The Long Awaited Conclusion

As I said before, I tried to finish telling the story about our trip to Indonesia last spring when we stayed with families and traveled all over Java and Bali with our teachers. I'm going to try and finish it now, so bear with me for jumping around in time.

As I mentioned before, the family we stayed with in Bali was incredibly generous and nice. But in some ways, that was the problem too. We began to feel a little smothered because they didn't want to let us take a taxi anywhere, and because we were in the center of the island we couldn't walk anywhere. On the day I was recovering from my durian experience, Hillary and I decided that we needed a change of address for our last few days in Bali. We decided we wanted to be by the beach, so we looked in our guide book and found a couple cheap hotels that we could stay in for $30 a night. But before we moved over to the cheap hotel, we decided to call Stan, who we'd met in Bandung, because he said that he was a part owner in a nice hotel in Bali and could get us a good rate.

When I called Stan, he said he'd see what he could do to find us a cheap room. He called me back and told me that he didn't want us to stay at the hotel because they'd have to charge us. However, a house that he owned with a friend was vacant. He gave me the number of the driver who he keeps employed year round and told me that he was happy to help. I told him he was far too generous, but I knew we'd insult him if we turned his offer down. We told the family we'd been staying with of our plans. They were a little hurt I think, but they insisted on driving us over to our new digs...

The place was incredible! It had five huge bedrooms, three set on one side of the pool and two set on the other. Each bedroom had an outdoor bathroom with either a big bathtub or a nice shower. The pool had a waterfall cascading into it and there were two huge covered patios with couches. On one of the patios, there was a full size kitchen and dining table. There were also two beautiful birds in cages that repeated Indonesian phrases!

We spent four days at the place, which was a short walk from the beach and several restaurants. There was also a salon across the street where you could get...... you guessed it, a massage for $5. It was definitely a nice place to spend our first anniversary.

On our last night there, the family we'd stayed with the first four days picked us up and took us to a chinese restaurant we'd eaten at previously with them. They gave us some very nice jewelry that they said they'd had specially made, as they own a jewelry shop. For me she had a bracelet with waves on it to commemorate my surfing experience. I think it represented the entire trip, because like a wave, there were peaks and troughs.

If you want to see other photos from the trip that didn't make it onto the blog, click here.