Biking Bali Style

We did manage to find some days without rain – every once in a while the rain gods took pity on us and gave us a glorious day. We took advantage of it! They have Bali countryside cycling tours and we decided to take off on one. It was perfect. They picked us up at our hotel and took us up to a mountain top restaurant for breakfast. There was one catch…it was rather a later breakfast than we had anticipated – in other words, we should have eaten first.
Before we hit the mountaintop chalet, we enjoyed a tour of a coffee plantation, Bali style. The weather is so fabulous year-around, they can grow hundreds of different things. We visited a smaller plantation where coffee is harvested primarily by hand and the land supports many different crops. They had coffee, cocoa beans, vanilla, mango, pineapple and probably some more things I’ve forgotten, all growing in the area. They had samples of the various native fruits that we had a to sample. Some, like mango and pineapple, we’d had before but they also had some lychee, jack fruit, something with a pulpy mass inside…never did get the name of that one. Most were pretty good, some…I’ll let them keep.
Now…the picture shows the man roasting the coffee, along with the pole for grinding it. While I firmly believe that at one point all of the coffee was processed that way, I bet there’s a bit more of an automated operation going on somewhere behind the scenes. That said…you’d be amazed at the number of spread out plastic or canvas sheets with peanuts and rice and coffee beans drying out in the sun – in the middle of the road.

Mount Batur

From there we wound our way up the mountain to the restaurant overlooking Mount Batur. This is an active volcano that has devastated the surrounding area frequently, most recently in 1994. It is a sacred mountain to the Balinese yet it can be climbed. We settled for the scenic view of the mountain.
The best part of the journey was just beginning. We went over to a small, country road – well, it was all small country roads, this was just a smaller, more country road than some of the others. We all chose a bike and headed off downhill (yeah, just my style). We traveled through steamy jungles, hundreds of rice fields and many towns where the children ran out to high five the foreigners as we road by. We dodged potholes, dogs, kids, drying rice, coffee and peanuts as well as motorbikes and the occasional car. Kept you on your toes!
Our guide(s) stopped periodically to tell us about things we were seeing. We hiked through a rice field to learn about how they still harvest rice – by hand! It’s a reasonable source of living for many people, selling rice to the local hotels and stores for – we foreigners supporting them whenever we have a meal. They use nature whenever possible, bringing in ducks after harvest to eat off the bugs and to fertilize the fields, rotating crops (beans, peanuts, corn or chili) to keep the soil in good shape.

Balinese Families

Our next stop was in one of the community meeting halls. Every community has a leader who works to keep the community working together and running smoothly. There are many celebrations and festivals each year (the island is primarily Hindu) and the leader identifies who should do what so that everything is ready. We saw a number of communities getting ready for a holiday that was coming up – men and women were out decorating the gates, meeting halls and cleaning up everything.
Families are very close and live together in a single compound. The son will live there all his life, bringing his wife to live with his family. The compound is not very large, but will house 2 or 3 “houses” with outdoor verandahs, a cooking area, a garden area and the family shrine.
Naming your child is very important in Bali because it identifies the caste you are from as well as your birth order. Some of our guides on the trip were named Wayan, in fact, almost everyone was named Wayan. Turns out the first born is always named Wayan – doesn’t mater if it’s a boy or girl. Madi is the 2nd born (we also had 2 guides named Madi). There are other given names and nicknames but the order name is important here. It sure confuses the heck out of me.
We ended up at the home of Wayan, the owner of the business. There his family had created the most fabulous lunch – including delicious vegetarian options! We sat on the open verandahs of the various buildings, visiting with our riding buddies and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere and great food.
You do need to take a look at the shot that includes Jeff sitting at the table. It’s not a great picture but…I have to share a story about the people with us. The two men were both from Portland, OR, in fact, there were 2 others also from Portland. The woman is from Hokkaido, another teacher at an international school. The thing is…she is a good friend of one of our teachers at school as was supposed to meet us all in Nagoya when she was on her way to Bali….small world.

Living it up in Bali

Accommodations in Bali range from the 5 star HUGE hotels to small, or rather large, intimate bungalows. We had the exquisite hotel with vast verandahs and gorgeous views onto the ocean or pools or mountains. We had the small bungalow with the open verandah and a view of the trees and flowers. One even had the open verandahs overlooking a koi pond – the pond was immediately off the porch…if you stepped the wrong way, you were in the pond. The most amazing thing was that the prices were a mere pittance of what you would pay for a dive in the states. It’s so amazing to be wrapped in the lap of luxury…a feeling I’ll never be able to enjoy stateside.
I decided to include a variety of shots for the “Homes (or rather hotels here) of the Rich and Famous” to quote a famous filming crew from long ago, though I’m afraid I’ve left out the personal facilities. Check out these places and dream of your next trip! Just imagine…we were at some lovely places…and there were MANY even nicer! You may note that I have included quite a number of pictures of our pond and you might get the idea that I loved this place (it’s also where the four-poster bed is). Well…you’d be right!

