BALI LOW

“I am on Bali now,” wrote the Dutch artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp, “and I like it very well . . . a delightful place. And also very cheap for me.” The year was 1903.

In September, when I visited this Indonesian island paradise, it was very cheap for me, too. Bali has been a premier budget destination since Nieuwenkamp’s day, but it’s a steal in the wake of the Asian economic meltdown. International travelers aren’t coming--partly out of wariness over Indonesia’s tense political climate--and the rupiah is in free fall.

In September 1997, $1 was worth 2,433 Indonesian rupiahs; last month, money-changers at Ngurah Rai International Airport, south of the Balinese capital of Denpasar, were giving 10,500 rupiahs to the dollar. How this translates for the tourist on Bali is that a fresh glass of pineapple juice costs 50 cents, a dress costs $4, car rental for a day $10, a hotel room on the beach $35, a two-hour massage and milk bath $8.

With political instability, rampant crime in Jakarta and riots on the big island of Java, travelers are wise to think twice before visiting Indonesia. The country has been shaky since the fall of longtime President Suharto and is poor by any standard, with the per capita income expected to drop to $610 by the end of the year.

But even when violent anti-government demonstrations racked Java last May, Bali remained essentially peaceful. And currently it’s business as usual on the island, according to the U.S. State Department. Bali is an Indonesian anomaly: the one spot in the world’s most populous Muslim nation that is overwhelmingly Hindu. And vibrantly, pervasively so, with 1,000 lavishly sculpted temples, cremations that are joyous affairs, and sacred days all through the year (even one for machines, called Tumpek Landek, when holy water is splashed on cash registers and motorcycles). So beguilingly colorful is the island’s religious life that the Dutch colonial government prohibited Christian missionaries from proselytizing in order to keep the culture intact. What is more, the 2.9 million Balinese are well educated by Indonesian standards and somewhat more affluent than their compatriots in this 17,000-island archipelago.

Tourists first started trickling into Bali in the late 1920s, when European artists like Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet settled in the rice-belt town of Ubud and sent home images so tantalizing that the trickle soon became a stream. Consequently, Bali is no lost Eden; big new resorts are rising at the very threshold of revered temples, and hard-sell peddlers ply every street and beach.

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But it is not too touristy for me because it’s beautiful. Fifty miles long, 90 miles wide and situated eight degrees north of the equator, it’s garlanded with oleander and bougainvillea and has a bumpy backbone of active volcanoes. Twenty percent of the land is given over to terraced rice paddies cascading over the flanks of mountains in emerald green. Sandy beaches edge the Bukit Peninsula in the southeast, and in the interior rivers like the Wos and Cerik cut deeply into a tangle of banyan trees, coconut palms and lacy bamboo.

With the dollar so strong, I simply had to go, though getting there was still not cheap. In early August I shopped around for a bargain fare, learning that the biggest Indonesian airline, Garuda, had ceased operation from the U.S. A number of airlines and travel agencies were offering attractive package deals, including round-trip air fare, accommodations and transfers for as little as $899 (for a five-night stay, from China Airlines).

But then I saw an ad for Cathay Pacific’s All Asia Pass, which costs $999 and includes round-trip air fare from L.A. to Hong Kong (a 4 1/2-hour flight north of Bali), followed by 30 consecutive days of travel to 17 Asian cities like Denpasar, Bangkok and Osaka. When I learned that the price dropped to $899 for those who register on Cathay Pacific’s Internet site, I made up my mind.

Before I left home I decided to travel without hotel reservations because you generally bag the best deals by showing up at reception desks and bargaining (a little dicey, perhaps, but later I met a family from Simi Valley doing the same thing). To be on the safe side, I booked accommodations for my first two nights at the nine-room Baruna Beach Inn ($35, including breakfast), 20 steps from the ocean in Sanur. Originally it was built as a residence by the late President Sukarno.

Faxes had yielded other attractive options in Sanur, such as a Balinese-style bungalow at the intimate Tandjung Sari Hotel for $129 (usually $160). But I stuck with the friendly Baruna, even though it lacked a pool, because I had bigger things in mind. If all the hotels in Bali were slashing prices, maybe I could cut a deal at one of the island’s luxury resorts.

Sanur is a beach enclave, about 30 minutes northeast of the airport by taxi (a $5 ride), where sorcery is a village tradition and where the Belgian artist Adrien Jean le Mayeur de Merpres settled in the 1930s with his wife, a Balinese dancer. Bounded on the north by the 11-story Bali Beach Hotel (built in 1946 with Japanese war reparations), the town is far more laid-back than busy Kuta, farther south (packed with young sun-and-suds-loving Australians), and modest in comparison with tony Nusa Dua, near the tip of the Bukit Peninsula.

