Shopping in Bali

Shopping could easily become an all consuming pastime in Bali, the range and quality of artifacts is phenomenal, and although the export trade has dulled the initial impact a little, the shear volume and price of the woodcarvings, paintings and Fabric designs sold on Bali still make it a delight. International standard ready-made apparels are quite inexpensive; while qualified tailors and dressmaker offer reliable 24-hours services. In addition, Bali acts as a bit of a clearing-house for the arts and crafts of other Indonesian islands.

On Bali, you’ll get the biggest overall choice in Kuta-Legian-Seminyak and in Ubud. Where the streets are crammed with all manner of outlets, from makeshift stalls to sophisticated glass-fronted boutiques – liberally sprinkled with a persistent gang of hawkers who will try to flog you anything from tinpot jewelry to fake perfume, at prices that drop by fifty percent in seconds.

Traditional covered markets, or ‘pasar’, tend to be much more rewarding places to hone your bargaining skills. Every main town has a fresh produce market, which usually opens up before dawn (some Denpasar markets stay open 24 hours) and draws traders from all the outlying villages. Most of them are fruit and vegetables, markets also have a floor devoted to non-foodstuffs, a section which is known as the ‘pasar seni’, or art market, and which sells everything from sarongs and lengths of ceremonial perada fabric to woodcarvings, T-shirts and blankets. Bali’s best ‘pasar seni’, at Sukawati near Ubud, is so large that it’s housed in a separate building from the food-stuffs, the less tourist-oriented ‘pasar seni’ on the top floor of Denpasar’s Pasar Badung is also well worth exploring.

Bargaining forms a large part of the fun of shopping in Bali. Remember to bring your cash, as not all places accept credit cards. Shopping hours is generally from 9am to 5pm. You’ll find that shops selling similar items are generally grouped together. This makes comparing prices easy, as you just have to go next shop to find the same thing!

Bargaining
In Bali, unless the product is price-tagged, bargaining is the norm. The first price is not the last price in Bali. You should attempt to learn the art of bargaining while you’re here. Unless you’re buying in a shop or hotel arcade (and often here too), it is expected that you join in. Restaurant meals, items in supermarkets or department stores, and room rates at the larger hotels are generally fixed in price, but nearly everything else is fair game.

Try not to except the first price that you are asked as most vendors add on anything between 25 – 50% extra. First ask the price that the vendor expects and then counter offer. You’ll get more for your money if you are prepared to spend time and a smile when bargaining. Your initial offer should be much lower than the price you really want to pay. It is advisable not to seem too eager to buy. Keep a sense of humor about the whole thing. There’s no such thing as a “right price”. You usually pay more than the locals do, but that’s the way it is. Although tempting, try not to buy anything much for the first few days, better look around, take your time, bargain hard and then buy.

Arts and Crafts
The very best area for buying paintings, wood-carvings and sculpture is Ubud and its neighboring villages, where every other family seems to be engaged in some kind of craft, and where stalls and marketplaces groan under piles of canvases and stacks of chiseled images. Here you can buy tiny unframed Keliki-style temple scenes for as little as Rp. 15.000, delicate abstract figurines for no more than Rp. 25.000, and huge hairy Rangda masks for around Rp. 50.000. You can also commission your own works, choose picture frames from highly skilled frame-carvers, and get the whole lot shipped home without having to carry it anywhere.

Once you’ve perused a few outlets though, you’ll soon realize that original ideas are not all that common, and that certain subjects (like carved weeping Buddhas and portraits of bards dancers, for example recur in most commercial galleries. This copying is as much a traditional practice as it is a commercial one, as Balinese culture has always defined a fine artist as one who replicates the work of his or her forbears to perfection. But if you look carefully enough you’ll soon be able to distinguish between a crude piece of work and one that’s more delicately finished. If you’re planning on investing big money, then you’d be advised to stick to the bigger and better known galleries where assistants are well informed and quality consistently high. But for smaller purchases, the less formal galleries and workshops can be very rewarding, and you may well get the chance to meet the artist as well.

