JAMMIN ISLAND III
JAMMIN ISLAND III IN GILI TRAWANGAN - LOMBOK - INDONESIA
STEVEN JAM
Steven Jam Release New Album
RAY D' SKY
LIFE STYLE PRIVATE CAFE
BALI OGOH OGOH PARADE 2011
GITO FRESH MELON RELEASE NEW SINGLE
GITO FRESH MELON ' Feat with Phay Izzy' Release New Single
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KUTA CLUB CRAWL
By Allison Bone
Kuta’s night life is as famous as the waves that pound its shores and Bali Mouse is on a mission to see how many bars and clubs we can visit in one night and remain standing. The only rule is one drink per bar.
We usher in the sunset, and start our mission in style, with a cocktail at Oceans 27 next to Discovery mall. This lounge bar is Kuta’s answer to Ku de Ta and sprawls across a stretch of white sand in front of Kuta reef. It oozes sophistication and style with its white nautically inspired décor, pillars made of mirrors, and tables and chairs in a pool that is knee deep in water – perfect for hot summer evenings. We sink into a day bed as the sun sinks into the ocean in a flame of crimson. The long island ice tea has quite a kick and the ambient tunes mixed by the resident DJ puts us in the mood to party. The last few months have seen some of the world’s top DJ’s, performing at a series of beach parties here, with state of the art laser light shows and exotic dancers.
We decide to off-set our rather pricey sunset cocktail by visiting the Green Box next. The name says it all, it’s a small box-shaped room painted in lurid green, located on Gang Bedugel, the small lane that runs between Poppies 1 and Poppies 11. Drinks here start at Rp 5000 and this is a no frills ‘sink as many cheap drinks as you can before you hit the clubs venue’. We order mojitos for Rp 15,000 and break our one drink rule by ordering a couple of shots -at Rp 10,000 each, it would be criminal not to.
Our next destination is Benesari, bars are sprouting like mushrooms along this stretch of Kuta and it makes a good place to get the night rolling. We head to the Balcony, Kuta’s hip surfer hangout, a favourite of Kelly Slater and other well know surf pros. Their frozen margaritas are legendary and a bargain at Rp 20,000. It’s a super chilled out venue, with soft lighting, Jack Johnson tunes and pictures of surfers adorning the walls. The margaritas are fabulous.
Our next bar is as manic, as the Balcony was mellow, its certainly proving to be a night of contrasts. Lyrix, on Benesari lane has dark red and black walls dominated by a painting of Jimmy Hendrix and bench seating. It’s the first place I have seen in Kuta that serves drinks Thai style – in buckets, so we have a vodka redbull. Its going to be a long night……The band is formidable and playing real rock n roll, belting out Rolling Stones, the Animals and Jimmy Hendrix. It’s loud and rocking.
We don’t have far to go for our next bar, just across the road to Brothers. Another excellent live band is playing a mix of reggae, rock and pop. It’s a relaxed hang out and as popular with locals as it is with tourists. A few people are up and dancing and we down our first arak of the night in a jug of jungle juice.Sensation is next on our list, another green bar just a few doors down from Brothers and yet again gives us another change of pace, its owner, a Sumatran surfer is a cool laid back dude and his bar reflects this. A sign out the front says “bring your music, bring your DVD, but no bring your mum”. It quiet and cozy and we stretch across the sofa and drink Virgin dogs, a very sweet, very blue concoction.
Love Buzz, further down Benesari lane entices us next, they are playing some pumping house music and a group of Russians are already plastered and dancing on the tables. It’s a tiny venue but big on atmosphere with a fabulous wall mural of a volcano set against a dazzling sunset.
By 11.30 we are ready to hit the bigger venues on Legian street. First up, it’s the long running and very popular Espresso Bar, Kuta’s home of Rock and Roll and the house band is one of the best rock bands in town. The music is incendiary, the lead singer is howling covers of Rage Against The Machine and the Chilli Peppers and by 12.00 the bar is so packed that the crowd has spilled out onto the sidewalk. It’s thick with atmosphere and there is a great mix of locals, tourists and expats rocking out in true head banging style. Our jug of tasty arak based jungle juice goes down rather easily.
