SIMPLE PLEASURES Head for the Hills What a relief to have Bali back to the gentle pace of yesteryear. No megaprojects pounding the earth, the world's tallest Garuda is on hold and the dredge at Turtle Island has been turned off. To celebrate I visit Merthasari beach with a few Balinese chums from Sanur. Behind the corrugated iron fence that perches on the primary dune a few lazy warungs serve gado-gado in the fierce noon heat. Shop girls sleep on warm benches, listening to the lilting tunes of arja music, Bali's answer to Chinese opera. It is a mesmerising scene and in the mirage-like stillness one is treated to a lung-full of dry air and a sense of tranquillity. Bali is back with the Balinese. Bravo! Back home the BBC is banging on about "Habibie tilting towards Islam" and I decide to head for the hills in search of more simple pleasures. My first stop is Iseh, the picturesque village nestled into the shadow of holy Mt. Agung in East Bali. The air is fresh and the sing-song voices of the delightful East Bali accent fill the air with merriment. Everyone seems happy. I visit Walter Spies' old studio-home, now the retreat of real estate baroness, Ivanna Pucci. The recently revamped villa sits atop rice fields carved out of Bali's most dramatic valley. Every window frames a sliver view of rice field activity. Water buffaloes swoosh and swish as field sparrows dart amongst the yellow bamboo: the garden is thick and dewy from the mountain air -- anthuriums, giant ferns and ground orchids fight for attention. It is a pixie glade of contentment. I have dinner with some artist friends who've sensibly forsaken the coastal sunset strip of "demented exiles" and placed themselves on a hilltop in one of the local prince's rental houses. The garden is 'leaf perfect', the view sublime. The meal is prepared by the prince's charming wife, Dayu Mas, who joins us for the gourmet Balinese meal (be lawar, fried grasshopper and saffron rice). Dayu doesn't ask after my immigration status or try and sell me land which is such a treat: we just gossip, in the time-honoured island tradition, about the wickedness of all the lords and ladies of the land. The next morning, as platoons of ducks wobble down the narrow Iseh road, and the mist rises on the village pagoda temple I head up the hill to the high road that connects Besakih, the mother Temple, with Karangasem, the capital of East Bali. For half an hour I drive through some of the most magnificent scenery known to mankind. There is not an art shop in sight: everyone is engaged in rural pursuits save a camp of workers building a base for a white-water rafting company. The Balinese are great at adventure tourism: they adore the outfits, the flesh- pressing and the commune with nature, in that order I suspect. It is the fastest growing niche market-bird watching, mountain-bike riding, hiking-and the hills of East Bali are a treasure trove of trekking treats. Passing scenic Putung I spot a litter and an entourage, like David's famous painting "Flight out of Egypt": it is bamboo queen Linda Garland, with some Guinness heirs, enjoying the tail end of her favourite walk from Tenganan (the Bali Aga village) to Putung. A Four Seasons helicopter hovers overhead springkling rose water ("El Nino has played havoc," the wonder woman tells me, "with monsoon merrymaking") and mangosteens drop from their fertile branches into designer baskets.  Further down the road, well 20km east, through the Salak (snake fruit) orchards for which the road is famous, I stop at Tirta Gangga, the water gardens of the last King of Karangasem. At the friendly Dhangin Taman Inn, homestay to the hill-billies, I visit artist chum Baxter who has spent years surveying the romantic folie of the architect-King and has been inspired to create paintings and ceramic artworks of trail-blazing originality. Together we visit the original bulé aga, woolite heiress Nyonya Carole Muller, who, with husband-architect Peter Muller, built the original and still the best mountain retreat, the Amandari. Carole joined the exodus from the fun bum-belt to the east two years ago and restored a 'wing' of the old palace. Her view over the formal fountains (European-oeserie) and fantasy follies of the terraced water gardens, built in 1945, is enchanting. Further up the Tirta Gangga road the Eastern 'highway' dips to the coast, to the villages of Amed and Seraya where some new boutique-styles resorts have recently sprung up on the lava-encrusted foreshores. I snorkel off the beach as armadas of native prahu sail out into the Lombok Straits, their aquamarine sails catching the morning sun. After a grilled fish lunch at the Mimpi Resort -- designed by Martin Grounds and Jack Kent, who gave us the heavenly Four Seasons Resort at Jimbaran -- I back track on the high road through the mountains, taking the western fork at Muncan, on to the Rendang-Besakih road, through the unusual mountain village of Suter, to Batur Lake at the feet of the still-active Batur Volcano. On the crater lake's western shore, in the once quaint hot spring hamlet of Toya Bungkah, now