Susi Johnston Bali Blog

In case you were wondering what that big wall of old shutters is doing near the beach in Seminyak, it’s a multi-faceted development called Potato Head Beach Club brought to you by the makers of Potato Head Jakarta (above), a description-defying place that opened back in January 2009. The brainchild of Indonesian international art collectors, Ronald Akili and Jason Gunawan, Potato Head (Jakarta) is an arty party place (bar, resto, music venue, hang central) frequented by socialites, creatives and neo-yuppies. Akili and Gunawan founded Ark Galerie in Jakarta first, then exploded their ideas outwards into the world of food-bev-tainment with Potato Head, calling in cordon-bleu trained foodie Sandra Budiman as exec chef and co-conspirator. Rumour has it the same faces are behind the soon-to-launch Potato Head Beach project in Bali. And that’s what makes it so interesting. Read more…

This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number Two: Word of Mouth, on Jalan Kunti near Bali Deli. The place is a showroom-playroom with a cafe and bar. Talk about one stop shopping. If you have to find gifts for everyone on a long list, the last thing you want to do in Bali is go hauling around in traffic, parking and unparking, and fuming with frustration. With that in mind, I’m focusing on places where you can get fed, watered, and find gobs of great gifts without wasting your playtime. Word of Mouth meets all of the above requirements, and then some. Read more…

I was contacted a few months ago by a niche events organiser asking if I would provide a cultural morning in Ubud for a celebrity wedding in August. I always welcome the opportunity to infect influential people with my incurable passion for all things Balinese, and this particular party was heavier with heavy influencers than most. It was the wedding of Jonathan Rutherfurd Best, London’s longstanding maestro of fine fêtes, fine food, and all manner of general capriciousness (above). The ceremony itself was held at Linda Garland’s estate (below), and several hundred guests were accommodated there and in various villas and hotels round about for a week or so to celebrate the occasion.

After a knock-down-drag-out welcome luncheon for legions of global glitterati lasting until well after midnight, (as knock-down-drag-out luncheons will do), we slept like the dead the whole way home in the car, and the next morning rose early to infect a phalanx of guests with a bit of Bali mojo. I’d roped my friend Tjok Raka Kerthyasa into providing a palace welcome and private tour of the sancta sanctorum of his family, the inner courtyards of the the Ubud royal palace. We planned it for ten or twelve guests, but seventy turned up bright and early and bleary eyed, in spite of inclement weather. Tjok Raka then proceeded to charm the designer pants off of all present. He’s good at that. As a co-ruling prince, and Bendesa Adat of Ubud (grand poobah of all things traditional and religious), and as a member of the Bali parliament, he is uniquely qualified to transmit the stories and spirit of Bali as it is manifested in Ubud. And so he did. Read more…

This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number One: Deus Ex Machina in Canggu, otherwise known as the Temple of Enthusiasm. I’m enthusiastic about shopping here, not only because there’s something for everyone (it’s a one stop shop), but also because you can eat. And listen to great music. And there’s no traffic jam to get there. And there’s no problem parking. And you can shop until 9:30 at night. Bring the whole gang, feed yourselves, get your shopping done, and don’t squander any precious playtime stuck in traffic or having aggro over where to get what for who. Read more…

When in Bali, please take my advice and listen to word of mouth — meaning Word of Mouth Bali, of course, the showroom-playroom of Valentina Audrito (below, out in front) and Abhishekar Khumbat (below, third from left), on Jalan Kunti in Seminyak. Val and Abhi always colour outside the lines and stubbornly remain impossible to define. So who was surprised when they brought a French-Cameroonian Grammy-nominated act, Les Nubians to the stage right here in Bali, right here in their wacky playspace? Not me. I expect the unexpected from Word of Mouth, and that’s usually what I get. Read more…

I’ve just had another massive overdose of masterplans. I have feeds and searches set up to keep tabs on new developments in Bali. It just doesn’t stop. Here are just a handful of the scores of new projects that have drifted across my desktop lately. Read on, to get a glimpse of the multi-storey mayhem that’s happening all over the island. But go get yourself a drink first, you’ll need it. Read more…

A large-scale exhibition entitled Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance will open in February 2011 at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, one of the world’s most respected institutions for Asian art. This is big news. Exciting news. The show includes works on loan from numerous international collections, many which have never before been exhibited publicly. Unusual ritual objects ranging from palm-leaf offerings to gilded palanquins will complement the more familiar Balinese art forms such as sculpture, masks and textiles. Read more…

You may remember Emerald Starr and Ken Ballard’s Sacred Mountain Sanctuary in the Sidemen Valley. It was a pioneering eco-resort with an earnest emphasis on eco. Now it is being “reloaded” at last, by the Karma Resorts’ developer, Selected Estates of Asia. Read more…

Tuesday night we attended the opening of the 2010 Balinale Film Festival at Cinema 21 in Kuta. This was the Bali premiere of Eat Pray Love, one third of which was shot in Bali, and the evening was touted as a gala event with a red carpet reception, VIP seating and a star-studded after party. We arrived spot on time. The red carpet was a truncated affair in every sense. The carpet itself was physically held in place with brown packing tape, there was no wall of stars, and the media were visibly absent. The carpet led to a table where we collected our bag of bumph (above), including an access-all-areas pass, three t-shirts, a wrinkly poster, and a beautiful new brochure for the Tandjung Sari hotel. What? No DVDs? No Strivectin? No engraved pink Nanos pre-loaded with the EPL podcasts? Oh well. This is Bali, after all, and apparently the national premier of EPL in Jakarta a couple of weeks ago took the wind out of the sails. Read more…

In case you were wondering about the massive construction project in between The Legian and KuDeTa on Seminyak beach, here’s the scoop. It’s called The Seminyak. How imaginative. Especially since it’s right next door to The Legian. How much did they pay their marketing think tank to come up with that name? The design is even less imaginative than the name, as these promotional images from their website illustrate. If you think these renderings look bad, wait until you see how much worse the exterior finishes and scale of the place actually are, in person, as it were. It’s dire, dark, cell-blockish, looming overhead, blocking sun and air circulation to its neighbours, and the street. There goes the neighbourhood . . . Read more…