Sun, Sea and Sand

Today we go to the beach. Finally.

"You haven't been to the beach yet?" says, well, basically anyone, but on this occasion our host, when he takes us there one evening to watch the sunset. 

"What have you been doing?" Asks his girlfriend, just about managing to keep the incredulity from her voice.

We launch into a small tirade of 'things we have been doing', realising in the process that we have done quite a lot in Bali. It's just it has been green trees and farmland rather than bikinis and sun screen.

And now, with two days to go before we leave Bali for Australia, we have taken ourselves off for a day at the beach. We are in Seminyak, not really having been able to bring ourselves to go to the dreaded and infamous Kuta ("not Bali" say the Balinese). Seminyak is the posh end of tourism for Bali, meaning the sane beach but less populated, more eye watering prices and designer shops and a proliferation of people swanning about with perfect bodies, perfect tans and perfectly expensive bikinis. You don't sunbathe here. You promenade sophisticatedly up and down the shoreline. It seems.

We are common as much of course, so display our rather less pricely bodies on some sun loungers. And stay there. Or try to.

The fact is, it's a beach. It has an amazing body of water, salty and deep and filled with creatures we can't see, or even begin to imagine. It has, this one especially, being surf central, huge waves to remind us rather spectacularly that the water has a very strong mind of its own. It has hot yellow sand, clear foamy tides and sun. 

I love the beach - or more specifically I love the sea. I love it in winter or summer (in fact in winter more so). I even love it in England, where the sea is peppered with litter and child wee, the sand with fag ends and lolly sticks, and the temperature is enough to freeze that one toe you may have dared to put into the water. (I normally ignore this and swim anyway).

However I just don't have patience with the beach. I like a swim and a bit of a nap in the sun. But I am restless quickly if what is on offer is day after day of sunbathing, sun lotion slathering and turning of one self over and over like roasted animal on a spit. 

Hence the green pastures, mountains and farmland.

Of course I do like to acquire that elusive thing, a tan, so I tend to attempt to dutifully smear and squint and doze and turn. But I am distracted by an ice cream, the possibility of having an ice cream, somebody else's ice cream, or M saying he wants an ice cream. Or I fall asleep. And wake up half red and half white like a particularly dedicated football fan. 

So I don't last long sitting on my bed, even with the spectacular wave show, before I toddle off to buy a bag (tradition dictates that I always break a bag just before leaving a country) and just maybe - an ice cream.

Some time passes. I return with a bag but without an ice cream, we both leap into the sea and enjoy the mild thrill of being swept off our feet by it, before reluctantly returning to guard our wallets, and setting off to eat copious amounts of curry in one of the more reasonably priced restaurants. (It is hard to eat Indonesian in Seminyak, perhaps, like Kuta, it isn't Bali).

It's fun. But it's a beach. I think I even prefer a British beach with it's edge of danger, lacking as it does that sense of over privilege and decadence. There's something gritty and determined about an English beach. As though we should all be congratulated on or fortitude in being there. And it's my own country. I don't feel like an over fed over sexed visitor who has forgotten to check the currency of her welcome. 

So there you go. British beaches. Less beautiful. More home.

Remind me to visit one in winter. I want to peer at a raging ocean from beneath my scarf and drink hot chocolate afterwards out of a polystyrene mug.

Forgot What Did

We are back in our wood cabin. We do silly little administrative duties like dropping off our laundry, banking, confirming flight plans and hotels for when we move to Australia on Tuesday. We begin to reply to a myriad of emails. I lose myself with Neville the Novel. We pick up a top I have ordered. We book coaches and trains between Melbourne and Sydney. We eat.

Nothing much else happens. 

Is it OK to say just that?

Green Sky Thinking

We send our way rather sadly back from the mountains, via a number of stunning things. The first of these is the Ulun Danu temple, a 'water temple' which regulates the flow of water into the rice fields for all of Bali. The temple is beautiful. Even more beautiful is the concept.  The rice fields are split into different groups, each of which have a slightly different calendar. They each plant their rice (the point when it needs the most water) just after their rice planting ceremony, spaced out through the year so that everyone is not planting at the same time thus maximising the supply of water and the chances of contamination or water shortage. Faith placed right at the heart of a community and influencing work as well as play. It's beautiful though as I have noted before, it's neither quaint nor without its dark side.  

From there we stop at Jatiluwih, the most famous of the stepped rice fields, which has UNESCO status.  It's beautiful. Stepped down the mountain in curved, swirling rows of lush green, punctuated here and there by a small barn in which a solitary golden brown cow munches happily. It's stunning. And, as we walk among the fields, its silent too. We can't hear the jeeps and motorbikes conveying tourists up at the top of the rice fields. We can hear the munching of the cow, birds, crickets and every now and then the rustle of the rice in what little breeze there is.