Yet again, its time for a change of scene, this time it’s Sky Garden. The club is famous for its 14-day infused Martinis but we opt for peach bellinis, served in elegant cocktail classes, a classy drink for a classy and sophisticated venue. My favourite thing about this club is its labyrinth of floors and rooms with three different sound systems. The main sound system pumps out a mix of good solid house music over three floors, including the open air garden lounge, which also features acrobatic and fire dancers. Another dance floor has hip hop and a stage with sexy dancers strutting their stuff, while the top VIP area is a very cool space with expansive views over Kuta. The windows are all open creating a light breeze and the music here is a softer more funky house. Outside a platform is lined with artificial grass where you can dance under the stars.
Next up its time to get airy at Apache, home to Kuta’s most righteous rastas. This dark cavernous club with its live reggae performances headed by the legendary Johnny Agung is the club of choice for Kuta’s Dread community and is a lot of fun. Huge portraits of Bob Marley adorn the walls. Good solid reggae and an intimate atmosphere makes it feel more like a party than a club and its friendly and pretension free, just a great place to groove to the rhythm.
Its 2.30am and we are now inebriated enough to hit Bounty, a serious den of iniquity with a very young and very drunk crowd. We order cocktails that are served up in fishbowl shaped glasses and watch the karaoke which is hilarious as the people on stage can barely stand up, let alone sing. Then it’s up the stairs and onto the huge dance floor, there are poles, podiums and platforms and a big stage for people to dance on, people are also gyrating in the cages which is pretty funny. The music is a mix of R&B, hip hop and house, and the dance floor is heaving with a sweaty shirtless, very ‘up for it’ crowd. It’s not classy, but it’s a good place to let your hair down and boogey.
By four am things are winding down, but we are still standing so, there is only one place left to go. It’s time to hit the mother of all clubs, Double 6, on the beachfront. This legendary club attracts the best DJ’s from all over the world and boasts an incredible sound system, world class audio visuals, a stylish pool and outdoor seating area. And it’s the only place still open at this time of the morning. Techno is booming out of the giant speakers and people are leaping about the dance floor, arms in the air. It is also the only club I have ever been to where you can have a bungee jump and we sit outside and watch one person after another leap over the pool from the purpose built tower.
We are still standing as dawn breaks over Kuta. Our mission has been accomplished and the only place to go now is home.
SAVE THE ORANG UTAN / SAVE THE WORLD
The jungle rises steeply in front of us and we cross the river balanced precariously on a dug out canoe. The wall of dense green foliage looks impenetrable but a narrow, muddy trail has been carved out and the ranger leads us to a small clearing and a feeding platform. We only have to wait a couple of minutes before an orangutan comes swinging gracefully through the trees. It’s a female, and her scrawny baby clings on tightly as she stuffs bunches of bananas into her mouth and scoffs handfuls of milk from the rangers bucket. In Malaysian orangutan translates as man of the forest, and these gentle creatures share 97% of human DNA. Their movements are so graceful and seem at odds with their awkward appearance – their oversized heads, huge shoulders, pot bellies and four limbs acting interchangeably as arms and legs.
Gunung Leuser National Park, Northern Sumatra is one of only two places in the world where orangutans can be observed in the wild. The Bohorok rehabilitation centre operated here from 1973 – 2004 and saw 200 orangutans rescued from captivity and reintroduced to the forest. The feeding platform is the last vestige of the program and is a ‘fall back’ for any semi wild orangutans struggling to find food. Coming back down the trail we see a huge male sprawled across a thick branch and further on another female hanging nonchalantly from a tree trunk. I chat with the ranger who says that he has the best job in the world. He tells me of the day his father died and as he sat weeping in the jungle, an orangutan appeared and embraced him. “Sometimes the orangs are more human than humans,” he says.
