2022
A Royal visit
3 November 2022
My last missive before flying out tonight – I have one more extraordinary tale to tell, for those who do not see my Facebook posts.
You may recall from the email I wrote before leaving Australia that I was wondering what might have become of Ibu Agung, the owner of Puri Saraswati now that it is under new management. From the royal family of Ubud, Ibu Agung had, decades ago, turned her palace home into a hotel, next door to the very sacred Saraswati Temple and the Lotus Pond. She was passing through the hotel gardens to visit the temple on Monday and saw me on the verandah and stopped to say hello with a beaming smile of welcome. (I have been staying at Puri Saraswati since 1988 and she knows me well.) It turns out she has moved to her son’s recently built home, Puri Langon, during the Covid shutdown as Puri Saraswati was deserted by both guests and staff and it was too lonely for her. Before she continued on her way to the temple she invited me to visit her at her new home the following day and would send a car for me. An honour indeed.
But I had no idea what I would find at her new home! A marvel of Balinese art and architecture, I was gobsmacked walking through the gate with the driver. Ibu Agung greeted me and we sat on a ledge of the back pavilion surveying the wonders before me, chatting for over an hour, with her feeding me dainty biscuits from a jar. She seemed just as delighted as I was to talk about the good old days at Puri Saraswati, about my former student Anoushka who later lived there with her for many months and was more or less adopted into the family. And I saw the video on her phone of her grandson’s recent wedding in the palace. A cast of thousands. We are both the same age and both grandmothers, so plenty to chat about (all in Indonesian) but just imagine how different our lives must have been.
While we were talking a tourist wandered in taking photos! As he came closer to us, I introduced him to Ibu Agung, saying this is her private home. He was terribly embarrassed, but she was very gracious in welcoming him. He said he’d read in a guide book that it was a special place and assumed it was a tourist attraction!
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Her son, Tjok Wah started the construction of this elaborate architectural wonder just ten or so years ago, taking years to build it. A friend responding to my FB post called it “Bali Baroque”! I loved it!
You may recall from the email I wrote before leaving Australia that I was wondering what might have become of Ibu Agung, the owner of Puri Saraswati now that it is under new management. From the royal family of Ubud, Ibu Agung had, decades ago, turned her palace home into a hotel, next door to the very sacred Saraswati Temple and the Lotus Pond. She was passing through the hotel gardens to visit the temple on Monday and saw me on the verandah and stopped to say hello with a beaming smile of welcome. (I have been staying at Puri Saraswati since 1988 and she knows me well.) It turns out she has moved to her son’s recently built home, Puri Langon, during the Covid shutdown as Puri Saraswati was deserted by both guests and staff and it was too lonely for her. Before she continued on her way to the temple she invited me to visit her at her new home the following day and would send a car for me. An honour indeed.
But I had no idea what I would find at her new home! A marvel of Balinese art and architecture, I was gobsmacked walking through the gate with the driver. Ibu Agung greeted me and we sat on a ledge of the back pavilion surveying the wonders before me, chatting for over an hour, with her feeding me dainty biscuits from a jar. She seemed just as delighted as I was to talk about the good old days at Puri Saraswati, about my former student Anoushka who later lived there with her for many months and was more or less adopted into the family. And I saw the video on her phone of her grandson’s recent wedding in the palace. A cast of thousands. We are both the same age and both grandmothers, so plenty to chat about (all in Indonesian) but just imagine how different our lives must have been.
While we were talking a tourist wandered in taking photos! As he came closer to us, I introduced him to Ibu Agung, saying this is her private home. He was terribly embarrassed, but she was very gracious in welcoming him. He said he’d read in a guide book that it was a special place and assumed it was a tourist attraction!
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Her son, Tjok Wah started the construction of this elaborate architectural wonder just ten or so years ago, taking years to build it. A friend responding to my FB post called it “Bali Baroque”! I loved it!