Our final stop is the Green School. This was such an inspiring visit that I am, perversely, struggling to know what to say about it. We had seen a lecture by the founder on the TEK lecture series, and from that we expected a school which was focused on evo friendly activities. We expected eco toilets, composting schemes, petitions to stop the use of plastic bags, and amazing, intricate architectural structures made from bamboo. We expected classrooms made of bamboo with open sides to allow a natural breeze and no air conditioning. We expected 'green' food in the visitors cafe. All of this we got. And more. There was a clear water stream running through it, and a natural swiming pool created out of that. There was a water fuelled turbine from which, eventually, there would be enough power to sustain the whole school. There was a bamboo bridge across the lake on which one hundred people could sit and have dinner. There were whiteboards made of old car windscreens, a mud pool, and a small bracelet to welcome us, made of the stone from a fruit tree on site. And the bamboo building themselves were beautiful, intricate, stunning pieces of art in themselves, with bright concepts behind them. In one, known as the 'heart of school' where all the children eat together, there is a 'bamboo forest' made of hanging bamboo poles. 

But what we weren't expecting, was the ingenuity of the way the pupils are taught. Our guide, the school's director explains to us.

"Children all learn in a different way," he says, "and the current school system is failing so many of them."

I rather agree. All over the world we are teaching our children to pass exams. Or to learn by rote. The good teachers resist this, try to approach it on a more holistic basis, but the system is more and more immovable. When my mother was at school she learned how to dress make. By the time I was in school I made three small things and spent the rest of the time writing about how I would do it, what I would do, how I could have done it better. My sister made even less. 

At Green School the teaching is done in 'Thematic Units' (actually a surprisingly boring name for a school that refused to use the name 'administrative centre'. If the children are learning about vikings, they make viking clothes and weapons, calculate how far they travelled, eat Viking food and so on. It's not a new idea, in fact, rather smugly, I , when starting a teacher training course which I finished, though never inflicted myself on any children as a teacher, had a similar idea to blur the subjects and teach maths , hygiene, science etc. through the running of a cafe for the parents project. 

"I was a visionary!" I say to M.

Maybe. The trouble was I was a terrible teacher. I couldn't control my class long enough to do anything other than basic. They ran rings, squares, oblongs and triangles round me. And it turns out it takes more than good ideas to be a teacher. It seems you have to be able to implement them.

The Green School does. But it goes much further. The middle school wanted to make a 'fairy house', so the teacher abandoned the schedule and they did it. The lower school built a bridge. They learned the physics of it through trial and error. They wrote about it afterwards. We are given a presentation by a group of middle school pupils of varying ages, about their plan to get the use of plastic bags banned in Bali. They talk with a self assurance I never had as a child and don't remember any of my classmates having either. They talk about 'our founder' by which they mean a couple of other pupils a few years ago. They have a board, on which one of the pupils we are speaking to, sits, where they make decisions about the direction they want to take this in. They have had audiences with people quite high up in government.

I am deeply impressed by the way that the children are. We need, perhaps more than ever, as our world changes, as our technology changes and we struggle to match our lifestyles to it, as our economy changes, a fresh thinking generation, capable of considering inventive solutions outside of the box. And yes that is a cliché. But with increasing government demands on otherwise bright, imaginative teachers, and school administration moving closer and closer to a businesslike model, it is a cliché we are living. Can we develop enough schools, allow enough leeway for creativity in teachers to produce a generation of problem solvers and forge the changes we need?

Food, Glorious Food

We spend the day walking through beautiful countryside, having begun the day eating papaya freshly picked by our mountains host for us as we walked through his plantation! Here everyone has a plantation. A plot of land in a strip down the mountainside, stepped into the slope with papaya and coffee trees, fruit and herbs. And probably a wild dog or two, just passing through.

We walk. And we talk. And today's subject is food.

M and I just cannot quite get our heads round each other when it comes to food.

I can always eat more, even quite shortly after a large meal, which amazes and rather disgusts him.

I am at least vaguely peckish most of the time and not, would you credit it, only at mealtimes. M is dumbfounded by this, I am dumbfounded by the apparently iron qualities of his stomach, which appears to admit food only if 1) it is mealtime or 2) it is good food and it's being offered for free.

I am perfectly capable of eating, no, of actually, salivatingly, really wanting, a packet of crisps. He is bewildered as to why I want this when, clearly, it is going to be bad for me, and possibly unsatisfying. Why do I not just eat a piece of fruit, or a salad? I am utterly stumped as to how he can possibly even ask that question.

But he, in turn, asks, perfectly logically, why it is that so often I make a decision to eat some food which I know will defeat my current attempt to be thin and beautiful, with such little thought? He is happy, he assures me, with the shape of my body, but if I am so unimpressed by it, why don't I stick more doggedly to my various diet plans? Wouldn't that make me happier than eating a flavorless bag of corn chips and a chocolate bar in quick succession?

I tell him that Kate Moss said that nothing tastes better than thin feels, but that Jennifer Lawrence pointed out that lots of things taste better than thin feels. Burgers, for example. Chocolate. Chips.

There is a pause.

"I didn't think you read those kind if magazines" says M, even more confused.

