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

Bali - Part 1 of many!

After a very long night (and not in a good way), in an over priced hotel in Sanur we were picked up in the morning outside the hotel by a chap called Putu. Putu was to be our Villa manager, organiser, driver and tour guide for our stay in Bali. It was New Years Eve and after a sleepless night of crying kids and firecrackers (the latter causing the former), we were heading north, away from the south of the island which had been our brief, tourist haven home for the night. As we headed out of the suburbs and towards the country Bali started to come alive. Carved Hindu Gods started appearing on every street corner. Then soon enough along every road until there seemed to be little room for anything to fit, including the houses behind them. Carved from dense grey stone these physical incarnations of the Hindu Gods are one of the mainstays of the community's income and are big business with a thriving import/export business going on locally. Onwards into the mountains with our assured driver. A constant diatribe of tidbits coming from him as he amiably answers our questions (which I'm sure he has heard a thousand times before). Putu is a local, local to the villa that we'll be staying in that is, not just to the island. I am suddenly even happier with this arrangement as we start to climb into the mountains that we see shrouded in mist ahead. The potholes become more pronounced (by which I mean bigger and deeper), and more frequent. Now, I expect that we might find a kamikaze approach by the driver to be the norm, but on the contrary, Putu's speed was rarely above 40kph and he did his utmost to avoid these holes in the road. Soon we settled into happy a rhythm, trundling along the roads at a very sedate pace. Even the kids seemed to enjoy the ride. Just as well because, by the time we reached the summit of the mountain (about 3000m), the visibility was down to about five metres in places and the temperature had dropped to about 10C (from around 30C). People up here were obviously used to it wandering around in jumpers and hats. The first time I had seen that since moving to Singapore. From the top we could see the base of the nearest volcano to our villa. However, due to the inclement weather that was all we could see (much to my disappointment). And so we headed down the other side towards the north coast and our home for the next nine days. Well, the trip down was.... interesting..... no wait..... treacherous, yes that's what I meant! We at this point were in full praise of Putu's local knowledge, ability and lack of need for speed. It was steep, narrow and as you can imagine in a tropical country the roads were somewhat wet, well, river like really. This prompted a lot of shouts of "hold tight" from the kids who thought this was a great wheeze. T slightly less I suspected as she obeyed the kids' commands herself! As the rain began to ease a bit we started to come across the local people starting to celebrate New Year (it was about 4:30 at this point), massive speakers set up with a heavy baseline pumping through them and alcoholic beverages well underway. Putu pointed out that the rain had in fact probably worked in our favour as most of these guys would probably have been out driving on the mountain if the weather had been good. I watched one of the party goers trying to just stagger to his neighbours house and wondered if maybe we'd had a lucky escape. The Gods had been smiling on us after all.

Finally, after three and a half hours of travel, we arrived at the fabled villa. We are greeted by our staff members for the week (yes, I said staff members). Our cook (and as we were to find, cleaner, washer and part-time child-minder), Made pronounced Maday. Our gardener/pool cleaner Wayan and our very nice security guard Kadek. In Hindi tradition we are presented with garlands of flowers round our necks. The kids dion't want to know. They are far too interested in getting out of the car and running hell-for-leather in to their new house. And what a place! Absolutely enormous and really way too big for us but what can one do? D immediately finds a hosepipe in the garden and that's him done for the  next hour, day, week given half a chance. The rest of the family meanwhile took a turn around the grounds and then inspected the chambers. Yes, I was starting to feel like the landed gentry. Then the kids reminded me that we weren't by promptly demanding this that and the other as soon enough it was like we'd been there for ages. After grand plans for eating Beef Rendang to celebrate New Year, we were so late that it turned into Chicken and rice instead. However, due to Made's cooking this was of course delicious. About half an hour before we were going to put the kids to bed the rain started. And the thunder. And the lightning. And the Lightning! Wow, big, BIG sky filling lightning. The villa was practically on the beach and the lightning was lighting up what looked like the entire ocean between us and the next landfall, Borneo. The waves are crashing agaisnt the breakwater by this point and it is loud. Much louder than anything we'd experienced in Singapore. I love it! Unsurprisingly, the kids are a little scared but soon come round to the fact that even the minor blackouts (in the villa, not from New Year imbibing), we are experiencing are not that bad and they go to bed with no problems. Bless them. The bedroom D is staying in (along with me, the idea of him stumbling into the pool in the middle of the night is quite scary),  is partially open to the elements and yet for all the racket of weather outside he doesn't bat an eyelid. Remarkable. T and I celebrate New Year with a vodka and coke. T turns in for the night and I watch the storm outside in awe.
I think we're going to be happy here, I thought to myself, Bintang in hand.