In Reply to: What is the strangest / most memorable posted by Stretch on Thursday, 2. February 2006 at 19:19 Bali Time:
We found an excellent woodcarver (at Goa Gajah, I think) who made excellent masks in particular. We purchased several things from him. On a return trip to Bali, we visited once more looking for something unusual. He happened to be carving a pair of statues, a man and a woman in traditional dress, kneeling. How about those? we inquired. Not for tourists, was the reply. Seems he was making them for a wedding ceremony. Would he make some for us? He seemed very puzzled by the request, and it took some convincing, but we settled on a price (a pretty high price, actually) and agreed to return in a week. On our return, he told us he had had to turn down several offers from other tourists to buy the statues. His wife was ecstatic, wisely seeing the way the wind was blowing. When we came back to Bali the following year, we found that he had several of the statue pairs for sale, and was doing well. His wife recognized us and was more than grateful, pressing gifts on us and even bringing a cake to our hotel! It seems that we were the impetus for opening a whole new avenue of carving for this man. Apparently, he never realized that there would be a market for this kind of thing -- sticking, instead, with the standard dolphins, boxes, masks, etc. The up shot of the story is that within that year, he had made his money and all but retired, and now his son was doing the carving. I never see those carvings without thinking of how we may have been at least partially responsible for his early retirement! Wish I could retire early, too!