A visit to the Rehabilitation centre and the quirky jungle village of Bukit Lawang which sits beside it, was once the highlight of many tourist itineraries. But one dark November night in 2003, a flash flood sent a 10 meter wave roaring through the valley destroying everything in its wake. The orangutans, high in the trees survived but more than 300 people died that night and much of the village was washed away. The road to recovery has been slow but five years on the village is once again flourishing as visitors are lured by the peaceful atmosphere, authentic jungle treks and the chance to see orangutans in the wild.
About orangutans
Millions of orangutans once roamed the forests that stretch from China to Java, now they can only be found in small pockets of Borneo and Sumatra and their very existence lies under grave threat. In the last 2o years the Sumatran population has decreased from 12,000 to an estimated 6500 and has been classified as “Critically Endangered” by the IUCN, the World Conservation Union.
The Pet trade
Although protected by legislation dating from 1931, which prohibits the owning, killing, or capture of orangutans, they are still in high demand for the pet trade. A baby orangutan can fetch up to $500 in Jakarta and $5000 in Taiwan. A common method for capturing a baby is to track a mother, fell the tree she is in then shoot or club her to death. Environmentalists say that for every orangutan in captivity at least three babies and their mothers have been killed by poachers or died from mistreatment. Orangutans breed more slowly than any other primate, with the female producing a baby on average only once every 7-8 years. A female will usually have no more than 3 offspring in her lifetime which means that orangutan populations grow very slowly, and take a long time to recover from habitat disturbance and hunting.
Shrinking habitat
It is estimated that the huge forest fires that swept though Indonesia in 1997 destroyed at least 30% of their habitat and drove orangutans to villages where they became easy prey for poachers. Clear felling for rice paddies, rubber plantations and the valuable hardwood trade also forces orangutans out of the forest in search of food. Deemed as agricultural pests by plantations owners, they are often killed.
Indonesia has one of the highest tropical forest loss rates in the world; an estimated 70% of Sumatran forest cover has now been decimated. The Indonesian government admits that the rampant destruction of its forests, estimated at over two million hectares a year has been an ecological and conservation disaster, yet illegal logging and forest conversion remain out of control. Many blame over-logging for the flash flood that devastated Bukit Lawang.
Palm Oil, the biggest threat of all
Now, orangutans face the gravest threat of all and that is an insatiable global demand for palm oil, a popular vegetable oil used in many food products, as well as cosmetics and increasingly in bio fuel. Ninety per cent of the world’s palm-oil exports come from the plantations of Malaysia and Indonesia. The low land forests of Borneo and Sumatra – the last remaining habitats for orangutans, are the areas favored for conversion. Over 80% of the land that has been deforested in Sumatra over the last 20 years can be attributable to the planting of palm oil and all unprotected low lying forest is at risk.
Growing palm oil is a lucrative business and the price of crude palm oil has risen steadily. Impoverished land owners see few financial alternatives and many give up their land to become small-holders or to work on the plantations.
The problem with bio fuel
The biggest irony is the use of palm oil for bio fuel, a supposedly ‘green’ fuel, which has been heralded as a low carbon solution to climate change. Rainforests in some of the worlds most biodiverse eco systems are being clear felled at an alarming rate and replaced by oil palms. This quest for green fuel is actually causing more damage to the climate than the fossil fuels it was designed to replace. The European Union has set targets for ten per cent of all transport fuel to come from crops by 2020. Currently, over seven million hectares in Sumatra are utilized as oil palm plantations, and the plan is to extend this by a further 20 million hectares. Fires are used to clear the land, and peat bogs are drained to plant oil palms, a process which releases hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, making Indonesia the third highest contributor of CO2 emissions in the world. Environmentalists claim that currently, more carbon emissions result from deforestation and peat fires than are produced by the entire global transport sector. When a hectare of primary rainforest is cleared it releases around 65 times as much carbon into the atmosphere as can be saved annually by using the palm oil as a bio fuel.
The use of palm oil in itself is not the problem; the problem lies in the destruction of primary rainforest to grow the oil palms. There is plenty of degraded land available in Sumatra and Borneo, but palm oil companies can increase their profits by cutting down rainforest and selling the timber. The international community needs to demand that oil-palm concessions are not granted in forested areas, and that local retailers and manufacturers only source their palm oil from non-destructive plantations.
