Fremantle/Perth, Australia to Bali, Indonesia

March 1 – Ouch, two ports in a row again. I don’t know if I can stand the strain. Today we are in Fremantle/Perth. Fremantle has the port and a short way up the Swan River. It’s not a river actually but an estuary. The original founders did not know that and it seems very river like. When they arrived the English found hitherto fore unknown Black Swans in the estuary, thus the name.

I was eating lunch as we were arriving. Late arrival today at Noon. I looked out on the pier and there were about 20 Red Hats waving and cheering as we sailed by. (In case you don’t know what Red Hats are I’ll explain. They are women over 50 who get together and just have fun. They wear red hats and outfits of some shade of purple. The hats have to be very red and the more outrageous the better. Large feathers and flowers are favorite hat decorations. They often carry red fans or feather boas as well as wear red shoes. Their only purpose is to have a good time. I think there are about 20 chapters of Red Hats in Irvine. They pay no dues, etc and they keep the groups small by closing them when they reach a certain number. The idea is to open another group. This keeps management at a minimum when organizing events and the like.) When we disembarked the ship there were the Red Hats (left) on the pier greeting us as we came out of the terminal. They seemed to be achieving their goal of having fun.

We took a tour that drove us to Perth and had a city tour and then we boarded a riverboat for the trip back to Fremantle. It was very pretty. Some of the real estate along the river was impressive. The most expensive home in Western Australia belongs to the daughter one of the partners who discovered iron ore in the Kimberly range. I thought it was a hotel. It was huge. Should have been, it cost $54 million Australian to build.

Perth (right) is a large city. On the waterfront they have a new carillon (below on the right) that houses the bells from St. Martin in the Fields in London. They were a gift from England to Perth for their 100-years of federation celebration. It’s very modern in design, steel and glass with dark red tile, clamshell shaped enclosure at the base. The sound of the bells was wonderful. I wonder why they were willing to give them up.

On the way back to the ship from the river cruise we got a tour of Fremantle. It’s the most well preserved port town from the 1800s. Most of the old building facades are still standing, most with very modern buildings inside. The downtown area has one street closed to traffic as an outdoor shopping mall. The main street that allows traffic runs perpendicular to and bisects the mall. It’s known as Cappuccino Row for all the cafés, coffee shops and bistros located there. It was doing a very lively business for the middle of a Tuesday. Our guide told us that a large portion of the population was Italian because of the wine grapes and Portuguese because of the fishing. It has lots of Italian restaurants and pizza shops. Very different from Adelaide and Albany where the predominant group, other than the English, was German.

Fremantle, where we docked (right), was the site of the 1987 America’s Cup competition after New Zealand had won it in 1982 in the USA. You may remember that Dennis Connor won it back for the USA down here. It’s a great place to sail, as there is mostly always a pretty stiff breeze. The ocean breeze that cools things off around here is called the Frebo Doctor. Frebo is what the locals call Fremantle. Aussies seem to shorten any word over two syllables. They would agree with me that San Francisco should be called Frisco. I told you, I love these people.

March 2, 3 & 4 – Three very restful, enjoyable days at sea. Every so often the chefs put on a desert show buffet. You can eat everything but they have a half hour period for viewing and picture taking. This one emphasized desert and appetizers. There was an impressive dragon ice carving that was the largest I’ve ever seen on a ship. They used 3 of the large blocks fused together by rubbing the edges with salt and then refreezing them. The tuxedo strawberries not only looked good but were delicious as well. The chocolate tree with meringue doves was a nice touch. They are also getting much better at making rice for sushi. It used to be way to gummy and not properly seasoned. The chef in the blue hapi coat made replacements as people ate the sushi. The egg penguins were very hard to photograph and I never did get the white balance properly corrected. Their heads are olives and their hats are pepperoni. The chess set is a cake surrounded by chocolate boxes with chocolate mouse inside. The ice dragon is three large blocks of ice fused together. Usually the carvings are out of one block. This is the largest I’ve ever seen on a ship.

They really put themselves out for these performances. The staff is allowed to come up and mingle with the passengers as they go through the buffet and you can see that they are quite proud of their work and appreciative of the compliments they get and the admiration on the faces of the passengers. When you pause to take a picture of their work they are very happy.

