Bali

Friday
I arrived in Bali around midnight and enjoyed a rather horrendous wait at immigration, thanks to the simultaneous arrival of four other flights, and also thanks to the fact the Balinese never seem to be in much of a hurry to do anything. After an hour of standing around, meeting Mum and Dad, and an hour of driving, I arrived at Chez Powell in Ubud. Hurrah!

Saturday
We spent our first day in Bali wandering around Ubud. Ubud is a fabulous town; the guide books generally call it the "cultural and culinary capital of Bali," and they're not wrong. It's a bit like what Chiang Mai is to Thailand, or Kyoto to Japan, only on a much smaller scale. So, in brief: art, dance, markets, shopping, eating, monkeys, temples, rice paddies. We stopped by Dad's office first (he's working for the Friends of the National Parks Foundation - check out their website), then on to the cute little town library, and then to lunch. After lunch, we stopped at the Smile shop, where Mum volunteers, and finally stopped at the Kupu Kupu shop; Kupu Kupu is a local NGO providing assistance to handicapped people in the area, Mum does volunteer work with them too. Later in the evening, we had a fabulous Balinese tapas for dinner, polished with a margarita in my case. It's funny, the only thing in Bali that costs just as much as elsewhere is cocktails, but on the other hand, they do make them really damn strong.

Sunday
On Sunday morning we went for a walk among the rice fields just out of town. It's a bit of a quirk of geography, I suppose, that you can emerge from the middle of Ubud into idyllic rural scenery so easily; on this walk, the farming loveliness starts barely 200 metres off the town's main street. So we had a lovely wander among the rice fields, with lots of "selamat pagi" (good morning) from farmers and passers-by, and hundreds and hundreds of ducks. Ducks are wonderful. We had brunch at a little restaurant perched in the middle of the fields, where we met an expat American lady who had taught at Keith Area School in the '60s. Keith is three towns away from Mt Gambier. All together now, "it's a small world, after all..."
Later, we stopped to check out the work of an artist who had set up in a little shack on the path. I bought three bookmark-sized paintings of birds for about $10 or so. Still later, heading back to Ubud, we met two kids, a brother and a sister. They wanted to try their English, Mum wanted to try her Indonesian, so we had a neat little bilingual conversation. The girl had a notebook, in which was written the names, nationalities and ages of all the foreigners that she had met, which we filled in. As we left, I thought that that was exactly what we wished our students would do, pretty much.

Monday
On Monday morning I went with Mum to help teach a class at the Kupu Kupu foundation. We had two students, girls about eight years old, who were quiet but keen, and covered colours, clothes, and body parts. Next, we had lunch at a nice hippie cafe (tempeh burgers, hurrah!), then stopped by Dad's office to meet his colleagues. The other staff at the office are Bayu, Komang, Made, Made and Made. See, in Bali, men and women have the same given names, and children are named according to their birth order. So a family's first child is named Made, the second is Wayan, the third is Nyoman, the fourth is Ketut, and then it starts back at Made. There are a few other names around - Komang, for starters - but there's still an awful lot of Mades and Wayans around.
That evening, we went to see a performance of the Kecak dance at a local temple. In short - because I am stupid and don't really know - the Kecak tells a story from the Ramayana, with an all-male choir providing the musical accompaniment. The choir, who sit in a circle for the performance, are representative of a monkey army, and their "ke-chak-a-chak" chant echoes the sound of monkeys. I think. The Kecak dance was followed with a Fire Dance, in which a man riding a prop-horse danced in hot coals and kicked the glowing embers around the performance space, rather perilously close to the audience.

Tuesday
On Tuesday we went to Nusa Penida for an overnight visit to FNPF's bird sanctuary. I'll put that in another entry, because it was really cool and un-Bali-like.

Wednesday
After visiting the local market, we hopped on the ferry back to the mainland from Nusa Penida. The actual crossing can be done in thirty minutes, but we were on that boat for three hours. We boarded at 10 o'clock, but didn't depart until 11:30. Then, the boat took its merry slow time getting to Padangbai harbour. When we got near the harbour, another boat was taking up the only berth. Padangbai is a launching point for ferries to Lombok, so if there are several ferries competing for the one berth, why do they not co-ordinate the arrival times? It's a mystery that can be solely put down to "Bali time." Anyway, we putted around the harbour in circles until the other ferry left and we could finally disembark. Phew.

Thursday
On Thursday, Dad worked in the office whilst Mum and I had a lazy morning before heading out to the Ubud Botanic Gardens. The gardens are lovely, and blend in with the surrounding forest very nicely. The pitcher plants and orchids were especially cool, though the "labryinth" was rather lame. That night, we had dinner at Indus, perhaps the best restaurant in Ubud. Indus is perched on the edge of a ravine, overlooking two river valleys and the steep ridge between them, with the occasional view of Bali's highest mountain, Gunung Agung (when the clouds part). A wonderful spot, and the fluttering bats and ample geckos just added to the atmosphere. Of course, geckos aren't really anything special in Bali, but whatever.

Friday
In the morning, Mum and I went to the Ubud market. Technically there's only one market in Ubud, but really, there's two; the one selling souvenirs to tourists on one level, and the local produce market for locals on a lower level. Interestingly, the market was pretty much women-only. The LP reckons that since women are in charge of cooking food, they're also in charge of buying and selling it, too. Like most markets, the Ubud market is fabulous.
Next, we popped into Ubud's number one tourist attraction, the Monkey Forest. The forest is home to a large troop of long-tailed macaques, who, technically at least, are wild, but they're not likely to wander out of their forest haven any time soon. These monkeys are very assertive and very confident. They have sharp eyes and won't hesitate to snatch whatever takes their fancy. The mere sight of a water bottle was enough to send a young monkey clambering onto my shoulder, eager for a grab. When I tried to gently prod him away, the little bugger bit me! One of the resident monkey experts immediately came to check it out, but the little blighter didn't even break the skin. No rabies for me, then.
We had lunch with Dad and his colleagues, enjoying a fabulous (and fabulously cheap!) nasi campur.
The rest of the day? We lounged around, before finally heading back to the airport for the midnight flight back to Japan.