ABOUT US

Ubud residents and small businesses are proud of the cultural and religious activities we share with our international guests each week. You can imagine the behind the scenes energy and planning it takes to put on such a wide venue of events. This publication is no exception.

On September, 2006, the Ubud Community publication was born with my belief that even our short term visitors would be interested in the many local- color events, business offerings and personalities of our area. My first helper was Alek, who now delivers our booklets and will occasionally write an article. Effervescent Juni answers the phone and takes care of technical layouts. Additionally, there are many local contributors of short articles we are so thankful for.

Now, less than 3 years old, we have over 50 advertisers and print 5,000 booklets per month. We are now envisioning a live Ubud Web based bulletin and are beginning to develop programs to help the disadvantaged children in our region.

We’d like to thank our advertisers and our readers for their kind and generous support.

Ruslan Wiryadi
Director, Ubud Community

EDITORIAL

Once upon a time, Ubud was so… beautiful.   Its people lived quietly and peacefully in simplicity. On certain days, people would gather in the courtyard next to the palace.   They came from villages all around and they brought  their agricultural products to sell or barter.   There were also people from the city, bringing the fascinating  things of their dreams. The villagers come around and spent their money, bought some household needs and also some special things.

There were some push-bikes parked on the side.   No modern day racket of mechanical noises-- Just the village sounds of piglets crying, buyers and sellers haggling and cocks crowing.

However Ubud is changing now, from village-life to a more chaotic lifestyle.   Noise, pollution and traffic are part of an Ubud today.   Take that big hole in the street in front of the market, for example.  I’m sure you’ve all seen that, and this is an example of too much overload on a small-town road.   The good news is that it will soon be fixed.   Hopefully this incident will make our local government more aware of the fragile nature of Ubud and try to preserve its small town personality.  

Ruslan Wiryadi

ubud market

suatu ketika, ubud begitu indah, damai dan tenang
pada hari tertentu orang berkumpul di tanah lapang
datang dari desa sekitar membawa hasil kebun dan ladang

ada juga yang datang dari kota
membawa dagangan yang penuh pesona
banyak orang datang untuk melihat
ada juga yang menaruh minat
membeli barang  yang mereka perlukan
atau sekedar menawar sarung yang menjadi idaman

sepeda kayuh terparkir disudut jalan tanah yang kering
tak ada deru mesin atau bising knalpot yang melengking
hanya suara tangisan si anak babi
atau teriakan pedagang dan pembeli
namun kini ubud telah berubah dari desa menjadi kota
maka deru mesin mobil menjadi biasa
memekakkan telinga mengotori udara