Not much to report on, Hokkien-wise. No conversations in Hoklo here to this point -- not that I expect or expected to have any, unless with gaijin from the Straits or "the other Straits".
There were lots of Peranakan Tn̂glâng here at some point. In the port town of Singaraja in the north, esp. in the streets behind the old port of Buleleng, I saw people with Tn̂glâng looks and old men who wore their "Western clothing" in the Tn̂glâng style. Not a few shops had pale, skinny, glasses-wearing women behind the counter.
I also heard about traditional Chinese healers. Yet Tn̂glângjī are a rare sight even in SR. Not sure what the situation was, pre-Suharto. Like in much of the Caribbean, it seems like mixing with the Balinese was/is the rule. Unlike in Sabah, mixed offspring don't speak Hoklo at this pt. Not that that's a shortcoming: they do speak two Austronesian languages with feeling and grace. But I was surprised when a young guy working in a store gave me a ha̍psi̍plé and a well-said "kionghí" after hearing that I came from Nusa Indah. He got the tones right. I'm not sure if he "knew" them, or if it's b/c tone contours 22-32 or 11-32 just happen to match a general Austronesian pattern. I visited the Lênggoân kiong at the old port of Buleleng, one of the very few Tn̂glâng temples on Bali. It's a Thiⁿkong biō and the central figure is Tân-hú Cinjîn. You wouldn't've known it by looking at them, but all the temple keepers were patrilineally Hoklo. They didn't speak Hoklo, but not surprisingly seemed familiar with a wide range of Hoklo religious terminology. I told them that we on Nusa Indah shared a language with their Hoklo kongmá. It wasn't clear if they understood me or maybe already knew this. They told me that many of the Tn̂glâng settlers were Cantonese or Hainamese, and that the Hakka achieved the greatest wealth through systematic sharing and lending.
Âng s.s. guided me around the temple and seemed disgusted when I didn't make a donation. Dug a huge ingot out of his nose, flicked it away, and turned to chat up a fresh party of visitors.
Untuk gua, Singaraja "felt" different from the rest of Bali. It's a generic tropical port town, with its Chinese and Arab undertones and Malay/Bugis overtones. It used to be on the major trade route from Java to the Maluku. The Dutch changed the trade routes when they arrived, forcing the town into a slow decline. For better or worse, that's probably also why few if any sinkheh arrived on these shores. The split btw a seafaring, opportunistic Moslem "tribe" and a land-based agrarian one is a common theme in this part of the world...
There's a great deal of Hoklo embedded in the lingua franca ("bahasa Malaynesia / Indo-Melayu"
) and written everywhere in lômájī. This is probably true t/o Indonesia and more so in the port cities of Java. You'll see "Cia Gwee 2562" written right under "Gongxi Fatcai". There's a cigarette brand called Dji Sam Soe ("234"). In Banyuwangi on Java I saw the word "anceng" scrawled on a wall. I don't know if it's Javanese or just lingua franca slang but maybe it means "quiet!"? And "cap cay" and "angpau" need no introduction for the Hok-literate. So... Indonesian Hokkiens in most places may be "post-Hokkien", but their lômájī is actually more readable than what you see in M'sia, Sg, or TW.
