Set amid the rice fields, temples and river gorges of rural Bali, art comes naturally in Ubud. And it’s one of the easiest destinations in the world to get in touch with your artistic side, thanks to a myriad day, half-day or longer arts courses just waiting for the taking.

So it’s worth planning some time to be creative. Here’s just some of the arts you can learn in Ubud:

1: Silversmithing
The area around Ubud has been a centre for silvercraft since time immemorial. Sketch out your own design. Then cut, beat, shape, solder and polish silver into the style of your choice. Book classes at Pondok Pekak learning centre (+62 (0)361 976 194), Studio Perak, or with Ayu (+62 (0)3619245833) at WS Art Studio.

2: Wood Carving
In traditional Balinese culture, wood carvings decorate not only temples and palaces but private homes. ARMA Museum and Puri Lukisan Museum offer day classes; Pondok Pekak learning centre (+62 (0)361 976 194) has half-day introductory courses.

3: Painting
Learn classical Balinese court painting, traditional Balinese art or contemporary Balinese art styles at ARMA Museum and Puri Lukisan Museum. Or try Pranoto’s Gallery to develop your own style in oils.

4: Fruit Carving
If you’ve ever wondered how to create those elaborate fruit sculptures you see in Asian restaurants, or just want a bit of practice before turning your attentions to wood or stone, spend half a day at Pondok Pekak learning centre (+62 (0)361 976 194), creating a masterwork out of a watermelon.

5: Paper Making
Work with mulberry pulp, leaves, dyes and silk to create your own handmade papers at Lingsir Paperie (+62 (0)361 977 984).

6: Basket Weaving
Elaborate baskets, both for offerings and for mundane life, are a big part of life in Bali. Learn how to make them from palm leaf, bamboo and more at ARMA Museum and Puri Lukisan Museum.

7: Offering Making
Offerings crafted from bamboo, palm leaves, fruit, flowers, rice, incense and coloured dough are an essential part of Balinese Hinduism, decorating private homes and shops alike, and reaching their fulfilment in the gigantic offerings prepared for major ceremonies. Learn how to shape these beautiful, ephemeral items at ARMA Museum and Puri Lukisan Museum.

8: Batik
Batik textiles originate in Java, but there are plenty of artists working with batik in and around Ubud. Use hot wax to print designs and paint them in natural dyes, creating your very own piece with artist Nyoman Suradnya at Nirvana Batik or at textile specialists Threads of Life.

9: Dance
For the un-selfconscious, a host of venues offer training in classical Balinese dance, among them ARMA and Puri Lukisan. Or learn to tango with the Bali Tango Club — beginners classes are free on Mondays.

10: Ceramics
If wandering through the rice-fields won’t get you grubby enough, try working with clay at Sari Api Studio, 3km north of Ubud. Workshops cover everything from the basics of working with clay to advanced techniques, using wheel or hand.

11: Balinese Music
From bamboo flute to gamelans and gongs, Balinese instruments are complicated to master but simple enough to be rewarding for the beginner. ARMA, Pondok Pekak (+62 (0)361 976194) and Puri Lukisan offer short introductory courses in a range of instruments, or try Nyoman Warsa at Pondok Bamboo music shop (+62 (0)361 974 807).

12: Beadwork
If you’ve ever admired elaborate belts, bracelets and courtly decorations, or there’s a ten-year-old girl inside you itching to get out, beadwork is a rewarding way to spend the day. Puri Lukisan offers courses for 3 hours or 6 hours.

13: Kites, Puppets and Masks
Puri Lukisan offers courses in traditional Balinese crafts. Create a kite butterfly to take home, craft a traditional shadow puppet out of leather, or paint your own mask based on those used in traditional Balinese dance.

14: Life Drawing
Pranoto Gallery holds regular life-drawing classes on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10am: bring your own materials.

And More…
A myriad venues across Ubud offer cooking classes, in styles from Balinese to Vietnamese. Yoga specialists such as Yoga Barn offer the full spectrum of yoga classes, up to teacher training level. Ketut Arsana’s Bodyworks offers training in Balinese massage, while Thai massage and reflexology are also available.

