Pre-tour, Denpasar
Saturday, May 5
After a decent night’s sleep, Tina and I walked into the Teratai Coffee Shop and quickly identified our sisters of the cloth at a breakfast table. Eight of us had arrived in Bali the previous day, and the final attendee would arrive before our welcome dinner on Saturday evening. We started getting to know each other and talking about each woman’s skills and interests and the adventures that lay ahead.
Barb and Cheryl, our leaders, came in towards the end of breakfast, having just arrived at 3:00 in the morning from a few days in Java. They suggested we might all enjoy an afternoon at the spa after our long flights, so booked that for us. A day heavy in relaxation unfolded before us. And at 6:30 we met at the hotel’s Rinascimento Italian Restaurant. We had the restaurant to ourselves, and started taking turns around the table acquainting the entire group with our individual passions for textiles. Barb gave us each a welcome bag, which included several locally made batik items, a fan, a power strip, and an electric mosquito repellent machine. We were prepared for whatever might come!
And with that dinner, the Bali Fiber Tour had officially begun. We adjourned to our rooms to repack our bags in preparation for Sunday’s transfer to Sanur.
Week One – Sanur
Sunday, May 6
The day was special for me, as my younger son was turning 43 without my presence, half a globe away. He was not far from my thoughts all day.
While the luggage van was taking our bags to the Prama Sanur Beach Resort, we got our first opportunity to see and pet some of the wonderful textiles indigenous to Bali—ikat.
< For your education—choose how much you want to know about ikat >
A YouTube video explaining the ikat weaving technique.
Just the basics, Ma’am.
An in-depth explanation of ikat weaving, for the fiber nerds among us.
<For your education—off>
After I had bought some beautiful yardage, some precious silk bags, and had ordered a beautiful vacation/dinner-out-with-friends shirt to be made for the Jazzman, and my fiberholic colleagues had bought their shares of beautiful fabrics and garments, we went across the street to the Wicked Parrot for lunch.
After lunch, there were rooms to be checked into, bags to be unpacked, and pools/beach to be explored. And later on, dinner to be enjoyed at the Paon Restaurant.
Day 1 completed. More beautiful things to touch on Monday.
Monday, May 7
Shopping Day
In the morning we visited three fabric shops in Denpasar. This TripAdvisor review gives you an idea of what to expect in these fabric stores filled with batiks and sarongs.
After buying about twelve meters of companion batiks with which to make bags for friends at store number one, and several little bags (and admiring the shop cats) at store number three, I stepped back and let others have their turn. Then we were off to Bali Bakery in Kuta for lunch. There we met up with the other group of five women who had been at the batik factory all morning. I was able to get a nice flatbread pizza that contained nothing on my list of migraine triggers. Whew.
After lunch, we headed off for more shopping at two sarong shops, and then headed back to Sanur to the hotel.
A little later, Barb’s friend Ajick, the leather tailor, met us in Barb’s room to accept commissions for leather goods. I chose an unusual rectangular backpack, that can be converted to a triangular shape and can easily hold my iPad Pro. It would be sewn in a caramel leather with a navy accent flap, and lined in an ikat I had picked up in Nogo. The ikat contains caramel, navy, turquoise, and a couple of other shades. I also chose another smaller backpack/purse, made of the softest of Napa leathers, again in caramel. It would be lined in the same ikat. They were delivered to us a week later, and I used them both for the last few days of the tour and absolutely love them.
The night was free for us to use as we pleased. Tina and I, along with Mary Helen, Sue, and Simone, headed around the corner from the hotel to Beach Breeze for dinner. Afterwards, Simone headed off to explore more Sanur shops, and the rest of us went back to our rooms to crash.
Tuesday, May 8
Batik Day
Our guide, Barb, has been working for years with a family-run batik studio in Bali. We were the final tour that would be able to work with these lovely people, as the patriarch died a year ago and the business is shutting down. And because of this twist of fate, samples that have been sitting on shelves for years were available to our group at sweet prices. No piece of fabric went untouched.
< For your education—choose how much you want to know about batik >
Batik is a method of dyeing fabric where wax is applied as a dye resist. The word, “batik,” applies both to the method and the finished fabric.
The tjap is the tool used to apply the wax to the dyed fabric. This page is from Barb’s “Bali Fiber Tour” website. You’ll see toward the end of the page the tjap pattern I used for my batik project.
