 200 baht. Me: OK. Her: No, 150? OK, 100. OK?

It felt like she wanted me to have the bargaining experience but didn’t trust me to hold up my end, so she did all the work herself. Talk about a service-oriented economy. Also, honestly, the highlight of the experience, which was otherwise very, very touristy. There’s a reason we don’t tend to do that sort of thing, but that’s what I get for taking off and leaving my Jiminy Cricket behind. Being a real boy is hard work.

Nah. The void and I are good, and neither of us would be pleased if I somehow filled it. But I am loosely tethered, and come by the gypsy feet honestly, having been subjected as an adolescent to my parents’ hardcore Wanderjahr.

So we’re doing what we’ve been doing all along: learning more about what works and what doesn’t and trimming to fit. We started with an idea, and we’ve been refining and redefining that idea on the fly ever since. No need to stop now, when the current iteration of that idea has me in Thailand instead of wintering in Chicago. Some ideas are objectively better than others.

It’s an interesting experiment, as Dorothy and I have never really been alone. We moved in together on my 18th birthday, directly from our parents’ homes. She waited until I was of age, which is kind of romantic, in a predatory sort of way. So this life is all we’ve known, and current circumstances will test our appetite for being apart and Dorothy’s appetite for my having fun without her.

Early returns are positive. We both conceive of Us as our atomic unit, but it appears that atom can be split. When we travel with others (my sister excepted, who will gladly have fun wherever you set her down) we’re always conscious of having to adjust our preferences to other’s desires. Not in an invidious way, just that we’re aware of the need to arbitrate across two sets of needs: Us and Them.

We’ve been doing it so long, it’s easy to forget that getting to Us also requires arbitrating across two sets of needs: Mine and Hers. It’s seamless and pretty unnoticeable, but now that it’s been stripped away it’s hard to be unaware of its absence. Not that the compromise is painful, but there’s something delicious and buoyant about just standing up and going somewhere, without any conversation required.

A steady diet of it would require living alone, which sounds like a punishment, but there’s no reason not to enjoy and appreciate it while we’re able. We’re thinking a few months off from each other every year could be an excellent thing for all.

On the emotional/psychological scale. On the practical side of the ledger I think it’s all negative, as we each have to replace the effort and expertise we provide one another. I have to feed myself and Dorothy has to do her own travel planning. Survivable (I haven’t gained any weight!), but measurably suboptimal.

The Neighborhood

The Airbnb is fine, its greatest asset being its location. It’s a one bedroom with a kitchenette. Like our place in Hà Nội, the kitchen sink is on the balcony. Also like that apartment and our Balinese apartment, the only source of hot water is the shower. Unlike those two, which had hose bibs in the shower, the shower head itself is the only place hot water appears here. I promise to never again take Western plumbing for granted. I believe it is our sole meaningful contribution to Civilization.

The textbook protocol for what we do is to take a place for a week on arrival and then use that week to scout neighborhoods and be certain of where you want to stay. We’ve never done that because it sounds tense and hard. Hitting the ground and having that kind of existential task in front of you with the clock ticking just seems nasty. So we do our homework in advance, learn about different neighborhoods, make our commitments and takes our chances. We’ve only had one fail so far, where we didn’t really enjoy our location, but our track record’s been pretty good.

Bangkok has been no exception. I’m in the Sukhumvit district, a ten-minute walk from stations on two of the main train lines. I’m a ten-minute walk from two hypermarchés. There’s a convenience store on the corner, a laundry a few doors down, and a weed shop directly downstairs. There’s two major malls, including an Ikea, within that same ten-minute radius. And food fucking everywhere.

The streets here are filled with weed shops (four just in the half block from the apartment to the main street), massage spas (eight in that same half block), bespoke tailors (only three, but that would be ridiculous density on any other half block on the planet), and more restaurants than can be counted. I have all the amenities I could want right at arm’s length, with trains able to take me to whatever isn’t right at hand.

I had to get to the Immigration office to extend my visa and there was no gracious public transit method, so I took the scooter version of Grab, the local Uber. It was faster than a car and a quarter the price. What I didn’t factor in was that the streets around my apartment were constantly clogged with traffic and moving at a crawl, but other streets were open and moved at full speed. That was a harrowing 30 minutes. That I won’t be repeating. I took a car home.

I have no idea how the ladies sidesaddle the scooters. That’s just nuts.

Those trains, by the way. First, always nice to have your train station look like a pagoda. But one of the lines has a positively brilliant innovation. You can buy a ticket or a pass, but if you’re a casual traveler you can also just wave your credit card at the gate and it will open up. Do it again on departure and the system will calculate your fare and charge your card. I think it’s new and hasn’t been rolled out across the entire system yet. It is the most friction-free transit system I’ve ever encountered.

Add bilingual signage and Google Maps directions that tell you what entrance to use and what platform to wait on, and it couldn’t be easier to get around like a local. Literally, as I’ve yet to see another farang on a train.

The extreme walkability of my neighborhood has led to extreme walking. In my first seven days here I’ve clocked 43 miles. That is not a typo. Thank goodness massage is so cheap and plentiful.

Neighborhood Wonders

OK, don’t pretend you weren’t about to google it. I did, and once I saw the pictures I had to go. For you, dear readers, always for you.

It turns out, which would have been my very last guess, that Cabbages & Condoms is the front end for an NGO, the Population and Community Development Association, focusing on birth control, education, and AIDS safety. It was founded by a retired politician interested in improving lives by promoting sexual health, and all profits go to the NGO.

It’s actually a lovely space, although the condoms are everywhere, once the eye adjusts. The food was OK, nothing to write home about, but the bowl of condoms on the table was a nice touch.

That was entirely my pleasure.

And then there’s this. This was just occurring outside an entrance to the MBK mall. No explanation was offered and, frankly, none was expected. I watched it until just before it got creepy and I was asked to leave.

Medical Tourism

I saved $850 today. I needed a root planing, but didn’t have time to take care of it before I left. I figured that I’d get it done in Bangkok, since my Balinese tooth cleaning had been such a positive experience. I saw this place in a mall (within my ten-minute radius), and walked in to inquire about rates. All four quadrants would be $250, as compared to the $1,100 I’d last paid in the US, so I asked to be scheduled.

They had me wait a few minutes then took me into a practice room for what I figured was a conversation with the dentist. Nope, they sat me down and started in. The dentist had excellent English (they even had forms in English), and asked me if I had any problems with my mouth. I told her that I couldn’t make it speak Thai.

She was super deft, and even the anesthetic was administered gently. I don’t much care for needles, whether they’re depositing or withdrawing, but of all of the places I hate needles, needles inside my mouth are the worst. The entire process was gentle and impressive. Although leaving the hearing aids home was a solid decision.

She did the first two quadrants and scheduled the finish in a week. Elapsed time, from walking in the front door cold to leaving with a slab of meat where my face had been: an hour and fifteen minutes.

Sometimes I just never want to come back.

Fun Fact

Thailand is the very first place we’ve been that doesn’t have some kind of brutal colonial hangover. Because it’s never been colonized, one of only a handful of countries that have avoided the master’s whip hand. There are a few we’re unlikely to visit (Afghanistan and Iran, although I’d love to see both), but we could wind up in Nepal or Ethiopia. It could happen.

Frankly, it’s a delight. Wading through the colonial aftermath, especially in Southeast Asia, has been illuminating but rough. Whatever fuckery they’ve inflicted on themselves is a rounding error compared to what the West would have done to them. Except, I suppose, Pol Pot, who colonized his own country. Anyway, I’m happy to have the break.

Massage Culture

There are two distinct and largely mutually exclusive massage cultures here: the traditional Thai massage and the traditional Happy Ending massage. Tradition! The trick is telling one from another, as each is only good at its specialty. If you’re looking for a real Thai massage and stumble into a Happy Ending place, you’re going to leave disappointed. And vice versa.

Some of the Happy Ending spas are easy to spot, as the photos of their “therapists” are alluringly posed, often including measurements and specialties, and their menus are a matrix of duration and granular variations on the Happy Ending. Just right out there in front of god and everyone. Unashamed. Easy, however, to avoid mistakes.

Real massage shops tend to offer masseuses in uniforms, rather than low-cut dresses. Although that’s a sort of uniform, too. A masseuse is assigned, rather than selecting one from a lineup. Some of their menus even say No sex, which is pretty clear. But not dispositive, since some of the Happy Ending shops are camouflaged, with uniformed girls and innocuous menus. By the time you’ve suffered an indifferent massage and been offered a Happy Ending, you’re already way past the desired experience.

Another tell: do they offer nuru massage? Nuru, if you don’t know (and if you do you probably shouldn’t admit it), is a Japanese invention, because of course it is. It involves a slippery, seaweed-based gel that’s applied by a naked masseuse using herself as a loofah. Like if a Slip ‘N Slide® and a succubus had a baby. It’s hard to conceive of anything more Japanese than that particular combination of innocent and depraved. That’s not just my opinion, by the way. These are the people, after all, who gave us anime tentacle porn. Anyway, as delightful as it sounds, nuru’s intentions are completely different than that of an actual massage.