a mega-resort of unspeakable naffness, I visit playwrite/actress Jennifer Claire, the original sarong party girl, now growing cabbages in the lava dust. Exasperated, with not a hair in place, Claire does her laps each morning in the 3 kilometre wide lake before settling into her writing. Her retreat soothes the soul with its simplicity: sitting in a puddle of hot sulphurous water at lake's edge I gaze at the fuming fury of Mt. Batur and Claire in a horse hair caftan tending her baby carrots. Life is sweet. Back on the road I head up the Caldera to the 11th Century Pura Puncak Penulisan my favorite temple in Bali. 10km west of Kintamani village on the Kintamani - Singaraja road, one finds here an ancient architecture of squat 'zen-simple' pavilions set, like precious gems, into a plateau of swept dirt. Statues from Java's classical Hindu period (9th - 13th Century), carried across by pilgrims and priests in the first 'crusades', line the black ijuk thatch long houses. The wind whistles through the alpine conifers; windows open in the mountain mist to deep views of vast valleys and shimmering lakes below. It is a magical experience. I head home to the coast via the Bali Aga (Mountain Bali) Villages of Belantih and Selulung -- the seat of the medieval fiefdom of the original mountain Balinese. In these villages, and in the architecturally superb villages of Songan, Terunyan and Bayung Gede nearby, the villagers look very Chinese. Perhaps their immediate ancestors are the Hmong and Meo, the semi-nomadic hill-tribes-people who populated all the mountainous regions from Kunming, in Yunnan, South China, through to North Vietnam. In local history, the village of Dong S'on is the most famous, as Bali's kettle drums originate there. Since 2000 BC, these people have travelled in spurts throughout the region, their descendants settling as North Burmese, the orang aseli of the Malay Peninsula, the Karo and Badui peoples of Sumatra and West Java, among others. But that's another column. All these mountain villages have linear settlement patterns, aligned to the holy mountain (rather than the Hindu lord Siwa or Surya the sun god). Like the architecture of the Pura Puncak Penulisan the low-slung single pavilion dwellings of these ancient villages exhibit an austerity of form and lack of decorative trim. All refreshingly simple, after the 'ghost-train gothique' horrors of the coastal movement. I wind back south through Petang and Sangeh and visit the new mountain resorts -- The Ibah and the Four Seasons Resort at Sayan. The Ibah is imaginatively run by my old chums, stars of the first Stranger column (1979), Cokorda Raka Kertiyasa and his Australian-born wife Jero Asri. Over-looking the Campuhan river and temple complex the Ibah offers authentic Balinese cuisine, a traditional spa and family hotel friendliness. On the sacred Ayung river, literally, the New Four Seasons Resort at Sayan is poised to challenge the Amandari's dominance of the lucrative heavenly hideaway market. Good luck. Driving back towards Sanur I spot a camel chewing grass near the shell of a bankrupt gin-palace and know I'm home. The hills suddenly seem a world away. The BBC is still banging on but I'm fortified for the next lap, the Asian way.   Love as long as your Visa lasts, and beyond... This month the Stranger looks at the Balinese tradition, now prevalent in the palaces, for taking european wives: A wedding in Bali ....... the Balinese culture is sustained - nay - the Balinese thrive on these palace mega-events where high style, logistic prowess and feudal fervor are doled out in equally generous portions ............... Farewell my Lovely: an obituary. Little Agung is dead, murdered in a village mêlée on Christmas Eve. The December pin-up boy who never made it to the end of his month, was to be married on January 1, now the date for his cremation. Royal Cremation for Jero Bongkasa, May 1997 The full-scale royal cremation of the Prince of Bongkasa, I Gusti Agung Gede Oka, on the 18th of May, 1997, was a magnificent affair. Family in white, guests in black, and battallions of war veterans in the peacock colours of their regiments. Jero Dalem Kepaon, June 1997 My balinese mum's trusted lady-in-waiting, admiredby all the village for never having missed a day's temple duty in 60 years. R.I.P for K'tut Tantri, August 1997 Ketut Tantri, a Scottish-born American woman, and the author of Revolt in Paradise, was Bali's most notorious Stranger. Sakenan Festival on Turtle Island in the Age of Development, September 1997 The Pura Sakenan temple festival has always been a main event on South Bali's religious calender. For the pious it is an important pilgrimage : for teenagers it is a dating place par excellence (above the din of screaming priests one could always discern a gentle rub..... Nothing if Not Practical - Burning Bodies and Batteries in Space Age Bali "El Nino, El Dorado and Elle Mac Pherson" &SHY may sum up the hysteria of these uncertain times &SHY but the Balinese go on with their ceremonies and devotions oblivious to rising collossii and camel parks.