On to Ubud

Yesterday we spent the first part of the day waiting for Bern's shirts he had had made to arrive (they didn't), and the rest of the afternoon taking a taxi from Legian, where we were staying, to Ubud.

We weren't sure where we would stay, but found a lovely place for $45 per night, complete with beautiful grounds and a pool.

We even got air conditioning, I'm happy to say. Now our clothes will dry. Oh happy day! It's good to get out of the craziness of the Denpasar suburbs. Ubud is smaller and quieter. Next to our residence are rice paddies. It's quite beautiful.

Ubud is the art center of Bali. Tomorrow will be a day to investigate all that. Today we spent the day on an eco bike tour and had a wonderful time. You see, the biking is mostly downhill. We began with breakfast high in the mountains.

Next we went to pick up our bikes and began our ride. We went to a botanical garden and learned about spices grown here. Here our guide, "Punk", is trying to tell us he's holding a marijuana leaf. It wasn't.

While there we learned about "poo" coffee. Perhaps you've heard of it. Civets eat coffee beans, I guess because they like the taste of the outside of the bean, but they can't digest the bean, so it comes out in their poo, as our guide called it. People gather the poo, separate out the coffee beans and then roast them etc. You really have to wonder who figured this out. It's very expensive coffee. We actually had the chance to buy a cup, while at the botanical gardens, for a mere $3 or so. It was quite good. Here's a photo of coffee bean eating, poo excreting, civet. It wanted to sleep, but our trusty guide banged on the cage to wake him up. He looked annoyed.

We went to a bamboo roofing place. All by hand, of course. Well, hand and foot.

We went to a compound. I won't go into how Balinese family life is arranged. Suffice it to say, it's extraordinarily complex and highly organized. Balinese culture as a whole is exquisitely integrated with family, religion, nature, spirits and ancestors, all immediately present. But I digress. In the compound we began with the animals. Balinese cows are simply beautiful. You need to ignore all the poo, none of which is, to the best of my knowledge, used for coffee.

After seeing the rest of the compound and learning all about who lives where when, and why, we moved on to the rice paddies where we found more beauty.

It was a bit scary, because we were walking between the paddies on narrow elevations of grass which sometimes became quite muddy. Falling would have been very dramatic!

On we went. Everywhere we met children, and they all waved and said "hello". In fact, virtually everyone we met waved and said "hello."

We went to a giant banyan tree. The yellow and white cloths say the tree is holy and symbolize harmony.

The kids by that big, holy, harmonious tree were very silly.

Our last stop was at the shop of a carver of doors. He makes exquisite, intricately carved doors, all by hand, of course. He was assisted by his son.

Our adventure ended with a wonderful lunch. By now we were all best friends, including this young man and his mom from Australia.

We reviewed where we had gone. And then to our hotels.

Perhaps you're wondering how much all this cost: transport to the start spot and back to our hotel, wonderful guide (plus another young man bringing up the rear of our bike caravan), breakfast, lunch, coffee, bikes. The answer is $35 each. That's all. Amazing.

Time for bed.