Love and Hate

I love Bali but I hate Air Asia. They will not help you in the slightest to get on a flight that still has 25 minutes before departure. So I sit here in the airport fuming about the airline rules, having to pay for another ticket, having to wait 6 more hours, to be arriving really late in KL and the fact it really couldn't have been that hard to get me on that plane.

Ok, good thoughts, I want to stop being mad now! A couple days ago, Yvonne and Claire drove me up to Ubud to have a drink on a terrace looking down on a luscious ravine of green rice fields. After playing with the frog ash tray and watching the herons fly in flocks, we watched a Kecak fire and trance show of 100 chanting men in checkered sarongs! I wanted to witness this ever since I watched the scene in Baraka. And although the movie displayed the seated circles of men in a grassy green valley with high mystical mountains all around, our show was still exciting. The music is made with the voices and the dance happens with the sychronized movements. The leader shouts out "A!" and the rest follow with different tones of "Kecak-kecak-kecak-kecak..." repeated really quickly. They tell their story while making patterns with their black and white bodies swaying, standing and lying down. The finale ends with a man on a hobby horse, running through a blazing fire of coconut shells. He stomps back and forth until the burning embers die out and then he shows off his black feet! P