I don't. I don't even know how I know that. And I am aware that I sound like a cliché.

The fact is, there are cliches upon cliches in respect of women and their relationship with food. I don't believe I am the first woman to continually break her diet, to refer to certain foods as 'naughty' and then go on to eat them with apparently, even greater gusto, to feel grumpy after doing so, to medicate the grumpiness with further food....etc etc. I don't think I am the first woman to overfill her plate, or to buy three chocolate bars when one would do, then eat them all to get rid of them so I can't eat them tomorrow. And I don't believe I am the first woman to reach for a nice comforting slab of junk food at the first signs of the going getting even vaguely tough, to use food as a reward, a celebration, a comforter or a punishment.

Insane? Yes, absolutely certifiable. Completely illogical. Deeply disturbed.

But it really isn't just the women. I know men who struggle with their weight, I know men who have intolerances to certain types of junk good but still eat them and go on to suffer the result. I know men who start new 'regimes' which they can't follow, and who fill their plate gravity defyingly high at buffets, and feel sick afterwards. I have worked with high flying men who are perfectly capable of stopping a high intensity board meeting to demand more chocolate biscuits, or who in fact can cause a near riot immediately following a high pressure business encounter and ahead of going back to tackle the resultant urgent workloads - because the lunch provided was not of the correct quantity or quality.

We all do it. Food is a distraction, a softener, a social olive branch, a breath in our hectic schedules, a symbol of release. In fact, in our opulent western society we are very rarely genuinely hungry when we eat. And so it is hardly ever, simply fuel.

Which is shameful, when you think about it. But the shamefulness is rather more in respect of the fact that others are starving and we do little about it than it is about the actual food consumption itself. I appreciate that gluttony is considered wrong in isolation of any societal inequality, but I have tried diets before in which, for every bit of unnecessary junk I consumed, I had to donate twice the cost of it to a relevant charity. I consumed the junk and gave glady. And I felt good about it.

Possibly there was something flawed in the system.

 But there is still a perception that gluttony is wrong. It's just I only notice it applied to women. If I go out with people I don't know and its a carvery or buffet, when we come back to the table there are plenty of people whose plates are piled high. But the men, plates oozing gravy over the side of their three Yorkshire puddings, don't get any scrutiny.

"Yorkshire pudding AND mashed potato?!" Someone will say, peering at my food, "K? Really? Have you got quite enough there?"

And I find myself laughing a little hollowly as I feel my cheeks colour and I wish, fervently, that I was either a man or the kind of woman who takes bird sized portions and likes it. The food becomes just a little less enjoyable, even if the scrutiny ends there (which often it doesn't ('wow! That went fast K! Where did you stash it all?!')) and I find myself eating fast and trying to rearrange things on my plate so it doesn't look so much. While the men trawl through theirs, order dessert and are either ignored or congratulated. People still dish up larger portions for the boys at the table, instinctively, regardless of their sedentary professions or their weight.

Now before I get all women's lib about this, may I point out that greed is not something I am condoning here. I am mindful of the episode in the Capitol of    Hunger Games, in which the guests drink a potion to make them sick in order to eat more while everyone else is starving. Greed is off putting and certainly not right when you happen to be doing nothing about other's urgent lack. And may I also point out that yes, I am aware that men do, technically need to take on more calories, on average, than women.

But is some of this strange attitude to eating not arising out of this very stricture? If women did not perceive food as something which they are not supposed to like much, and if men did not perceive it as some kind of muscle test, might not both sexes have a healthier attitude to it? Might we get closer to seeing it as a pleasurable but necessary fuel for our bodies? If we didn't demonize chocolate would we all be less crazed about getting it? Something that is 'naughty' is immediately tempting. I'm sorry, but it is. We're all children really.

I went through a phase once of being a little obsessed with a vending machine at work. Eventually the only way I could successfully curb it was by standing in front of it and literally saying to myself,

"Go on then. Have one. Have a Mars Bar. It's perfectly allowable. In fact you probably should. It will taste sweet and stodgy and the chocolate on top will probably flake as you bite it. You'll feel a tiny bit sick afterwards so you should probably get crisps too. To take that sweet taste away. Get them now while you're here. Saves another trip...hey where are you going?"

Because surprise surprise it just isn't that compelling when it isn't a transgression. Gradually the idea of the Mars Bar would shrink back to its natural size. It would take on its actual natural attributes. And I would come to a conclusion close to what I think goes through M's mind - that it just isn't that worth it.

Except M doesn't have to spend half an hour discussing it with himself so that he has to stay later to finish his work.

(And yes I did have to avoid the people whose desks were close to the vendor. I don't know what they thought I was doing.)

Our discussion rolled round to its natural conclusion, which was that I would probably want crisps less if M didn't disapprove, women would be less obsessed with chocolate if there wasn't so much focus on their bodies and the things they put into them, that the same goes for men, that M is just especially ruled by his will power and sense of logic and that we are both sick of talking about it.

