Bali, Indonesia

So Jeremy and I took a trip with our good friends Tyson and Angela to:

Bali, Indonesia

This is us arriving at the airport.

Here is a recap of our trip in the random order that Blogger has decided to upload them in. Bali was amazing and awesome all at the same time. I recommend it!

We went to a monkey preserve. They sell bananas for you to feed the monkeys but you are supposed to hide them and pull them out one by one so that you don't get bombarded with hungry, greedy monkeys. We missed that memo and the people who work there had to come and tell Jeremy and Tyson not to touch the monkeys even though they were crawling all over them. 

I am not an animal fan, generally, so I stayed away from the monkeys. However, that monkey not only photo bombed us but jumped on me uninvited!

 Scooters are the Balinese people's main source of transportation. You see them everywhere. Babies, children, teenagers and adults are all strapped to them and they just weave through traffic like it is no big thang. We rode in an SUV with a hired driver to remain safe. We would have killed ourselves on the scooters. They know what they are doing, they surround cars and weave in and out of the road, and traffic and steering wheels are on the wrong side. If we had tried to drive ourselves...whew. We would definitely be dumb Americans. We sat at a stop light at a large intersection discussing which road our driver was going to turn; we were all wrong.

 This is one of those countries where they carry large loads on their heads. It was unbelievable. There were plenty of people with bigger loads than this.

 Fruit Stand with real fruit grown there. This sounds normal to anyone who doesn't live on Guam. We  seem to only grow coconuts on Guam so it is rare to see a fruit stand.

 This is Jeremy's buddy. (It is a monkey at the Elephant preserve). He reached his hand out and held Jer's hand for a second but then he turned his back to him as if he wanted a back scratch. They could be twins.

 We rode this elephant. He almost took us swimming, which is part of the show but I was not thrilled. See comment about animals above.

We left our villa at 2AM, drove across the island to arrive at the base of the Batur Volcano at 4AM. We hiked for 2 hours straight up, I swear, but it was so that we could watch the sun rise! Beautiful! Check it out!

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Mount_Batur?o=2802&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com

It was chilly at the summit and we had hot chocolate - which was probably Hersheys syrup in water. Then we hard boiled our breakfast (eggs) in the volcanic smoke. (It is still an active volcano.)

The rice paddies. They were beautiful!

                                      This is the beach behind our Villa. Black sand. Cool.

 They had temples everywhere. Buddhist and Hindu. They are obsessed with their temples and with making offerings to their Gods.  In fact, the workers at our villa made offerings everyday on our behalf. Offerings are these:

Banana leaves with various flowers in them. If they are on the ground, they are to keep the evil spirits away. If they are not on the ground they are an offering to the good gods. A typical family makes 25-50 offerings a day. They also put objects on themselves to show you that they are praying. I was trying to be courteous to a server at a restaurant in telling her that she had rice on her forehead. She informed me that she was praying. I thought she was messing with me but then I saw rice on other people too. I am going to use that the next time I get food on myself. :) 

 These were legit chicks. I don't know how they make them colored like that. We were told that they hatch colored.

OK, I think that this was a mans bathroom but I want to add that bathrooms in the world are not all created equal. Many bathrooms we went in did not have toilet paper and instead had a hose. Like, a bidet or washlet but not that sophisticated. What would happen is that a person, namely me, would go into a bathroom, would sit down, realize that there was no TP anywhere - not even a dispenser - and notice a hose, like the kind that you would use on your kitchen sink. This method does not come naturally and I usually left a mess of sprayed water everywhere. There were also toilets that had a bucket of water sitting next to them. There was scooper inside it. You apparently are supposed to "flush" by using water from the bucket to fill the toilet. I learned this after a few toilets where I walked away without flushing. This is a long paragraph but seriously, you don't even know the value of the simple toilet sitting in your bathroom right now. If you go somewhere that is third world country, ask for a "Western Toilet". You're welcome.

Our driver took us to his store (his wife runs a small open air shop). We met his wife and daughters, I am now friends with one of them on Facebook but can't understand the language that she posts things in. Our driver, Made (pronounced Maddie), also let the boys ride their scooters. 

 We did a cooking class one day and met these awesome people. There were 3 girls "on holiday" from Germany and Hungary, I think. One was taking a 2 week break. Another a month long break and the other was going to travel for 6 months, go back to Germany and have her job waiting for her! Crazy! We really enjoyed cooking with them. This was one of my favorite experiences.

This was Tyson's favorite activity: finding hot, spicy foods cooked by street vendors. This one was his favorite and cost 5000 Rupiah which was 40 cents USD. Food was so cheap there. I think one meal that we had was $7 USD total for 4 of us.

 Jeremy and Tyson went and swam with the Dolphins. This is hard to see from this camera. We weren't allowed to take pictures.

 Delicious. This was meat on a stick grilled right in front of us and the next picture is grilled corn on the cob. So yummy.

These are fish - eating the dead skin off your feet and legs. I did not particularly enjoy this because I don't like fish touching me. It felt like they were vibrating on my feet but I wouldn't look at them because I knew I would freak out. This takes time to get used to.

This was our view from the villa. We had a 3 bedroom villa with an outdoor eating area, which we ate at everyday. We had this pool all to ourselves and the Indian Ocean right out the back gate.

That is the link to Bali Diamond Estates to get a better idea of what the place looked like. The furniture was different and we were in the right part of the duplex but they were all pretty much the same. Our outside chairs were blue, instead of red, obviously.

https://www.flipkey.com/gianyar-villa-rentals/p687332/

 These are our good friends, Tyson and Angela Jensen from Tremonton, Utah. We partied at all hours of the day and night with them. This was a really amazing trip!

When we got home we gave our kids their gifts. These are traditional temple attire that the kids wear in Bali. They go to their temples daily and wear these clothes. We made our kids put them on. Cody really hated his.

 But they got over it.

 And the thing I think I missed the most (sorry kids) was cereal and milk. They do not have that there. I had a big bowl at 3pm when we got home. Jeremy said, "That looks so good." I am grateful to be an American!