Advertisement
Published: July 31st 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hot springs near Lovina
"Hot" isn't the proper adjective. It's more like bath water that's cooled for a few minutes. Like all natural hot springs, it's supposed to bring about good health. Toby opted out once he saw babies sans diapers and small kids paddling about. Lovely place though. We flew from Thailand to Bali on June 11th and did some sightseeing and diving before finding a bungalow to rent in Ubud. Our place is small but comfy and chock full of Balinese style. It’s part of a family compound owned by an artist, his wife and two teen daughters. They are incredibly nice and bring us along to Balinese ceremonies in their neighborhood. Made Tanke, the wife, regularly gives us papayas and green, spiky sour sop fruit from her trees. As you might have guessed, the sour sop is a bit puckery but okay when mixed with other fruit and drenched in yogurt and muesli. Amazingly the rent is only $350 a month including utilities and whenever we leave they come by and clean the place for us. It’s like staying in a bed and breakfast for a little more than eleven bucks a day.
Toby’s volunteering at a dog rescue where he plays with puppies, walks older dogs, bathes away their ticks and fleas, and cleans their poop filled kennels. His thongs understandably started smelling like a pair of dead gophers so he bought a second pair for walking about - Balinese leisure wear. Toby gets all
happy when a fearful dog finally lets him pet them and soon wags its tail at his arrival each morning. Of course, the scared ones are the smart ones who don’t get eaten. Yeah, there are parts of Bali where they eat woofie. It’s quite a recurring theme in much of Asia. And considering the mangy condition of some of these Bali dogs I would think they’d prefer a less skin infested meal of rats and cockroaches.
I hang out on the patio all day drinking green tea in front of the computer. I’m writing a book about our travels which is pretty common among Bali expats. Chances of getting anything published are nil but it’s a fun and challenging process. I get an endorphin rush when I piece together some words in such a way that I even crack myself up. It should be a fun read for friends and family. I’m on chapter 3 now and learning just how much of an anti-social being I am. I can write for days never saying more than a hello to our landlords and chatting with Toby in the evenings yet I don’t miss talking. As a matter of fact,
Dragon bridge
He must be on the last lap of the race. ;-) I still have a hard time staying focused when Toby’s talking. I’m working on it but I still zone out on him once in a while. Luckily he gets to meet and chat with other volunteers during the day.
We occasionally go to Friday quiz night at the Fly Café and meet some interesting (or incredibly nerdy) people. Their chalk board has a great moniker, “Thank the gods its Flyday.” Speaking of gods, we went to a new building ceremony up the street where they had traditional dancing, gamelan music, food, and much hoo-ha around offerings of braided palm leaves, decorated coconuts, a whole roasted pig, and (wha!), a dead puppy. A little chocolate brown fur with the feet and head still attached was laid amongst all the other innocuous offerings. I tried to tell myself it was just sleeping but when a fly landed on its nose and a tiny pink tongue didn’t flick it away I gave up the pretense. I’ll spare you any pics with the poor pup. I don’t know what they did with the rest of the body. Gads, I hope it wasn’t in the lunch!
We met four Americans at the ceremony.
Entrance gate to Lovina
They really push the dolphin tours everywhere around here. One who lives in Bali told a tourist from San Jose that there was a shaman nearby who could cure his persistent headaches. We went along for the ride to see what they did and if it worked. The shaman placed a small, smoothly round wooden stick between the tourist’s toes. It didn’t look like it should cause any pain yet the patient groaned and clenched his teeth in sheer agony. Skeptical Lisa tried to see if the shaman was smashing his toes around the stick or jabbing the point into his skin but I couldn’t detect any hocus pocus. But then that’s what a good magician is supposed to do - sleight of hand. The shaman had him snort some astringent liquid up his nose (ouch!), drink some vile tasting orange liquid and rub oil all over his skin. After two rounds of this he went back to placing the stick between the toes and the patient had hardly any pain. We walked away and after a few minutes the guy said that his double vision induced by a stroke five years ago was gone and the headache had disappeared. If anything, not having the ever present headache was
Temple relief
Must have been carved after the Dutch arrived. A bicycle with flowers for a wheel. Hm, the Dutch must have brought magic mushrooms with them. now unsettling. The veins on his legs started popping up like a relief map which suggests he was given something to dilate his arteries. We never saw him again so I don’t know if the cure lasted. Regardless, trippy skippy!
Everyone keeps asking us when we’re coming home and we don’t really know. I was shooting for October but Toby just read that the unemployment rate in LA is expected to hit 13% soon which sounds rather dismal. In September I’m going to contact a financial consulting firm that offered me a job in 2006 and see if they have much work available. If not, we’ll likely stay here until June of 2010 when the lease on our house is up and hopefully the job market has picked up. It’s awfully cheap to live here so it wouldn’t make much sense financially to go home to pricey CA when we’re jobless bums. We’re only half way bums now that we have a semi-permanent address and non-paying jobs.
We don’t have much to post about these days as we’re busy weekdays and only go sightseeing on weekends with our rented motorbike which, BTW, only costs $1.50 a day.
sculptured palms
There must be a religious reason for all the effort. Driving along the road you will occasionally see coconut palms with frawns trimmed up like these. Don’t be surprised if another blog notice doesn’t hit your in bin for a several weeks. I’m pretty slow about getting around to it as it is. Nothing seems urgent here in Bali. And the dadburn travelblog.org site is often down when I’m trying to use it in the afternoon which translates into the wee hours of the American morning when the IT dweebs are doing maintenance and upgrades. Can’t really complain though since it’s free.
Please do email us!!! We get around to the internet every few days and would love to hear from you. I may be anti-social around strangers but I miss all of our peeps!
Ciao!
P.S. If you need to escape the rat race, please come to Bali and meet up with us. We do have one extra small bed for anybody traveling solo who doesn’t mind listening to us snore. My mom is visiting from Sep 3 - Sep 17 but otherwise we’re free.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.053s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0306s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Dave Clark
non-member comment
Hey now!
Who are you calling an "IT Dweeb"?! Your little bungalo looks awesome! Looks like a very relaxing place to me!