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Published: March 18th 2014
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The group decided today to go somewhere not on the beach but towards the mountains and we came across an activity where we can bike 25 KM's which is around 14-16 miles through Ubud's rice paddy fields. We left the house around 10AM and unfortunately, traffic was so bad through the island that it took about 3 hours + lunch to get to the destination.
I like to take a moment and point out why EVERY DAMN BUG in this country is huge. I saw centipedes 6 inches and now this. Look at the spider...it was about 7 inches in length and chilling there. (see picture)
We pick up our tour guide which was in charge of the bike tour and we agree to give him a ride anyway to the destination. As we are driving through small towns and rice fields, we come across a police checkpoint where we ran into our first problem of the day.
The police tells our tour guide that our drivers did not have international passports and we were to exit the vehicles to be questioned. (no pictures at this point). Our tour guide gets out and walks with the
police officers as we were all holding our breaths. About 3 minutes later he comes back and tells us that he had bribed the police officers into letting us go.
Lesson learned. Cash is king.
Our tour guide, "DARMA" bribed the officers with about 15$ USD or so we were told. As we ascended all the way to the top of the hill, we finall arrive in at the destination where our bikes were waiting for us. DARMA tells us he will be leading the bike tour with him and that the 15 mile bike ride was to take about 2-3 hours depending on the stops. As we desceded down the hill, our first stop was by a bush and Darma begins to tell us that the mountain is home to many living organisms. He tells to look up at this particular bush and there it was.
An army of spiders chilling on this bush.
As the girls shrieked in terror, Darma goes to the bush and plucks a spider our of the webs and the local kids come running by. (see picture)
THE KID ENDS UP PUTTING THE SPIDER ON THIS FACE. 'MURICA!
As we left the spider colonies, Darma wanted us to stop by a "compound" which is comprised of many families living together. (see pictures) These compounds are something you see out of the movies where these are basically developing countries. Everything is made by the husband and wife from selling baskets, cutting wood, building additional homes...etc. (see pictures)
I introduced Ritz Crackers and Pocky Sticks to these group of children. It truly was amazing seeing their eyes light up as these children have never seen these types of foods before. See the world if you can and embrace it. (see picture) I have racked up good karma for my entire life.
We continued on and all of the sudden out of nowhere, rain began to pour down as we were leaving the compound...thin rain, fat rain, sideways rain, you name it.
Darma and his friend gave us ponchos but I decided to show them what AMERICA was made of and decided to NOT wear a poncho...the correct way. (see picture with my friend)
Our last leg of
the Tour de Bali-rice field was through the backwoods and rice fields. (see pictures) These were hundreds and hundreds of acres of rice fields and it felt somewhat different being in this country. Knowing that it was so peaceful and quiet was something to take in.
Plus, I was just happy that no one thought I was running away from working at the rice fields.
After arriving at our destination, we said goodbye to Darma and continued home where we decided to order in dinner. Which was pizza.Yup, you read that right, in Bali, we decided to order delivery pizza.
Exhausted. And we have a 11AM flight to Bangkok...update you all in 12 hours!
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