Or this. The emphasis is probably not on the quality and integrity of the massage.

Online reviews are their own minefield, as coy verbiage makes it unclear exactly what experience is being reviewed. I found a forum where men traded intel on Bangkok’s various Happy Ending spas and posted a question: where do you go when you want an actual, real Thai massage? I figured consumers of the one would be able to tell them apart, and sure enough, I got a handful of recommendations right within my ten-minute radius.

Wat Pho? I Don’t Know, Stop Asking…

My first stop, counterintuitively, was the temple at Wat Pho. Wat Pho is actually the thankfully shortened nickname, its full name being Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan. But everyone knew her as Nancy. No one knows exactly when it was built, but sometime during the Ayutthaya Kingdom, which places it anywhere from 1351 to 1767, a pretty wide range. The current footprint appears to have been established right around 1700. Which is notable because it still has that new temple smell, like they just removed the tape.

We’ve been in plenty of places (Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Hagia Sophia, the Medina in Marrakech, Tunisia’s El Jem colosseum…) so deeply infused with their own antiquity that their age had a seat at the table. And ordered for you. Not so Wat Pho, which has been buffed so hard and maintained so diligently that it could have been built yesterday. But it wasn’t.

These days, Wat Pho is known for several things. One is a 150 foot long, 50 foot high golden Buddha statue. If you had one of those, that’s what you’d be known for, too.

But I’m not fooled. You came for the stupas. And you’re not wrong. They are splendid. Enjoy.

It is also Thailand’s first public university, teaching traditional Thai arts and sciences. In 1955 they opened a school for traditional medicine, including Thai massage. It’s still operating, and there’s a massage center on the grounds of the Wat. No appointments, but I walked right in. I figured I’d baseline Thai massage at ground zero and have a yardstick for judging how good the massage was at a more convenient, less expensive location.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Massage

I’d never had a Thai massage before. It’s on the menu at most of the places I’ve been in Southeast Asia, but I didn’t know enough about it to know if I’d like it, or what it was for, or even if what was offered was an actual Thai massage, so I’ve never requested one.

What surprised me most was how intimate it turned out to be. Not in the Happy Ending sense, obviously, but in the sense that it’s a full contact sport. Elbows, knees, legs, feet, all used to stretch this limb or that, to bend me, rotate me, and generally tie me into a pretzel knot.

Rather than standing up and addressing me from a remove while I lay on a table, like an autopsy, the massage therapist was on the same surface as me, climbing, rolling, circumnavigating, and doing anything a squirrel can do to a tree. She was a preposition. We were engaged with one another, rather than my being the supine recipient of the kneading of muscles.

It was a lovely, intricate dance (I followed), and a fabulous massage, so much more actually therapeutic than a traditional massage. I staggered to my feet feeling noticeably better, more limber, able to move more freely. I am an official Thai massage stan.

Armed with my newfound expertise, I went to one of the shops from the suggestions I’d been given. Truthfully, I picked it on price. There were a number of ladies sitting in front in branded masseuse uniforms, and I wasn’t given a choice of therapist, so that was promising. One just grabbed me. I did notice that most of the masseuses were aunties, but the young cute one had picked me. It’s all the charisma. Not my fault.

I then proceeded to get the very best massage I’ve had in my life. In fact, had I done this one first I think I’d have been disappointed in the Wat Pho massage. In the interests of full disclosure, I was high. I’d stopped at one of the many dispensaries on the walk there and scarfed down a 10mg gummy on the way. No paperwork or ID, by the way, more like a convenience store purchase. It was harder to get a tube of cortisone cream.

I don’t think that harmed the experience in any way, but I also think, my condition notwithstanding, that it was an objectively amazing massage. I’ll be going back, for sure, and will do it sober, so I can report if the experience in that condition is less ecstatic, more quotidian. What I suffer for you all…

In addition to massage, the Me Time options here include a smattering of Vietnamese-style barber shops, like the one I visited in Hà Nội. 700฿, by the way, is about $22 for 90 minutes of service.

Weirdly, the one thing they don’t offer is the haircut. I guess the claw grooming makes up for it.

Bangkok

Bangkok feels most like Istanbul to me, with echoes of Mexico City. It’s a dense capital city with plenty of historical flavor and a strong modernist streak. But our view of the cities we’ve visited is inevitably colored by where we’ve chosen to stay. Hà Nội undoubtedly has much in common with Bangkok, but we stayed in the Old Quarter, which felt more like a LARPing arena than a modern capital.

Here’s one of the strangest things I’ve noticed about Bangkok. In every other place we’ve been on the planet, sidewalk traffic patterns mirror roadway traffic patterns. If the cars drive on the left, pedestrians walk on the left, and vice versa. Not here. The cars drive on the left but pedestrians walk on the right. The only pedestrians walking on the left are farangs, desperately trying to rationalize the chaos. And only making it worse. It’s a gift.

It makes crossing the street even more disorienting than usual, for those of us used to cars on the right. I feel like a meerkat, swiveling back and forth, never certain in which direction lies danger. All of them, I think. Danger lies in all of the directions here.

The Old City

If I’m staying in the heart of modern Bangkok, I owe myself a visit to the Old City to compare the experiences. Little did I know that I’d already been, as Wat Pho is in the Old City. I did a little more homework before venturing back, and learned that the area, properly known as Rattanakosin, is also home to the Grand Palace, the ferry piers of the Chao Phraya river, ancient forts, and Phra Athit Road, home to some of Bangkoks oldest structures.

Truthfully, Phra Athit was a little underwhelming. Yes, there were some old buildings, but they were leftovers that have been individually repurposed as shops and restaurants. There was no sense of the history of the district or what it had once been like. Hà Nội’s Old Quarter, Marrakech’s souks, Istanbul’s Sultanahmet historic district… You could trace their history directly back from their modern iterations in an unbroken lineage. Phra Athit, on the other hand, was some old buildings still in use. Not uninteresting, but not the living history I craved.

The Grand Palace

This was definitely the highlight of the Old City, especially viewed in tandem with Wat Pho. The grounds of the Grand Palace hold two distinct attractions: The Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace itself.

Before I could cross the threshold, however, my exposed calves were deemed insufficiently respectful. Thank goodness they couldn’t see my musclebound thighs. The horror! I was forced to both purchase and wear a pair of long pants. In their defense, they were light and gauzy and were gaily festooned with elephants. In my defense, I was wearing long pants in 90° heat. I appealed to Buddha directly, but was met with stony silence. Fucking Buddha, amIright?.

Like Wat Pho, every one of the buildings here seemed scrubbed raw and built yesterday. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha was built in 1783, but you’d have to carbon date it to tell. As advertised, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha holds an emerald Buddha, high up on a platform, orders of magnitude smaller than Wat Pho’s massive golden Buddha. In addition to pants being required, there was a sign at the entrance admonishing: Do not point your feet to the Buddha. Not entirely sure how that was supposed to work in practice. Crab walking?

No photography was allowed, so let’s thank Wikipedia for this image.

But that’s OK, because the temple itself had plenty to offer on the outside, having a, how do I say this, distinctly Liberace vibe, all gilt and polished mirror tiles.

The Grand Palace was built in 1782, and served as the royal residence until 1925, although it’s still in use for official events and state functions. Which is probably why this was as close as I could get.

The grounds also held the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles. She seems to have been much beloved, and had just died in October of 2025, a few months before my arrival. Memorials to her are all over the city.

Just hanging out in front of a metro station. The guest book on the table was completely full

Finally, I ended my tour of Rattanakosin with a walk to Phra Sumen Fort, right on the Chao Phraya River. Dating from the late 1700s, Phra Sumen is one of only four of the original forts still intact. The rest were demolished to make room for roads and buildings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It was a peaceful way to end my visit, but I was truly knackered by the conclusion. The easiest way to get home from the fort was a water taxi to a train, about an hour-and-a-half total transit time. I buckled, and took a Grab back to the apartment.

The Dainty Elephant In The Room

While there are Happy Ending massage parlors everywhere on the planet, Thailand stands tall as one of the globe’s sex capitals. Much of it is tourism-based, but there’s a considerable portion of it that’s local. It seems only lightly stigmatized, as it enjoys a quasi-legal status and is a substantial contributor to Thailand’s economy.

Prostitution in Thailand is legal so long as there’s no coercion or trafficking involved, no pimping, and so long as solicitation isn’t undertaken “openly and shamelessly.” That’s a vague metric, yet no one seems to have run afoul of it.

In July of 2016 the then Tourism Minister announced that the government would be abolishing the sex industry to make Thailand a more wholesome destination. He lasted just over a year after that proclamation. Instead, there’s a substantial movement in Thailand, led by human rights organizations, to fully legalize and regulate prostitution. Which would bring Thailand up to par, human rights-wise, with the rural parts of Nevada.

The Happy Ending massage parlors, because they blend into the landscape and are everywhere, are actually the underneath of the iceberg. The more visible tip is the overt red light districts: Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza, and Patpong in Bangkok, Bangla Road in Phuket, Soi 6 and Walking Street in Pattaya. Unsurprisingly, given my central location, I’m close to two of them, Soi Cowboy within my ten-minute perimeter, Nana Plaza just outside it.

