Often the industrial conversion of raw materials is done in mountain villages and the arty finishing work done by the talented artisans of Ubud, the very hub of the giftware industry here. Ringo had heard that the raw wood boats were produced in workshops in a village on the far side of Mount Agung on the very east corner of the island. That's all he knew, there are a million artisans on Bali, and almost none have a website, so it's not like you can just google it to find out where to find. But if we could secure a supply of the raw boat displays we could soon find Ubud artisans to do the finishing work and we might be able increase supplies.
Mount Agung is a live volcano, last exploded in 1963, wiping out hundreds of villages killing about fifteen hundred people. The government moved many people to other parts of indonesia, which is why you find Bali people from this area all over the Indonesian islands. Our agent in Yogyakarta; Gede is from a Bali family that had been relocated. The drive according to Google maps was about 2 hours, but four hours later we were still wending our way round breathtaking rice terrace vista and squeezing past country ceremonial happenings of which there are many. Climbing the flank of the volcano it gets pretty chilly, for a tropical island. Here is a fruit producing area, with the best snake fruit in all of asia growing and a highly prized export. Sometimes called Salak fruit it's skin really does resemble snake skin.
