Six Degrees South

Sometimes it takes weeks to get a reservation for the lunch dim sum at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in downtown Jakarta. Luckily, there was a table for one available at opening time. I love dim sum as it is a wonderful way of eating: bite-sized dishes served one at a time. As I have great difficulty narrowing down what to order on the regular dinner menu, this format that caters to experiencing variety is especially appealing to me.  Pictured here: *Goldfish-shaped prawn dumplings swimming in mutsusaki mushroom broth *Edamame and sweet potato dumpling with black truffle *Szechuan shrimp wonton in soy sauce infused with chili *Crystal beef dumpling with ginger and celery *Tofu Kung Pao bun with cashews (my favorite) Not pictured: Spicy scallop dumplings and mango pudding with carmalized banana for dessert.  A wonderful meal at one of my 5 all-time favorite restaurants.

As my flight was approaching the international airport in Bali, I noticed a giant statue on the horizon that was about 15 kilometers away, but appeared as though it must have been hundreds of feet tall.  I decided that I would visit it while I was on Bali. My last day on Bali, I decided to hire a taxi to take me to the Gurita Vishnu Kencana Statue, which depicts Vishnu riding on Garuda.  Including the pedestal, it is 122 meters tall (30 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty) and the winged Garuda's wingspan is 64 meters.  And the statue is so massive it can be viewed from up to 20 kilometers away. It is the tallest statue in Indonesia and the tallest statue of a Hindu deity. When the taxi I hired arrived at the park entrance about a kilometer from the statue, we found that the site was closed indefinitely.  I couldn't take a picture, because you couldn't see the statue at all through the trees and it was obscured further by the terrain.  My intrepid driver attempted to f

Scenes from the temple at Batuan (Bali), some of which remains from the earliest construction around 944. It was interesting to watch the women of the temple preparing baskets of offerings for the ceremony that would be taking place later in the day, as well as the turtle shrine.

Back in Jakarta, but just making a couple of posts that I neglected during my trip.  One of the most interesting places I visited was the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, home to over 1000 monkeys.  These creatures have resided in this forest, probably forever, and the temples to these sacred creatures within the sanctuary date back hundreds of years.  This crew of monkeys is a bit better behaved than the one at the Uluwatu shrine as they are provided a constant diet of sweet potatoes and other vegetables and don't need to resort to stealing tourist items and holding them hostage in exchange for a ransom of food as is the case at Uluwatu.

  Decided to splurge and spend my last night of vacation in a beautifully restored Gladak teak house from 1891 (now part of the Balquisse Heritage Hotel). The house is on the grounds of an old estate and is filled with vintage antiques. To add to the surrealistic, dreamlike quality of the experience is the lush tropical foliage surrounding the house and the fact that I seem to be the only person staying on the property this evening. I am also intrigued by the spooky sounds of unfamiliar insects, birds, and night creatures all around me--yet none of them are visible.   This property is no "cookie-cutter" hotel; in fact, it was a finalist for Condè Nast's award for the world's best design in a new hotel in 2016. I am not surprised as the design and decor really does create a sense of existing in the distant past. It's as though I am residing in the setting of an E.M. Forster novel, if he had ever decided to set a novel in Indonesia. But even better is the hotel'

Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting five Sampoerna University students residing on Bali and hosting them at my hotel for dinner. The only SU students I've met are the ones I seek out on my travels. It was fantastic to chat and learn their perspectives  The only odd thing was the set of photos the waitperson took of us with my phone. I am emitting so much light it seems I could be radioactive, able to glow in the dark. Or maybe I should tone it down with the sunscreen so I can get a little more color?  I am reminded of those Renaissance-era paintings of saints and holy Christians, who are cast under an intense aura of light. Angelic I am not, so that's no explanation of what happened either.  I guess all I can say is don't purchase low-end Samsung mobile devices and don't become over-enthused when meeting students in person.

The Bali Bird Park has one of the largest collections of tropical birds in the world, particularly from Indonesia. And the aviary is immense and spectacular, with hundreds of birds swooping all around you.

I spent most of the day lounging in my villa's pool, but near the end of the afternoon, I traveled to the southwestern tip of Bali to visit the Uluwatu Hindu temple dedicated to the guardian spirits of the ocean. There has been some sort of worship on this site since about the 9th Century (and as you see below, worship continues on a daily basis) but most of the remaining structures date from the 16th Century.  As you can see, Uluwatu is situated on an extraordinarily dramatic and beautiful cliff above the sea. Additionally, hundreds of monkeys, who are symbolically important to the religious meaning of Uluwatu, roam the site and, if you aren't careful, they will steal your possessions, including your bottle of hand sanitizer, as one tourist standing not far from me learned the hard way.

After spending almost the entire past four months locked down in my apartment in Jakarta, it's wonderful to escape to Bali for four days. Staying in an amazing private villa with personal pool. Dinner was a delicious barramundi (Asian sea bass) with vegetarian spring rolls.  Nice to get away.

I was bogged down in August, but I've roared back in September, reading five books during the month.  Even better is the fact that all five books were fantastic and worth reading. First one I read is a book a dear friend recommended quite some time ago and I found an old copy that I brought with me to Indonesia.  Finally, I read it: Blink, by the prolific Malcolm Gladwell. Though it's one of his older works, it still resonates today. In a nutshell, Gladwell utilizes lessons from psychology and neuroscience to teach us how to make better decisions using our ability to focus extremely quickly on a few essential details. Highly recommended, though it was sad to read the chapter on the Amadou Diallo case.  15 years ago Gladwell provided a blueprint on how police could be better trained so they could avoid cases of accidental police killings of minorities, such as in the Diallo case, by training police to recognize bias and modify their policing. Of course, in the thoroughly unprogr