All of these areas are combinations of gogo bars, hostess bars, and ladyboy bars. Soi Cowboy has a ladyboy bar called Cockatoo. That’s just excellent. Thailand’s ladyboys are legendary, and if it was just a cabaret show I would totally go. Why not? But all of the bars, ladies and ladyboys alike, are hard-sell hustles. Entering a ladyboy bar is implied consent to being hustled, so no. Also, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about beautiful women with unusually high testosterone levels. I just feel like I’d be on the wrong end of that. I am a gentle woodland creature.

One of the bars just off Soi Cowboy is called Bush Garden, which also warrants calling out. It’s not even their language, but they use it awfully well.

I’ll confess that I walked Soi Cowboy’s single neon-lit block intending to check out one of the gogo bars. First, because why not? And second, because sure. I’m here. It’s a thing. Life’s rich pageant. But the drink hustle is supposed to be fierce in those places, and if you’re not vigilant you can wind up with a substantial, padded tab and large men insisting it be paid in full. The level of effort required to avoid being hustled just seems to exceed the likely entertainment value.

In general I consider myself a pretty intrepid traveler, hardy and capable of taking what the universe throws at me. Unless it has tentacles. Then I’m out. But if I’m being totally honest, it’s not just the effort to avoid being hustled that’s keeping me out of the gogos. I don’t consider myself easily intimidated, but they intimidate me. I’m probing that feeling like a sore tooth, and the only solution may be to man up and cross the threshold. Or I can just be a weenie. Also a perfectly reasonable option.

I think the most dangerous thing we can do, as travelers, is to apply our lens to other cultures and judge them on their fidelity to a foreign point of view. We’ve been able to see positives in everything from one-party rule (Cuba, Vietnam) to state religions (Morocco, Tunisia), although, looking through a US lens, those things are just objectively wrong. Even though plenty of Americans, it seems, would be happy with a state-sanctioned religion. So long as it’s theirs.

So I’m not about to tell Thais that their approach to prostitution is wrong. If that’s how they felt about their own country, they’d abolish it, not work to legalize and formalize it. There’s an argument that in a perfect world prostitution would probably follow the abortion mantra: safe, legal, and rare. In that perfect world, every man would have a partner he loved and who loved him in return, and every woman would have a wealth of career opportunities. But that’s not this world.

Say what you will about the underlying economic conditions that make this true, but prostitution in Thailand pays better than many of the available options, allowing women to send money back home and support their families. Until there’s equity in access to education and career paths, I’m not in favor of shutting the industry down because it’s morally dubious. To us.

I remember the last time I went to a strip club, 20+ years ago. I went for Pretty Ladies, but that’s not what I saw. I saw a room full of men desperate for connection, with, for a multitude of reasons, no other options for achieving it. It wasn’t at all obvious who was exploiting whom. And it was sad.

I think I’ll skip the gogos.

Shopping

I’ll be doing a separate post on craft shopping, as I do, but there’s still plenty to discuss short of that. The big reveal here is that local shopping is incredibly mall focused. I suspect that’s because of the weather. Mall shopping means air conditioning, which seems to be everyone’s first choice.

My host came over the other evening to drop something off, and I was very proud of the fact that the AC was off and the balcony doors were open. Living like a local. I thought. Until he asked if the AC was broken. I’d assumed that living here inured you to the heat, but they hate it just as much as we do. Thus, I believe, malls.

Because they’re the dominant form of retail, they exist in a dizzying range of variations. Unlike the US mall monoculture, which is nothing but chain stores, and where the physical relationship of Hot Topic : Auntie Anne’s : Victoria’s Secret seems to be an immutable law of nature. Or at least building code.

Sure, they have their fashion malls here. There’s Chanel, YSL, Tory Burch, and both Dolce & Gabbana. The usual suspects. But the malls distinguish themselves primarily in the small one-off shops that make up the bulk of their rosters. In fact, in hunting for Thai silk I found Old Siam Plaza, whose entire massive second floor is given over to small silk shops, most of which had room for a sewing machine. We tend to have a negative view of mall culture, but it means a completely different thing here.

One of the malls nearby is the EmSphere, which is where the Ikea is located. It also has a robust first floor food court, which has both Subway and Krispy Kreme kiosks, but is primarily made up of small one-offs, just like the retail tenants.

The other mall right nearby is Terminal 21, which has a very odd conceit. Each floor is assigned a geography, so there’s a Rome floor, San Francisco, London… The shops aren’t specific to the location, but the site design traffics in unsurprising stereotypes. San Francisco has a faux cable car, Rome has classical statuary, London has inedible food…

I took an entire afternoon one day to tour a mall complex with four (or more?) malls all connected by sky bridges. My research told me that one of them specialized in indie fashion and the other in crafts. I did find a few non-branded clothing vendors in the one mall, amongst all of the LV and Vans and Levis shops. Hardly a concentration. Likewise for the place that was supposed to have crafts. I found a few shops tucked in a corner, and that was it.

What I did discover was that mall layout here is so non-linear as to be effectively non-Euclidean. I did an entire tour of the first mall, Siam Paragon, without seeing any clothing stores, except the high fashion brands on the lower floors. Then I did a second tour and there was an entire wing of the mall that I swear hadn’t been there on my first go-round. Same thing happened at the second mall, Siam Discovery. The Discovery being, I suppose, that the laws of physics have been suspended on premises. Every mall here is a Harry Potter tent, bigger on the inside than the outside.

The Fucking Language

I thought Vietnamese was the worst. With an honorable mention to French, for, you know, all that French. But Thai takes the cake. It has the worst elements of every language we’ve tried to learn, plus a unique fillip all its own.

First, the alphabet. It’s pretty, like Khmer in Cambodia. But put all those letters together into words and sentences and it’s just a soup of loops and whorls. Here’s an example.

ผ้าพันคอสวยๆ ที่หน้าต่างราคาเท่าไหร่ and ฉันสามารถมีเพศสัมพันธ์กับภรรยาของคุณได้. The first is “How much is that beautiful scarf in the window?” The second is “Can I fuck your wife?” It’s a minefield.

Then there are the vowels. Thai is tonal, like Vietnamese. No one can agree on the exact count, but Thai’s five tones interact with the basic vowel set to create well over 100 distinct vowel sounds. To put that into perspective, English has 19 vowel sounds. Your mouth can’t make a sound your ears can’t hear. That’s fucked up.

What’s really fucked up? Thai has taken the worst elements of both Khmer and Vietnamese and added… duration. Yep, how long you hold a vowel completely changes its meaning. It’s like the anti-Esperanto, a hash of phonemic fuckery whose sole purpose seems to be tripping up farangs. I’m sure it is a constant source of amusement to them. Or they wish we’d just stop shitting on their language. Or both.

The vowel stretching is also why Thais always seem to be singing, but that’s not enough. Beautiful, yet incomprehensible. That about sums it up.

Any final indignities? Oh, right. No cognates to speak of. Sandwich. Awesome.

I think we may have learned three words in Vietnamese, which is three more than I’ll be learning in Thai.

The only upside, such as it is, is that none of the farangs, no matter their country of origin, are able to learn Thai. Which makes English the official language of tourism, leaving everyone else to struggle with a non-native tongue. There is something delicious about making French people butcher another language, since they’re so snooty about theirs.

It’s the small pleasures that make life worth living.

We had to cancel our scheduled flight to Hanoi last February, leaving in March instead, so we could help Dorothy’s parents pack up for a financially necessary relocation from California to Tucson. We weren’t able to rebook on Delta, and we’ve been carrying that credit for the last year, unable to use it. We were staring down the barrel of use-it-or-lose-it, and there was no way we were just handing that money to Delta and getting nothing in return. We discussed flying to Europe and flying right back, just to use the credit. Fuck the man!

We hadn’t been back in the US long enough to set off on another leg (OK, I had, but Dorothy needed more recovery time), so we hunted Delta’s map to find out where we could go for a winter getaway with: the funds available; not so far away that it was burdensome to get there; and with affordable accommodations. Thankfully, the answer was the Caribbean, and the pricing for Airbnbs quickly led us to the Dominican Republic.

The first weird thing about this is that the Slow Travelers are taking an eleven-day vacation. Not at all on brand. The second weird thing is that we’re staying in Punta Cana, which is kind of DR’s Cancun. Not our style, but we wanted this break to be all about the beach. The capital, Santo Domingo, would normally have been our likely base, but the accommodations were, surprisingly, more expensive than Punta Cana, and the beaches are near to Santo Domingo but not directly accessible. We wanted to be able to walk to the beach from our apartment every day.

The Apartment

The Airbnb itself is actually fine. The setting is lovely, right in a garden, and it may be the only one we’ve stayed in that didn’t require purchasing something to fill a gap. There are enough hangers (!), the kitchen is exceptionally well equipped, everything works. I mean, there’s a garlic press. That’s officially wtf for an Airbnb.

But.

