Love the outdoor shower!
We took a 26-kilometre bike ride through some of the local villages with a guide named Bagi from Banyan Tree Cycling Tours. First stop was breakfast overlooking a beautiful terraced rice field near Ubud. We had fresh watermelon juice and banana/pineapple pancakes. Bagi had several cyclists to ride along with our group. When we told him we were from Dallas, he shouted "Oh! Chuck Norris! Walker Texas Ranger!" hahaha It was great because we got to stop and learn about life in the villages. Most of the Balinese are rice farmers. The women do all the hard work and harvest the rice themselves, not the men! It is a brutally hot job. The rice takes 4 months to grow. When it turns from green to gold, the rice stalks are cut down, gathered into big bunches and whacked against a wooden board until all the grains of rice fall off. We watched the women working and they allowed us to do some rice-whacking ourselves. Those grains of rice can really fly! The stalks are then fed to the cows. Why they do not use modern machinery is beyond me.... Riding thru the villages we saw so many things I will never forget; kids shouting hello and waving to us, roosters in bamboo cages everywhere, women walking up and down the road carrying big baskets of food and flowers on their head, people making offerings at their temples, stalks of bamboo everywhere you look, scooters zipping past us and getting way too close for comfort, petrol sold on the side of the road in bottles of Absolut Vodka, and hundreds of dirty dogs everywhere! All Balinese families live in a compound together. When a woman marries, she goes to live in the compound with her husband's family. There is definitely a caste system and you must marry within your class. There may be up to 25 or 30 people living together in one compound. There are typically 5 separate buildings within a compound. They eat all their meals in a common area (they cook once per day), they have a temple area in each compound, a room where the eldest person sleeps and ceremonies are held, a room for the parents and children to sleep, and a store room which is their shop to sell things on the street. The one we stopped at had big beautiful gardens where they grow peppercorns, nutmeg, vanilla beans, cinamon, all kinds of spices which of course I bought some! Balinese women give birth at home. The babies are carried around and their feet are not allowed to touch the ground until 3 months of age, at which time a ceremony is performed and they are recognized as humans and not "gods" anymore. The Balinese are full of ceremonies! They have what they call a "tooth filing" ceremony when the child reaches 17 years of age. The canine teeth are filed flat which they say is painful. It has something to do with karma and recognizing that the child is an adult now and capable of recognizing the difference between right and wrong. They are "filing away" the spirits of jealousy, bitterness, etc. Of course there is a big wedding ceremony, and the biggest ceremony of all is the cremation ceremony. When a Balinese person dies, their body lies in the ceremonial room (where the eldest person sleeps!) for several days. Sometimes the bodies are buried for weeks, months, even years until the family can afford a proper cremation and the ashes are tossed into the ocean. Our bike ride ended at Bagi's home, where his wife and sister-in-law prepared lunch for us - rice, noodles, chicken, satay, fresh vegies, fish, and coconut treats.
These women work SO hard in the hot sun every day!
The basket at her feet contains an offering
Kasey and Megan under the "FOREIGNER" sign at the airport. We are getting used to standing in the lines designating us as the foreigners! :)
Megan, Kasey, Wes and Ryan at the villa
Here is the staff of the Villa Teresa. We loved Rosy, who would make us pitcher after pitcher of fresh squeezed orange juice and lime juice each day. She even made strawberry lime juice! :) They insisted on doing everything for us which we felt a little funny at first but quickly grew accustomed to! Fun while it lasted!
Beautiful sunset at Tanah Lot Temple, one of the most photographed places in all of Bali
Wes and Ryan with their boards
Trying to get a good Eskimo Joes photo at Tanah Lot
The local Balinese men wear what looks like tablecloths tied around their waist, and always the traditional head covering
Kasey and Megan getting a massage at our villa. We did massages, pedicures and a cream bath for my hair - cheap cheap! It was none too relaxing when I put my face in the "donut" for the massage and had a gecko jump out!
My dinner one night at the villa! I ordered fish, head and all! Usually after dinner we would play Uno or watch the pirated DVD's that the kids bought in town. Shelby and I loved lying in the pool chairs and watching the stars at night. :) Same stars we saw while in South Africa, Australia, and Lake Texoma back home. A real sense of awe seeing the same thing in so many different places!
Part of a temple in the local village
We witnessed this ceremonial wedding procession while on our bike ride
Out to dinner at the Beach House Restaurant on Echo Beach
The girls and I went shopping one day in Seminyak. Boy was it ever HOT!
Statue on the beach
Locals playing soccer at sunset. We usually had our Happy Hour at the villa and took a walk along the beach to watch the sun go down.
Local woman and child on the beach
The Balinese love soccer! They played for hours with a ratty old ball and used bamboo sticks to mark the goalposts.
Sunday is family day at the beach. There were literally hundreds of people in the water, especially the cold water where the river ran into the ocean. Most of them swam in their clothes. Check out the lady in red carrying food to sell on her head!
Wes and Ryan before tackling the waves. Some days at certain times the waves were so huge and so strong it would just knock them off their feet.
Another outdoor shower by the pool
Kasey and Megan in the swimming pool
One of hundreds of temples in Bali
Young girls are introduced to Balinese dancing at an early age
Close up of the offerings made daily
It's a full-time job for these women to make offerings, since they are used on a daily basis.
This is a common sight!
Beautiful terraced rice fields near Ubud
One of the most common sights in Bali is scooters. Almost everyone in Bali gets around on a scooter, sometimes entire families will ride on one scooter. We have seen scooters with people carrying 6 tires, huge water jugs, ladders, dad driving and holding infant with mom and other children hanging on, women texting on their mobile phones while their husbands drive the scooters, women sitting side saddle on the scooter because they wear long skirts, and they point their toes up so their sandals do not fall off! I have a book showing all kinds of crazy things that are carried on scooters, which is great, because they drive so darn fast I was unable to actually get good photos!