And a little bit peckish.

Searching for Paradise

Today we have booked a tour which includes a guide to take us on a trek through the rain forest and around the two lakes, Lake Buyan and Lake Tamblingan.  This also includes passage across Lake Tamblingan in a dug out canoe and then a three course lunch at the restaurant which organises all this, say at the top of the mountain, with a view over the lake. What could be better? Food and nature. Our twin passions.

We set off. Our guide takes us down paths in the rain forest so steep and overgrown that there are point when there is literally not ground beneath you feet. It is magical. Above us the sunlight is almost shut out by the debsiy of the forest, but manages to filterits way through in patches. There are leaves and vines and trees half eaten away by the parasitical embrace of other trees, there are strange red bulbs which signify wild ginger, non edible by humans, and there are a myriad of other worldly plants, flowers and fruits.

"Don't touch a leaf that looks like that," warns our guide, pointing to a perfectly innocent looking long narrow leaf, directly after I have been grabbing at armfuls of grassy undergrowth to steady me as I slither and trip my way down the step paths, "will slice your hand open."

Ah. OK. Good to know. I stop clutching at grasses.

"Are there many animals in this forest?" asks M amid the ensuing carnage that is me trying to get down the path on two feet as opposed to my head.

"Yes" replies our guide, "there are porcupines and ant eaters. And wild pig. And snakes. And sometimes monkeys. But is very hard to see them."

Indeed we don't see any of these. And over time it becomes clear that the real threat in this forest is not the animals, but the plants.

"Do not touch this tree" warns our guide, "you will itch for a week."

"Do not touch this. Is poisonous." He says of a leaf that looks to me exactly like every other leaf in the forest.

"This!" He says, a few steps onward, "do not touch. Will hurt skin."

I stop touching anything in the forest, which is seeming alarmingly similiar to that island in the Life of Pi which is steadily eating itself and its occupants. Even so, by the end of the day, and as I sit writing this, I have a small red mark on the inside of my arm which has just recently stopped itching. I believe that a plant, somewhere in the forests managed a crafty little sting as I passed it. Thankfully I don't remember the guide saying anything about the plants being fatal, but I am monitoring its progress. If it gets worse or goes green or starts painting the inside of my arm with the faces of the people the plant ate for dinner yesterday, I will tell you.

The climb down through the forest has been fairly treacherous, especially in the light if recent monsoon rains and I am startled to learn that when our guide was a child he would walk this way every day to school. It was a two hour walk. In certain seasons, he tells us, it was especially dangerous, given the strong winds and mud slides which can afflict Bali.

"But you weren't scared?" I say, thinking of the child's ability to simply take such terrors in its stride.

He looks at me askance,

"Yes!" He says, "of course I was afraid!"

After more scrambling and some stops because I am trying in vain to capture the rather terrible beauty if the trees growing on other trees, the carcass of the old, smothered tree preserved and entwined with the roots of the interloper, using a phone camera, we arrive at the foot of the mountain and the shore of the lake.

The water is like a mirror of glass it's so still and, in the distance, slowly crossing it, we can see the tiny shape of a dug out canoe, being paddled to meet us. Rising upon either side are the lush green vegetal mountainsides, a wispy haze of cloud winding leisurely around the top. When we get into the canoe, literally a couple of hollowed out tree trunks attached by three planks laid at intervals across them to act as seats and as bridge to the far side, we are each given a paddle and begin the slow and immensely peaceful journey across the lake. Bali has been called a paradise by so many people before us and we have been a little baffled at times, given the noise and air pollution and the incongruity of the raging traffic. But now, here, moving unhurriedly across the lake, turned emerald green by the landscape around it, towards the tiny village huddled at the foot of the mountain just at the corner of it, I think that yes, this is it. This is paradise. I begin to daydream about living here, writing my novel at the side of the lake. I imagine my parents coming to visit me, greeting them in my canoe and proceeding to row them, casually across the water.

"Yes this is it," I would say, airily, as though I had personally invented it, "this is where I live."

The daydream, lovely as it was, fades a little and gives way to reality. We climb out of the canoe and walk through the little village. It's picturesque because of its setting and its diminutive size, but the rusted corragated iron roofs and crumbling walls speak not just of something better viewed from afar, but of poverty and hard work. Perhaps they would say that to own a motorbike, as opposed to a boat, would be paradise. To live the way I do, to work sitting down, might they say that was paradise? That's an open question. I dont know. They might not. But it's all very well looking at something which for you is a beautiful novelty, and assuming life would be wonderful if you lived like that all your life. Or even just for a year.

"We thought it was so beautiful. But they were starving." That documentary plagues me to this day.

Even so, as we resume our walking through the forest back up now, towards the top of the mountain huddled over the village, I cannot help but consider the reasons why people were/are so convinced this is paradise. Smiling, friendly Balinese people, children waving hello to you, hens pecking at your feet, roosters crowing, bright green forests and lush vegetation, still green lakes, colourful birds, coconut trees and fruit and coffee plantations, staggered rice fields and beautiful ceremonial arts and spirituality, not to mention the food or the brilliance of the coast line....