We went 24 hours without water, which we spent refreshing ourselves on Airbnb’s cancellation policies, the only refreshing available. I’ve probably never appreciated a shower more than the one I took after the water came back on. Then one of the dining chairs collapsed while Dorothy was sitting in it, trapping her ass down and legs up through where the seat had been. Thankfully no injury, or my laughter would have been problematic. In my defense, I didn’t laugh until I was sure she was unhurt. But it was an objectively ridiculous situation. I had to tip her over so she could wriggle out.

Then there’s the resort being built next door. Specifically, behind a fence about five feet from our bedroom window.

8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Every day except Sunday. Which wouldn’t be so bad except we had two late night ragers just across the fence, so there hasn’t been a moment’s peace. After the second one we thought it was a thing, but it was just those two nights.

But that’s OK, because beach. Which, while we can walk to it as promised, is a little farther than expected, about a mile walk each way, and then a little walk to a quiet part of the beach.

There are beach clubs where you can have lunch and take a lounge under a palapa, but they are $50 USD/person. Which includes lunch, but still. Yikes. We are budget travelers locked in a resort environment.

One of the resorts has a lovely pool and a lax enforcement protocol, so we enjoyed their pool our first two days here. Then I think they clocked us, because on Day Three there were security guards at every entrance checking wrist bands and denying us access. Probably not because of us, but it still felt personal.

Fine, we’ll walk the mile back to our apartment and relax with the open windows (fan only, no AC) and the construction crew. We like to imagine, solely from the unintelligible shouting, what injury has just occurred. Like car bingo, but with blood. “Everybody cross out Head Wound.”

Shopping

The grocery shopping setup here is outstanding. There’s a small supermarket a block from us and a pair of hypermarchés about a ten minute Uber from our apartment. Which is super important because we’re in a resort area, and the food is priced accordingly. We got plates of beans and rice and beef at a shack on the beach and the tab was $16. Delicious, but we’re not making a habit of that.

The big supermarkets are in malls or are mall adjacent. We even spent some time in the local Ikea, to find solace in its air conditioning in the shank of the day. We’re obviously not huge mall fans, but they often showcase an aspirational side of a culture that we wouldn’t ordinarily witness. Or this:

Children were wheeling about the mall astride their steeds, and they offered grownup rides. I suspect they’d have looked askance if we weren’t accompanying a child. Regrets suck.

Local Crafts

While we’re here for the beach, we will never overlook the opportunity to pick up a stunning bit of local handiwork. We didn’t really know much about craft customs here, and it turns out there isn’t much to know.

On the one hand, there’s larimar, a beautiful blue/green mineral uniquely native to the Dominican Republic, which is pretty cool. We bought some beads at this beachside market.

Then there’s the indigenous Taino culture. Or there isn’t. The Taino live on genetically, obviously, but they died out as a distinct culture in Hispaniola (DR + Haiti) in the mid-1500s, thanks to the traditional colonial stew of smallpox and slavery. A sancocho of death. Some recipes never go out of style.

But they left behind cave paintings and pottery, whose iconography has been appropriated to sell trinkets flavored with the dreams of a long-dead people. This and this…

Have become this…

It is, of course, exactly what we did to the Native Americans, but Hispaniola is an island, so it was easier to pull off the genocide that we couldn’t quite complete. Had we finished the job there would have been nothing left of Native American culture but branding. Which is all that’s left of the Taino. Branded gift shops selling imagined ghost merch.

Bizarrely, the gift shops here are full of souvenirs from Turkey, of all places. Turkey exports almost $175M in tourist goods annually for sale in Dominican gift shops. No reason. They’re just cheap and colorful. And have about as much connection to the current population as the faux Taino knickknacks, so why not?

Thankfully, there are two things that DR can claim as truly authentic local culture: rum and cigars. Many Cuban cigar makers relocated to DR when their holdings were nationalized in the revolution, finding a similar climate and soil, as well as an existing tobacco business to which they could apply their particular expertise. As a result, DR cigars are considered world class. Not an aficionado myself, but we’ve brought a couple back for my nephew. Much less fraught than bringing a box of Cuban cigars back for him buried in my luggage, sweating through Customs.

Where the rum is concerned, however, I am a practitioner. We knew about that in advance, so we came equipped with a couple of padded bottle wraps.

We came back from our Puerto Rican Christmas trip in 2015 with a taste for Ron del Barrilito Three Star, which turned out to be available in the US. If we love the Brugal, that can also be added to the repertoire.

Day Tripping

We’re only here for eleven days, but we’ve squozed in a couple of day trips: one to local cenotes and another to an island beach.

Ojos Indígenas

We think of cenotes as underground, as they mostly are in Mexico, but the three cenotes at Ojos Indígenas are all aboveground. What we would call ponds. But ponds with exceptionally clear water nestled in the heart of a biological reserve. So, cenotes.

Ojos Indígenas is only half an hour from our apartment, and we probably should have just arranged a car and driver and gone on our own. Instead, we booked a tour. Even though we know better.

We’d done a little research beforehand, which suggested that the cenotes were too cool for swimming. So while we brought suits, we left them in the tour van, not realizing that we wouldn’t see the van again until the very end of the tour. The cenotes turned out to be, if not warm, not too cold for swimming. For me, at least. I’d have gone in, but Dorothy, who abhors the cold, would have passed even if she’d had access to her suit.

But the setting was scenic in an atavistic way, and the pools were gorgeous. No complaints. Before we got to the cenotes we were given a tour of the bioreserve. We saw bees, eagles, and giant iguanas. Not uninteresting, but not worth the extra cost of the tour vs. just going to the cenotes by car.

Finally, the cenotes themselves.

They lived up to the billing. Obscenely clear turquoise water in a tropical jungle setting.

And not for nothing, additional entries for our upcoming coffee table book, Dorothy Sees Patterns.

Sadly, the cenotes were followed, as is tour custom, with a lengthy stop at an overpriced gift shop. How overpriced? The $32 bottle of rum I’d purchased at the liquor store in town was $68.

On the way out we dropped a couple of guests off at a resort (technically, the entire biodiversity center and the cenotes were on the grounds of a resort) that passed a residential community called Ciudad de Canas. Cana, as in Punta Cana, obviously means reeds or canes. But the slang meaning of canas is Gray Hair, which was delightfully on the nose, and I’m sure made the developers laugh every single day.

Saona Island

One of the things we discovered on this vacation is that good travel planning takes more time than a vacation provides. Or at least the way we do it. Case in point, we thought our catamaran cruise to Saona Island was a snorkeling trip. It was not, which appropriate due diligence would have revealed.

It was a beach trip. It was an awesome beach trip and we have no regrets. But the waters were empty, the fish clearly having enough sense to stay away. The women walking the beach offering surfside oil massages were the only wildlife we saw.

Stop number one was billed as a natural swimming pool in the ocean. It wasn’t really a pool, just an exceptionally long, shallow shelf, coming up only waist high hundreds of meters from shore. It was also where all of the boats stopped, so it had a distinctly Grand Central ambiance. But it was a legitimately sweet spot for a swim.

Our second and final stop was the beach on Saona Island itself. Three hours of swimming, sunning, and a lunch buffet that was unquestionably food. This was also when we figured out we weren’t on a snorkeling trip, which explained all the free rum they were pouring. Drunk Snorkeling could easily be a reality TV show, but not one we’d sign up for.

All good, though, because the beach was everything the Caribbean promised: soft white sand, warm water, palm trees, and shaded lounges. I think we swam five times in three hours. Completely worth it.

Except for the return trip. Our boat and several others the same size were sluiced onto a larger catamaran, which announced itself as a Party Boat! An hour-and-a-half of free rum and bachata blasted through overtaxed speakers. To be fair, it wasn’t all bachata. We were also blessed with the Macarena.

I had no idea my lawn extended all the way to the Caribbean, or that it could be so painfully full. At first it made me feel old, but then I realized that there was no age at which the sound splattering out of those speakers would have been acceptable.

Roadside Attractions

No visit to a new location would be complete without documenting the local graphic design and public art. Not that these are all truly local.

Yogyakarta is pronounced Jogjakarta, and is commonly referred to just as Jogja. The J-Y shift is a Dutch hangover. Don’t worry. It’s the only one. The Dutch were otherwise stellar stewards of their benighted little brothers. BFFs, really.

Jogja is also, and this was a surprise, a monarchy. They have their very own sultan! While a few other areas in Indonesia have their own sultans or local rulers, Hamengkubuwono X is the only one with official state power. As sultan, he is the Governor of the Special Region of Yogyakarta. This arrangement is payback for the then sultan’s support for independence during the post WWII revolution.

Kotagede

This time around we’re not in the throbbing heart of the city center, as we so often are. Instead, we’re in Kotagede, Jogja’s old city. Kotagede means Great City, and it was the capital of the Mataram sultanate, dating back to the 16th century. The Matarams were the precursor to the current Yogyakarta sultanate, having lost power through Dutch fuckery. Kotagede is renowned as a craft center, and has been a major locus of silver artisans since Mataram times.

