Name: Jared
Location: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Type: Guest House
Years lived in: Two
Jared is an American photographer who relocated to Indonesia to work on a long-term project photographing portraits in Bali. (To see his work, check out his recent exhibition at Tonyraka Gallery in Bali.) He found this amazing rental house in Ubud, the town made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. If you're not jealous yet, you will be when you learn how much a house like this costs…
For just a few hundred dollars a month, you can find a two-story house in Ubud with its own grounds that rival the best botanical gardens! Jared's rental has belonged to the same Balinese family for generations. It's a two-story guest house with a kitchen, bath, living room, bedrooms, lots of porches and balconies, and a gorgeous outdoor area. Wood carvings, artwork, and shrines decorate the home. Indonesia has a large Muslim population, but Bali is a tiny island where more than 90 percent of residents practice Hinduism. Hindu gods, goddesses, and shrines are honored in the architecture of local homes.
The aesthetic of Jared's home is clean and simple—almost modern, in a way. Traditional Balinese homes are oriented in relation to the sacred mountains, and encircled by a wall with an intricately decorated gate. Inside the compound, indoor and outdoor spaces blend into one another. While the bedrooms are fully enclosed, the living room and kitchen open out onto the garden, which has plenty of spaces and structures designed for relaxing outdoors.
Special thanks to Kristin Coleman, who visited Jared in Bali, took the photos, and provided us with the information about this incredible home!
(Thanks, Jared and Kristin!)
Images: Kristin Coleman
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Comments (14)
"But...it's Balinese!"
Lovely, but all of that lush vegetation reminds me of all of the unwanted things that come with tropical living: bugs, lizards, snakes, and worse.
Nice, but not for me.
OMG. I wish I had a lush backyard like that.
An unlike "Sydney" I would welcome all those fascinating little critters into by yard. I'd even setup a water feature to encourage frogs to come by and sing me some songs at night.
Actually, Bali is Hindu/Animist.
Ubud became famous in the 1930s and 40s: "Between the 1930s and the 1940s, Ubud’s role as the epicentre of Balinese culture was further enhanced by the arrival of eminent European painters (Bonnet, Spies), anthropologists (Mead, Bateson), writers and musicologists (Covarrubias, McPhee), and the rise of Balinese painters and sculptors (Ida Bagus Nyana, I Gusti Ketut Kobot, Dewa Batuan), as well as architects, lontar (palm leaf) experts and assorted literati."http://www.micebali.com/ubud.asp
Ubud was a sweet little untouched town when I spent time there 20 years ago. Ms. Gilbert is swift, contributing to both literary and cultural demise with the stroke of her keyboard.
sorry, thorndale, but it was "touched" by you when you went there.
I loved Ubud when I visited a couple of years ago. I touched the place and it touched my heart x
Superbly serene and lovely.
Thorndale, I really don't think you can accredit Ubud's touristy-ness to a book published in America only a couple of years ago, and only read by Americans. Bali has been crawling with my fellow Australians for the past decade at least, more like 2. Isn't the Bali bombing part of the American consciousness at all? That happened to target a nightclub known as a haunt for rowdy Australians.
Beautiful and serene! I spent a significant amount of time living in the tropics. (Sydney - the plants and crawlies that live in the tropics aren't for the faint-hearted, but after a while one usually gets accustomed to them) I wish that when I lived in Thailand my apartment could have been as lovely.
Yes Flickvan, I am well acquainted with the tropics on first hand basis, and on multiple continents. I too have been to Bali, and I'm not keen on the "wildlife". My family has also owned a home in Hawaii for about 70 years (great grandparents were original owners) and the bugs there aren't my favorite either.
RosieGreen, I am certainly familiar with the horrible Bali bombing (88 Australians were killed, as I recall); I was in Australia not long before that happened so it is a strong memory for me. Atrocious, just atrocious.
I don't want to be a naysayer, but did anyone else find the description of this photographer's work to be more than a little disturbing?
The language used to describe the project really reeked of fetishizing the "exotic" beauty of these young women, children really. I hope it is just lost in translation, otherwise this seems like a really irresponsible project.
Otherwise, the house is quite beautiful.
I also love Balinese style homes; very lush and serene.
After hedgehoginfog's comment, I browsed the photographer's link and am also puzzled by the photo project: photographer thinks 18-21-year old Balinese women supposedly have lost "the look"?? So, grade-school girls had to be used? Heavy makeup on 5-10 year old girls to capture their beauty??
There was a bit of bragging about 9-hour make-up/shooting days without a break. Sounds like major violation of child-labor laws.
If the home was such a bargain, imagine what the girls must have been paid.
Absolutely gorgeous!
So serene and lovely.