My thoughts are interrupted by an insistant animal noise that, at first, I assume is a monkey. And then we grow closer. It's coming from a little nest of puppies. One is crying continually, the others nestling together and apparently sleeping.

"Wow,' I say happily, carefully resisting my urge to reach down for them, in case the mother felt threatened, "I expect the mother dog has gone hunting."

"No." says our guide, uncharacteristically soulful, "these have been left here."

"They've been left? But..."

I  half just being slow to catch on and half desperate not to hear the remainder, but our guides keeps explaining.

"These are all girls" he says, gently moving them with his stick to check. "People here not like girl dogs. So they put them here. Thet need Mother's milk. We cannot help them. They will die soon."

I cannot wrap my mind round this. But the basic facts are that if people own a dog and it has a brood of puppies, the girls tend to be taken away from the mother whilst still too young to eat solids - and abandoned for death. My mind goes crazy. Why? Why not let the dogs suckle and set them lose when they eat solids, so they have some fighting chance at making it through. Or abandon the mother with them, if you have that little regard for the animal, that you will kidnap her puppies. Or not have a dog in the first place? Or get it neutered? Or...

"In England," says M with some feeling, "a person who did that would be punished."

"Fined." I say angrily, "or jailed."

"Is there an animal rescue centre?" asks M.

The guide doesn't know of one.

In England the RSPCA would come and collect the puppies. And begin an investigation to bring the culprits to rights. 

And suddenly I realise that this is part of England's paradise. That this cannot happen without a fuss. That there are laws to protect animals who are defenseless against us, that there are shelters and charities and societal disapproval. Because Bali, in my mind, cannot be paradise. There can be no paradise where this behaviour is normal. No paradise can be lastingly built on suffering.

In a society in which animal sacrifice is not only normal but commonplace, could the puppies at least have been put out of their misery swiftly? If they were not allowable as appeasement to the gods surely at least there are people in the vicinity who are comfortable with killing an animal who could do something quicker and more painless than death by starvation? Perhaps, given there was nothing we could do, should M and I have done this to ease the puppy's suffering? But I doubt either of us could bring ourselves to it. If you care that little, people of Bali, at least finish the job. If you care that little - don't take ownership of a dog. The litter of a stray dog is not yours to kill. (Though neither, incidentally, is that of your own).

We tear ourselves away and I hope against all sanity that a stray dog with puppies might somehow adopt them. We eat our lunch with our view. 

I am not going to rant, (though I could) about animal cruelty and demonize the otherwise beautiful people of Bali. My point is that paradise is not in Bali. But neither is it necessarily in England. Or on Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia or Malaysia.

Paradise (at least the nearest you can get to in this world) has been split into little pieces and scattered over the earth. It is in the harmony of Penang, the vibrancy of Vietnam, in the courage of Cambodia (I'm not deliberately doing this alliteration thing - it just happened!), in the jungles of Langkawi and the beaches and relaxed attitudes of Thailand. It is in the tolerance of British culture, (bar UKIP), the healthy lifestyle of Sweden, the little pockets of natural beauty everywhere that have not yet been sullied in the grubby hands of humans.

You have to search for it and knit it into the weave of your life.

Simples

It is, purely and simply, just a really nice day.

I wake up, as is my wont nowadays, at the barely ripe hour of six am, throw some clothes on (including a Cardigan - a Cardigan!!) and take myself, my laptop and my battered old notebook out onto the small balcony outside our tiny, perfectly formed room. It's still largely dark, but the view out over the mountains is a beautiful cool haziness, gradually clearing as I write, until the dim lightbulb on the balcony grows quickly redundant, and the haze clears to reveal the lush green tree coveted mountains, the lake, still, like a mirror on the landscape, and tiny clustered villages nestled into the foliage, as if trying to keep warm. It's beautiful and it's blessedly cool and the air is sharp and fresh and tingly on my tongue as I breathe it - and it's really quite a place to be positioned to write in.

And you know Neville the novel and I have been getting on famously. Since I began this regime of early morning installments I have written better than I have in a while, with proper focus, and each morning, without fail, I have achieved what I wanted before the rest of the world around me wakes up. Even better, I have that elusive feeling which I get only when a novel is really in its element, where it resides in the back of my mind all day, like a happy mantra, the characters feel real and I am sure of their responses to every situation that I, the grand puppet master chose to put them in. And if that sounds a bit grand - it is. It is genuinely amazing but I would challenge any writer who says they feel it unfailingly. It happens for a while and you ride, gleefully on the wave of it. But you have to enjoy it, because there'll be a time later when you will have to make effort. Neville and I are like puppy dogs in love right now. But we'll be snarling bitches in time. And it'll take serious effort to force grudging reconciliation.

Right now though, we are flying with it, and I will, as I smugly close my laptop and prepare to join M and begin the day, gave a warmth in me from it until I go back to bed again this evening.