Our Apartment

The apartment is comfortably appointed, if a little charmless. There’s a thorough selection of kitchen appliances, a dining table (which has been in short supply during our Southeast Asia run), a comfortable seating area, and three (!) bedrooms. That last is important because my sister, Nef, is joining us for four of our six weeks in Jogja, so she gets the upstairs bedroom and some privacy. We get to use the extra first floor bedroom as a closet. It’s nice to not trip over our stuff.

There are a lot of nice, small touches. They provide water, in five gallon bottles with a dispenser for hot and cold. There are balconies on both floors. There’s a washer and more than enough drying racks. And this is the first place we’ve ever been that’s provided enough hangers.

We are suffering a quirk of Southeast Asia, which is that they use duvets instead of top sheets. Which makes zero sense, since the weather is way too hot for duvets. We’ve managed this in the past by pulling the duvets out of their covers and using those as top sheets, but the duvets here don’t have covers, so there’s nothing to strip off. We visited several department stores and figured for six weeks it was worth it to buy a top sheet and just leave it behind, but there were no top sheets to be found. We are sleeping under a rotating layer of lovely Balinese ikats.

The bathrooms here are a challenge. The only hot water is from the two showers, but at least there’s a faucet, so you’re not holding a basin under a shower head to get hot water to wash dishes, like we did in Amed. And the only actual sink is in the kitchen. So the bathrooms are more like 3/4 baths, with just a shower and a toilet. We renovated ours by moving in an outdoor table and placing a plastic basin there for a faux sink. We’re survivors.

The biggest challenge was how shockingly dirty the apartment was. We spent our entire first day doing nothing but cleaning. It was everything. Floors, walls, toilets, dishes, cookware… I spent over an hour on the refrigerator alone. It’s fine now, and we’re not using their cleaner. There’s no point. We haven’t said anything, as it’s not like there’s something they can do. It was dirty and now it’s not, so problem solved. Also, they’re really nice people, and we don’t want them to think we’re weirdos. There’s been the odd plumbing problem, for example. and they’ve been great about getting someone over right away.

And we are completely not being weirdos. Every place we’ve been has required some cleanup on move-in. That’s a normal and expected part of the Airbnb experience. But what we faced here was a level of filth we’ve never encountered before.

The Neighborhood

Kotagede’s streets are narrow and recursive, circling back on themselves not unlike the souks in Marrakech’s Medina, but without the density. They’re perhaps more reminiscent of Gunajuato’s narrow, winding streets, but without the mountains. It makes exploring the neighborhood feel like an actual exploration.

The vernacular building design here is completely different than in Bali. There, homes are built around open courtyards, almost Mexican or Moroccan style, and the ubiquitous black volcanic rock is a common material. In Java, peaked, tiled roofs are constructed over wood-framed buildings. A completely different look, but every bit as beautiful.

While that’s the archetype, there are other interesting things going on here. This street is Between Two Gates, and features traditional Javanese Joglo houses.

Masjid Gedhe Mataram Kotagede

Kotagede is also home to Mataram’s historic mosque, first established in 1575. The current iteration is a rebuild from 1926 due to a fire, but there are clearly still structures from much, much earlier.

At the ticket booth there’s a separate price for wedding party photography, which made sense once we were inside. It was almost impossible to take a step without unintentionally photobombing a bride and groom posing together.

The site is full of beautiful historic structures.

And sweet architectural details.

The highlight, without question, was the Pasarean Mataram, the final resting place of the royal family of the Mataram Sultanate. All of them. Going back to the 16th century. I am disinclined to credit the spiritual, but let’s just say there was a vibe to this place. It was an indoor mausoleum, and pictures were not allowed. I even searched the interwebs for something to scrape, figuring they’d have let in a journalist at some point, but nothing. Not, of course, that a photo would have communicated what it was like to be in that space. It was truly beautiful. I felt things.

This is from a neighborhood cemetery, but the style of the aboveground crypts is typical Javanese. The royal crypts are fancier, of course, but the design is pretty much the same.

Appropriate dress to enter was both required and supplied, for a donation. Leading to a rare sighting of a mating pair of Waldos.

Taman Sari Water Palace

The Taman Sari Water Palace was built in the 1750s by the first Yogyakarta Sultan, after the Mataram’s fell. It was meant to be a place for the sultan to relax after a series of wars. It’s a modest site, but it has some beautiful structures.

Taman Sari’s highlight is the bathing pools, which is where the sultan did much of his relaxing. He would leer out of an upper floor window watching his concubines bathe. But not in a creepy way. They were his concubines, after all.

When he made his choice he would throw a rose down to her to indicate his favor, and she would get to spend the night with him in one of the upper chambers, in a bed heated by charcoal braziers underneath. That’s just a win for everyone.

Shopping

Pasar Kotagede, a traditional covered market, is just a few minutes walk from our apartment. There’s an even bigger version, Pasar Beringharjo, downtown. It was massive, covering several square blocks, and has… everything. Groceries, handicrafts, electronics, an entire batik market…

Supermarkets were a different thing. It took us multiple attempts before we found something usable. The first two we went to were Carrefours, whose local brand is TransMart. Which led to this:

As it happened, the first TransMart we went to was being renovated so hard it was no longer a store. They were doing the same thing to the second TransMart we went to. Then we went to a third supermarket, based on a google search, and it was just a jacked up Quickie Mart. I finally asked our host, and on our fourth attempt we found a real supermarket. Although it took a fifth store before we were able to locate pickles. Vlasic is everywhere, if not in every store.

Downtown’s Malioboro street is chockablock with batik shops, but it also seems to be snack central. There are snack shops that seem like the modern equivalent of the riches of the Silk Road. Rendered in snacks. These photos are all from the same shop!

Dining

Eating is a form of shopping, and we enjoyed an evening at the Alun Alun Kidul Night Market, a nightly cultural institution.

The high point was these hollowed out cars that had been transformed into glowing pedicabs. I know, we should have taken a ride. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

We also dined at Omah Duwur, a lovely Dutch era restaurant with magical grounds, right in the neighborhood.

We’re back in a Muslim country and are once again immersed in the call to prayer. There were places in North Africa where competing mosques reduced the overlapping calls to prayer as noise, but there were also places where a single mosque’s call rang clear and sounded like music. There must be a lot of mosques here, since we’ve yet to hear a distinct call. Here’s what it sounded like while we dined at Omah Duwur. Hard to peel it back and hear how many mosques are at work here, but it seems like a lot.

The Javanese have done to Islam what the Balinese did to Hinduism, mixmastering it with their traditional belief systems to make a bespoke religion that’s all theirs. We’ve had several people say, “We’re Muslim, but not like [waves hands] them. You know, that whole Sunni/Shia thing.” They really want us to know they’re the chill Muslims.

To be fair, this is a thing.

But our very best meal was when we backslid (all the way to grade school) and had dessert for lunch. But look what we were up against. We never stood a chance.

And here’s how Bear In Bathtub met his end. Oh, she’s a savage one. Although I suppose that bringing a hammer with your dessert is technically foreshadowing.

Graphic Design & Packaging

This is always one of my favorite reports. I absolutely adore local graphic design, and Java has seemed denser in entertaining graphic presentation than many of our destinations. There’s a lot to love here.

The festival features arts, crafts, traditional and modern performances, plenty of food, a night market, and a midway. It is ridiculously well attended, and has the vibe of a county fair. But it’s Bali, so everything about it is beautiful. We went our first night, and it was so much fun we spent the next two evenings there, as well.

Grounds

To call the grounds rich is to diminish them, but there are only so many superlatives to throw around. Close your eyes and spin, and when you open them you’ll be staring something marvelous in the face. It’s dense.

This is just the entrance gate.

It’s not at all clear how much of the decorative infrastructure is reused vs. what’s created fresh each year. Some of the more elaborate constructions seem to be made of ephemeral materials, but even if some pieces are reused, they’re all beautifully maintained, and certainly look brand new.

This is just one of the stages.

But wait. There’s more.

As promised, there’s even a midway, as part of the stalls that make up the market area.

And plenty of food stalls. We were there three nights and ate dinner in the stalls every evening. The cuisine has a distinct top note of ouch. I believe they use the chilis in surgery instead of anesthesia, to distract from the pain. When we are given the option of pedas (spicy) or not, we choose not.

Performance

We saw dance and music performances every night, and got a crash course in Balinese gamelan music, which is both offered on its own and accompanies the dance. I kind of wasn’t expecting to like gamelan, as it doesn’t use a Western tonal scale, and operates, in my mind, in the same taxonomic space as Chinese opera. Which sounds to me like cats desperate to convince you of something very, very important.

I may have to revisit that bias now, as I truly loved the gamelan music. It has the manic, coked up energy of a Raymond Scott Looney Tunes score.

Gamelan is not, as I had ignorantly thought, an instrument, but a style of music. While there’s the odd flute or string, the vast majority of the instruments are percussive: drums, xylophones, gongs, and metallophones (tuned percussion). That’s a gangsa metallophone on the right.

While this isn’t the craziest music we heard, it’s the craziest we recorded.

