Around Klungkung: crafts of South-East Bali

The town of Klungkung, or Semarapura, lies between the giant resort area of Denpasar, synonymous with Bali for many tourists, and the more secluded enclaves of Candidasa and Amed. Throngs of vacationers pass through its environs daily, yet the attractions of the South-East remain hidden in plain sight like E.A. Poe's "Purloined letter". Nobody but the most dedicated explorers ever visits the local artisans - and this part of the island, for whatever reason, seems to have accumulated all the rarest crafts.

The gamelan makers of Tihingan

Indonesia has an ancient musical tradition, its own classics and court music. It is based on the gamelan - an ensemble of gongs, xylophones and metallophones, with the possible addition of a flute. The performance of gamelan relies mainly on gong ageng, the great gong. This massive bronze dish is the only truly polyphonic percussion instrument in the world - expertly struck, it produces three clear tunes at once, the central knob, the plate and the rim resonating at different frequencies. Tihingan village near Klungkung specializes in gamelan manufacture, and the most spectacular part is casting and beating the gongs. The great disk of metal is repeatedly heated to incandescence and hammered with wooden mallets to achieve perfect shape. It looks like nothing more than gods' own smithy pumping out new suns, and is extremely photogenic. Other jobs, like assembling the xylophones or carving and painting the wooden frames, are worth a peek too, but if you have limited time, aim for the sound of hammers.

Satria Glass Factory

Glassblowing is a dying art. Decorative miniature pieces are still occasionally created this way, but everything else involving glass is done by machines nowadays. A few glassblowers survive in Afghanistan, two artisan families are still keeping the craft alive in Cairo, but generally, you have to know where to look for it - it's very rare. In Bali, there are at least three such workshops clustered between Denpasar and Klungkung. One of them, Satria Glass Factory, is in fact pretty close to Semarapura town. Do not expect ancient kilns - modern electric furnaces are used, and the raw material is broken windows and bottles, so it is technically recycling. The rest hasn't changed since the invention of this craft: long metal tubes to blow into, red-hot blobs of viscous molten glass, and the masters puffing their cheeks like trumpet players. The items produced are both decorative and utilitarian: large vases and jars, mostly. The local design uses chunks of gnarled wood as stands - after blowing the glass into desired shapes, the pieces are quickly lowered onto prepared dummies, so that the bottom preserves the uneven form of the wood. The stand and the vessel have to be sold together, obviously - alone, such vases wouldn't be able to remain upright.

Salt making in Kusamba

Fishermen living on the beach just south of Klungkung have developed another unusual craft: making salt by evaporating sea water. Unlike in most Indonesian islands where it's done industrially, in large open ponds, here hollowed-out tree trunks are used to make troughs, which are then filled with sand scooped on the shore, and fresh water. The result is natural salt, later sent to resellers or sold privately on the highway nearby. Such products are gaining great popularity nowadays, coming under the label "organic" - although what organics could one find in a pile of NaCl is rather baffling. If you want a pack, here it will cost marginally more than synthetic salt in a minimart, and tens of times less than you would pay for it in some "healthy living" shop. While salt is hardly a work of art, the process is interesting to see and quite photogenic.

Practicalities

Public vehicles headed east pass on the highway, and a few bemos - local minivans - turn off it to enter Klungkung town. By using them smartly and walking a lot, all three sights can be visited in a day from Denpasar, although an early start would be required: both the bemos and the craftsmen finish work in mid-afternoon. Do not bet on hitching a ride back - Bali is pretty corrupted, and on the main highway hitchhiking is not reliable. One way around it would be to stay in Klungkung and take it slow, including a few of the waterfalls north of town in your itinerary. The few cheap guesthouses in town cannot be reserved on international websites, but there are a number of homestays and even villas in nearby villages. Another method, more typical for a common tourist on a short vacation, would be to use a hired car. Of course, if you drive a motorbike, it solves the problem automatically.