The very best way to learn about styles and artistic quality, however, is to visit one of Bali’s major ant and craft museums. In Ubud, both the Neka Museum and the Seniwati Gallery will give you an excellent grounding in painting genres and techniques. While the galleries of Ubud’s Puri Lukisan and Denpasar’s Taman Budaya Cultural Center make worthwhile introductions to fine woodcarvings and an oversee on the development of styles and techniques in Balinese painting, carving and sculpture.

Be particularly careful when choosing woodcarvings, which are sometimes sold under false presence as a more valuable wood, and which don’t always travel that well. The easiest wood to fake is sandalwood, or cendana, an extremely expensive material, mainly imported from East Timor. Sandalwood’s most obvious characteristic is its pungent aroma, and this is sometimes faked by packing the carvings in real sandalwood sawdust for several days. Or by scenting them with sandalwood oil. In either case, the smell doesn’t last that long, so either buy from an established outlet or assume that it’s faked and reduce your price accordingly. Both real and fake sandalwood pieces are usually wrapped in plastic bags and kept in locked display cabinets to conserve their perfume.

Ebony, which comes mainly from Kalimantan and Sulawesi, is another commonly faked wood. The best way to check the authenticity of an ebony image is to compare its weight with any other wood: ebony is very dense and will sink in water. Most tropical woods crack when taken to a climate that’s less humid because of the uneven shrinkage that results from escaping moisture. Some carvers circumvent this problem by drying the wood in kilns, while others soak the carvings in a substance called polyethylene glycol (PEG), which fills the cracks before they have a chance to widen out. It’s always worth trying to ascertain whether your purchase has undergone either of these processes, and you should definitely check for cracks before buying.

Antiques and Reproduction Furniture
One of the best signs you’ll see on Bali is the declaration “Antiques made to order” – but at least they’re honest. The antiques in question generally either come from Java or are reproductions of Javanese items, chiefly furniture such as chairs, cupboards, tables, chests, beds, screens, carved panels, window shutters and doors. Weatherworn or fashionably distressed, most of the furniture is heavy, made from teak to a Dutch-inspired design, but carved with typical Indonesian grace and whimsy.

The main centers for antique and repro furniture are Batubulan and Kuta-Legian Seminyak; bargaining here is essential, and reasonable sample prices include US $ 60 for a small table, or US $ 250 for a cupboard with carved doors. You should check your intended purchase, for rot and termite damage (genuine teak is resistant to termites) as well as for shoddy restoration work. In addition, be warned about the possibility of the wood cracking when transported to a less humid climate – see the advice on buying woodcarvings, above, for possible ways of preventing this.

Fabric, Clothing and Jewelry
The main cloth-producing area on Bali is Gianyar, which is noted for its distinctive ‘ikat’ or ‘endek’ cloth – a special technique that involves dying the weft threads into the finished design before weaving begins. This produces a fuzzy edge to the fairly bold designs, and is a popular fabric for cushion covers and bedspreads, as well as for sarongs and other clothes. You can see ‘ikat’ weavers at work in Gianyar, but their product is sold at outlets all over the island. The tiny Bali Aga village of Tenganan near Candi Dasa is the only place on Bali to produce double ‘ikat’ or ‘geringsing’, a painstakingly intricate technique that produces stunning designs – at prices to match.

Although Balinese ‘ikat’ is occasionally used for sarongs, Javanese batik is currently much more fashionable, and is used for everything from sarongs and shirts, to tablecloths and surfers’ board-bags. Some batik is now screen-printed rather than waxed, and the results are generally less good, especially as the dyes on screen-printed fabrics don’t penetrate to the reverse side. The larger fixed-price tourist shops in Kuta, Nusa Dua and Candi Dasa tend to stock the most exhaustive range of batik goods, but you’ll find cheaper sarongs (Rp. 10.000 – 25.000) in the Pasar Seni (Art Market) frequented by the Balinese.

The ceremonial dress worn at temple festivals and other important occasions is usually fashioned from heavier, more luxurious materials such as gold-and-silver brocaded ‘songket’ and gold-stamped ‘perada’. The best place to buy ‘songket’ and ‘perada’ is either from the ‘songket’ weaving center of Gelgel or from any sizeable Art Market.