We repair to the Waring on the roof of the home stay to eat Burbur Ingin, black rice pudding in a sort of coconut soup, for breakfast, with Kopi Rempah, coffee with a stick of cinnamon. It is as delicious as it sounds. Then we set off, clad in walking boots and anoraks (worn like belts in preparation for potential monsoons) to walk, hike, trek or whatever you want to call it. We have never quite managed to work out the distinction between these terms. 

We head for the waterfalls, if which there are two, and as soon as we turn down the rather slippery path between the greenery and up and down along the side of the mountain, than we cease to hear the noise of any motorbikes (apart from a rude few which have the audacity/skill to ride past us on this track) and we begin to hear better the crickets. They sing loudly, so loudly it's like standing beneath the world's most powerful pylon, and the rhythm and pitch seems to differ as the day grows older, and as we move further up or down the mountainside. We can also hear birds, who seem to sing more lustily and clearly here, and, every so often, the odd croak from a toad or a frog hidden in the wet fronds of something. 

The first waterfall is the largest in the sense that it falls from the greatest height and is reached by a series of treacherously slippery steps cut into the mountainside. It has rained heavily overnight and there is a lit of bright moss on the surfaces, which looks lovely but which would quite like to kill us. Luckily we are intrepid enough to own such a thing as walking boots and they have properly grippy undersides. Even so, we still slide. When we encounter two other walkers in flip flops we are not sure whether we should honour them for their courage or think them crazy. What's nice though is that, being out of season,  we are not seeing anyone else in the way of tourists. It's just us, the massive butterflies the size of small birds, the greenery and the water.

And what water. When we get to the bottom we simply sit on a small bench in front, and stay there in silence, listening to the roar of it, feeling the spray on our faces and watching the sun on the very top, making the water there glow as it begins its thunderous descent.

I like that we don't talk about this. We don't verbally agree to sit for a while without speaking, we just do it. And when we do decide to leave and make our way back up, that too is tacit.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that M and I are at our best in natural surroundings. We hate traffic and become unreasonably cross about its existence, growing snappy even with each other when we walk by the side of a road on which the traffic is making louder noise than we are, and drowning us out. In the jungle, in the countryside, in the mountains it feels as though not only verbal communication is easier but that we can hear unspoken things better, can interpret gestures more, walk more in step. Hippy nonsense perhaps, but it does seem to be true. And even if you are too cynical to go that far, definitely nature makes us happy. We appreciate a mountain more readily than we appreciate a car or a house or even a city. 

On the way to the next waterfall, we come across a small Warung ams I persuade M to stop and refuel over coffee.

The coffee, in fact, is ginger tea, and the owner, a smiley Balinese named Made (so we instantly know of course that he is the second child in his family) beams at us as he tells us that he has mixed the western and Balinese tastes to make his very own version of Pisang Goreng (generally fried banana in batter, served with palm sugar syrup and shaved coconut). Obviously we don't have the heart not to try this creation, and are rewarded for this with a wide smoke and a plate of thinly sliced dried banana just to whet our appetites. The waitress is French. We get talking to her while Made gets busy in the kitchen with his creations. She is a teacher by trade, teaching languages, but she has a sabbatical and us travelling for as long as she 'can keep going' before either monetary or mental limitations kick in. 

"I want," she says, "to have time when I get home, to practice the things I have learned while I am away and use them in my normal life. I think it will take some time."

I know what she means. Seeing so many clever and wonderful things, getting new insights and growing new attitudes is great. Here. But what would make much more sense would be to take them back home. And realistically, that's difficult. For one thing you have to work at home. And you have a culture to deal with, and alternately embrace or resist the different parts of, which you no longer have the luxury of seeing yourself as being 'outside of'. It would be possible, certainly to return a little wiser and hold onto it, but it takes time and practice. And concerted effort. Most wisdoms tend to sit outside of the norm, they make you walk a different path or a different to everyone around you. And human beings are naturally social.

"Why are you crying?" asks the protagonist in a book I love, in which said protagonist us wandering through a landscape in which humanity is based on a pack of cards. He is talking to the Joker.

"Because," replies the Joker, who has much more grasp on reality than the rest of the pack and therefore does not follow the simple customs they so unquestioningly obey, "there us only one joker in the pack. Only me. I am the only one."

And he bursts into inconsolable tears.

It's hard to be the joker in the pack. It takes practice to live in a culture and practice what amounts to a motley collection of little 'wisdoms' accumulated from various 'elsewheres'. I enjoy talking to our French friend (avoiding yet another pseudonym!) and I enjoy the 'special bananas' we have ordered.

As we go to leave I, characteristically, emerge from the toilet to discover M deep in conversation with the owner of the restaurant, Made. (It is rather useful that so many people are called Made or Wayan here, removing the need for pseudonyms!) Made tells us he would like to invite us for dinner at his house, which is also where the French lady is staying.

"Money is OK," he tells us, "you just pay what you think. I not a restaurant am just liking new friends."