The relatively narrow beach at Sanur wouldn’t wow Southern Californians, and I didn’t see much when I went snorkeling out by the reef. But with its long waterfront sidewalk lined with open-air restaurants and neatly manicured, low-rise hotels, Sanur was a nice, quiet spot to recuperate from jet lag.

As I stopped for a cup of tea on my first afternoon at the Segura Agung Restaurant, about a hundred people in sarongs and headdresses assembled on the beach around a tiered offertory tower made of bamboo, tinsel, flowers and colored paper and cloth. They chanted as a native gamelan orchestra, made up of drums, flutes and a xylophone-like instrument called a gangsa, played and a priest doused the group with holy water. I asked the waiter what the ceremony was for, and he waved his hand vaguely, saying, “They’re celebrating September.”

I celebrated myself by viewing some of Le Mayeur’s paintings, featuring more bare-breasted women than a year’s worth of Playboy magazines, in the museum that was once the artist’s home. To use the pool at La Taverna Hotel, my favorite of the lot in Sanur (doubles are $65), all I had to do was order a drink at the bar. Later, I had a delicious dinner--Thai seafood soup and peanutty gado gado salad--for about $6 at the Tandjung Sari.

The next morning, I was awakened by a brief downpour that sounded lovely on the roof of my dark and slightly shabby room at the Baruna Beach Inn. The porch was much nicer, overlooking a garden with waxy blossoms dripping from trees and a ledge lined with Balinese sculpture. A staff member was plucking flowers for the pretty little woven palm trays called canangs, placed as offerings to the gods in every nook and cranny across Bali.

The artistic Balinese handcraft everything from temple pavilions to gamelan drums, and seem to occupy the very landscape artfully. This yields photo opportunities wherever you look. But to see Bali at its most beautiful, you’ve got to go to Ubud, about an hour’s drive north of Sanur. Tourist buses and hot, crowded public minivans called bemos get you there incredibly cheaply, but I arranged for a private van, bargaining the driver down to $5 from his original asking price of $10.

Long a center for indigenous religious painting, the village in the 1930s became a haven for Western artists like Spies and Bonnet, who, together with the ruler of Ubud, Cokorda Gede Agung Sukawati, founded Pita Maha, a society for the advancement of Balinese art. The school, now centered in the beautifully landscaped Puri Lukisan Museum, transformed traditional Balinese painting by teaching a new generation of local artists to include scenes from daily life in their work.

Located among river gorges and rice paddies, Ubud is a sprawling town that is surprisingly cosmopolitan for its size and rural setting. It has a busy schedule of dance and puppet shows (about $1.50 per ticket) as well as shops, galleries, artists’ studios and museums. Good places to eat abound, like Han Snel’s Garden Restaurant. Here, with tables next to an elegant lotus pool, I ordered fresh pineapple juice, spring rolls and an Indonesian sampler called rijsttafel, all for $6.

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On the day I arrived in Ubud, my good-natured driver took me on a hotel tour, stopping first at the Four Seasons and Amandari resorts in the nearby village of Sayan. Alas, neither place was willing to haggle over room rates. So we went on to the village of Penestanan, where at the Melati Cottages I almost took a gorgeous double with a picture window looking right onto a rice paddy for $35.

But I wanted to be in the center of Ubud, so I ended up at Pringga Juwita Cottages. Nineteen rooms are scattered beside a winding, jungly water garden, and it has a pool. Breakfasts in the central pavilion were excellent, and my bungalow was lovely, especially the partly open-air bathroom, its sink set in a bed of tropical plants.

When I decided to stay an extra night so that I could attend a cremation (the most important ceremony in Balinese religious life, with a procession accompanied by priests and musicians leading to the final lighting of the funeral pyre), I was sorry to find that my room had been reserved. The manager walked me across the street to Sama’s Bungalows, quite affordable at $7 a night but hardly as well kept as Pringga Juwita, and with no hot water.

The two dance performances I attended were magical, with gamelans sounding like mellifluous traffic jams in the dark, steamy Balinese night. At the cremation that Saturday, hours of preparation and ceremony ended abruptly when three catafalques surmounted by huge paper bulls were set afire.

On a shopping spree in Ubud, I bought two batik dresses and a blouse (all for about $15) and a woven handbag (for $5). But my favorite adventure of all came when the manager at the Pringga Juwita agreed to take me to see the nightly fly-in of thousands of herons at the village of Petulu. Speeding along a country lane on the back of a motorcycle, watching the graceful birds converge in perfect “V” formations toward their nesting places, was a sight that will stay in my memory, right up there with St. Mark’s Square in Venice and the ruins of Petra in Jordan.