Monkey Park

Ubud is a small town that draws a lot of the artsy crowd. Many of the local craftspeople have shops here so the place is full of paintings; many quite gorgeous, carvings; gigantic, gorgeous, practical, tiny, obscene or intricate, pottery; practical, decorative and everything in between. It’s also the source of those huge rock sculptures you see in many places. It really does have the most interesting shops.
It is also the home of the Monkey Forest, a small preserve that is the home for hundreds of macaque monkeys. Let me tell you, they’ve taken the place over. The humans, who think they own the place, actually are there to serve the monkeys. First, they’ve been directed to sell bananas to the unsuspecting tourists. The monkeys are extremely perceptive, quickly identifying which tourists succumbed to the sales pitch and which failed to recognize the need to have bananas. Immediately identifying the correct humans, they gathered around the person, waiting for the handout. Each used different techniques…there was the pathetic hang dog look that let you know it was certain that the animal was going to die at your feet if you didn’t feed it. They also used the sweet and adorable routine…worked very well for the young monkeys capering around. The overworked mother also appeared with the younger crew clinging to her fur - and she rarely shared her haul with them, guess she figured they needed to learn the cute routine.
Now some humans, not being well trained yet, thought they could tempt the monkeys into performing for them…stand up, sit, roll over, and beg. That didn’t go over well with these guys. Their response was a very firm, jump on the person, grab the banana and beat it out of there. The human was usually left in a state of total surprise. Some monkeys preferred a bit more terror, scrambling up the leg or landing on the head. Either move was sufficient for them to get the banana – and sometimes the entire bunch.
People were also warned that they should watch their purses and glasses, monkeys had been known to steal anything they could (particularly from those people who failed to bring them any food).
Once you made it past the entrance (believe me, no bananas survived in a human’s hand past about 50 feet into the park), the monkeys became much calmer and returned to more monkey activities, chasing each other, grooming, eating greens, and mating. There’s a large temple in the center of the preserve. While it is still used by people at certain times of the year, it is not open to visitors (most of the temples in the country are closed the same way and if you do get to go in, you need to wear a sarong and sash – provided by the temple for a fee). It is remarkable how much the style of the temples is repeated in hundreds of the buildings and gates around the country.

Bali Rain

If I were to sum up our trip to Bali, I’d have to say it was wet, rainy, humid, hot, sweltering and did I mention it rains a lot? I must admit that the rain made the country gorgeously green, but I think it also gives everyone webbed feet!! While it always rains this time of year, even the locals were noting that it was raining a bit more than usual. We had a very atypical run of 3 days worth of non-stop rain. Now I do indeed love reading books but even I found that it was getting to be a little bit much. We finally started to wander out whenever there was a bit of a lull just to move around. This worked well sometimes and sometimes got us totally drenched before we got home. The locals were ready for the rain, having lots of HUGE umbrellas – and even our bungalow had large ones for us to use.
Even though the rain was almost never ending, the thousands of shops were open for business at all times – with no end of “great deals” for us to explore. They wanted to sell us absolutely everything – carvings, pottery, weavings, you name it, they had it. Some things were wonderful, absolutely gorgeous, some were just very cheap. I must admit, it didn’t take long to get tired of roaming through the shops.

Hanabi in Japan

Here’s one I forgot all about writing until I came across the pictures. The Japanese love their fireworks – especially on those warm, summer evenings. The word for fireworks, hanabi, means “flowers of fire” and they have truly developed gorgeous displays; the colors, the patterns, the size are all spectacular and are well worth seeking out. They have huge displays that would rival anything I’ve ever seen on the 4th of July.
We had the opportunity to watch a small, local firework display and I have to admit, the process of “shooting off” the fireworks was worth watching! Let me see if I can describe it for you (the night pictures, of course, did not do the process justice).
First, you must recognize that this was the local version…the small stuff. Our small fireworks that we purchase and shoot off in our front yards (with prominent caution warnings attached to each sparkler) seem SO tame. 2nd…don’t do this at home….
OK…imagine a small park..roughly the size of a small block. Trees around, open spot in the middle, bathroom on one side. The fire department (I’m guessing that’s who they were – they looked official) sets out a “runway” of some material that doesn’t seem to catch fire. There’s also a small, movable “wall” of the same material that is nearby (men kinda hang out behind it but ya know, they also just wander around it too). OK…now….imagine a woven basket…maybe it’s like 3 feet tall...with a handle on it. Yes, woven out of some plant – most likely bamboo since it’s available everywhere here (oh, it’s flammable you say…just wait). The audience (being smarter) sits outside this cleared area, perched on the outer edge of the park. Meanwhile…a group of men (remember the ones hanging out around that movable wall?) well…one of the fire type people walk over with a burning torch, poke it in the basket until it catches fire and then they run back over to the wall…one of the young men (in, of course, the very tight fitting outfit) walks over and picks up said burning wicker basket, set themselves into a very nice back stance, and hold the basket close to their side while the basket is spewing sparks, burning brightly, the sparkling fire cascading into the sky, complete with a deafening roar but the jock just stands there until it burns out. (Once again, I repeat, don’t try this at home.) They didn’t do this once or twice, they spent over an hour doing it over and over again. I think there might have been some competition…who had the best stance or stood the stillest or became the deafest or got burned the most (or least). Who knows.