We agree. We continue our walk through more beautiful, peaceful greenery to the second waterfall which is also lovely, though the first, a more dramatic drop, remains our favourite.

Then we walk a bit more. We walk through small winding dirt roads cut into the side of the mountain, with houses dotted along the way, containing small waving children, feverishly barking dogs and scuttling hens, hustling their tiny chicks away from this danger. We are rewarded by a beautiful view through trees, just tiny peeks, as though a well kept secret, of the rice terraces Bali is so famous for, cut in steps down the hillside, to maximise the use of land and to allow for the ingenious irrigation systems which mean that one field can be flooded, which another is dry, harvesting rice from somewhere, all year round. These are not the UNESCO protected landscapes of Jatiluwih, they are practicalities of daily life for farmers here, that just happen to have the side effect of being beautiful. Palm trees growing here and there among them, seem to have realised this effect and be making every effort to optimise it.

We float back to our room, shower and contemplate the view until its time for our dinner date, when we are escorted into Made's family dwelling, sat down at a table laid just for us in the courtyard, and served a variety of amazing food.

It's a lovely end to a perfect day though, in keeping with the theme, the experience at Made's would have been even better if it had been simpler. The family eat separately on the floor in their kitchen, and, though everyone pops out now and then to have a chat with us, and our French friend comes to swap contact details with us, if they didn't mind we would have enjoyed just sitting down on the floor with them and having a chat. Perhaps that's selfish though. Would you want random tourists round your table each evening? Inspecting your normalities and making uninformed generalisations about  your 'simple lifestyle?

We roll into bed. What we have discovered is simple. More than anything on this trip we have realised how happy nature makes us. If we love a good waterfall, why do we not put more effort in England, to visiting its waterfalls, it's heritage sites? Some of the things we have travelled the world to see, do in fact exist on our doorstep. 

Conquering Fearfulness

Today we are travelling up into the mountains to Munduk, a small village quite high up. We are both very much looking forward to this. We hope it will offer beautiful lush green views of the rural Bali we like so much more than its rather more schizophrenic traffic raging counterpart. We hope there will be long, exhausting walks, friendly villagers and great food. We hope there will be no motorbikes. 

We are staying until Thursday and on the way up we have booked ourselves into the Treetop Adventure Bali, in the middle of the Botanical gardens in Bedugul, a village similar to Munduk, and, handily, on the way.

The idea behind the Treetop Adventure trails, other than because it sounds like fun, is for a wee spot of fear battling on my part. I am working up to something not unlike the strong and fearless version of myself I had originally thought I might, rather glibly 'discover' on this journey, only with a few more fears. No one, I tell myself, is absolutely fearless. It would just be good to make sure that the fear wasn't crippling.

The Treetops Adventure set up is rather similar to the Go Ape type assault courses in the trees which abound in National Trust parks in the UK. Only this has several trails, ranging in difficulty from orange (children only) to 'the black run' which requires, according to the brochure, mental courage and physical strength and is not advisable if you are of a weak disposition or build. 

And I of course am strong, like a warrior, in both. It is this black run we intend to work up to. We will skip the children's courses and the easy courses and will begin with blue, apparently 'where the thrills start'. And work up through red 'fairly challenging' and with a maximum height of 8 metres. To the black run, which has a maximum height if 20 metres and is insane.

We are fitted with our harnesses and walked through the initial safety training. Of course we will be harnessed and clipped the entire time so there is no real danger, only that which you perceive with your tiny, treacherous little mind.

"Never unclip both carebenas at once" warns our safety man.

"We won't" we promise.

Not likely. 

I take a sneak peak at the courses. Viewed from below without anyone else on them, they look rather tame. All the usual rope bridges and climbing nets, zip wires and various hanging versions of stepping stones. Though of course, being hung, they don't keep still.

We do the blue run. It's absolutely fine, though I note that this course, contrary to Go Ape, does genuinely require some physical strength and dexterity. My memories of Go Ape, though they may have been edited, don't include much muscle ache or sweat.

We move on to the red run. Just as a note, this prospect is not all terrifying for me. I am not being incredibly brave and strong willed by being here. I do actually quite enjoy these things. It's like a playground that has been scaled up for adults. It's exciting and it's fun. You get beautiful views of the forest below you, and the thrills are mostly the enjoyable with an edge kind, rather than the weeping and clutching and wailing to get down kind. I am expecting to be scared but not to be so scared I have to wimp out. I very rarely actually refuse to go through with something and absolute crippling fear tends to happen rather more if I am asked to jump off or climb down something without a reassuring nappy harness around me. If we go canyoning in New Zealand it will not be the actual abseil down the waterfall that will floor me, it will be the jumps and the mud slides. Even so, doing the black run will be enough to feel proud of, and a little creep nearer to that brave soul I would like to be.

The red run is also fine and I  getting quite cocky. I am less confident on the bridges which consist of various hanging steps,  stirrup's or logs, placed increasingly far apart and swinging, alarmingly with every step. But I am making it, and M and I are having a lot of fun. 