March 5 – Today we are in Bali, Indonesia. We tried to come here in 2002 but unfortunately the terrorist bombing occurred just before we arrived so HAL switched the port to Broome, Australia and we sailed right past Bali. In fact, I took some pictures of the bay where we anchored without knowing it was the place we were supposed to anchor. There’s a small oil facility of some kind there and the tanker ships made a nice picture with the volcano in the background.

Bali Island is one of the thousands of islands that make up the country of Indonesia. Unlike much of Indonesia, Bali is mostly Hindu with some elements of Polynesian culture added. This is probably why the Islamic terrorists exploded the bombs on Bali. It was an attempt to ruin their tourist industry, a major portion of their economy. The Balinese people have great respect for other people and are very warm and welcoming.

The port here is small so we will be anchored offshore and using the lifeboats to tender into the pier. This always creates a huge bottleneck in getting ashore.

Bali is a very exotic place. Almost all the architecture looks like Hindu temples, even the private homes. The traditional Balinese home is really a compound surrounded by a wall. The front gate looks like a Hindu temple gate and, in fact, each home has a family temple. It usually occupies the highest point in the property as that is considered the most holy spot in the compound. It has three shrines in it, one to Brahma (the creator), one to Shiva (the dissolver or destroyer) and one to Vishnu (the preserver). Each town has three community temples, a separate one for each of these gods. Of course, Hinduism has about 2,000 gods but these are the big three to the Balinese. One other important god is Ganesh (the protector) the son of Vishnu. He is shown with an elephant’s head and is usually the first thing you see when approaching a business or home.

There are other buildings in the compound, one for the family area, one for sleeping, one for the children, one for the kitchen, one for the toilet and one for visitors, sort of a spare room. These buildings are not large by US standards but there are so many of them that the family has lots of space. Their concept of the family is a lot more inclusive than ours. The way we count families there would be 2, 3 or more living in one compound. They consider uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, etc as members of the immediate family. This is why the house pretty much has to be a compound.

Those of you who have attended my class on the Jewish calendar probably appreciate how much more complex it is than our Gregorian calendar. Well let me tell you, the Jews have nothing at all on the Balinese. They actually use two calendars, the Hindu saka that everyone uses and the wuku, which is unique to Bali. The wuku calendar, which is used to determine festival dates, much like the Jewish calendar, has 10 different types of weeks that range in length from 1 to 10 days and they all run simultaneously. The intersections of the various weeks determine the holy days. You can’t do it in your head.

Unfortunately we were on tour all day so I had very little time to walk around and get pictures of the locals. Our first tour was to a Barong Dance and then on to Mt. Batur, the major volcano on the island.

Our first stop was at a temple in Klungkung (above left). Here we saw the Barong dance. The orchestra, called a gamelan, was an interesting collection of gongs, bells, cymbals, drums and xylophone-like instruments made of bamboo. The sound was very pleasant. We sat under an awning like shade looking at the front of the temple which was about 20 feet above us setting on a series of terraces with life-sized statues of various gods and a wide stairway up to the temple’s main door. The performers came out of the temple and proceeded down the stairs to a large terrace about 5 feet above ground level. This lowest terrace served at the stage.

The first to enter was the Barong (above right), a large shaggy creature that is half dog and half lion. He personifies good and protects the village. He danced about; I guess I should say they danced about, as there was a second man in the rear half. It had a red wooden mask for a face and the only sound it created was a clacking noise when the front actor snapped the mouth open and closed.

Next, two women danced down the stairs and onto the lower terrace (left). I believe this was a welcoming dance. Their way of saying, “Thanks for coming.” The women were attired in beautifully colored silk dresses. They wore upside down heart-shaped hats made of Plumeria blossoms. The smell must have been wonderful for them. Their hand gestures and body movements were very precise and they must all have double-jointed fingers, as the positions they attain are totally impossible for me.

