Even though the work week is mostly comprised of Serena and I running errands and taking care of the kids, we get out on weekends for adventures when Riley is home from work. Both last weekend and this weekend we went to the Waikato River for a day of fun in the sun on the water!
I found a bead anklet.
This was Jo Jo's first time to the river, and it turned out to be so much fun! She was a bit hesitant at first, but soon enough she was coming to us in the water and letting us pass her back and forth and swim her around in circles. That was wonderful to experience with her!
Come here Jo Jo!
You did it!
Love this girl!
Joelle's leap of faith...
she eventually trusted us enough to pass her back and forth in the water.
Joelle loves Da Da!
Feeding the ducks with Jo Jo.
Whoa look at that throw, you can see the bread mid-air!
The Duck Destroyer
Poor chap was unsuccessful so don't take his name too seriously.
Jo Jo and I went on a walk together by the river and we found some more ducks to feed.
The Brave One.
Jo Jo's spa treatment.
Start with exfoliation...
...then move to Swedish Massage...
...the Big Finish - the back cracker.
She's available for hire. Will work for raisins.
Or for tacos, which we found out means crackers.
Random side note... the Golden Kiwi.
These babies are not tangy like their green cousin,
they are only grown here in New Zealand
and cost you $2 each!! I had to try one of course.
Serena, Caleb, and Jo
What was Caleb doing this whole time, you ask?
Sleeping and avoiding the sun of course!
What does he do when he's not sleeping?
He grunts.
More grunting.
He grunts like this all through the night even,
Serena is able to sleep through it after much practice.
Wow, it's been a crazy week so far. Serena and I are domestic baby slaves. It's amazing how ones schedule can be so uneventful and yet so completely jam-packed all at once. Caleb is 9 days old, and I haven't really had any time to make any posts till now. I'm actually sacrificing valuable nap time while Joelle is down for a nap just to write this short little thing!
I think Joelle has now nominated me Mommy #2, which is sweet, and helpful for Serena since she needs to give Caleb so much attention. Joelle wants attention too, and will often go to whoever is holding Caleb and whine to be picked up. Serena and I kept trading Caleb back and forth till we figured out Joelle just wanted whoever had him! Maybe a BIT of jealousy is surfacing. It's been kind of tough lately because Joelle's teething 4 big side teeth, is waking up every night in the middle of the night crying, and is very grumpy lately. I think it must be very painful so I feel a bit sorry for her, but man, I'm seeing her dark side too! Fortunately her dark side is not so bad, but with so much going on it can ware on you. So anyway, she's been very whiny the last few days so it's time for me whine at you now. SORRY! I'm still so glad to be here to help Serena, I'm just telling the story as I see it in each moment :)
Though I do fine with them for the most part, I'm not really a little kid person. I never know what to say to connect to them, and sometimes the whole 100% attention on them thing gets to me. Maybe it's not for me, I don't know, at least not for a while yet. I'm not interested in being that selfless or scheduled. Usually, Joelle is a suuuper good kid. I really like her, but even though I like her more than any little kid I've ever met I still don't know if I'd want one. I just want to sleep through the night! OK it's 1:30pm and I'm going to bed now.
My final days of Bali were an interesting switch-up. I took a bus down to Kuta for my last 3 days in Bali. It was very easy to do this since Ina, my landlady, had another room available there that I swapped to and kept my same rent, not to mention I was 10 minutes from the airport to fly out in 2 days. Kuta is more or less an Aussie haven/tourist trap. It's a beach area along the west coast in the south of Bali, right by the international airport.
The car ride to the bus station in Ubud.
This gives you an idea of the driving experience here in town,
there's huge tourist buses that block traffic on the tiny streets all the time.
The first day I was in Kuta I went around town and did some touristy things like shopping and checking out the beach areas. Shopping here is a mixed bag. It can be fun, but if you're anywhere off the main Kuta Square of high priced chain stores from Europe and the US, expect non-stop hassling by pushy street vendors. Thailand can be intense in this way sometimes, but it is no where near the omnipresent aggressiveness of the Kuta street vendor. If you even glance at or get in range of any of their stalls, you will be hassled non-stop until you leave, and after you leave to "Yes, please look", "Come in, miss", "More Sarong for you", "Good price", "Yes, this, this". "Sunglasses, sunglasses! No? Belt, Belt come look" Usually they are pointing out items you aren't even vaguely interested in that you saw at EVERY other stall you've walked by for the past 2 hours. A range of beautiful mass produced art to cheaply made nick-nacks that you wouldn't take for free if they begged you. And some do beg you. Even if I am interested in looking, I'm usually feel so pressured by the person literally following me within inches through their stall commenting on every single thing I glance at in a desperate attempt to get my business that I just want to leave. On top of that add the roaming street vendors and you feel like you can't escape.
People come to Kuta for holiday? More like: walk around in a poor area ritzed up (mostly by foreign companies) for the tourists, tape a huge money sign to your head and see how much fun you can have trying to see the city. Then add the onslaught of desperate vendors in contrast to the barrage of sun-burnt hung-over Aussies in Bintang shirts (the local beer) and you've got Kuta in a nutshell.
So I mostly enjoyed myself by eating exotic foods, one of my favorite past-times for travelling.
Young Coconut
Dragonfruit.
Avocado Chocolate Smoothie.
I had several of these throughout my trip, amazing!