But that wasn’t our first exposure to gamelan music, which came on our first night, in an outdoor arena that seats 6,000, but had plenty more standing.

What we didn’t know we had walked into was some sort of weird all-female gamelan orchestra battle of the bands, featuring dozens of women in identical outfits, like a Bizarro Tommy Dorsey orchestra.

They must have been local celebrities, because each band had a cheering section with fans waving flags the same color as their outfits. The whole thing had the energy of an Iggy Pop performance, the ambiance of a World Cup match, and the choreography of a Busby Berkeley jam. It was enchanting.

Then there was this, and whatever was making those weird harmonics. I thought it was singing, but Dorothy thought it was flute and strings. We both thought it was wild.

Topeng Dances

Topeng is a masked dance that is found throughout Indonesia, not just in Bali, with roots that stretch back to 850 AD or earlier. While they originally focused on nature and ancestors, the introduction of Hinduism to Indonesia added the Ramayana and Mahabharata as source texts for new dances. Still, many dances represent archetypal characters more than structured narratives.

Here’s the blustery guy arguing with another character. This went on for so long, without dance or music, that we had to leave. I’m sure it was funny if you spoke Indonesian, but that left us out.

We think this character is Patih Keras, a high-ranking court official. But that doesn’t get us anywhere near understanding the narrative of this dance. This clip is long, as I wanted to capture an entire performance, so feel free to bail. I certainly wanted to, or have magically sprouted a tripod. On the other hand, it does an excellent job of capturing the sonic range of a gamelan orchestra, which can go from eerie to frenetic, delicate to thunderous, and every stop in-between.

In this particular case, the music is sinister and the dance is a little creepy, making a compelling combination. The dancer’s fine body control is something to behold.

Ramayana Dance

While the Topeng trended more folk dance, there was another troupe that focussed on Ramayana dances. Knowing that didn’t make them any easier to understand, but there was at least some familiarity. The Ramayana has been a consistent through line during our time in Southeast Asia.

We think these dances had something to do with trickery, abduction, and, shall we say delicately, seduction. But only because that seems to be what the entire Ramayana is about. This may have been about a lovely picnic.

Again, the body control is very hard to wrap your head around.

This dance, though, was the bomb. We were totally not expecting saucy drag. Shockingly, Googling “ramayana saucy drag” brings back nothing, when it should most assuredly be bringing back this.

More Ramayana…

This performance was less dance, more play, and was played very broadly. So broadly that I tagged it as commedia dell’arte when I filed the photos. It’s still from the Ramayana, and appears to involve giants, or giant hermits, kidnapping fairies, or little girls, or princesses. And impertinent men hitting on saucy wenches. Or something. There was much declaiming.

The Crafts Mall

And this is where our dreams came true, and the reason we didn’t bother trying to fabric shop on Jalan Sulawesi. This was a selection of artisans so perfectly curated that we didn’t have to go anywhere else to find the very best artifacts. They had conveniently all been brought into one place, seemingly just for us.

The indoor mall had a large open courtyard, with a side gallery featuring a series of four rooms with textiles and jewelry.

Crafts

The courtyard had all sorts of things, from housewares to sculptures in a variety of media. For whatever reason, what leapt out was one woman who hand painted baskets, purses, fans, and wall hangings, using canvas and reed. Dorothy picked up a swell fan.

Jewelry

There’s a famous silver village, Celuk, just half an hour from Denpasar, that had been on our list. But since it seemed like every major Celuk jeweler had a booth in the craft mall, no need. I bought a ring and we both bought earrings.

The four large side galleries were all set up identically: three walls of textile makers, the fourth wall and the center island for jewelers.

And… Ikat!

We’d done a good job picking up display quality textiles on our day trips to Tenganan and Sidemen, but we needed things that could be cut up and made into garments. We only have so much wall space, but I wear shirts every day.

As with the jewelry, it seemed like every artisanal ikat maker was represented at the craft mall, so it was an incredible one-stop shop. We bought fabric each of the three nights we attended the fair. They started to recognize us.

The range and selection was astonishing, and rewarded three nights of viewing. Every time we went back we saw amazing things that we’d somehow overlooked on previous visits. I’m glad we took the time to go slow and dive deep. Our wardrobes will thank us.

One of the most amazing things we saw was ikat with figurative, brocade-like designs. I understand how that’s theoretically possible, but it still doesn’t seem practically achievable. The technical complexity is just through the roof.

Here’s another thing that should be impossible. That hand-woven stripe on the right isn’t pieced in. It’s woven on the same loom as the ikat. Then just to show off, it shifts back to ikat. Insane.

But this is going to end up exactly where you thought it would: with loot. We bought us some fabric.

I have to blame Dorothy for the fact that I’m a fabric slut. I can’t imagine that I’d have wound up in that place without her influence and guidance. My world is profoundly enriched by that, as it is by her in so many, many ways.

Unless you need dental work done. Then Denpasar is a must-visit dental tourism destination. Because, you guessed it, we needed dental work done.

Dorothy developed a throbbing pain in a tooth with a filling, so we got a referral to a dentist in Amlapura, a mere hour from Amed, rather than the three-hour drive to Denpasar. Verdict: “Dude, that’s fucked up. You need to see an endodontist.” They provided a referral to a provider in Denpasar, but they couldn’t see her soon enough, so we found someone the old fashioned way: Google Reviews.

We made an appointment and got dropped off here. Which is whatever the superlative of unprepossessing is.

Despite the first impression, the interior was clean, modern, and well-staffed. We’d made an appointment for an exam for Dorothy and a cleaning for me. My cleaning was outstanding, maybe the best I’ve ever had, and the price tag was 600,000 rupiah, about $35 USD. It was so good, I canceled my return cleaning at my expensive Chicago dentist. This is how I’ll be managing dental care going forward.

Dorothy’s X-rays and exam came to $18, and they scheduled her for a crown. One appointment for the surgery and the temporary, and a follow-up appointment to install the final crown. That last appointment was five days before we needed to be in Denpasar to fly to Yogyakarta, so we decided to burn our last five days in Amed and pick up a hotel in Denpasar. Easier than the back and forth, and onsite in case any follow-up care was required before we left.

As it happened, they were able to replace the filling on Dorothy’s first visit, so she never went the crown route, but we stuck with our plans to finish up Bali in Denpasar. Why not? By the way, the hypermodern, ridiculously skillful filling came to $60 USD. Here’s hoping our next dental emergency happens outside the US, where we can afford it.

We were pretty confident we could fill five days in Denpasar. Despite its reputation, a little digging revealed a fair amount going on. There was a whole street of fabric stores, a massive craft market, an array of temples, and an annual, month-long arts fair. We’d be fine.

Goa Lawah Bat Cave Temple

Our first stop was actually on the road to Denpasar, the famous Bat Cave Temple in the seaside village of Klungkung. It’s truly built around the opening of a bat cave, although that part wasn’t open to the public. It’s one of Bali’s six most holy sites, and dates back to the 11th century. And it’s bat-themed. Which is, I suppose, all you truly need to know.

We thought this was pretty cool, right at the first courtyard. But then we looked closely and realized it was starlings, not bats. Still pretty cool.

The courtyard also featured a couple of these crazy seed beasts. I have no idea why it appears to be standing over a pair of severed human feet. It does give one pause.

T

Like all proper Balinese temples, a cadre of fierce yet charming guardians.

There was plenty of action cross the street from the temple, too. There were services being conducted right by the beach.

Even better, there was a massive bat-themed sculpture (Installation? Roadside attraction?) that was the total highlight of the visit.

Hunting Crafts

I had a couple of hours to kill on our day trip to Denpasar for Dorothy’s filling. I thought I’d check out the Kumbasari Art Market, four floors of crafts. I figured I could scope it out in advance and that Dorothy and I could make quick work of it together when we came back.

Kumbasari was impressive in scale, the first two floors dedicated to clothing and textiles and the upper two floors featuring handicrafts. Bali is known for its beautiful ikats, and while we’d picked up museum quality specimens in our day trips to Tenganan and Sidemen, we were short on textiles that could be fashioned into personal wardrobe.

With that prompt, I was in and out of Kumbasari pretty quickly. The third and fourth floor crafts mall was mostly souvenir grade goods. There were some nice wooden bowls and trays, but nothing that inspired acquisitiveness, and certainly nothing that warranted trying to squeeze in the additional weight of wooden artifacts. And the first two floors were mostly utilitarian ready-made clothes for locals, so no treasures to be unearthed there, either. Unless we truly ran out of things to do, there’d be no reason to return with Dorothy.

That took all of half an hour, so with more time to kill I crossed the street to Denpasar’s largest fresh market, Pasar Badung. We’d be staying in a hotel for our five days in Denpasar, so we wouldn’t be cooking. Still, these local markets are always a treat and it was fun to walk through. But knowing that we wouldn’t be shopping there meant it was more a tourist visit than a scouting trip, so that didn’t take long, either.

Finally, I took a quick tour of Julan Sulawesi, three solid blocks of nothing but fabric stores. I didn’t do any shopping on my own, but this definitely warranted returning with Dorothy.

