Walking the Path of Elizabeth Gilbert: 5 Highlights of Finding the Real People Behind "Eat, Pray, Love" in Bali

If you’re a warm-blooded, breathing woman, chances are, you’ve read (or at least heard of) the book, “Eat, Pray, Love”. If you haven’t, this best-seller from Feb. 2006 is author Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir of her journey to recovery from a divorce, by eating her way through Italy, meditating in solitude in India, and finding healing and love in Indonesia. I don’t compare my life to Elizabeth’s, nor was I one of the mid-life-crisis groupies secretly wishing I could leave my husband and travel the world for a year. However, since my travels were taking me to Indonesia for two weeks last month, I was intrigued enough by the Balinese chapter of her journey that I decided to walk in her footsteps for a few days.

The key “real people” she meets, establishes strong relationships with, and who change her life in Bali are two main people: Wayan, the healer woman, and Ketut Liyer, the old medicine man. I’d never gone to see any kind of fortune teller or alternative medicine doctor in my life. But was curious enough to open myself up to meeting these people and giving them a chance.
It was pretty easy to find them. A simple Google search produced this page from Elizabeth Gilbert’s website (http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/faq.htm) that gave us simple directions to find Wayan and Ketut. As she said, simply asking any local or cab driver will get you to them. Here are the top 5 highlights on my meetings with them.

1. Their existence has not changed that much after being major characters in a best-selling book. Surprisingly, Wayan has her traditional Balinese medicine shop in a very non-descript building in the town of Ubud, where she has always been. Ketut Liyer is still sitting on his “porch” (though it’s not the type of porch us North Americans imagine) in his traditional Hindu-style compound. Both have definitely seen an influx in visitors, and I imagine will get even more after the movie version (Julia Roberts will be playing Elizabeth Gilbert), but neither had big flashy or expanded businesses as a result.
   
   
2. But they are charging a lot more than 25¢. Each of them charged us $25 for our services, and in a country where the average daily wage seems to be $5, they’re not doing too badly either.
   
   
3. Wayan’s palm & body reading were more accurate than Ketut’s. I went into both experiences with sceptical curiosity – some hopes of being told that I’m brilliant and will be a millionaire soon, yet bracing myself for some bullsh*t response. Since we had come all the way to Ubud and found them, my husband Dave and I both jumped in and had palm/body readings with both. It’s probably no shocker than Ketut is quite old (he says he’s now 93), and therefore, I blame it on his age that he said some of the exact same things to me that he said to my husband two minutes later. Wayan, on the other hand, was bang-on with some pretty specific details of my past, so I listened to her more intently when she doled out advice on my health and hints into the future.
   
   
4. Wayan’s magic may be the real thing. While we were in Wayan’s shop, where people are treated simultaneously – not in privacy and not exclusively – we met a few other foreigners who had come to get her “magic” treatment. Some had heard of her from the book, and others had been referred to her by other patients. One of them was an American man in his 40s who had come to her seeking help for a damaged shoulder. After a 30 minute Balinese treatment by Wayan and her assistants, he was in shock. He exclaimed to us that he had seen numerous chiropractors, massage therapists, and physiotherapists in the US, and still had constant pain and inability to raise or rotate his shoulder for 15 years. He was incredulous that one treatment would “heal” him. He went on to say that he would listen to anything Wayan told him to do, including taking herbs she recommended for clearing his liver, and reconciling with “whoever he was angry with for the past several years because it was causing physical damage to his liver”. (He did say that that would be harder than getting the shoulder treatment since that would mean probably apologizing to his ex-wife).
   
   
5. They were both anticipating the filming of the Balinese segment of the movie with Julia Roberts. We literally missed the cast and crew of “Eat, Pray, Love” arriving in Ubud by a few days! Wayan was already anticipating them coming, posting a picture of Julia Roberts right below Elizabeth Gilbert’s picture on her wall. Surprisingly, though the producers had already paid them a visit to explain what was happening and to let them know that actors would be playing them, neither of them knew much more detail than that. I would only hope that Julia Roberts would take the time to visit them like we did and experience traditional Balinese readings, healings, and treatments to truly walk in the steps of Elizabeth Gilbert.
   

Would I recommend visiting them? Absolutely. If you’re going to be in Indonesia, visiting Ubud is a must and seeing Wayan and Ketut will take one day out of your trip. For less money than a spa treatment in Vancouver, you can experience traditional Balinese healing and judge for yourself how much of your body reading to believe.