That night, Ina and I went out to the main party strip, Legian Street. We checked out some of the biggest venues in the area, one of which was the Sky Garden Lounge, a 4 story high-rise club with different DJ's in each room and balcony views over the city. This was an OK scene, it seemed like it could be fun on certain nights, but my experience was somewhat tainted by what happened at the door. I got in free because I'm a tourist, but Ina had to pay. When I asked her why she had to pay she said that many local hookers come here. So any local has to pay to get in, I'm guessing this is to deter locals from coming and maybe get some profit off "business ventures". This kind of made me sad and uncomfortable for Ina. She seemed OK with it though, so we still had a good time together.
My next couple of days I met my other housemates from Belgium and France, who also introduced me to more friends from Belgium that they met in Bali. I really enjoyed our time together because they were such friendly, inviting people. Matt and Jessica (who I don't have any pictures of ><) and Romie (spelling?...) were my housemates. They introduced me to a sweet couple, Erika and Paulus. Many of them have been in Bali for 3 months, and some have come back year after year. It was a great experience travelling around town with them and seeing some spots that they had already done all the hard work of finding :) I love it when you're in a group of people where 4 languages are being spoken all the time. Regularly going and spoken by almost all of them were Dutch, English, French, and Indonesian. Romie and I were able to speak Spanish together as well, so that was a great time!
They took me to a Japanese restaurant and afterwards we went to Cocoon to lounge back on the big outdoor couches and have some drinks by the pool with a view of the evening ocean. It was so warm out even at night.
Poolside at Cocoon,
a swanky outdoor lounge with a pool that I definitely used on my last night in Bali!
My swimming buddy, Erika.
Wonderful Belgians! My housemate Romie, and Paulus and Erika.
On my last day in Bali I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and lounge on the beach. I took a taxi from Kuta just north to Legian beach which only cost about 13,000 Rp ($1.45). It's not really worth it to try to relax on Kuta beach, more relaxing is Legian because it has less people on the beach patrolling around badgering you to buy things. After some pro bargaining I rented this lounge chair and umbrella for 20,000 Rp ($2.25) for the whole day, and had food, beer, and ice cream continually rolling in.
Here's my spot on the beach in Legian.
:)
Interesting side note, this is "whitening cream" that you can buy in the stores here.
Tan isn't beautiful here, white is. I wonder why it is that people think what they don't naturally have is what they need to be beautiful? White people want to get tan, tan people want to get white. Straight hair, curly hair... you get the point.
After my day in the sun I ran into my Belgian friends again while walking back down the beach. After a few more drinks and a tasty dinner, all too quickly it was time to hop in the taxi and be off to the airport. Here's some interesting things from the airport:
Though Bali is Hindu, Indonesia is primarily Muslim.
With obligatory prayer 5x a day, this seems necessary.
Ha! This was on the toilet in the airport.
People need to know these things.
Thank you Bali, for a beautiful time full of beautiful people and experiences. I'm so fortunate to have been able to do Thailand and Bali on my own, I've learned so much about myself through challenges and amazing adventures. I'm capable of more than I knew, and am excited to bring what I've gained into my life. Once again, I'm off to a new adventure: New Zealand, where I get to help bring my new nephew Caleb into this life. I'm excited to help my sister Serena with this transition, and am thankful for this time with Riley and my girl Jo Jo too!
The Legong and Barong are dances performed regularly in Bali. Each tells a story! For some reason, the Legong ended up being my dance of Bali. Through various unintentional twists of fate, I ended up seeing the Legong 4 times. One was very special though: When I saw a temple ceremony happening in the evening, I stopped my bike to sneak a peak. I was very hesitant about intruding. I was spotted by a Balinese woman in ceremonial dress who came over to me and wordlessly grabbed my hand and walked me into the temple, brought me water, sat me down and sat with me while we watched the Legong being performed in ceremony for the Balinese, not tourists. I cherish this memory. The following videos are not from that event, but they very closely resemble what I saw there.
Welcome Dance in the Legong.
The dancers throw flowers on you in blessing.
Here's some short clips of each of the 5 typlical dances of Legong.
There are more, but these are the most commonly danced.
Clips from The Barong
This dance reminds me of a Balinese comedy version of "Where the Wild Things Are".
I had some time to check out some of the beautiful temples and sacred places in Ubud. The places are full of artwork and design dating from hundreds to over a thousand years ago. Here's some of my favorites. These first ones are shot at Ubud Palace:
The palace entryway.
Palaces here are not what the westerner would expect. They are still single level, because a king could never walk on the bottom floor of his palace if someone was walking above him. Generally they are the same as other temples and houses just grander, with more space and garden.
Goa Gajah
The next temple area that I went to was Goa Gajah. This means "Elephant Cave" There are no elephants here, it was just called that because they use the word "elephant" to describe large grand things, such as the huge river that runs right through the temple grounds. Here's some cool shots of this gorgeous place.
The entryway to Elephant Cave.
Inside the cave are carvings and altars.
The cave doesn't go very deep, about 20 meters,
what's really impressive about Goa Gajah is the grounds.
In real life these views are directly side by side like so... gorgeous.
This reminds me of Thailand. The Thai wrap their big trees with cloth to keep the spirits in, I don't know why the Balinese do it, other than this tree is so amazing it must be honored on temple grounds.
Rooooots!
There's big pieces of old ruined rock carvings all over the grounds.
These carvings are also scattered around the grounds.
This is a ceremonial outfit that was in part gifted to me by my neighbor Ibu,
She is such a sweet, genuine, kindhearted woman.
Ceremonial decorations woven all from plants.
This is just one style, they are very creative and have lots of variety.
