Dear Everyone,
This may be my last letter from Bali so it is fitting that it should be about the things that brought me all this way.
About a month ago, I discovered an interesting thing that some of the locals spend time doing when the rest of us are asleep.
Usually, I get off my shift at the restaurant buzzing and not at all ready to go to bed(despite needing to), so I go to the only internet place that is open late and spend some time. They close around 1:00am and I head home on empty streets, dodging dogs. This is the witching hour in Ubud.
On a particular day that week, I passed a group of men in shorts and flip-flops carrying large air rifles with even larger scopes. They were circling around a big tree.
I simply had to turn around to get a closer look.
I pulled up alongside them and asked what was up.
"Bats, Bro."
"Really?!" I must have made a face.
"Hahaha. Ya."
It's not every night you see a group of heavily armed hunters stalking downtown Ubud. I imagine it would be much like seeing men in the wee hours, tracking pigeons on Wall Street.
I cruised home and came across another group. This one staking out another big tree on the steep hill that leads to my house. Half the men were hunkered down in the shadows. The other half were taking shots while one of them pointed a large flashlight into the branches. Nothing was coming down but when I pulled over to watch, one of the guys held up a large bat by the wing and chuckled.
Turns out they chop off the wings and heads, skin them and make a dish called Gerang Assem. It's sort of a curry without coconut milk that the Balinese have great affection for. I had previously thought that it was made with the losing bird in a cockfight, but I guess there are no hard and fast rules about things like that here.
I am beginning to see what it takes to be a man in this place. In addition to being married and a chain-smoker, you've got to love your dog (but not in public), stroke your cock (especially before a big fight), and be batty about stew (I know some think that the pun is the lowest form of humor but sometimes you just can't resist).
Back in the present, all of Bali is celebrating a festival called Galungan. The streets are lined with long trunks of bamboo elaborately wrapped in all manner of palm fronds and bamboo leaves. The tips taper to a string from which hangs a sort of basket that is filled with offerings to the gods. The weight of the baskets pulls on the bamboo and arcs them out into the road in festive arches. It is quite lovely to drive down the street and just take it all in. Troupes of kids dressed in white tromp around carrying Barongs, which are huge, benevolent monster puppets that take two people to operate from the inside and remind me a lot of Chinese dragons. Gamelan music is everywhere. There are actually three days of celebrations for three different holidays but people just call the whole thing Galungan and that's that. Also, no one seems to know what it is all about.
"It's Galungan" They say.
"Yeah, but why are we celebrating?"
"We do this every six months."
"Yeah, but what are we celebrating?"
Stares.
A half Balinese girl I have become friends with told me that it is the Balinese Christmas...
"Yeah, but why are we celebrating?"
"Hmmm. I don't know. We just celebrate."
So I asked a westerner living in Bali who has read some books. I can't verify the truth of what she related to me but she said that at some point in history, there was a twin boy and girl born to the royal family. They were compelled to marry each other and their son was not only horribly ugly, but he was a great leader. He ushered in a new age of science and prosperity and because he had more or less abandoned the Hindu ways, he was assassinated. The people celebrated a return to Hinduism and that is what Galungan is all about.
Okay. That's not what it's been about for me.
For me it's been about stuffing my face with pig, 50 different ways.
I woke up with a call from my host. "Come to my family compound. We made some food." When I arrived there was a large table piled high with the following platters: A plate of sausage, a bowl of babi Kecap (basically sweet, stewed pig knuckles), tum (packets of pork and spices cooked in small envelopes of banana leaf), deep fried slices of pork belly (a personal favorite...maybe you can relate), three different lawar (it's like a salad of chopped long bean with chopped pork skin, coconut, fried shallots and garlic, the raw blood of the pig and some spices). I don't know what possessed them to make three different ones but there they were. Balinese are really passionate about lawar. Oh yeah, there was rice too.
After dangerously stuffing myself, I returned home and napped for a few hours before going to work. At work, they had made lawar and babi kecap for staff meal so I noshed a little. Then I left for an hour to go to a ceremony at one of the cooks' house.
It was his baby's three month ceremony, which means that his son has been elevated off the ground for the last three months (as dictated by tradition) and that was the day he got to touch down.
I had to go back to work before the end of the ceremony and the food, so when it was all finished, he drove half an hour to the restaurant with the hindquarter of a spit-roasted suckling pig (my favorite) and we all got to eat just a bit more pork.
I wish I could say that I was going to be doing a fruit juice cleanse after all this gluttony but I don't think it is in the cards.
Nope. This week is all about tying up culinary loose end by learning all the dishes I haven't yet had a chance to at the restaurant. It will culminate next Monday when I kill and spit roast an entire pig AND make a lawar of my own (with some professional assistance). I'm doing this to thank the staff at the restaurants for all their help and kindness over the last 6 months. It also gives me a good excuse to learn how to make these crucial dishes.
A disturbing number of the dishes I have learned this week require ingredients that I've never seen in the States. Take for example the smoked duck I promised to tell you all about. It has the following increasingly bewildering list of ingredients:
1)Shallot 2) Garlic 3)A duck 4) Hot and Red Chili 5)Coriander seeds 6)Pepper 7)Salt 8)Nutmeg 9)Oil 10)Lemongrass 11) Daun Salam (Balinese Basil) 12)Ginger 13) Fresh Turmeric 14)Galangal 15)Kencur (Lesser galangal???) 16)Shrimp Paste 17)Candlenuts (no substitute) 18)Fresh Cassava Leaves 19)I'm told there is one or two secret ingredients that are preventing my dish from reaching it's flavor potential. Anyway, after creating a paste out of the first 17 ingredients, you make a thick stew and boil the bird, stuffed with the same ingredients and some blanched, chopped cassava leaf, for at least two hours but hopefully more. You are supposed to smoke it overnight but who has the time...or the smoker? After it is tender and properly spiced, you cover it in more spice and cassava leaves, wrap it in banana leaves and then in foil and roast it for another 45 min. At this point it will taste at least as good as the second best thing you have every eaten but not as good at it could. I'll get it right eventually though (even if I have to grow the ingredients myself). Hopefully some of you will be the beneficiaries. You can also do this with chicken, which is really good too.
Whew. I'm tired and hungry. I'm leaving for Vietnam in about a week but it's just busy, busy, busy until then. Thank you guys for all your letters over the last months. They have really kept me going and have meant more to me than the actual trip itself.
I'm excited to resume the backpacker lifestyle. I'll write as often as I can.
Love,
Alex
3-Month Ceremony For Baby.
Galungan Decorations on every road.
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