Ubud, with the dazzling ricefield landscapes around it, the colourful rituals and the dazzling dancers, is also an outstanding location to practise your photography. David Metcalf, who’s been taking photographs in Indonesia for almost 30 years, leads well-priced full-day and half-day photo tours out of his gallery in Monkey Forest Road, and will take you further afield too.

For more on Ubud in general, please do read about where to stay in Ubud, how to spend a weekend in Ubud and the best restaurants in Ubud.

Not found a place to stay yet? Agoda has great deals on Ubud hotels and guesthouses, from the indulgent COMO Shambhala Estate to great value central ricefield spots like Sri Bungalows and homestays like Tu Eka.

The post 14 Great Arts Courses in Ubud, Bali appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

In the days when the Brooke dynasty ruled Sarawak — even during the heady couple of years when Sarawak had an airforce (two seaplanes, one of which broke soon after arrival) — the trip would have taken weeks, if not months. Flights have changed all that.

And nomadic tribes like the Penan could live their life untouched, as they had for untold centuries.

Hunt and gather from the forest. Communicate in a language tailored to their life, one of several thousand languages the world is likely to lose during the nine year old’s lifetime.

Today? Well, in Mulu, they’re a human zoo.

Tourism in Mulu National Park takes the form of organised group tours. It’s just the way they do things. So Z and I ended up spending half an hour at the human zoo.

I’m sorry. On a visit to a traditional Penan longhouse at the Long Iman settlement to shop for handicrafts.

As he said, “There’s nothing traditional about this longhouse! They used to live in the forest. They never had longhouses.”

Until the early 50s, pretty much all the Penan were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Their language contained no word for thank you, because everything was shared. No word for forest, because it was all around them. No word for goodbye, because they lived so communally. And six different words for different kinds of “we”.

They had a developed sign language, used for hunting. And a woodland code, using twigs, leaves and marks on the bark, whether to mark trees as protected for future harvest or indicate the way they had passed.

Sharing was at the heart of their culture. Children learning to hunt would divide their catch in even parts among the very smallest. They moved from temporary settlement to temporary settlement every couple of months (each family had two huts, one for living, one for sleeping).

Lived without money, without a base, with very few possessions, believing, like many forest peoples, in the spirits of the forest

Then, in the 1950s, under the British colonial administration, the missionaries came. Persuaded many to abandon belief in “the evil jungle birds”. Wear (and own) clothes. Settle down.

The post-independence government, keen as ever to monetise the economy, control population movements and get tribal peoples out of the way of the logging companies (I’m sorry, improve access to government services), established settlements and built longhouses.

Turned the Penan over to producing handicrafts for the tourist trade, or subsistence farming rice, and their land to logging and oil palms. Such as this plantation we saw from the air.

In Long Iman village the old folk sit under a concrete structure, selling woven baskets and blowpipes that might once have had a use, like some sort of twisted bring and buy sale.

When the various tour groups arrived in our different boats, this young woman was down at the river bank. She’d been bathing, as you can tell from the wet hair and her sarong. Also drawn some water for boiling and cooking. She stopped for a while to wait, and stared in utter mystification as we trooped on up.

So how is life for the Penan today?

Well… Only around 300 Penan still live their traditional, nomadic lifestyle. Their tribal lands are being logged, their rivers polluted and a system of dams is set to flood much of what remains.

For those who have been relocated, life is tough. Most, ill-prepared for a cash economy, struggle to pay the water and electricity bills for the homes the government built. (Many of the new longhouses the government is building will have property rights attached, with consequent obligations: there is, of course, no compensation for their tribal lands.)

There is insufficient space for them to hunt and gather. Some don’t even have enough land to grow rice to feed their families.

And, according to the Penan Support Group, a coalition of NGOs which has been lobbying the state and national government for action for almost two years, many women and young girls in the more remote settlements are routinely raped by logging workers as they walk the forest tracks to school or to fetch water.

Which makes life within the human zoo seem, honestly, a pleasant alternative. For more on the Penan, and how to help, visit Survival International.

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