In Kuta, Ubud and Candi Dasa, you’ll also find a number of shops specializing in cloth woven to the traditional designs of other Indonesian islands, particularly Samba and Flores. Prices vary enormously, depending not only on the size of the fabric, and whether or not it was hand-woven, but also on how old it is. Shawls and 100cm x 30cm wall-hangings cost from around Rp35.000, but larger and more complicated items such as Sumbanese ikat bedspreads, rarely start at under Rp500.000 (US $ 250).

A good way to display lengths of cloth at home is on the special carved wooden hangers sold in furniture and “antique” shops. These come in a variety of sizes (it’s worth nothing the width of your cloth before buying a hanger), and often have decorated finials. Most hangers are made in Lombok and Kalimantan and prices start at around Rp10.000.

Shopping for Painting

Paintings are sold in souvenir stalls, art markets, cooperative galleries, and pushed by hawkers on foot everywhere you turn. Finding good paintings, however, is hard work. It helps to understand that artists are now working mostly for a European market and the tourists’ demand for paintings “suitable for framing” has changed the technique and content of their painting style.

Balinese artists only started to sign their paintings when Westerners started to ask them to about 50 years ago. Now almost all paintings are signed with the artist’s name and the village where he or she lives.

Producing copies is one of the main occupations of the artist or his or her assistants. If a particular painting sells well, umpteen copies are spawned. This explains why all over the island you’ll find similar paintings portraying hackneyed tourist cliches of a tropical paradise-glowing sunset, smoking volcanoes, sloe-eyed nymphs bathing. The worst, sold by peddlers on Kuta Beach, possess all the banality of velvet paintings in cocktail lounges.

The competition between all the small galleries and painters’ studios has become so intense now that shop owners are contracting with travel agents and tour operators, paying Rp3-4 million up front for the delivery of busloads of tourists. This drives the price of the paintings up, since so many people have to be taken care of-the agent, the bus owner, the guide, the driver. But a tourist who only has a week in Bali and has the money to burn will buy expensive paintings, even for US$3000-4000, no problem. This is how such high-class galleries like Agung Rai, Rudana, and Agung Raka in Gianyar Regency have grown so fast.

To avoid getting fleeced, do your homework. Visit a number of galleries to learn about the different painting styles. Some have whole rooms dedicated to a distinct style so you can get a good sense of each. Don’t be put off by the schlock quality of the majority of the art on display. It’s strictly for mass tourist consumption. Finding the best art takes persistence, and when you do find good art it costs a bundle.

If you see something you like in one of the big commercial galleries, you may be able to look up the artist in his or her home/studio, probably nearby. Many of Bali’s finest painters live around the villages of Ubud, Batuan, Penestanan, Blahbatuh, and Sukawati-all major centers of Balinese painting in south central Bali. Go to the village indicated on the painting and ask around in your primitive Indonesian. Many painters are even listed in the phone book. It could be 1000% cheaper if you buy directly from the artist, avoiding business with Ubud’s countless galleries. Art shops customarily pay only 20-30% of the sale price to the artist. You also won’t have to pay a commission (10-50%) to a guide or driver, which is tacked on to the price of a painting.

However, be aware that high quality paintings by well-known artists may be sold for the same price in the painter’s home as they sell for in the galleries. This is because the painters do not want to undercut the galleries where their work is displayed and thus make a bad reputation for themselves. They want the galleries to continue to buy from them. They will sell a good painting to a gallery for Rp500,000, and the gallery in turn charges a million for it.

Some Buying Tips
Buy only something you really like. Ask yourself: “Do I want to look at this painting for the next 10 years?” Taste obviously plays an immense role in your purchasing decision. By no means should you take advice solely from a gallerist. Ask the locals and ask other tourists. Look at a lot of paintings.

Decide how much you have to spend. This will narrow your scope. With practice, you can tell the difference between a great artist and a mediocre one. Before you buy, decide where the painting is going to go in your house so it doesn’t get stuffed in an attic forever.

If you’ve decided to invest in a fine piece of art, then start reading reference books (see “News, Travel, and Entertainment Media” under the Information and Services section in the On the Road chapter) and visit art galleries. Go to a gallery where paintings are clearly priced. Fixed prices are fairer to the purchaser; the artist also knows what price his work is being sold for. (You can still bargain a little, by the way.)

