By Amy Chavez
For The Bali Times

It used to be that we only had to deal with funny Indonesian English. But with the flood of goods available in the big superstores, most of which are imported from China, we now have a different kind of English written on the boxes of products we buy. This new English is grammatically correct but enough to make you wonder if you’re not watching a late night TV commercial promising you washboard abs in just three seconds per day. It’s as if there’s a little Chinese salesman inside each of these products selling directly from the box.

I recently bought an “electric mug.” This is actually a plastic jug that holds two liters of water and has a heating element inside and on the outside a picture of a bear flying a kite with the words “Activity bear” under it. (Of course bears fly kites).

The box insisted it was a “NEW!” one. Well, glad to know I’m not buying a used one at that price. Furthermore, according to the box, it says I can “boil water instantly.” Can you imagine boiling two liters of water instantly? Makes you wonder: If you add instant hot water to instant coffee, does that give you instant, instant coffee?

With instant boiled water, you could serve the fastest coffee in the East. But in Bali, who would want fast coffee? It would be contrary to the pace of life and would surely spark civil unrest. My friend Wayan says he starts with a cup of coffee on his desk in the morning and slowly sips it all day. Electric mugs are threatening to encroach on the Balinese way of life.

The box goes on to explain, in English, the major points of this electric mug:

Boil water within seconds anytime and anywhere. Huh? Wait a minute. “Instantly,” has now become “within seconds.” This is a big blow. It’s not that I mind waiting a few seconds for the water to boil; it’s that they didn’t say exactly how many seconds. Everyone knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but you could still say it was built in seconds. Lots of them.

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By Amy Chavez
For The Bali Times

It seems that with the filling in of potholes currently underway on Jl. Legian, we can all look forward to smooth driving down Kuta’s main tourist road. Until the potholes come back, that is. The thing about potholes is that they are like a disease, a mumps of the road. And they are contagious. Even after being cured, they are likely to come back. Once you have one pothole, there will surely be an outbreak of them in that part of the road, and soon they will have spread all the way down the road.

The movement of potholes from one place to another has been wholly documented. The Indonesian government recently decided to allocate more money to fill potholes at the provincial level outside of Jakarta and less money to the municipal roads. This indicates a movement of the pothole epidemic from the city to the countryside.

There is no doubt that Bali has been infected with the pothole disease for a long time. An Indonesian friend blames one individual pothole for the demise of his warung. It started out as a small hole in the road in front of his restaurant. Despite his complaints to authorities, no one would fix it. It kept growing bigger and bigger. The water attracted lots of flies and not long after that, alligators were living in it. The pothole continued growing until it was a small pond you could sail a dinghy across. And that was in the dry season. In the rainy season, it rivaled the Great Lakes. The pothole clogged traffic as tourists would stop their cars and do a few Hail Marys before crossing. To this day, it ranks as the largest pothole I have ever seen in Bali. 

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By Amy Chavez

For The Bali Times

I was riding my motorbike on Saturday, when I came upon a cow standing on the side of the road mooing at me. For some reason, cows always moo at me. So I did the polite thing — I mooed back. Then it hit me: This was not just another Saturday in Bali. It was Tumpek Kandang - the day to pray for animals. Suddenly the meaning behind that beckoning moo became obvious — stop and pray for us!

Not surprisingly, this cow was standing right next to Tanah Kilap, where a Tumpek Kandang ceremony was taking place. So I turned my bike around and went back to the temple to pray for the cow and all the animals of Bali.

In Bali, Tumpek Kandang is celebrated twice a year, which is every 210 days on the Balinese calendar. On this day they thank the animals because without them, humans cannot live. We eat the eggs from the chicken; we drink the milk from the cow; we eat the flesh of the goat.

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By Amy Chavez

For The Bali Times

“You want tattoo?” says the hawker, opening his book of temporary tattoos, despite my “No, thank you” response.

Temporary tattoos, I suppose, are for people who can’t make the commitment to a lifetime tattoo. The difference between a permanent and a temporary tattoo is so significant, however, that you’d think they’d have something a little more in-between, such as a 10-year tattoo, or one that disappears after the age of 40.

“You want tattoo?” he asks again.

Which got me to thinking. Do I really need another tattoo? I already have so many!

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By Amy Chavez

For The Bali Times

One thing I like about Bali is that there are no vending machines selling soft drinks. Nothing where you feed coins into some cold, unappreciative slot, listen as the machine swallows them and the coins travel one by one down through the pharynx into the esophagus and plop into the pit of the machine’s stomach, after which it belches out a soft drink. No wonder there’s so much gas in them.

Then, after you are given your can of fizzy gas, with any luck, the machine will expel some pellets of small change, coins that were originally fed in by someone else, and since then have been digested and have passed through the machine’s entrails.

No, no, not me. I prefer buying things from people. I prefer little Indonesian houses with storefronts with someone inside who smiles and greets me with, “Selamat pagi” (Good morning). Someone who will give me a cold bottled drink from their ice chest, hand it to me and insist I take a seat. It’s a pleasant way to spend a few moments on a hot day. And when I’m finished, she’ll smile and say thank you with “Terima kasih, Ibu.” Then I’ll pay, and if I say, “Keep the change,” she will.

On my planet, the United States, not only do we get soft drinks from vending machines, but we are likely to eat many of our meals in the car. These meals have been made by a team of people wearing plastic gloves and hairnets who are paid to make food as fast as possible and then hand it to you through a drive-in window. This is only after you have shouted out your order, loud enough to be heard over the background noise of a car muffler, into a small black box. This muffled English is then processed by the team. When you see an arm sticking out of a window and a bag of food hanging from it, you know your meal is ready. Who needs face-to-face contact? Isn’t arm-to-arm good enough?

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By Amy Chavez

For The Bali Times

As a tourist in Bali, you are probably wondering what the best way to get around the island is. Here are some options.

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By Amy Chavez
For The Bali Times

Buffalo races take place all over Indonesia and their forms vary from place to place. Whereas buffalo races in Bali are done on an oval track, with riders in carts, the buffalo races I witnessed in Sumbawa were quite different. In Sumbawa, the buffalo were more in their natural environment — a muddy field.

You see, water buffaloes have little hair. They are practically naked their entire lives, with just a tiny bit of hair sticking out of tough elephant-like gray skin. This is why they are called buffalo — they’re in the buff!

Luckily, water buffalo are rather proud of their baldness and have never taken to the barcode look that balding men resort to when they comb all their remaining hair over their bald spot. No, with bald buffalo it’s different. They’re comfortable with their nakedness. And it’s a good thing, because you can just imagine the size a buffalo toupee would have to be.

Balding men should take a hint from the water buffalo, who spend a lot of time wallowing in mud. Mud adheres to the skin and keeps them cool. So bald men can easily cool off in the Indonesian heat by dipping their head in some mud. Mud hats would indeed be very fashionable. Just like the beehive haircut was popular with women in the 50s, the wasp-nest-style hat could be very fashionable for the modern bald man.

But mud isn’t just for men. Buffalo were the first to recognize the beauty benefits of a mud spa. Quite the entrepreneurs they are — now mud spas are famous all over the world as beauty treatments for both men and women. We have these gentle, beautiful beasts to thank for this.

Being a bit of a bovine aficionado myself, I was highly interested in seeing how these water buffalo in Sumbawa would perform.

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