Since this is a morality play with good and evil, next comes the rangda, an evil witch with long hair and saber-like fingernails. She attacks the village and is driven off by the barong. Good triumphs again. There are some humorous parts. One man is always whining and crying (right) over his circumstances, he’s a riot. His is constantly berating his assistant for things over which he has no control. This is all in Balinese of course but you can follow what’s going on by the gestures and the facial expressions. There’s a prince and his attendant, the prince’s wife or consort and her attendant, a white monkey, two red monkeys, and a group of villagers

From there we drove up to Mt. Batur and had lunch on the patio of a restaurant (right) that had a wonderful view of the mountain and the valley in between. It was getting cloudy quickly and that should have given us a hint of things to come. The lunch was delicious. Various Indonesian and Balinese dishes (below) toned down for US tastes but they did provide 4 different spicy sauces to zip them up to local standards. It was served buffet style, which is great because you get to sample small amounts of lots of dishes and then go back for bigger servings of the best ones.

From there we drove part way down the mountain to Tampak Siring and the Temple of the Holy Spring. The temple is over 1,000 years old and is on the site of a spring that produces large amounts of water that constantly flows from the mountain. People all over the island come to this site to bathe in and drink the water. As we arrived there it started to rain. It steadily increased to monsoon level and then stayed that way for 2 hours. There was spectacular lightning and thunder, sometimes so close it was simultaneous. Appropriately, we all got thoroughly soaked at the Temple of the Holy Spring (below left). Umbrellas were worthless as the wind was swirling the rain from all directions. I was wearing my poncho and managed to keep most of my upper body and cameras dry but my legs were soaked. I couldn’t take video because those cameras are very sensitive to moisture. It was almost impossible to get still photos (below right) because rain instantly got on the lens, obscuring the picture and causing the auto focus to mess up. The rain was coming from every direction and it finally got in around the neck of my poncho and soaked the front of my shirt. The rain was flooding the temple’s terraces and turning them into lakes. The stone stairways looked like waterfall cascades. The water got so deep that it was over my shoe tops and that led to some very soggy socks that squished for the rest of the day. Ah, the rigors of travel. Fortunately it was very warm so the soaking was more of an inconvenience than a discomfort. The vertical streaks you see in the picture are huge raindrops falling too fast to be stopped by the shutter. You can see the tidal wave Diana’s shoe has set in motion.

After leaving the temple we went to the ancient village of Ubud. This is an artist’s village with painters, wood carvers and weavers. We stopped at one dealer for each of these items. Diana got a woven circular box with at carved lotus blossom and turtle on top. It cost 100,000 Indonesian Rupiahs. This is not bad because the exchange rate is 9,000 to $1.00. They gave us a discount and we only paid 85,000 or $9.50 for a very nice box. I bought a hand woven and hand painted tie made of silk. This was very expensive, 55,000 Rupiahs or about $6.15. Yikes!! Diana bought some small carvings at the wood store. I’m not even sure what they are. Almost every shop has a shrine to Ganesh and Diana posed with one for a picture (right).

We booked an evening tour to a Kecak dance that was to meet on the ship at 6:30PM. Our morning tour was supposed to get back at 5PM but we were an hour and a half late. Our bus arrived at the pier just as the first tender carrying evening tour passengers arrived. So we just went from one bus to the other and missed dinner. Ouch, that hurt! Actually, I had enjoyed lunch so much that I wasn’t really hungry at dinnertime.

The evening play was similar to the one we saw in the afternoon but it had a large candelabra made of plant stalks and leaves that supported 12 to 14 fairly large torches arranged like Christmas tree lights. There were no musical instruments. Rather the first event was the entrance of a large group of men who formed three concentric circles around the candelabra. They chanted ke-cak over and over and that is how the dance derives its name. They did this with hand motions and then sat down in the three circles. They provided the accompaniment of the play as they chanted various other words, always returning to the ke-cak chant that sounded for the whole world like they were saying, “Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck”. I began to wonder if he was ever going to show up. Chuck, that is. It was fairly dark so my pictures are only so-so. The video will be better.

The characters (left) are much the same as the Barong play but the story is different, there’s no Barong or whining man and the chanting men replace the musical instruments. The two red monkeys, the white monkey, the prince, his assistant and consort and the long haired, long finger nailed witch were all there. In this version the monkeys drive off the witch not the Barong.

After that it was back to the ship and on to three days at sea heading to Brunei.

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(c) Rod Longenberger - 2005