Documentary showing the batik process – seven minutes
If you want to learn more, the Lunn Fabrics team, Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka of Lancaster, Ohio, have produced several videos showing the full batik process, from designing and creating the tjap through the base dyeing of the fabric, wax application with the tjap, overdyeing, drying and setting of the dyes. The Lunn Fabrics batiks are made in Solo, Java.
< For your education—off >
After we did our shopping in the sample room, we went into the tjap storage room to choose the pattern we wanted for our fabric. Then we watched the owner lay out a tjap design in a graphics software program and manipulate it to ensure all the registration marks worked together seamlessly. Next, we watched the base dyeing of the fabric. Then, using rayon yardage that had been dyed earlier, the artist who would help us with the tjapping laid the fabric out on the frame. He showed us how the beeswax and paraffin are melted over a gas flame, and then began dipping the tjap into the wax and stamping the hot wax onto the fabric. After he set the first row, he assisted us in tjapping another meter or so of the fabric. I chose two tjaps, a small and a large design. I chose to have the small design placed densely on the first couple of meters, then the large design placed less closely over the remaining couple of meters.
When each of us had done part of our design, our fabric was moved out of the way so another person could do hers. It is a time-consuming process, and we had more shopping to do elsewhere. The artist would finish our tjapping, then another worker would apply the overdye and fix the dyes, folding and packaging the fabric and delivering to our hotel later in the week.
Bali Bakery was so good the previous day, we went there again for lunch. Again, I got pizza. Again, I was happy. This was the place where the pizza I chose included ham, and the waiter asked if I wanted pork or beef. Hmmm, I’m not familiar with beef ham. It must be a Bali thing. 😉 This bakery sells cookies that look like big buttons. Of course we couldn’t skip a place that knew our hearts!
The afternoon included more shopping, at Toko Central, a craft store and its sister notions store across the street. Because we were late arriving to lunch, we got into the middle of afternoon rush hour on the way to the next stores. Oh, my gosh. A drive that would have probably taken us fifteen minutes in non-rush traffic took us well over an hour. And the motor bikes. Oh, what a nightmare driving in Bali is!!!
I didn’t care for the store that was all beads and craft items. But the notions store across the street had bag hardware and hundreds of zippers calling my name. I came out with bag hardware for my next twenty creations. (See my pictures of the zippers below, and also search “Toko Central” on TripAdvisor to see more pictures. Just wow!)
Back to the hotel, we had a short break before heading to Massimo in Sanur for dinner. While eating wonderful Italian food, we watched one of the kitchen staff making spinach tortellini on a large work table behind us. After dinner, you can stand in the long line out front of the restaurant to have a dish of their ever-popular gelato. Or, you can just ask your waiter to get it for you and skip the line. You can guess which we did.
Wednesday, May 9
Free Day
As Tina and I planned our free day, the major goal was to hop the hotel shuttle down to the supermarket, Hardy’s, to be able to visit a couple of shops we wanted to see without having to pay for a cab. (Which would have cost all of, oh, $3. But a girl has to have her standards!) After breakfast, we did some laundry. And missed the first shuttle. Then went downstairs to catch the next shuttle, and it was late, so we went into the hotel gift shop to see what they had. We found three things each we wanted to purchase, but the clerk was slower than slow, more interested in chatting us up than taking our money. So we missed another shuttle. Or two. As it was nearing lunchtime, we walked out the hotel entrance road and hailed a cab all the way to Nogo, which would have required a cab ride or a very long walk, anyway.
Let me tell you about cabs in Sanur. If you’re walking along the main shopping street and a cabbie sees you looking toward the street, he’ll beep once if he thinks you want a cab and he’s available. If you try to hail him and he’s not available, he’ll beep twice. Or once. Or thrice. Sometimes it’s not clear what he intends. But one thing is very clear. If one has beeped at you and stops a block further on to take you to your destination, but you don’t realize he’s stopped for you and you take another cab that stopped right in front of you, well …. (How does one say “pissed off” in Balinese? At that point, Cabbie #1 is majorly pissed off.) And it’s not like there’s a dearth of cabs along the main drags through Sanur. They’re everywhere. There are even cabbies on motorbikes anxious to get you to your destination and put your money into their pockets.
