Ketut & Me in Ubud

Friends complain I left them un-assuaged in Indonesia.

So... before leaving Bali I went up to Ubud to visit my old friend Ketut Liyer, the Hindu priest/shaman/medicine-man I met in 1994, who has become a superstar since the filming of that awful book, eat pray love.

It was late at night, pouring rain; we sat on a porch in his compound & reminisced about the good-old-days when I followed him around Ubud watching him perform ceremonies for new house, new baby, marriage, tooth-filing, etc. etc, and another visit when I brought him a gallon of holy water I'd drawn up out of the Ganges River.

This time he was tired, his back ached, & he told me he was 95 years old, which isn't true. He grabbed my left hand, examined some creases & said I'd get married again. Noticing my frown, he corrected himself. "Maybe not a husband but a boyfriend," he said with a big smile, showing his one good front tooth.

I stayed in his house overnight & left the following morning having to plow my way through the crowd of white-faced visitors lining up to meet him.

Here's a picture of us in front of his house, taken on March 9th, 2010.