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.

The evil that is durian

In Southeast Asia there's a famous fruit named durian. It is a large spiky fruit about the size of a football and it has a terrible smell. We had learned about it in language class, and our teacher always encouraged us to try it when we moved to Indonesia.

The afternoon after we had tried our luck at surfing, Hillary was taken off to a spa by our hostess and Hunter and I returned to their house. While we were hanging out, they offered us some fruit and they asked if we wanted to try durian. We decided that our teacher would appreciate it and it'd be a good cultural experience if we gave it a try. It tastes as bad as it smells!

We only ate a few small pieces of it, but we felt like we'd given it a fair chance. Later, Hillary came back from the spa with a few beers our hostess had bought for us. She gave one to me, which I drank before we went down for dinner. At dinner, Hillary also was talked into trying durian.

Later that night, all hell broke loose in my body. I won't get into the details, but I was incredibly sick. We assumed it must have been a bad beer or something like that the next day because no one else was sick and we'd all eaten the same food. I spent the day recovering. Two days later, Hillary went through the same thing!

We've come to the conclusion that the durian is to blame. We've read all sorts of accounts of how durian mixes with alcohol to cause a chemical reaction that makes you really sick. I got sick that first night because I had a beer after eating durian, but Hillary had her beer an hour or so before she ate durian. The night she got sick, we had gone out to dinner and had a few drinks, so it was the first alcohol she'd had since eating durian. Bottom line. It's an evil fruit!

Massage gone wrong

You've read so far that massages vary by style depending on where you are in the country and how westernized the place is. Our host in Bali, Pak Wayan, called the guy who he normally has do his massages for us. The massage was great, but he used some sort of tool, dragging it down my back. Hunter had the same experience. It didn't hurt at all, and I didn't even know there was something wrong until Hillary saw my back. She thought something was seriously wrong at first, but it was similar to a blood blister and went away the next day.

Surfing, a relaxing sport

That's not either of us in the photo...but it could have been. That is, if we could stand up on the board and ride a wave. Surfing is really hard.

After dropping the rest of our party at the airport to head back to the states, Hunter, Hillary and I went with the daughter of the family we were staying with to Kuta beach, a popular tourist beach. There were Australians everywhere trying to learn to surf. Most of them were just as bad as us.

We rented surfboards from some random guys for 10 bucks for 3 hours. It was a good time - except for the general soreness of fighting the waves while holding a 6 foot long buoy and Hillary getting smacked in the head by my surfboard. There was also the worrisome moment when one of the fins on Hillary's board broke by slamming into her, but luckily it was cheap to fix and didn't set us back too much extra.



We'll try it again someday, but next time, it will probably be a good idea to take some lessons...

Welcome to Bali

There are some places that everyone has heard of, regardless of their ability to locate them on a map. I would say that Bali is one of those.

It's a pretty amazing place that's full of great culture, kind and friendly people, and some beautiful beaches and mountains. Everywhere you turn in Bali, you see Hindu statues. They're in front of every business and house and they always have offerings to the god laid out before them.

We were met at the airport by a couple who were the parents of an Indonesian college student who our teacher knew through his church here in DC. The kid had contacted his parents, and being the generous people that they are, they brought us back to their place where we stayed in their really nice guest rooms free of charge. The only bad part about this was that the house was close to the middle of the island, which isn't near any beaches or restaurants.

The next day, they took us to one of the many large temples on Bali. There was a mix of tourists and natives who come to pray and everyone must wear a sarong to enter. When you leave the temple, Balinese and tourists are forced to walk a seemingly never-ending gauntlet of shops with storekeepers trying to sell you souvenirs. The tourism industry was really devastated after the bombings, so anytime they see a Westerner, they try very hard to get your business.