Traffic Jam

This is Eden, the lush garden of drivers, cars and motorcycles. We drive along the north coast of Bali, from Lovina

Rice field

The worker in the rice field

The workers in the rice field are going home after having been planting the seedlings all morning. Two of them remain in the field and are still over there under the blazing sun. I sit on the balcony waiting for the afternoon rain that will come soon. One of the workers moves rather slowly, his legs as round as zero, the form of a circle, but still not a wheel that pushes him forward. It’s an old man; it might even be an old woman. I can hear the two workers talking from far. They make identical gestures of the hands, picking the seedlings, firmly putting them in the thick mud.

A demon in the hotel

I love her at first sight. All of sudden, she is in the open hall of the hotel where breakfeast is served. Outside is a shaded terrace with a seaside view. This is a prime location for a hotel, a restaurant, an early breakfast, for her. She didn’t enter from the terrace. I’m sure of that. She must have entered from the back, where the gardens and the swimming pools are, the high trees, the holy statues of deities, the spouting fountains, the demons between the plants. She had been in the garden. No, I don’t think she is a demon, a fountain or a statue. The body of the grinning demons under the splashing fountain water are green, not hers. She is too quick and elegant, too vivid and vital to be a statue. However, she might be a new demon, her big eyes wide open although behind glasses (most demons don’t wear.) Okay, she is not a local demon, speaking fluently and loudly Spanish but no English. Her hair is blond, meticulously dyed and her eyes are of a dangerous brown color. She cannot smile.

Umbrellas and tropical rain

Umbrellas and tropical rain
Today, I had an unexpected program - inadvertently. After breakfast, I walked along the beach of Kuta you already know. I can tell you, this morning I have seen more dogs together in the sea than ever before. A young guy was throwing a tennis ball upon the water and all the dogs from the beach of Kuta at large ran into the sea, to the same ball, to the same place. The man was practicing his forehand or his backhand depending on the place of the viewer.

A sandwich?

It's a pity, I don't speak Bahassa Indonesia. I'm too old or too lazy to learn it.  However, I do my utmost best to communicate  - in English. Yesterday, some hours after dinner, I was a bit hungry. No problem, I order  a coffee and a snack.' No, Mister, we have no snacks, no sweets, no desert.'  'All right. Maybe you can serve us fried banana.' I'm sorry, sold out.'  But, the bakery is around the corner. 'Sorry, Mister, may not leave here.' Then she suggests to have French fries. I reply that we have had dinner and a snack will do. 'Please, no French fries.'  Finally, I order some bread and cheese. 'Ah, you would like to have a sandwich.'  I think to know how a sandwich looks like. 'Okay,' I give in, 'let's try.' After a while, she brings the coffee. Half an hour later, I ask her for the bread. 'That takes time, Mister,' she says. Returning from the kitchen, at last she brings two big plates with French fries in the middle decorated by four sticks with sliced bread, tomato, cucumber,onion dipped in mayonnaise and hot sauce. A meal for a hungry elephant, a lost lion or a beggar in the street. It might be easier to learn Bahassa Indonesia than to order a sandwich in my hotel.

The beach of Kuta

The beach, the mud and the dogs


It’s the end of a tropical day. The heat is silently hanging over the beach of Kuta. No wind, no change of heat, no movement of the damp, sticky air. The rainy season is over,but

The train to Yogyakarta

The best train

We request our driver to stop at the railway station in order to make a reservation for tickets of a train from Bandung to Yogyakarta. Inside the office of Reservasi, we tell the lady at the desk we would like to have tickets for two windows seats. We want to sit opposite of each other at the same window. Opposite not facing the same direction.The lady gets confused, but the driver succeeds to clear the situation. Everybody is happy and smiles a big smile. Early in the morning of the next day,

Visit to the Tea Factory

Why visit a tea factory?