Back to our walk. In Nogo I picked up the shirt I had had made for the Jazzman. (He loves it, BTW.) That’s the thing about Nogo. They’ve got a number of ready-to-wear garments on racks for customers to try and buy. But let’s say you see another ikat fabric on the shelf that you prefer to the fabric the garment is made in. Slip on the garment, they’ll measure and see where it needs to be altered. Then they’ll make the garment up for you in your preferred fabric and perfectly tailored to your body. In two days! The shirt I liked for the Jazzman was in a Large, but Large in Bali is not Large in the U.S. My guy has lost quite a bit of weight over the past year and all his shirts are too big. But I knew by looking at the shirt that it would be snug on him. I ordered it on Sunday and it was ready on Tuesday afternoon. And since I had used much of my Sunday ikat fabric purchase to line my two leather bags, I picked up another piece of yardage for a future garment.
Tina and I started walking back towards the hotel when we saw Jenggala Ceramics. Tina knows a thing or two about clay (graduate degree in sculpture!) and I’ve never met a handcrafted mug I didn’t need to own, so we were looking forward to exploring Jenggala’s wares. I bought a hammered rice bowl in blue and Tina added a single frangipani chopstick rest to her collection.
But I was still looking for little bags to take home to friends. As we exited Jenggala, we notice A-Krea in the strip of shops next door. A-Krea sells handcrafts from local craftspersons. Honestly, I could have stayed in there for hours. I found small pouches suitable for my sons, bookmarks for my reading grandkids, another cool zippered pouch for my son’s mother-in-law, and so on. Beautiful, high-quality handcrafts. This is a must-see stop in Sanur, and there’s also a shop in Ubud. (I searched repeatedly for a website to show you. Alas. You’ll have to make do with a photo of the goodies I found there.)
With beautiful gifts stashed for ourselves and our friends, we hailed another cab to go to a batik clothing shop where Tina had ordered a dress to be made for her. There we ran into our tourmate, Ann. When shopping was completed, we walked to Ari Putri Hotel to have lunch at their restaurant, which is located in front of the hotel. The restaurant is peaceful and the food delicious. There’s soft jazz playing on the sound system, and our late lunch was one of the best meals I had in Sanur. In fact, Tina and I chose to go back to Ari Putri for our final night dinner a week later.
Many restaurants in Bali are open air. There’s a roof overhead to protect you from the three-minute rainstorms. The sides are open, letting in lots of light. It’s never cold. The geckos stay on the upper exposed walls, eating mosquitos to protect you. Dining al fresco in Bali is delightful.
After lunch, Tina and I went back to the hotel, straightened up our suitcases and spent time logging our purchases so we’d be prepared for customs inspection when the time arrived.
That evening was a Balinese dinner, music, and Legong dance presentation at the hotel’s outdoor stage. Barb had reserved a table for us close to the stage with a good view of the dancers. Food stations were set up on the perimeter of the dining area, and musicians were seated on the right side of the stage.
Description of Legong dance.
Videos of Legong dance in Ubud—choose how much you want to watch.
Thursday, May 10
Last Day in Sanur
More shopping this morning, for anyone who hadn’t gotten enough fabric. We visited a couple of batik fabric shops in Denpasar, then retired to Tommy’s for coffee, then on to Kuta’s Discovery Shopping Mall. The driver let us out at the door to Sogo, and forced us to walk through the handbag department, filled with beautiful leather bags. OMG! My googling tells me Sogo is a stylish Japanese department store with an international cult following. I can understand! I’m pretty sure Sogo is to Japan as Nordstrom is to the U.S. (Just remembered I’m headed to Japan in a month. Pretty sure I’m going to have to visit Sogo again while there.)
Barb walked us upstairs so we could see a store filled with souvenirs of Bali, and a store filled with wonderful batik bags and clothing and decorative items. At the last possible moment before our driver was to pick us up, I grabbed a darling soft red leather clutch unlike any I’ve seen before. I left that mall a happy shopper.
As it was our last day in Sanur, Barb and Cheryl took us to lunch at a restaurant on the beach south of our hotel. Delicious fish and chips for me, and a view of kite surfers perfecting their skills in the bay. There was a wonderful breeze coming off the water, and this lunch was the perfect way to end our time in Sanur.
Tina and I spent the afternoon packing and doing needlework on the balcony of our room. For dinner we walked down to the hotel’s Bamboo Bar and sat on a double swing enjoying the live music on the beach.
We’ll be back in Sanur for one more night at the end of the tour. But for now, on to Ubud.
Sanur Photo Gallery