Galleries
Hundreds of large and small galleries are found all over Bali. Smaller galleries are more apt to bargain than big galleries. Walk up and down the roads of Ubud, Pengosekan, and Peliatan, an area smothered in art shops and galleries. With few exceptions, their interminable labyrinths are filled with a bewildering, conflicting, super-kitsch, haphazard collection of paintings from virtually every school encompassing widely differing styles and big gulfs in quality. In many cases, there are so many paintings that they’re stacked up in piles on the floor. In addition to these commercial galleries, many painters have small galleries attached to their studios.

For an overview of the full range of Balinese painting, visit the Neka Museum (one km west of Ubud in Campuan), which displays the whole gamut of styles, prices, and sizes. This private museum, the first of its kind on Bali, is distinct from the Neka Gallery in Padangtegal (near Ubud). The owner/proprietor of both, Suteja Neka, is an important force in Balinese painting and has published several books on the subject (see Booklist). The first gallery owner to actively collect the art of expatriate painters, Neka is an excellent source of information and always has time to talk to visitors.

The museum, which should more aptly be called a gallery, is made up of Balinese-style buildings set in an exquisite garden. One room contains just the Balinese masters and early modernists such as Lempad and Togog; another contains just foreign artists who’ve worked in Bali like Smit, Spies, and Bonnet; another holds Indonesian academic artists who’ve painted in Bali; and yet another is filled with Western masters such as Blanco, Meier, Snel, and Friend. At the entrance, buy Perceptions of Paradise (Rp65,000) by Neka Gallery, as well as postcards of the famous works inside.

The superb, spacious, and expensive Agung Rai Gallery is in Peliatan (two km east of Ubud). Assembled by a self-made visionary collector of every school of Balinese art and an expert in the evolution of Balinese painting, Agung Rai’s collection is accommodated in six separate display halls. Ask to visit the permanent collection and his private museum in Peliatan. The gallery sponsors well-attended painting classes on a regular basis. In 1995, the Agung Rai Museum complex opened in Peliatan. The three-hectare site consists of a spacious building for the permanent collection, another large structure for visiting exhibitions, an art school for children, a library, and an international artist’s colony.

Also don’t miss the Rudana Gallery north of Mas and about one km south of Teges (south of Peliatan). The gallery displays a large collection of traditional, naive, and modern paintings in a sprawling complex of rooms. Also pay a visit to the Sanggraha Kriya Astra Arts Center in Tohpati outside of Denpasar on the road to Ubud, where a wide range of good quality paintings are for sale at fair prices.

Shopping for Crafts

The most important thing to remember when buying crafts is to take your time. It doesn’t take long to learn to distinguish quality. Leisurely browsing isn’t always possible if you take part in guided tours because the bus stops at preselected showrooms and galleries, but if you’re by yourself, you have all the time in the world.

All art shops accept traveler’s checks and major currencies, most accept credit cards, and some even take American Express. A surcharge of five percent is added to your bill if you use a credit card. Rate of exchange offered by shops for traveler’s checks is invariably worse than that given by moneychangers.

Much shopping on Bali still entails bargaining, a traditional and very acceptable way of doing business. Much to the relief of many Westerners, you may not bargain in fixed price shops. How can you tell a fixed-price shop? If it’s a hotel gift shop, it’s fixed price. And, generally speaking, if it’s an a/c store with glass doors and/or windows and the wares have price tags, it’s fixed price. But even if there’s a sign reading Harga Pasti (fixed price) or “Sorry-Fixed but very Reasonable Price,” and the clerk says all prices are fixed, always give it a try. Cut the asked price in half, then you may end up with a 25% discount. This technique used to work better but now the Balinese have responded by quadrupling their prices to ensure adequate profits.

Effective bargaining requires knowledge of the correct price. For a high-priced purchase like a big wooden statue or a leather jacket, do your research first and buy in a reputable outlet. Check out the price first in a fixed-price shop, to give you a good idea of what you should be paying, then hit the streets to see how well you can do. Bargaining is not arguing. Executed with good humor, it provides both buyer and seller with a mutually acceptable price. Prices may seem absolute, but they may not be. It may take you an hour or even repeated visits to clinch a sale. A few minutes spent in bargaining will usually obtain a 20-30%-sometimes 50%-reduction in the price. For more on bargaining, see the “Money” section of the Introduction.