We did go back, but the goods leaned distinctly utilitarian. There wasn’t a lot of art there, and we wound up scarcely stopping. Part of that was because the night before we’d gone to the annual arts fair, Pesta Kesenian Bali, and that’s where the action was. They had a craft mall set up with an exceptionally well curated selection of textiles, jewelry, and crafts. We went three of our four nights in Denpasar, and found something new each night. With a rich array of art, performances, and food, I had to give Pesta Kesenian Bali it’s own post.

Bali Provincial Museum

The Bali Provincial Museum was just the right size to do in about an hour without feeling overwhelmed. There are three galleries, each housed in a discrete building. As with so many Balinese museums, the grounds were as, or perhaps more, spectacular than the collection.

The collection itself was… odd. There were representations of multiple art forms, but all of the artifacts on display seemed modern. I’m not at all clear what their curatorial POV might have been, but it was still all interesting stuff.

Bajra Sandhi Monument

This, despite looking ancient, is modern, designed in 1981 with construction completed in 2013. Its design abstractly celebrates Indonesian independence, which was declared on August 17, 1945. The monument has eight main pillars, 17 gates, and central tower of 45 meters. Which, you know, visually screams, “Hey! It’s about independence.” Couldn’t be more obvious.

Still, even if you somehow miss the hit-you-over-the-head symbolism, the building is awesome and the site is beautiful.

The exterior is also festooned, as the Balinese do, with guardians.

The first thing you notice is the faux Victorian interior, complete with marble columns and staircases and a pond. Because, you know, Independence.

The second thing you notice on entry is the garish, exaggerated sculptures of pig-nosed turtles. They surround the main floor, with their snouts facing out and their tails facing in. There’s no overt explanation for their presence, but Hindus believe the world is supported on the back of a turtle, so… probably?

The second floor is a rotunda with wall to wall dioramas covering the entire history of Bali. So, plenty of chieftains overseeing their bucolic domains, and plenty of Dutch fuckery. Which, sadly, is not the name of Amsterdam’s red light district.

It’s a lot of fuckery to take in at once, and I’m not sure the dioramas truly help it go down easier. Dioramas don’t usually make me want to cry.

It turns out that a 45 meter tall tower holds lots of steps. Lots and lots of steps. But if you make your way to the top, no matter how slowly, you are rewarded with spectacular views, both of the surrounding area and the compound itself.

Puri Agung Pemecutan, The Pemecutan Royal Palace

This 17th century palace is technically open to visitors, but only a tiny bit. You get the outside, but the inside is off limits. Still, sometimes a lot is too much, so I’m not going to complain about having a manageable scale.

Mostly, as seems to the case in Bali, it was about the statues. There were the expected Balinese guardians, but the emphasis here was on goofy animals. Hard not to love ’em.

Roadside Attractions

No trip anywhere is complete without enjoying what can be found on the way.

This was an innovation in dessert so compelling we went back. They make and stock plain yeast donuts. The bins on the left are the icing dips, and the bins on the right are the toppings. So you could get mango icing with peanuts, or chocolate icing with crispy ball pink. As you should. And they make them to your spec right there. In front of you.

And this, just your run of the mill bridge decoration. Basic.

And finally. I thought it was a lesbian bar, but it turned out to be a women’s clothing store. I wasn’t going in either way, but I was still kind of disappointed.

And it was, if it was important to have our noses rubbed in the destructive impact of overtouristing.

By hype, Bali is thick with tourists coming for yoga centers and wellness retreats. We intentionally chose to stay in Amed, an off-the-radar beach town, to avoid that, and it worked. Even Denpasar seemed more like a bustling capital than Man Bun Mecca. We were beginning to think that Bali’s reputation was unwarranted.

Har.

It’s not just that we were greeted by a sign on our way into town offering a men’s retreat where you could “Learn To Love Like A King.” Ok, fine. That is such low hanging fruit for mockery that it’s doing its own heavy lifting. But there’s nothing funny about the devastation wrought on Ubud by tourism.

I am not immune to the irony, or whatever the superlative of irony is (self-loathing?), that the only way to learn about the impact of overtourism on Ubud was to arrive as tourists. That’s the throbbing cognitive dissonance that has been a top note to our entire travel extravaganza. Sometimes I feel like a john who justifies his behavior because he treats the girls so well.

We maintain a light footprint. We live as close to the local lifestyle as possible. We support artisans over merchants. And we’re still helping to drive up the cost of living and housing wherever we go. We’re still part of the problem.

Which makes whinging about Ubud problematic. But nothing I can’t overcome by ignoring it!

Ubud reminds me of nothing so much as San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. Like San Miguel, Ubud is a charming town whose charms have been nearly obliterated by tourists. In both cases you can squint and see the town that was the original draw, the elements that attracted tourists in the first place. San Miguel still has much of its original allure, as its clientele is the 1%, and their EPCOT Center village will be properly maintained. Don’t make them contact the manager.

What’s disturbing about San Miguel takes a minute to notice. It’s not that it’s a squalid hive of tourists, it’s that there are close to zero locals loose. No visitors, just shopkeepers. Mexicans have been priced out of San Miguel, which boasts Mexico’s worst income inequality.

Ubud is pretty much the same story, although its native charms are less manicured than San Miguel’s. But the setting, the old temples, the winding streets… The attraction is still evident, despite being buried under the avalanche of boutiques and souvenir shops that cater exclusively to tourists.

It’s not the wellness centers and the retreats. It’s that there’s nothing left of Ubud for people who actually live, or lived, there. It has given itself over completely to the predations of tourists, the most invasive species of all.

Because San Miguel truly is a way station for the 1%, it’s clean, curated, and modestly peopled (the only modest thing about it). There’s only so many folks who can afford San Miguel, which is how they like it. Ubud, on the other hand, was reminiscent of the souk in Marrakech, a veritable ant farm of gringos. It was, if I may permit myself, disgusting.

“But I’m not like those other guys, baby. I’ll love you like a king.” Which I think means that when I’m done with you I’ll fuck your daughter and your livestock. It’s what kings do.

*sigh* Welcome to Ubud.

Despite the above, we managed to squeeze out several positive experiences in our day there: a pair of nice temples and one spectacular, wholly unexpected museum.

The Royal Palace: Puri Saren Agung

Very little of the Royal Palace is open to the public, though what is available is choice. The palace was built in the early 1800s and restored after the 1917 earthquake, so it’s fairly modern. It’s used these days primarily as a performance space for traditional dance and gamelan music.

No Balinese palace is complete without a panoply of delightful carvings and adorably fierce guardian statues.

Puri Kantor Legacy Palace

Puri Kantor, like the Royal Palace, isn’t terrifically old, having been built in 1930. It’s a hotel now, with its grounds only available to guests. We got to view the courtyard, which was plenty interesting, especially since there was renovation underway.

There are still plenty of highly skilled stonemasons in Bali, working on both restorations and new construction. It was fascinating to see one of them at work.

Setia Darma House of Mask and Puppets

On paper, this looked like an interesting place. In real life, it was breathtaking, combining a ridiculously beautiful natural setting with a world-class museum collection of masks and puppets from all over the world.

Despite being hard by Ubud, 6 km and about 30 minutes by taxi, the place was deserted. There was one other couple there during our entire visit. It’s actual culture, so I suspect it doesn’t resonate with the kinds of tourists who find Ubud worthwhile. Fine. We were more than happy to have it to ourselves.

The museum is set up as a massive traditional Balinese compound, with each gallery taking up a discrete Javanese wooden house, a joglo. While the focus is on Indonesian masks and puppets, the collection features artifacts from all over the world. The compound also serves as a cultural hub, hosting performance and workshops.

Like many specialty museums we’ve seen, Setia Darma is the brainchild of a lone obsessive. Hadi Sunyoto is a wealthy collector who turned his private collection into a public museum in 2006. On the plus side there’s no entrance fee, so thanks, Income Inequality!

While there is, I’m sure, scholarly discourse available on the fine distinctions between regional storytelling traditions, we’ll have none of that here. That would require knowledge and expertise, and I’ve sworn off. What we have instead is a breathtaking collection of artifacts that can be appreciated for nothing more than their raw beauty. That’s enough for me, and it will have to do for you, too.

Wayang Kulit

Originating in Java, but performed in Bali, as well, Wayang Kulit is the traditional Indonesian shadow puppet show, a storytelling form over 1,000 years old. Unsurprisingly, the collection of Wayang Kulit puppets is excellent.

Balinese Ramayana Masks

Like many Southeast Asian storytelling traditions, the Ramayana figures prominently in Bali, and is responsible for some of the most beautiful masks.

Masks From All Over

Although it favors Indonesia, this truly is a worldwide collection.

Marionettes

We did a poor job of documenting countries of origin for the marionettes, but it’s pretty clear they represent a lot of different cultures and traditions.

There was also a display of hyperrealistic marionettes with no real explanation. These don’t look like archetypes, they look like very specific people. Other than the first one, which is obviously Obama and which was tagged to identify the other marionette as Hadi Sunyoto, the museum’s founder, there’s no information on who these people might be. But they’re definitely real people.

