A Natural Progression

Usually my helper, Ibu Sri, buys a bag of dried minnows at the market, chops them up, mixes them with rice, then feeds that to my cats throughout the week. Nobody can say my cats don’t eat enough carbs. They are very used to this diet. This is the diet of most Indonesian house pets – dogs and cats alike. Even Indonesian animals live on rice! In fact, if I ever try to feed them anything else, like a saucer of milk or some chicken scraps – things American cats would love, they usually turn up their noses and look at me with slightly distrustful eyes, like they don’t believe they should actually be eating that stuff.  Bags of dry food can be found here, but only at very specific places, and usually at a relatively high cost.

Before I went to Bali, I was in a local grocery store and happened to find boxes of dry cat food for only $2 (cheapcheap)! And since our helper was on vacation and my neighbor would be taking care of the cats, I thought I’d simplify her life and buy a box. I had no idea if the cats would eat it or not, but my neighbor is definitely not the type who would mess with stinky fish if she could avoid it, so I figured that dry food was better than no food. And for the record, I bought the fish flavor. Anyways, when I got home from the Bali trip, the box of cat food was left inside my front door with very little of it used. I assumed the cats didn’t like it, and I stuck the box by the back door.

Later that night, my cats came inside and were sleeping on a chair in my bedroom. Then they spotted the box of food. The following ensued.

Then they both cried for some food, so I poured them a bowl. Pretty sure it was gone in seconds…  Finally! I found a food my cats really love!

Traditions

Tradition number 1. No matter who else comes to Bali with us, Yohanes, Peco and I will always be together for New Years. We are the only three people who have been there every year for the past four years in a row.

New Years 2009

New Years 2010 (We never actually took a picture of the 3 of us together that year, but I promise I took the following picture of the two of them, so that is proof that we were all three there!)

New Years 2011

New Years 2012

Tradition number 2. The first two years I had this great tradition of taking a picture of the first sunrise of the year. It worked well for those two years, then it all went to heck.

First sunrise of 2009 (taken from Sanur)

First sunrise of 2010 (taken from Gili Air over Lombok)

First sunrise of 2011. This was the year that we saw – not exaggerating – TWO HOURS of sunlight during our 10 days on Bali. I set an alarm for 4:30 on New Years Day, woke up, looked out the window, saw that it was pouring down rain, and went back to sleep.

First sunrise of 2012. I already broke the tradition last year, so why bother? We were on the west side of the island anyways, so it wouldn’t have made for a good sunrise photo.

Tradition number 3 (kind of). I like finding Happy New Year signs and taking pictures of them. I’ve done this a couple times, so I think I’ll make it my new tradition. I like it because I don’t have to wake up at 4:30 to accomplish it.

Any good suggestions for other New Years traditions out there??

Bali – Leg 3 – Sanur

After two days in Jimbaran, we moved back into civilization a little bit, and found ourselves in Sanur. The rest of our group had come there the day before (after spending one night in Denpasar), so even though we were staying in two different hotels, we were all together again most of the time. It was cloudy and rainy both days we spent in Sanur, so I don’t have many pictures. On our last full day there, I did go down to the beach in the drizzle and haze and snap some pictures with my point and shoot. Enjoy!

The sand down by the water on this beach was pretty cool. Instead of being very fine grains of sand, it was more like little balls of rock and slivers of shells and coral!

Bali – Leg 2 – Jimbaran

On New Year’s Eve, six of us made our way to a location new to all of us – Balangan Beach, just outside the town of Jimbaran. It was way out in the boondocks, which worked out well, as we were trying to avoid the mad drunk tourist crowd which usually swarms the beaches of Bali for New Year’s Eve. On our way there though, we stopped at Hard Rock Café for our token ridiculously expensive meal.

Why, yes… Yes I did spend $40 for nachos, a burger, and a bottled water. But I tell you what, that’s the best meal I ate all year, and it’s the best I’ll eat until the next New Years in Bali. I justify the cost just this one time a year. It’s so worth it. Red meat. And bacon. And cheese. And real tortilla chips. And oh my goodness I need to stop talking about it or I’m going to go crazy.

So back to Jimbaran. Speaking of back to Jimbaran, all six of us crammed into one taxi for the 30 minute ride back after dinner because it was the only transport we could find on New Year’s Eve on Bali. That alone was an adventure!! So anyways, the six of us stayed in this awesome open air bungalow that I didn’t get many good pictures of.

This place also had an open air bathroom, but no hot water. That ended up working out well because it was basically blazing hot the entire time we were there.

After we got back from dinner at Hard Rock, we decided to hike down to the beach. It was a bit of a walk in the pitch black darkness, and as we discovered when Sam stepped in something warm and slippery, the field we had to walk through is actually a pasture for local cattle known as sapi Bali!

 

It was fairly quiet down at the beach until a little closer to midnight when some drunk Australians thought it would be a great idea to come down and shoot off fireworks. They didn’t really seem to be paying attention to what direction the fireworks were pointing, and they ended up shooting toward us, at buildings, straight into the water, and sometimes even up into the sky! That last one seemed to take quite a bit of concentration and effort though… So I took a picture to capture their momentous feat of brilliance!

We don’t actually know when the new year happened. There is no ball that drops in Indonesia. And at that beach, there is barely electricity anyways! There is a small village located along this beach, but the electricity is pretty sketchy, so power kept flickering on and off, and nobody really had any clue what the real time was. I think we heard about 8 different countdowns from different village houses and groups of people on the beach. About 10 minutes after the last one, we decided to really confuse people, and we started our own countdown. Besides that one moment of immaturity, the rest of our ringing-in-the-new-year time was spent talking about what God has done for us this past year and what He has been teaching us, hopes and goals for the new year, and just encouraging one another.