The best time to go shopping is in the evening when it’s considerably cooler. In some hotel gift shops, prices are given in rupiah; in others prices are quoted in U.S. dollars. Always pay in rupiah, which almost always works out cheaper (if you’re getting a good rate of exchange). Also, Legian is cheaper than Kuta. In fact, the further north you travel on Jalan Legian (if starting from Bemo Corner), the cheaper it gets.

During certain seasons, prices are more favorable. French tourists start raining down on Bali in July and August, and Aussies overrun the island during the Christmas holidays and January schools break. But from March to June, crafts can be one-fourth to one-half the usual price.

To cut down on costs, avoid taking your guide and/or driver or agent into a gallery or art shop. Why? They’ll almost always expect the gallery owner to give them a commission. The majority has made arrangements with the owner beforehand and will always steer you into only those shops paying them commissions. This is why guides are always so eager to take you shopping.

Visit the home of the artist instead, saving yourself the percentage (10-50%) of the cost, which must go toward the commission. Often paintings that sell for US$2500 in the art shops on Ubud’s main road the artist sells himself for US$300-400 in his home studio just down the path in the ‘kampung’ behind the art shops. You can find the artist’s home through persistent inquiry, or in the phone book or by using directory assistance (tel. 108).

Don’t buy big-ticket items from street peddlers and hawkers. You’re just fresh meat to these shrewd professionals, and if the item is shoddy, misrepresented, or if you want to trade it for another you have no guarantees and no recourse. Just tell them you already have it. Stick to shops your friends have recommended. You have to trust the seller.

Where to Buy
Most of the big art shops are found on the main tourist corridor between Denpasar and Ubud. This crowded road, for a stretch of 25 km, is dotted with hundreds of boutiques and art shops selling every type and quality of souvenir, painting, carving, antique, jewelry, handicraft, ready-to-wear clothing, and woven cloth. The bigger the gravel parking lot, the more likely it is the shop caters to tour groups and the prices will be ridiculous.

Tour buses tend to visit only those places, which can accommodate the large a/c buses. If a shop doesn’t pay to get the buses to stop, it is destined to pine away into oblivion. These showrooms are increasingly located behind or beyond the craft villages. Vendors on motorcycles, offering carvings and paintings in US dollars, follow and descend upon the buses everywhere they stop.

In price, quality, and variety, the Ubud area offers some of the island’s best shopping. Shops lie close together and you can wander up and down Monkey Forest Road in a leisurely fashion. Another extremely dense concentration is Jalan Legian in Kuta/Legian, and the roads running from Jalan Legian to the beach. In the traditional village of Tenganan on the eastern part of the island, arts and crafts products are possibly the best that Bali has to offer. The crafts are not expensive, and it’s a great six-kilometer walk through thick forests to get there from Candidasa.

Hotel gift shops usually carry a good selection of the island’s crafts but at high prices. The cheapest and most hassle-free tourist shops are in Candidasa on the East Coast. Here you can buy a sarong.

The Sanggraha Kriya Asta (Government Handicraft Center, P.O. Box 254, Denpasar, tel. 62361-222942) in Tohpati, is just 10 minutes by bemo from Denpasar on the road to Ubud. This fixed-price art cooperative is made up of five roomy buildings, each containing an important craft-silver and goldwork, paintings, stone- and woodcarvings, textiles and clothing.

The center has always been a good place to visit to determine a fair price for bargaining purposes, but lately their prices have gone up. Though they have a large selection and the quality of the goods are high, the silver, woodcarving, and clothing are now more than double what you would pay in Ubud. Kriya Asta doesn’t give commissions to guides and their mobiles are still cheap. Open daily 0830-1700, Saturday 0830-1630, closed Sunday. Free transportation provided.

Don’t forget the supermarkets/department stores, where you can come across surprisingly reasonable items. In Kuta, you can visit Gelael Dewata, Jalan Raya Kuta next to the gas station on the way to Denpasar, and Alas Arum, Seminyak, close to Jalan Dhyana Pura. In Sanur, you head to Gelael Dewata on Jalan Bypass. In Denpasar you’ll find Tiara Dewata, Jalan M.J. Soetoyo, and Hero, Jalan Dewi Sartika; and Tragia right in the middle of Nusa Dua in the Galleria.

