And she's back...

Hi all.

Sorry for the long delay in writing but A LOT has happened since the last blog. So I will start from where I left off..

We left Candidasa on the 7th to move to Ubud. We ended up staying at a place called Ubud village and well lets just say it was an interesting place. The bathroom (toilet, shower, etc) was all outside so in the middle of the night if you had to go to the bathroom it was like being in an outhouse equipped with bugs, geckos and even cockroaches. The first day we got there we decided to swim for a little bit but were interrupted by load thunder and lightenting storms (which I can now say I am not longer afraid of). As we couldn't swim much longer we decided to shop. There is a main drag of shops on Monkey Forest Road and everywhere you go there are Balinese men sitting usually picking their noses, butts or privates and yelling "Lady - you need taxi; I have nice car" if you don't respond to that they normally yell something like "Transport" until you decline their services. We did find a group of guys that must have decided yelling was too much work because they had just printed and laminated a paper that said "you need taxi" It was pretty funny.

The first night we went to a restuarant called Cafe Wayan and we sat on mats under a verdana type thing and had a very nice waiter. They are so traditional here and we were asked to take our shoes off to have dinner. The food was good and then we headed off for some more shopping and then when to a dance performance of the Legong. The performance was unbelievable - there was about 20 men playing the gamelan and then 8 different dances. All 8 were amazing and all the dancers are so talented. The women do this thing with there fingers where it almost appears as though they are double jointed. Then they open their eyes really wide and look side to side with the gamelan beat. It is a little freaky but really cool. After that we headed to bed; this night we both slept through the night.

The next day Linda and I walked through several of the shops and found a lot of cool things and just looked around a lot. We also did our first visit to the local market. It was unlike anything I have ever seen and you have to spend a long time bargaining and every person is yelling/grabbing at you and typically saying something along the lines of "I give you good price..because lucky customer" That first day we really didn't purchase anything because we were both a little overwhelmed. Linda was speechless. After that we had dinner and then I started having some stomach problems...we'll just leave it at that.

The next day Linda went with Patra and Madti to do some more shopping and
I decided to take it easy and stay at the hotel, so I worked on my tan and read a little. Funny story about my day at the hotel; while I was laying by the pool there was a Japanese family that came out and was tanning/swimming. After about 15-20 minutes the father and son (son was probably in his 20s) started video taping themselves in the pool. I thought I was being sneaky and carefully spying on them until they started do something simliar to sychronized swimming and jumping in to pool; the father did this one move and I started laughing - they looked over and started laughing too and then talking in Japanese to one another and pointing at me..at which point I realized - they were doing that because I was not so sneaky in watching them. So they gave me a little performance - it was really funny!


That night Linda and I walked around a bit and then went to bed. Only to be woken up my a piece of wood that had fallen off my bed - I thought my bed was breaking but was scared to look or move and all I kept thinking was "is this bed going to break.." (it didn't) and in the morning we looked under the mattress and realized that instead of 1 piece of palm that was the length of the bed I had 3 seperate pieces all looked pretty sketchy. We had that changed and Linda and I headed out with with Madti for a day of shopping.

Oh slight detour on the story - Mr Bonn (he pronounces Mr.Bond) our driver has been teaching us Balinese/Indonesian each morning. Typically he says the word in English and then the Balinese/Indonesian word. Well the other day Mr. Bonn rattled off something in Balinese looked at me and said "you understand?" I looked confused and then he say "what you mean" again I looked confused so we just kept driving. So a little later we get on a road that is very bumpy and he is teaching us how to say "the road is bumpy, slow" in Balinese and we try to tell him the word "bumpy" - then he looked confused and said "what you mean" and then couldn't say bumpy only bop bop. We all started laughing!

Okay so day 4 in Ubud, Linda and I woke up and headed down to the village market to give it another go, plus the earlier the better because then it is just the locals and they are setting up and usually willing to make a better deal because they want good luck for the rest of the day. Linda and I headed in and right away started to bargain and get some neat things - the cool part is that everytime you buy something the use your money to bless the rest of their goods and typically say something like "mi mi mi" while hitting the money on the merchandise. Well actually Linda would usually do that for them (it is also a Thai tradition). After the market we heading in for more shopping. Mind you I still am not feeling good at this point..

Our last night in Ubud we went to a shadow puppet show; I really thing I was a puppet master in a past life. The whole time the performance was going I was like - I could do that. Take some puppets make them yell at each other and make up some weird song to go with; that is right up my alley! Anyway we go to sleep at normal time that night but Linda wakes up at 3am and is up taking pictures and as she says is "being quiet as a mouse" until she wakes me up at 7am so that we can get packed and make it to the Monkey Forest before we leave for Sanur at 10:30am. I wake up and think that I am just a little tired/cranky but later realize that I am pretty sick and spend the rest of the day in the new hotel room in Sanur (which wasn't too bad since we overlook the pool and ocean).

So let me explain the monkey forest..it is one of the freakiest places I have ever been - first of all there are hundreds of monkeys and they are wild so you never really know what they are going to do. And the fact that Linda and I got there so early meant that we were the first ones there and the place was empty. Oh and they had just put food out for the monkeys. So imagine walking through a forest with huge, I mean huge trees; cemete carvings of monkeys and komono dragons and temples and then add the hundreds of monkey running around playing, fighting and making weird noises..it freaked me out!! We stayed for about 45mins and we did actually explore quite a bit and after a while it wasn't too bad..actually who am I kidding I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

So that brings me to Sanur. We are staying at a beautiful hotel and it is right on the ocean. Yesterday I spent most of the day in the hotel room but today I am feeling 100% better and we spent most of the day at the pool/ocean.

Tomorrow we are off to Northern Bali to go to a Pearl Farm; I am not quite sure what to expect but I will definitely fill you all in.

Oh and I almost forgot - tonight when we came to use the Internet it was closed at first - so we decided to look at the nearby shops while we waited. I walked into one shop by myself and the owner was a little (well short) Balinese woman that proceeded to make me try on almost everything in her store - and while I was trying on the different things she was feeling me up a little. When Linda walked I was standing in my bathing suit with wide eyes and this short little Balinese ladies putting clothes on me..I really didn't know what to do, so I bought something and got the hell out of there...another interesting thing that likely doesn't happen to most.