Random Acts Of Puppetry

There was a small display of New Guiinea Hand Puppets. A seriously missed gift shop opportunity.

There were a few full-size, multi-person Barong puppets.

And even a collection of puppet-themed paintings. As if the entire place didn’t already scream, “I have more money than I know what to do with!”

This one warrants its own discussion. The demon creatures are a Javanese-specific addition to the Hindu Ramayana narrative. The creature seated on the right is Samar, a Javanese demigod. The character on the left is Petruk and the bowing one in the middle is Bagong, both of them Samar’s sons. Along with their brother, Gareng, they make up the Punokawan, or clown servants. They are a consistent presence in both Balinese and Javanese wayang puppet shows.

OK. Great. But what the fuck is actually going on in this picture? Whatever it is, the women are clearly horrified. I’m horrified, and I have no idea what’s supposed to be happening. I can’t decide if I desperately want to know the story behind this or desperately don’t, so I can make up my own. Please offer potential narratives in the comments, like a New Yorker cartoon contest. There will be voting.

So did the Setia Darma House of Mask and Puppets make the visit to Ubud worthwhile? A resounding yes. As repulsive and disturbing as we found Ubud, the mask museum was at the other end of the spectrum, a peak experience and a must-visit if you ever find yourself in Bali.

Which you should.

As always, though, in Bali the journey is as important as the destination. Unless you’re asleep in the back of the car, it’s impossible to drive around Bali without being devastated by its raw, unfair beauty.

Besakih Temple

I have confessed, to my shame, to a notable case of Temple Fatigue towards the end of our ten weeks in Vietnam. There are just a fuck ton of temples and pagodas slathered thickly throughout the land, and they do get a little samey after repeated viewings.

And I’m going to get myself in trouble here, but I’m expressing a personal esthetic, not assaulting a sovereign nation’s cultural patrimony. I find the Vietnamese temples a little twee. Not at first. But on repeated exposure their delicacy starts to feel a little forced. Like how Brits seem so polite until you remember they were all caned at school for speaking up. Not Piers Morgan, obviously. Some folk clearly weren’t caned enough.

My point being, if I can crawl out of the hole I just dug, that we are having no such problem in Bali. Maybe after ten weeks we would, but I doubt it. For one, we’re not temple chasing here. We’re taking a more measured approach after our Vietnam experience, so that should reduce our risk. But I also just love the ferocity and joy in the Balinese temples. Their guardian gods are locked and loaded, ready to defend to the bitter end, if necessary, with nothing but love for their followers.

If we’re going to be choosy about our temple excursions in Bali, then we can’t miss Besakih, the largest and holiest temple in Bali Hinduism. Built on the slopes of Mount Agung, Bali’s largest active volcano, it’s not even one temple. It’s a complex comprising 23 separate temples. It’s also very, very old. It dates to at least the 8th century, but the stone bases of several temples, including the main temple, Pura Penataran Agung, resemble megalithic stepped pyramids. That would place the oldest structures at about 2,000 years old.

As you enter the temple grounds, the first thing you notice is Mount Agung looming over the meru towers and the tropical foliage.

The courtyard before the first temple has a massive fountain, featuring dragon heads and clawed feet.

Just past the fountain is the reveal, Pura Penataran Agung.

The temple’s plaza is used for prayer and is off limits to tourists. There are ceremonies going on all the time, so some parts of the complex will always be in use and inaccessible. Our guide, as a native, was permitted in, and took this 360° video for us.

We were able to get a look at the main plaza on our way up the side of the temple. The umbrellas are meaningful, as they collectively represent the Trimurti: Red represents Brahma, Vishnu is black, and Shiva is yellow and white.

Once you get to the top you can see the Gates of Heaven up close. We learned in Vietnam that the Gates of Heaven shape represents hands raised in prayer.

As we ascended further up what felt more like a small city than a temple complex, we reached the area where visitors are allowed to pray. We had purchased small pre-fab offerings on our way in, which is why we were able to enter the area. Our guide lit the incense for us, and we placed the offering where directed and knelt on the stone floor. A priest chanted and sprinkled us with holy water. Money was stuffed in a donation box. It’s almost like we knew what was expected.

Getting to the top also gave us access to spectacular views…

And a closeup look at the Besakih’s defining visual feature, the pelinggih meru towers. These are the primary shrines in Balinese temples, built with a masonry base, a wooden chamber, and thatched roofs.

The thatching is replaced every ten years, and the towers require ongoing maintenance. We were unsurprised to find construction going on while we visited.

The entire site was chockablock with interesting things to see wherever your eye happened to stop for a moment.

And of course, no visit to a Balinese temple would be complete without visiting the gods, who always seem delighted to protect and serve. Just like the LAPD.

There’s something about the culture of polytheistic Hindu animists that really speaks to us. The monotheists seem closed down and locked up by comparison. I suppose when your theology acknowledges multiple right answers it’s easier to relax into a lifestyle with a more expansive definition of normal behavior.

Sidemen: Textiles & Silver

This was the whole reason for the day trip. Songket is a ridiculously rich, complicated brocade only made on backstrap looms. There is no way to manufacture songket; it has to be made by hand. Thankfully, Sidemen, one of the few places that makes songket, was close at hand.

Pertenunan Pelangi Traditional Weaving

We’d researched shops and studios in advance, so we knew we wanted our first stop to be Pertenunan Pelangi. They explained that almost all songket weaving is done in women’s homes, because of the backstrap looms. Pelangi sells their finished pieces, but their onsite weaving studio produces ikats.

Which is fine, because watching ikats being woven is plenty fascinating. A large room was filled with over a dozen looms, a handful of which were in use while we were there.

What’s ikat? I’ll quote myself, from the post on Tenganan’s double ikat.

Pelangi specializes in endek, which is a weft ikat. That means that the warp (vertical) threads are a solid color while the weft (horizontal) threads are dyed to make the final pattern. That information is important in understanding what we saw on the second floor. There, a young man wove colored plastic strips into frames to create patterns. It took a few minutes to understand what we were seeing.

He was creating templates for dying the thread used to weave a particular pattern. They can weave from their library or create custom patterns on demand. This method, which we had never seen before, allows for mind-bending precision, permitting traditional ikat weaving to mimic complex brocades.

Later, when we went to Ubud, we visited Threads of Life, a high-end textile boutique, where they had examples of the hand-tied thread, ready to dye.

Minds completely blown, we staggered into the shop. There’s one section for the songket brocades they carry for local weavers.

And another section for their own ikats. Which were just fucking spectacular.

Kupu-Kupu Traditional Weaving

Our second stop was, as it happened, right across the street from Pelangi. Where we found a woman, a backstrap loom, and songket in progress. We got to see songket being made after all!

What’s the big deal with songket? Well, it’s an ancient weaving technique, dating back to the 7th century. It originated when Chinese traders brought silk thread to Indonesia and Middle Eastern traders brought gold thread. It is rich and luxurious, almost decadent, and another weaving technique it’s difficult to wrap your head around.

I am thrilled we got to see it being made, as there’s no way to appreciate it otherwise. I watched the weaver work for several minutes before I figured out she was weaving. I thought she was setting up the loom, because I’m used to seeing weaving where the shuttle moves back and forth on each weft row. Instead, she was taking individual warp threads and wrapping gold and colored supplementary weft threads around them to create the brocade pattern.

Every time I think I’ve seen the full range of complexity in weaving, shit like this happens.

Would anyone like to place a side bet on whether Dorothy bought a piece of songket? I thought not.

Agung Silver

Sidemen is actually best known for its custom silversmiths. You have to be a textile nerd to know it for its weaving. Since we were there, we let our driver take us to a place he knew, Agung Silver. The shops all have tourist classes. They give you seven grams of silver and a couple of hours to make a ring for about $30. Which is fine if you want the silver equivalent of a handprint ashtray. I have never understood the desire to make something badly yourself instead of spending that money on an artisan’s labors.

It was unprepossessing, but full of lovely things. Dorothy got earrings and I got a ring. I have decided, in my dotage, to becoming a ring wearer. Do not judge, lest ye be judged yourself.

Just Add Water

Technically this was a different day trip. Perasi Beach, known as Virgin Beach, had been suggested as part of this day’s itinerary, but we passed on it for the Sidemen trip because we’re old and weak. Dorothy’s craving for a white sand and turquoise water experience, however, was not to be denied. Our black sand beach in Amed was amazing, but tropes are tropes, and they are disrespected at your peril.

For those of you keeping score, this is what happy looks like.

Cremation Creations

On our way back, our guide pulled over so we could get a look at these astounding funerary sculptures being constructed. They are custom built to order for cremation ceremonies, and are lit up along with the loved one, to ease them on their journey. It’s a shame to see this much craft and devotion go up in flames, but they are purpose built, so they know their fate going in.

We were most taken with this piece. The fish part swam you to your destination, and the fierce beast head protected you on the way.

A new note for Sam and Ruby. In addition to daily altar offerings, we may require a Balinese style sendoff when we’re finally done. I’d had something more Viking in mind, but how can this not shift your perspective?