What about us?
The thing is its not just about animal lovers and conservationists wanting to ‘save the cute furry animals’. Yes, they are incredibly endearing and anyone who has ever had a close encounter with an orangutan can testify to what a magical experience it is, but the orangutans are just the tip off the iceberg. They are recognized as a “keystone” species for conservation, as they play an important part in forest regeneration through the fruit and seeds they eat. If they become extinct there will be a knock-on effect on thousands of other species. Including humans, because we cannot survive without the oxygen created by the rainforests.
The rainforests here in Sumatra are considered to be the lungs of the earth, absorbing toxic carbon emissions and releasing life-giving oxygen. Locals here are on the frontline and face the dilemma, Save the jungle ? Save the world; or plant oil palms and feed the family?
Eco Tourism in Tangkahan
The tiny and remote village of Tangkahan is a prime example of grass roots conservation where the community rejected the lure of palm oil and decided instead to set up eco-tourism. I travel by trail bike from Bukit Lawang on a muddy potholed trail passing through rural villages, rubber plantations, the occasional forest and miles and miles and miles of oil palm plantations.
Sitting on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park, the village is infinitely peaceful and provides a true wilderness experience with just four guesthouses and an elephant camp. Of the seven elephants that live here, three came from Bukit Lawang, emerging from the jungle just days before the flood. They were in a frenzied state and refused to go back. Locals were at a loss as to what to do with them; you can’t have wild elephants living in the village, so they were trucked to Tangkahan to join the Conservation Response Unit, which uses elephants to patrol the jungle in search of poachers and illegal loggers. It is possible to join the four day elephant patrol treks to Bukit Lawang, but also to do two or three hour treks through the jungle. The experience is totally authentic; there are no circus tricks here, just happy, well loved elephants. I stay at the Jungle lodge, perched tantalizingly over the river and share dinner with the local guides. The talk inevitably turns to palm oil, they are all too aware of the conflict but hope to lead others by example and show that there are alternatives. “One step at a time” someone tells me, “We can’t do much, but at least we can do something” adds another.
SOS
The key lies in education and SOS, the Sumatran orangutan society runs a number of programs to this end, claiming, “The success of orangutan conservation in Indonesia lies in the hands of the local people”. Their aim is to empower the next generation of Indonesian conservationists through grass roots projects focusing on wildlife conservation. Programs include: Restoring deforested land: Touring educational road shows: The development of a conservation curriculum for schools in North Sumatra: Community forestry schemes to reinforce national park buffer zones and provide sustainable alternative incomes for people living adjacent to natural orangutan habitat: As well as a tree planting program that has seen the planting of over a quarter of a million indigenous tree seedlings to date.
Hidden paradise
I wake early the next morning to birdsong and monkey chatter, my body aches from the bike and elephant rides, so I swim across river to a crevice in the rocks where hot springs bubble up. Completely alone, I soak in the therapeutic waters and soak up the tranquility of the ancient forest. My guide Rinto arrives and leads me upstream to a gorge and a picturesque waterfall where I get a jungle massage from the pummeling water. We then drift gently downstream on tubes, stopping at Pantai kupu kupu (butterfly beach). Rinto tells me that if a butterfly lands on you it will bring great luck. But as I sit by the river in this hidden paradise, with hundreds of brightly coloured butterflies flitting around me, I already feel incredibly lucky.
HAMANAH DRUM AND DANCE
One Drum Event
By Alison Bone
It’s late afternoon and over 100 people have gathered in a drum circle on Seminyak Beach Bali. Across the world similar circles have formed for the One Drum event; from Chile to Norway to India to South Africa; each group will play the same rhythm, in unison, in order to raise global awareness for peace and the environment.
Drumming has been used by various cultures around the world for thousands of years to bring people together, and it seems fitting to use this ancient, non verbal form of communication to send a global message for peace. It’s also a chance to have a get-together and make some noise. Our group is a great mix of tourists, Indonesians, expats and families and we soon settle into a rhythm.
