By Anne Sigmon
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Shopping category
“Both light and shadow are the dance of love.” —Rumi
“Why go back?” my travel-loving, adventure-obsessed husband, Jack, wanted to know. “Places like Bali are never as good the second time around.
I was planning to return, alone, after twenty years to a land steeped in ritual, myth and mystery, the most popular island in the South Sea, the artistic heart of the Indonesian archipelago. I’d discovered Bali in 1991 at the tail end of a wild Borneo exploit, my first-ever trip to the bush, my first-ever overseas journey with Jack, a month after he slipped an engagement ring on my left hand.
Why did I want to go back? This trip could never top the thrill of that first adventure. I was no longer the carefree traveler I’d been back then, giddy with the daring of exotic destinations. I was a different person now, one who’d had a stroke at forty-eight—a cataclysm that left me unemployed, memory-challenged, dependent on scary-high levels of blood thinner and particularly vulnerable wherever medical care was thin.
Still, the invitation from a group of friends to join them on Bali felt like a siren’s call, the invitation to some quest I didn’t fully understand. I felt sure Bali had changed, but so had I. Back then, I was new to exotic travel, tentatively following Jack’s more experienced lead. In the years since, Jack and I had slogged through jungles and deserts on six continents. We’d tracked leopards in Botswana and grizzlies in Alaska, climbed temples and crawled caves from India to China and back again. Bali would be tame, now, in comparison, just an leisurely trip down memory lane, I imagined. Now, my only fear was for my health.
I flew into Ubud two days before my friends to allow time for my brain to rest—a must ever since my stroke. Sheltered in Bali’s central foothills among a verdant rainforest and terraced rice paddies, Ubud is stippled with Hindu temples and shrines. It’s also famous as an enclave for artists. Our lodging was on Sayan Ridge, a rainforest outpost fifteen minutes from the town center. The cottages, in various states of repair, overlooked a tropical woodland of coconut palms, banyan and teak. My first night there, I unwound with a drink on the clipped hotel lawn, eyeing the verdant rice paddies that spilled down the hill. I breathed in the sticky warmth and the sunset glow. For the next few days, I planned a ramble around Ubud, peeking into my past. I wondered how much I’d remember of that long-ago visit.
The next morning, my first stop was the Hotel Tjampuhan, where Jack and I stayed years ago, just a ten-minute cab ride from Sayan. The hotel—originally the royal guesthouse of the Ubud Palace—is a series of cottages and bungalows that tumble down a steep, thickly forested gorge to the River Oos. As I stepped from the taxi, the place was instantly familiar. In the restaurant, “our” table still sat in the corner under a phantasmagoric stone lintel of a barong mask. Thatched roof bungalows still tumbled down the gorge into the shadowy heart of the rainforest. As I sat on the lanai, I remembered our first day there: the air heavy with the fragrance of frangipani and promised rain, the velvety feel of damp sheets on my thigh, the thrumming of an afternoon downpour on our thatched roof. And afterward, Jack’s smile, a rainbow painting the sky outside our window, the sawing of cicadas, and the whoop of a kingfisher diving into the ravine.
But on closer look, much had changed. Now, sipping ginger tea on the terrace (my drink had been Bintang beer, back then), the constant whine of motorcycles hissing past was new, and the bungalows were unrecognizable: glassed-in, air-conditioned, holding the jungle at a comfortable remove.
On that first visit with Jack, eating breakfast on the terrace, we’d watched as village women washed their clothes in the river, wringing them tight, slapping fabric against the flat rocks, then spreading them out to dry. As I savored strong Balinese coffee, a glint of familiar pink caught my eye, then another of turquoise. Wait a minute: Those weren’t clothes brought from the village; they were my clothes, the ones I’d sent to the hotel laundry the night before.
“So that’s the laundromat,” Jack laughed. We toasted then, I remember, with papaya juice and high-fived our luck at being in this exotic paradise, our luck at being together.
But now the view from the terrace is gone, obscured by a fancy new block of rooms. There are no women down by the river, no laundry drying on the bank.
The next morning, back at my hotel on Sayan Ridge, I was breakfasting alone on my balcony when hoots of laughter drifted up from the gorge, unseen rafters on the Ayung River, I supposed. Watching two egrets wheeling above me, I remembered the hot afternoon so long ago when Jack and I had our turn on that wild torrent. We’d paddled quietly at first, the sun on our backs, strokes in perfect unison (or so I imagined) until the current grabbed our raft, spun us around, then shot us forward on a rollercoaster of frothing white water, whooping and hollering just like the kids down there today. Oh, how I’d loved the thrill of that ride, the dry-mouthed taste of danger, of pushing myself beyond any physical limits I’d ever dreamed.
The sun darted behind a cloud. That part of my life was over, I knew. There wouldn’t be any rafting for me on this trip, or any other. Even if Jack were with me, I couldn’t chance it. Middle-aged ladies on blood thinners have no business duking it out with rock-strewn rapids. Just being here, far from medical care, was danger enough. But where’s the thrill in that?
I drained my coffee cup and headed out to explore Ubud. The city center was like a misplaced memory. I recalled a quiet village focused on temple life and the arts, with just one market and a few simple shops and restaurants. Now it was a three-mile, traffic-choked grid. Cheap eateries and backpacker hostels bumped against boutique hotels, foodie havens and upscale shops. I shielded my eyes against the sun glinting off the herds of cycles and scooters parked helter-skelter on every street. My shoulders slumped with disappointment; this seemed like just another schlocky Asian tourist town, like a dozen more that blurred in memory. My white shirt felt dirty with sweat and traffic grime as I navigated taxi touts, broken sidewalks, and sewer repairs, searching for some remnant of the Ubud I remembered.
