2022
Saraswati Sojourn - D-Day minus 1
26 October 2022
Relatively quiet couple of days before it all starts happening tomorrow. Ubud swinging again - packed with tourists despite being off season and the hellish rain.
I left you just after the splendid High Tea at Biku and arriving in Ubud
I left you just after the splendid High Tea at Biku and arriving in Ubud
Always lovely to be back at Puri Saraswati, even though it is under new management and changes are already happening. They have (sadly) tamed the famous rampant gardens. New staff who do not know me, but still a warm welcome after all the correspondence making my booking. Ibu Agung, the former owner, has moved to her son’s palace where hopefully there are fewer stairs to make her old age a misery! I am managing the stairs - just- but not without loss of dignity in scrambling up the set of steps into the main area, holding on to pot plants. The top step is far higher than all the rest and it takes all my powers to get up it - no pot plant on the top step too! We have moved rooms closer to the pool area, to avoid another set of steps to the back of the hotel, and also our rooms there had an impossible front step. The only way I could reach my room was to edge along a narrow ledge of the verandah to the far end where there was a stone column with a carved plinth that Liz and I could use as hand holds. Our new rooms have friendly statues of gods (or demons?) on either side of the steps whose heads we can grab. See what I mean about dignity! Out in the street, in places where the step up from the road on to the high flood-proof footpaths requires the good offices of any passing stranger, I just ask sweetly “Bisa bantu?”- “Can you help me?”! I refuse to be embarrassed when I have to play the “little old lady” card.
Getting down is OK, but the much higher top step is a killer coming up.
Getting down is OK, but the much higher top step is a killer coming up.
The other big change is that the central pavilion is no longer used for breakfast. It is bare of all furniture, and they say it will later be used for yoga sessions. Instead, we go through the side gate into the famous Lotus Cafe that they also own which looks over the glorious lotus pond and Saraswati Temple. Overly generous breakfast - from now on I will refuse two of the four-five courses they bring. Anyway, from tomorrow we will be rushed in the mornings to get up to the festival.
The rooms are slowly being renovated one at a time, but the “old” ones are still extremely comfortable and spacious - an enormous bed I feel lost in! The huge verandah where we gather for G and Ts of an evening is my favourite spot. I hope they keep the signature carved Bali double doors in the renovations.
My room - note the gods who help me up the steps!
My room - note the gods who help me up the steps!
Those of you who have read my FB posts know of the rain that is plaguing Ubud at the moment (a month before the official rainy season is due to start). We got held up at Casa Luna the first night, unable to cross the road back here for an age while the heaviest of deluges fell, but enjoyed the spectacle (which included a lot of sodden tourists) from the front table, Josh’s old morning coffee hang.
Serendipitously, a guy passed by selling plastic ponchos for which we paid well over the odds, but he deserved to make a killing for his entrepreneurship. A similar downpour yesterday, longer (but not so heavy) kept us tied to our verandah all afternoon and evening, but after a big lunch out we had no desire to go out to dinner. Instead caught up with Jane, newly arrived in Ubud and staying just behind us at the next door Mumbul Inn, and Deborah, journalist friend from Sydney who has been reporting on the Bali Bombing memorial events last week - she is upstairs in the room above Liz. Plenty to talk about.
….as there was in catching up with Stephen and Ochie of Cinta Bahasa language school. The first of my old Ubud mates in a list of those to meet again. Good to hear their school is slowly picking up after Covid and to hear what living in Ubud was like these last two years. They treated us to a Kamasan Cafe feast - regular readers know this is my favourite spot, both for its location in luxuriant organic gardens and its Javanese dishes. Bumped into regular festival mate Barbara Bicego also having lunch there.
….as there was in catching up with Stephen and Ochie of Cinta Bahasa language school. The first of my old Ubud mates in a list of those to meet again. Good to hear their school is slowly picking up after Covid and to hear what living in Ubud was like these last two years. They treated us to a Kamasan Cafe feast - regular readers know this is my favourite spot, both for its location in luxuriant organic gardens and its Javanese dishes. Bumped into regular festival mate Barbara Bicego also having lunch there.
Called by the festival office and got my festival pass (free to me as a translator of the anthology). A new festival logo bag to add to my large collection too. The site seems far from ready for tomorrow, but no doubt they will get it together in time. They always do. Very puzzled and upset by the fact there will be no printed program this year - relying instead on an online version that requires you to click on link after link. The program is always such an important resource for cross referencing clashing events in different venues, and it is a great souvenir of the festival. It seems there was no money for printing. This seems, understandably, to be a pared-back first festival after Covid. Two of the big-name writers Arundhati Roy and Malaysian author Tash Aw are not coming after all. And the festival Gala Opening is on Thursday night at the end of the first day, not Wednesday night as always. It clashes with our Indolitclub event - not that I got an official invitation this year. But festival friends who might have come to Indolitclub will surely go to the Opening ceremony.
The markets that dominate the centre of town are being totally rebuilt and the stall holders have been forced to set up in all the outlying streets in the open air - no doubt a nightmare for all concerned.
The markets that dominate the centre of town are being totally rebuilt and the stall holders have been forced to set up in all the outlying streets in the open air - no doubt a nightmare for all concerned.
Off to another catch-up lunch with a very old friend, Janet Molloy, known to some of you. Met her here first in 1988 when she was working for the Australian travel agent, San Michele Travel that arranged my first school trip from Sydney Girls High. What a time we had then.