2013 Indonesia, Bali, Ubud, Dukuk Village, Performance

We made our way north on the main road out of Ubud. The whole road  is full of  various artisans shops from painting, woodcarving, bronze etc, and as it was a ceremonial time there were these huge long elaborately decorated bamboo poles erected outside every property. The poles curve over at the tap, and have various palm fronds and bamboo embelishment, and flowers. These reflect the curve of the mountain top and the rivers flowing down the mountain with all the bounty of fruit etc in the forest.

After a few km we found the turn-off to Dukuk village, marked only by the sign for Ubud Alam, a big flash hotel is up the road from the Dukuk Village Homestay where we'd arranged to stay.
It was a very steep and winding drop into the valley, across a bridge and another steep and winding climb up into Dukuk village, which was very small but still had more than one of the obligatory temples that often outnumber the houses.
As we reached the top we came out onto a ridge of beautiful rice paddy terraces fringed by forest, banana and coconut trees. We could recognise the homestay place just ahead from pictures we'd seen on the internet. After meeting the hosts, we were soon established in our upstairs twin rooms, with a veranda overlooking the paddy fields in both directions. Stunning!




Our hosts brought us some Indonesian coffee that is served much like Turkish style with the grounds in the cup.
It is very very nice coffee. After a bit of rest I was quite keen to investigate the 'garden' that our host had mentioned.
It was described as being just down the path that ran beside our house and another one next door. So we all traipsed down the path and there was a small garden, and a pond, but I thought there must be a bigger one further down so we continued down the path which eventually changed from concrete to a dirt path which led past a pig sty occupied by a huge female and what looked like about 3-4 month old piglets.
We carried on past that, after being analyzed at how one of the piglets managed to urinate continuously for about 2 minutes. The path led onto steep downward slope punctuated by narrow terracing where banana trees had been planted. There wasn't really a marked track as we ventured further down into the increasingly steep ravine, it was more like stepping points. 
The undergrowth was denser as we continued, but there were still a few cool trees like cocoa, and a large tall Rambutan with a few fruit still clinging to outlying branched.
Soon it became evident that we couldn't go much further without some serious bush-whacking and I wasn't certain if there'd be much in the way of snakes, scorpions or dangerous spiders etc, so we turned back and retraced our steps in a very hot and sweaty climb to the homestay.

We had a bit of rest and later headed into Ubud town again for something to eat, and while we were there picked up tickets(75k each) for an traditional dance and gamelan performance.

In the meantime we decided to visit the monkey forest just down the road. Descending the quite steep main road you pass and endless parade of art orientated shops selling paintings, carving of wood and stone(stone carving has a ling history and is of a very hight quality, similar to Korea in some ways). 
Not sure why but several had penis carvings of various sizes, from around 4" to 10 " monsters. Apparently they're one of the biggest selling items with tourists.
Actually I'd covered the monkey forest earlier so I'll move on. I'm about 7 days or more behind this diary so memory is at its limits!!

Anyway, the performance was really amazing with very loud percussion from rows of xylophone like instruments, some pot like gongs others like cymbals, and some huge hanging gong that have an amazing resonance that goes on as a background to all the other percussion.




Two different type of flute and a couple of large bongo type drums made up the ensemble. The dancers accompanied each piece, with some dancing as a group and other s as individual performances.
It seemed each dancer spent at least 75% or more of the rime in a half squat position, and somehow kept their big toes pointing up as well. It must be very physically demanding. There were lots of various hand and finger movements as well, all choregraphed moves. In one dance by a man he wore a rather hideous demonic mask, with long wild looking hair, and very long finger nail like extension around 10" long that he'd point and gesture with. Both the women and men wore copious amounts of makeup, very similar to what we'd seen on dancers in Kochin in Inda.



During the dance they would maintain a strange half distance stare so you weren't sure if they're looking at you or not. Sometimes one eye would be closed in an extended sort of wink as well which was a but amusing.