Matahari Dept. Store, in the eastern part of Denpasar (ask directions, everybody knows where it is), consists of three amazing floors selling everything under the Balinese sun-fashion clothes, cheap well-made non-ethnic Western clothes, stationery, household furnishings, sporting goods, untold racks of T-shirts. It even has a supermarket and a KFC in the basement.

Mega is a six-shop art shop chain. The main one is at Jalan Gajah Mada 36 (tel. 62361-224.592) with branches in the outskirts of Denpasar on the road to Gianyar (Jalan Gianyar, Km 5.7, tel. 62361-228.855); in Kuta at Jalan Raya Kuta 137 (tel. 62361-751.626) and at the Pertamina Cottages Arcade (tel. 62361-751.161); in Sanur in the Bali Hyatt Hotel arcade (tel. 62361-288.271); in Nusa Dua in the Bali Hilton International Arcade No. 15 (tel. 62361-71.102). Mega stores have a great variety of items, and prices aren’t too outrageous. The branch at the Km 5.7 mark in Denpasar’s outskirts is a huge emporium of arts and crafts.

Art Markets
If you have only two or three days on Bali, you may not have time to batter your way down Kuta’s Jalan Legian in the heat and traffic going into all the shops. In this case, the art markets of Bali offer an excellent overview of all the available crafts and souvenirs.

Every major tourist center and medium-size town has an art market. One of the best is Pasar Badung by the river in the center of Denpasar. Different commodities-cookware, batik, bamboo basketry, and fabrics-are all offered in the market. Bargaining is an absolute must at this huge multistoried market; it helps to have a working knowledge of Indonesian. More tourist-oriented Kumbasari Shopping Center, a giant market just west of Pasar Badung across the river, is choked with hundreds of small shops selling ready-to-wear, house furnishings, knickknacks, woodcarvings, textiles, jewelry, and other crafts. Prices are unbeatable. Sanur also has an art market on Jalan Segara on the beach, but prices are substantially higher.

The mother of all art markets on Bali is the Pasar Seni, in Sukawati on the main road from Denpasar to Ubud. A big two-story building with shops and stalls inside and out, this is one-stop shopping at its best. Very comprehensive and diverse range of basketware, place mats, sarongs, local fabrics, ikat, woodcarvings including carved fruit, the usual barong T-shirts, and lots of ethnic kitsch-all at the lowest possible prices. Offer no more than one-third of the opening bid. Two roadside shops here sell authentic dancers’ costumes and hats, rhinestone-studded gold leather angel wings, and other paraphernalia, but not cheap.

In addition, small village markets usually have small stalls that sell traditional implements to the Balinese; English is not spoken. Souvenir stalls have also sprouted up around all the most popular tourist sites: Tanah Lot, Tampaksiring, Goa Gadjah, Goa Lawah, Besakih, Tirtagangga, etc.

Don’t miss the fascinating, one-of-a-kind, old-style Asian market in Klungkung, just past the stoplight (coming from Denpasar) in the middle of the block on your right. Different sections-to the left is bamboo, ready-made clothing, sarong, and more. Good prices. One of Bali’s best-kept secrets.

Shipping Crafts
If you have bought quite a bit of stuff and want to ship it back home, sea mail (surface post) via the Indonesian postal service is the cheapest way to go. It will take a trip into Denpasar, Kuta, Singaraja, or Ubud to the ‘paket pos’ office, an hour of your time, and will cost around Rp4500 per kilo. Overseas-bound packages may be posted, insured, and registered (tercatat).

For a large quantity of goods, use one of the numerous air and sea freight forwarding services, concentrated in all the major tourist centers. These professionals assure secure packing and can arrange all the paperwork and permit to ensure your shipment’s safe arrival. They also provide pick up service. Cost depends on the weight of the goods and the destination.

Beware of all the ludicrous add-on costs like the “Archaeology Certificate” and the “Container Freight Station” charge which could double ocean freight bill (150 kg). For more on shipping parcels overseas, refer to “Information and Services” in the On the Road chapter.