I finally found it, across the street from the new visitors’ center. Walking into Café Lotus was like walking into my past. Shaded by a thatched open-air pavilion, café tables overlooked Ubud’s historic Water Palace—the Saraswati Temple—with its famous lotus pond and water garden. Frangipani trees bloomed along the water’s edge. Pink lotus buds shimmered in the afternoon light and swayed like dancers with each puff of breeze. Flamboyant stone sculptures of Hindu deities marched across a bridge to the temple. Sitting at a table overlooking the pond, I relaxed into the high chirps of tiny birds and the burble of water fountains, remembering the day Jack and I sat here snacking on tiger prawns and love.
That evening, I returned with my friends to watch Balinese dancers leap, strut, swagger, and slink across the stage to the shrill percussive beat of the gamelan orchestra, a perfect accompaniment to the frenzied battles of the Hindu epic, Ramayana. In the world of Balinese myth, neither good nor evil prevails; the constant stuggle between them is the theme of life.
Three days later, our group visited Gunung Kami north of Ubud, one of Bali’s oldest and holiest shrines. Gunung is an eleventh-century complex of eleven rock-cut temple-tombs carved into a sheer cliff face. This would be my private memory of Bali; Jack and I had not visited this place. To access the site, I walked down a long flight of 300 gray stone steps past steeply terraced rice paddies. In the fields, tender shoots still wet with dew shuddered in the wake of a water buffalo’s passing. Men in batik sarongs bent low, planting one section, plucking another, dropping the silky fronds into hand-woven baskets. The mysterious gray stone shrines sat tucked in quiet meadows at the bottom of the cliff. They are presumed funeral monuments dedicated to 11th-century Balinese royalty. The temples seemed lost in time except for the fresh canang sari, tiny offering baskets fashioned from fresh flowers and banana leaves, brought daily by unseen devotees.
I was reluctant to leave this ethereal place. On the slow, hot climb back up to the road, I paused to rest at vendor stalls selling batiks, candles, and other handicrafts. Near the top, I noticed a kiosk offering leather shadow puppets called wayang kulit. I stopped, drawn to the dusty shop.
On that first trip to Bali with Jack, I’d fallen in love with those long-armed, long-necked caricatures of gods and ancient folk heroes. I remember entering a narrow, dark room. Chairs and stools were scattered around helter-skelter. A long white cloth screen dominated one end of the space. Behind the screen was a hubbub of activity: bright lights mounted on poles, the dalang (puppet master) and his two assistants, four gamelan players, and a phalanx of carved leather puppets. It seemed like a lark. But everything changed when the music started. The puppets came to life, dancing to the rhythm of the orchestra. They flitted through the shadow world like ghosts bobbing from dark to light. For the people of Bali, the wayang plays recount ancient and beloved stories. They are spiced with bawdy humor, but also carry philosophical messages and deep spiritual meaning.
After seeing that full-length shadow play with Jack, I chafed to buy one of the gorgeous puppets, and stopped to look at every market we passed.
“Oh, they’re just tourist junk,” Jack said. “More stuff to clutter the house.” He didn’t seem to mind the clutter when it was something he wanted to buy. I pressed, and he resisted.
“They’re nothing but junk. Can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t. I think they’re beautiful.” He rolled his eyes. I clenched my jaw.
Despite my pique, I let it drop, back then, not sure how to judge the quality or my desire. But something about those characters—magical and sacred to the Balinese—spoke to me again on this return trip. They seemed to symbolize something about my life, to carry some message I needed to understand.
Jack’s not here this time, I thought. I determined to have my puppet, but not from a tourist shop. Instead, over the next few days, I sought out the finest puppet maker on Bali, a craftsman, I was told, named Mustika in the village of Puaya a few miles from Ubud.
Mustika’s shop was empty when I arrived at ten on Sunday morning, my last day in Ubud. Leather puppets about two feet tall—intricately tooled in the Balinese tradition—lined the shop walls, perhaps two or three hundred in all. Most were brightly painted in circus colors, familiar characters from the Ramayana myths: Arjuna, Rama, Sita, Hanuman, and Kayonan, the tree of life. I browsed for a long time, taken by these funny figures—a pastiche of good and evil, light and dark—undecided on which to choose. As if to nudge me along, Mustika picked up two of them to illustrate the art of the dalang. With Mustika moving their arms and legs, narrating in a high guttural tone, the puppet characters flailed at each other and argued in two distinct voices. I didn’t need to understand the words to realize that this was clearly a battle.
Ultimately, I chose two, the star-crossed lovers, Rama and Sita. Those puppets represented something to me—youth, time, change, loss?—that I couldn’t quite decipher.
When I returned home, I hung the puppets over my writing desk. They remind me not just of the rollicking adventures I once had with Jack but also of what I’ve gained since—my own voice, my own point of view.
Looking at them today, I see that my shadow puppets are, in many ways, like my life—like anyone’s life—the light, the dark, the real, the imagined, the present experience, and the sweet shadow play of memory.
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Anne Sigmon is a California writer, stroke survivor, and autoimmune patient who covers adventure travel for people with health limitations. Her stories about travel to remote corners from Burma to Ethiopia, Iran, and Syria appear regularly in magazines and anthologies, most recently The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12 and Wandering in Japan: The Spirit of Tokyo, Kyoto and Beyond.