Catur and Sarah of Hamanah Drum N Dance have organized the event here in Bali, and Catur, one of Bali’s best know drummers’ leads the circle. The Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS), are supporting the event and have brought along a mascot dressed in an orangutan costume. He leaps around, pounding the djembe, then joins Sarah in a spirited African dance, which all the kids find hysterical.
Like many here, I am a novice drummer and feel a little self-conscious but find that my mistakes are absorbed by the group, and I soon learn that when I stop thinking and start feeling, the rhythm flows naturally, and what had just been a noise I was making on the drum has become music. It’s all about letting go and by the last half an hour I am pretty much losing myself, and am actually feeling quite exhilarated.
I have always found myself drawn to drum circles without really understanding why, but when I chat with Sarah she describes the experience as being like returning to the womb, where our first sound was the rhythmic beating of our mothers heart. A drum circle is also the perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. While it’s individuals playing the drum, it’s the combined efforts of those in the circle that creates the music.
Here on the beach, against the rosy backdrop of the setting sun, 100 strangers are smiling, enjoying the vibe and making music – and we sound awesome.
This shared experience has created a bond between us all and by the end we are friends without having spoken a word. We are also aware that we are just one small part of an event that is taking place in 16 countries around the world.
The benefits of drumming go well beyond the mere beat of a drum, and Catur and his Australian wife Sarah set up Hamanah earlier this year, in order to bring African drum and dance workshops to the community in Bali.
Sarah tells me that, “The beauty of drumming is that unlike a string instrument which can take years to learn, a drumming rhythm can be picked up in an hour.” Anyone who has ever managed to discover and hold a rhythm will have experienced the feeling of liberation, and the sense of unity that joining a drum circle brings.
Studies have shown that repetitive drumming changes brain wave activity, inducing a state of calm and focused awareness, and can trigger the release of endorphins (the bodies natural opiates), thus inducing a state of well being which is highly beneficial in the treatment of depression, anxiety and loneliness. Drumming also provide an emotional release, acting as a channel for impulses that might otherwise become destructive.
A number of schools, recognizing the positive impact of drumming on their students, have signed up for Hamanah’s weekly workshops and educational programs that include themes such as ‘Orang a rhythm’ which convey environmental messages through song and dance, and gives kids the chance to drum like orangutans. The couple also conducts free workshops at the Jody O Shea orphanage in Denpasar, a highlight of the week for the children. Sarah tells me that the time they spend here is incredibly rewarding. “It’s nice to give something back”, she says, and hopes what they are doing will inspire others to do something similar. Hamanah with the help of Bali for Kids Online Magazine found a generous sponsor from Holland who funded 40 drums for the orphanage so that the kids could have something to practice on & call their own.
Catur lives and breathes drums and his passion as a musician shines through. He learned the art of drum- making from his brother, a process that he describes as a meditation. It can take up to a month to make one of his signature Rasta Gong drums and each is infused with his love and energy. Sarah a talented dancer, leads the African dance workshops - a high energy form of dance that she describes as “non sexual” and “telling a story.”
Hamanah also perform at events, parties & weddings. Their electrifying performance at Bali Spirit Festival earlier this year was one of the highlights of the festival. Free full moon family oriented events take place at the Sol Beach Restaurant at Echo Beach Canggu, ushering in the sunset and the rising moon with interactive drumming, dancing, fire spinning and bonfires.
Check their website for details and upcoming events
www.hamanah.com
Contact: 081999906861/ 081999906862
Email: info@hamanah.com
Community classes are held at the following locations:
Seminyak – Earth Café Jln Laskmana, Oberoi
Monday 4.30pm African Dance
Thursday 4.30pm African Drumming
Saturday 10am “Jungle Jammin” kids class 1-8yrs
Sanur – Gateway Community Center Jln Danau Batur
Wednesday 5.30pm African Dance
Wednesday 7.30pm African Drumming
Classes will soon commence in Ubud & Nusa Dua, intensive retreats are in the pipeline with International teachers, and corporate team building workshops can also be organized.