Always asking why, that 's is an attitude, a reflex of the body, a reaction of the mind, a moment to hold on and to wait. It's an interruption of the stream of consciousness, of the blind process that pushes or drags us somewhere. We don't like to leap in the dark. We are afraid of the dark and the hidden happenings. So, we go to the tea factory not far from Bandung to stop our pondering and watch how it looks like to process tea. The scent of tea reminds us of Proust writing about the madeleine cookies he got from his aunt when he was on holiday.

Bandung without a map

A bookstore in Bandung

I went to  this city, to Bandung without a map. Traveling without a map is like reading a dummy, a book without words. Opening the book, I start to read whatever I want or imagine and love to visualize. My mind and the book are blank. When I like it, I read the invisible words and phrases from left to right, from the bottom to the top, the Chinese or the Japanese way. Even it's possible starting in the middle, half way the page, reading up or down the page.  It's like a poem, my own rhythm and rime. The pages can do without numbers and I might read repeatedly the same white, unnumbered page, the endless stream of thoughts, ideas, words.  Reading in all directions without getting lost, following my own brand new lines, my own paraboles.

Bandung,point zero

Arriving at the airport, there is just one other Westerner. People are polite apart from the woman who pushed me away from the custom officer. Children on the arm of their mom  are watching us as if having never seen whites. Children are naive and innocent, they behave spontaneously and unreserved - they don't push me away. So, I like Bandung. The taxi driver is friendly and smiles continuously. He is happy to have a client, to be on duty, to show he is real, to demonstrate the art of driving. It's crowded in the streets - as crowded as crows would collect other crows in a tree at dusk. And the smell of this crowded city is everywhere. Noise and exhaust fumes, stench and noise, dirt and decay, rubbish all over the street.  Seven million people where governor Daendels ( about 1810) put a stick in the ground and said: make sure, a town will be built here. This spot is called point zero.

Walking in Kula Lumpur

Yesterday I  walked from the hotel to the center of Kuala Lumpur - downtown and its many malls. I left the air conditioned lobby and crossed the dangerously busy street and I made it. Behind my back already the storm of cars, scooters and motorbikes on the way to the next traffic light, intensifying the tropical heat of midday by its murderous speed and exhaust fumes. I passed through a quarter of Chinese restaurants, one next to the other, men moving chairs and tables, women cleaning floors, lazy looking laundries with sleeping women, beauty parlors, balconies lining up drying laundry row after row, and in the streets an army of girls offering the old man sweet massage, dirty dreams and more.  I followed the shade of the skytrain flyeover and entered a high building, a  modern, tall,  recently built mall. The escalators crossed the wide inner space of the huge pavilion and launched me as a consumer to all floors. However, I roamed around as a stranger, an insect lost in the woods, not as a shopper. I loved to see the windows, the reflection of the insect and to enter the open shops. I looked around as if I was the only visitor, highly concentrated, fully energized, an official out of office. The girls of the shops  watched me and turned around. I would like to buy everything. That's what they observed. A hopeless insect of another planet. They smiled and looked away. Something was wrong.They knew.

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur

On the way to Bali, we stop at Kuala Lumpur.  Monchique, my Portugese village has become a tiny, little place, almost a point in my memory. It's so far off now and so immeasurable small, compared to this metropolis of skyscrapers, the multitude of people, the intensity of traffic, the variety of malls and shops. The hotel with a small swimming pool is the place of rest behind the high walls that even cannot keep off the noise of the streets. The malls are ponds of glitter, floors of marble, spaces of glass and high density areas of humans and consumer products. This is the garden of Eden, a paradise of seduction, full of Eves and apples, reflected a million times in the windows of wealth. Moving up and down the stairs or in the elevators of glass, I'm floating on the surf of a whispering wealth and happiness in this consumer paradise. Outside the malls, at times I see a beggar or smell the stench of the hampering sewerage system. No paradise without poverty. Fate and fortune, two sides of the medal.