Besides awesome friends and uplifting conversation, the best part of the night was being able to lay back in the sand, listen to the waves crash against the shore, and watch all the airplanes take off from nearby Denpasar and fly overhead. So peaceful. Until we realized that it felt like we were in an episode of LOST.

On New Year’s Day, we got to visit with our friends who used to live in Salatiga but have since moved to Papua. They are expecting a baby any day now and are working with a midwife here on Bali, so they flew in for the occasion. Obviously, I wore my Sunday best for lunch with them. Actually, our bungalow was too small to unpack anything in, and I was having trouble finding clean-ish smelling clothes in my duffel bag.

This was outside the Italian restaurant where I made my New Year’s post from my Blackberry. It was super fun to see them and to get to spend time with the kids. We spent almost all day with them around town and at their small rental house.

The next morning was all about the beach though. It was about a 7 minute hike from the bungalow, through the cow pasture, down a cliff, and through a tiny village.

But it was a beautiful hike, and the beach was definitely worth breaking a sweat to get there.

HARDLY ANY TOURISTS!!

One of the best parts of this day was watching an old man walk his (wait for it…) MONKEY down the beach. Like with a leash and everything… Then the guy decided to go swimming, so the monkey simply crawled onto the guy’s head! WHAT?!

Do you see the airplane that just took off? Do you?!

Do you see it now?? If not, you should probably get that checked out.

Happy New Year!!

Bali – Leg 1 – Ubud

Our group this year was 10 people total, but we didn’t all stay in the same place at the same time. Though we kind of fluctuated a lot, we all started out together in Ubud for our first leg. Well, I guess technically those of us who rode the bus for 26 stinkin hours (as opposed to flying) ended up coming a day and a half later than the rest… Won’t be doing that again if I can help it. But anyways, Ubud is a traditional place for us to stay each Christmas. This was our third year in a row to stay at the T-Houses, located just outside of town. Basically, we love it here. Ubud has some of the best food and culture of anywhere on Bali. And if you recognize the name, it might be because it’s where Elizabeth Gilbert spent time for her whole Eat, Pray, Love deal. If you watch the movie (not a strong recommendation), you’ll see how beautiful Ubud is! In fact, Ketut Liyer, the traditional medicine man she worked with, lives just around the corner from where we stay! The only downfall is that there is no coast/beach in Ubud. This is nice around the holidays though, as it tends to keep the tourist levels down. This was our rest and relax leg. The guys did lots of yoga with an instructor they found in town. The girls spent lots of time hanging out by the pool and getting to know our neighbors from around the world who were staying in the other guest houses.  And trying our best to figure out if our neighbor was a topless woman or a very gay man in a speedo. Conclusion: he’s French!

(The house all the girls stayed in)

(One of three bedrooms in the girls house)

(My favorite part of the T-Houses – outdoor bathrooms!!)

(Note – always check to make sure nobody is harvesting coconuts before you strip down!)

Every night we got dressed up and went out to dinner together. We had some awesome Thai, Mexican, organic, Italian, and Cuban food. That last one proved interesting. In the Cuban restaurant, I was sitting with my back to the door, and halfway through the meal, a friend across the table from me casually said, “That’s Tyra Banks”. I turned around and looked, and sure enough! – Tyra Banks had just walked in the door and was making her way to a table across the room! (We googled it later and found out that she is there for some kind of spiritual retreat after her breakup with her boyfriend, someone-or-rather.) Other than one creepy stalker-ish bald guy with a camera, I was pretty impressed by how low key her being there was. (Question: How come I can’t go to the grocery store without getting my picture taken 25 times and comments, proposals, and wolf whistles thrown at me, but Tyra Banks can walk into a restaurant and nobody bats an eye?!) As we were eating, a salsa band started playing, and turns out our waiter, Karma (the name he was born with – we asked), was also a salsa dance instructor! He got everyone out on the dance floor, and we ended up staying there a good 4 or 5 hours, dancing the night away and working off all that rice and beans!

Sam, our Mexican friend (though you wouldn’t know it to look at him), left a note on the wall after we were finished. It was fun to go around and read all the other things people had written over the years! And it was nice to find that even though I can’t speak Spanish anymore, I can still read it pretty well!

 

(A sweaty Sam after hours of salsa dancing in dress clothes)

(Peco, me, and Yohanes – we have spent every New Years together in Bali for the last 4 years)

One other big thing we did in Ubud was go see a Kecak dance.

(The program for the dance, which tells the story of the Ramayana - Indonesian Romeo and Juliet, Rama and Shinta)

In case you need more information, you can read the following excerpt from the program which we all found amusing. Please pardon its French.

On Java, when they perform the Ramayana, it is accompanied by traditional Indonesian instruments called gamelan. The Balinese version is accompanied solely by voices. The 100 men *sit* in three concentric circles and kind of beatbox the rhythm of the story while the dancers act it out. There is also one guy who sings/tells parts of the story in what we think was a Balinese tribal language. There were some other minor differences in the story which were interesting to spot. A big part of why the traditional story varies between the two islands might be that Java is predominantly Muslim while Bali is almost entirely Hindu.

We had to go to a temple at night in the pitch black to see the performance. I have a few pictures, but not a whole lot.

(First step – lighting the candles in the center of the “stage”)

(The singers come out and form their concentric circles centered around the fire)

(Eventually, the singers sit down, and the dancers come out, dancing the story. The one dancer you can see above is Shinta (Juliet))

(A part of the show where there were no dancers. All the sounds you hear are voices – there are no musical instruments used in this performance. Pretty cool, no?)

And I leave you with a few more pictures of the beauty of Ubud.

Vacation from Vacation

Home and semi well rested. Pictures to come.