But that didn’t help me decide where I was going for my last two nights in Bali. Lovina beach in the north sounded too funky, and the Gunung Batur volcano too touristy. So it was a bit of good luck that I agreed to snap a picture of a couple from Berkeley, Paul and Kathy Terrell, while taking a walk north of Ubud one morning. They told me about a luxurious new hotel they’d found in the east coast hamlet of Ahmed, where the long skirt of Gunung Agung, Bali’s mother mountain, drapes into the sea.

The Hotel Indra Udhyana, which opened last year, was as nice as the Amandari, they claimed, but a lot cheaper. Furthermore, the guest-starved management was cutting deals. The Terrells managed to book a two-story garden-view bungalow there for half the brochure rate of $120. And they absolutely adored the split-level pool overlooking the sea. When traveling without reservations, you can remain flexible enough to seize opportunities like this.

The hotel lies on a rutted road south of Ahmed, about a three-hour drive east of Ubud. This time my driver was a painter from Penestanan who charged me $20 for the trip, stopping to tour the historic palace at Klungkung and the water garden at Tirtagangga, built in 1947. (I could have rented a car, but why, when it doesn’t cost much to pay someone?)

The beach in front of the hotel lines a little bay, bordered by dry hills, with a fleet of fishing boats pulled up on the sand. At dawn, the rising sun outlines the adjacent island of Lombok in pink and the boats return from early morning fishing trips in an invasion of colorful sails.

My bungalow, which I snagged for $50, was a joy. The second-floor bedroom was lined in cherry-colored wood, and it had breeze-catching windows and CNN.

Because the hotel has you virtually captive in an undeveloped part of the island, meal and activity prices are high. I paid $25 for a morning of snorkeling with an extremely adept guide who took me first to the offshore wreck of a World War II U.S. cargo ship, and then to the reef just north of the hotel. There I did the best snorkeling of my life, as barracuda, squid, snapper and Oriental sweetlips swam by.

I left for the airport the next morning, stopping to shop at the Sukawati craft market south of Ubud. During my stay on Bali, I spent $60 for a whole bag of Balinese goodies, and another $60 per day for accommodations, meals and entertainment. I could have done it even more cheaply. But there’s no counting pennies in paradise.

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GUIDEBOOK

Bali on a Budget

Getting there: Cathay Pacific’s All Asia Pass is good for travel through Dec. 15. Many restrictions apply; telephone (800) 228-4297 or visit the Web site https://www.cathay-usa.com. (To get the $899 fare, register as a Cathay Pacific CyberTraveler on the Web, then book through a travel agent.)

Other packages are available from Cathay Pacific, as well as from Singapore Airlines, tel. (800) 742-3133; Northwest World Vacations, tel. (800) 800-1504; China Airlines, tel. (800) 227-5118; and Escapes Unlimited, tel. (800) 243-7227 or (714) 771-3154.

Where to stay: The Baruna Beach Inn in Sanur, tel. 011-62-361-288-546, fax 011-62-361-289-629, about $40. La Taverna Hotel, tel. 011-62-361-288-497, fax 011-62-361-532-3674, $90 to $200; Internet users will find discounts at https://www.asiatravel.com.

In Ubud, Pringga Juwita Water Garden Cottages, tel./fax 011-62-361-975-734, $57 to $150; Melati Cottages in Penestanan, tel. 011-62-361-974-650, fax 011-62-361-975-088, $20 to $35; Sama’s Bungalows, tel. 011-62-361-80-571, $7 (rates fluctuate widely).

South of Ahmed, the Hotel Indra Udhyana, tel. 011-62-361-241-107, fax 011-62-361-234-903, Internet https:// www.indo.com/hotels/indra-udhyana, has 33 bungalows and pool; brochure rates $120 to $350. On the same bay is Coral View Villas, tel. 011-62-361- 431-273, fax 011-62-363-21-044; brochure rates, $29 to $104.

Where to eat: In Sanur, try Segara Agung Restaurant, or the restaurant at the Tandjung Sari Hotel, local tel. 288-441. In Ubud, I liked the Cafe Wayan, tel. 975-447; Casa Luna, tel. 96-283; and above all Han Snel’s Garden Restaurant, tel. 975-699. In Ahmed, try the fish at Wawa Wewe, near the Hotel Indra Udhyana.

For more information: A visa is not required for stays of up to two months. Bali’s Regional Office of Tourism is at Jalan Raya Puputan, Renon, Denpasar, tel. 011-62-361-225-649, fax 011-62-361-233-475. A useful Internet site on Bali is https://www.balivillas.com.

PARADISE FOR A SONG

Beach hotel room: $35

Two-hour massage and milk bath: $8

Dinner: $6

Car rental, per day: $10

Dance performance: $1.50

Batik dress: $4

Fresh fruit juice: 50 cents