Bali - Part 3 - School and mountains

Tuesday and back to Bukti today to visit the school in Putu's home village. The schools in Bali are private and parents must pay for their kids to get educated. Having spoken to the Villa gardener it's not that cheap but  most parents (as parents do), will find the money somehow as they realise how important it is. As we have littl'uns we went to the primary part of the school where the kids are aged between four and six years old. As soon as you arrive (for those of us with families) you get a very familiar feel to the place. Toys in the playground, bright colours and cartoons adorning the walls and cheeky kids everywhere. Well, not everywhere. The school was slightly emptier than usual owing to the fact that the village was celebrating Black Moon Day where the majority of the village stops to make flower offerings and gather in the temples to pay devotions to nature's energies. Those children that were in school were dressed in their traditional robes topped off with the 'peci' or hat. Also in evidence was the traditional Batik design (which is actually named after the technique used to make it), so famous in Indonesia.

I really like Batik, but I don't think it's something I could get away with wearing. It just doesn't suit me. I've seen many westerners that have tried it and not many pull it off!
A little reserved at first, it didn't take the kids long to come out of themselves. The girls gathering round D (how does he always do that?), while he ignored them coz he had scissors.
You'll notice that in my pictures on Flickr they are mainly of the boys being cheeky. I thought the girls were being reserved through some sort of cultural reason but the teacher told me that their 'gang' wasn't together today whereas the boys 'gang' was which gave them the confidence to show off. Same the world over, eh? The children sang some songs. A lot of which were exactly the same as songs they sing in the UK and Singapore (only with Indonesian words of course!). D even recognised some of them and thought about joining in. But not quite. He decided afterwards that he'd like to go to school, on his own. Which was nice, because he will be soon (nursery is on the agenda and then proper school in September)!
Back in the car and off to see a waterfall in the mountains. Was pleasantly surprised by the great quality of the roads a we ventured up the narrow tacks into the hills. One village was particularly large. It turned out that these were the well off guys in the area as the nature of the weather allowed them to harvest different types of fruit the whole year round. Just enough rain and just enough sun to grow most fruit, vegetables, spices and cocoa throughout the year. Parking up at a friend of Putu's house, we embark on the long, hot and humid walk to the 'falls. Putu immediately takes control of the buggy with Z in it and ploughs on up the hills with the aroma of the many clove trees hanging in the dense, humid air. The steep track through beautiful padi fields lead us up to the 'spice-man'.

This guy is about 1000m up the side of the mountain selling, amongst other things, refreshments for the weary tourist. And a very good trade he does too. As well as the refreshments he sells spices, lots of spices. And coffee beans. Notably the mongoose coffee bean. I won't go into detail but sufficed to say, Mongoose love to eat the coffee beans. They'll only eat the really good ones and they don't get digested so off course they come out the other end. This apparently starts of the fermentation process and gives it a 'particular' flavour. I'm sure it does, but not quite my cup of, er, tea. But it does sell very well and for quite a lot of money (surprisingly there aren't too many people practising mongoose poo coffee making), so he can't be wrong. What I wanted to know was who had discovered this process in the first place? He seemed unable to answer that question. D was quite fascinated by the mongoose though. Of course, we bought some spices, quite a lot of them. I think I probably paid over the odds, but hey, I'm gonna pay a whole lot more in Singapore and they aren't going to be freshly harvested from a Balinese mountainside! And then on to the waterfall itself. Spectacular certainly, and very tall. But on account of us not being able to get too close because of the kids and heat we didn't really see too much of it. As they say, sometimes it's the journey not the arrival and to be honest, really the revelation was the 'Poo Coffee'. I like finding things like that.

On the way back down I start to become aware of the amount of people who do actually live and work up here. The smell of fermenting cocoa beans and spices out in the sun greets us at almost every homestead we pass. The aroma is terrific and a world away from the busy land of Singapore. D is doing very well with walking up and down these tracks until half-way back he trips and sprawls over the track, bangs his knees and ends up on dad's shoulders. Can't say I blame him. It is very warm by now and the water is being drunk by the bottle. I have to say though that it would have been much more of a struggle without having been acclimatised first in Singapore. We met some Dutch tourists on the way looking very red and hot and needing a long sit down at the Spice Hut. Think they were slightly amazed at the way Z and D were going at it. Even with D on my shoulders we couldn't catch Putu who by now was off like a startled rabbit with Z in buggy. Great fun, with the most beautiful scenery and great weather. Not to mention seeing the biggest spider since our arrival. A good six inches across. What's not to like?

See more photos of our Bali trip on Flickr.

Cocoa beans fermenting in the sun

Hillside homstead