Until we come to the 'Tarzan Swing'. It's towards the end of the red run and is the first one we have come across. You hang onto a rope as though your life depends on it, and then you jump off a platform at the highest point of the trail. Into nothing. You are clipped into your harness, but your harness, this time, is attached not to a frame, or to anything stable, but to the rope itself. Everything depends on that rope. (Just as a note, the trail confirms to European safety standards, something I find reassuring, if only because I am a little more familiar with what those standards actually are.) 

As for the rope, as if jumping off holding onto it wasn't enough, you then swing with it into a vertical net. Think flies and spiders. I stand on my tiny platform, holding my rope and contemplating the drop. The net's not a problem - it's the getting off the platform. 

I stand there. The rope is heavy in my hands, dragging me downwards so that I am worried it will tug me off before I am clipped to it, which in reality would only allow me to fall just below the platform, given that currently I am clipped to that. Even so, the resultant dangling is not especially attractive either. I clip myself to the rope. M has already done this and he seemed to survive.

I jump.

The fall is not too long before the rope tautens and I start to swing, which is much preferable to falling, and which lulls me into a false sense of security. That, I think, was not so bad. As long as I don't have to do another one. When I hit the net I am too busy being smug and so I miss my chance to grab at it by a second.

"Grab the net!" shouts our safety man from below. It's a little late but as the rope swings away I attempt, valiantly, to hook a foot into the net and pull myself in that way. My foot catches. My shoe comes off.

Up at the side of the net, waiting for me, M gazes down with a mixture of amusement and sympathy as I dangle in mid air with one shoe off on the end of a rope. Our safety man turns and wades into the undergrowth to retrieve my shoe, probably rolling his eyes as he does so. In fact, the actual falling part being over, I am relaxed and amused at the idiocy of the situation. It is with good humour that I catch the shoe our safety man tosses up to me, and reattach it. It is with slightly less good humour that he, sighing wearily, begins to drag the rope back again, using a handy narrow rope attached to the end of it, so he can swing me into the net.

"On the black run," he says, once I am safely in the net and clambering my way across it to join M, "if you miss the net after the Tarzan jump you have to start again. I cannot swing you."

This information is the opposite of reassuring.

"There's another one" I whisper to M.

"Yes," he replies, "but you are a brave wife. Not one of those wimping out ones."

"Definitely not" I say firmly, with such force that he bursts out laughing, and nearly loses his footing.

"Concentrate" I say sternly.

And so we move on to the black run. It begins, terrifyingly, with a vertical climbing wall. And I have never been any good at doing anything which might require you to think whilst half way up a vertical rock face. 

"Can I go first?" I ask M, so that I won't have to contemplate this climb for too long from the ground.

"Of course" he says, and then, "if you put your right foot in that one and then your left hand into that hole just there..."

And so he continues. He talks me through every single move (it's quite a high wall) and I don't paralyse with fear, I just obey instructions. A little tremblingly I admit, but nevertheless I get there. Did I mention how fantastic my husband is?

I do the same for him from the top. Though he needs it rather less.

We move on. We are much, much higher now. Despite the harness, everything feels more perilous. And I am dreading the Tarzan swing.

It comes quite soon, and it is more terrifying by far than the first one. Because we are higher, the rope is even heavier, gravity acting on it so that I can't hold it and clip myself on at the same time. M, reassuring and, being a little scared himself, empathetic, holds the rope for me. I clip myself on.

"I don't know if I can do this" I say.

"You can do it" says M.

I squat so that a tiny portion of that fall is minimised, grip the rope and basically launch myself off before I can think any more about it.

The fall is greater than I imagined and I am so scared I think that for a moment, right at the bottom, I lose, if not consciousness, at least a bit of control. I let go of the rope in that moment, which of course doesn't matter because I am clipped to it, and I let out some sort of unearthly scream. 

But then, no sooner has that second of the panic passed than the rope has grown taunt, which feels much more safe and begins it's swing back upward. I concentrate all my efforts on grabbing that net.

I hit it. I grip on. Only then do I realise that I am making the unearthly screaming sound and also, that there are six very scared looking American girls looking fearfully up at me a long way below.

"Wooooatgh!" I shout at them, for some reason, "that was terrifying!"

I am half laughing half shaking and the girls, quite reasonably presume it's not safe to engage with this lunatic.

"Shoot" I hear one of them say, "she just JUMPED from there to there!" She says it with fear in her voice. These girls, I suspect, are about to get harnessed and try out some of these runs. I wonder if they will do this one.

I, in the meantime, have other problems. 

"Climb higher" shouts our safety man, "and hook your harness to the loops. I look up and see that at the top of the net there are a series of loops for my harness. Which means that in the meantime I may be holding the net, but if I fall I will be harnessed still to the rope. Which would mean another drop. I grit my teeth and start climbing. 

After I have got to the top and changed my clips (with some difficulty, the rope still being quite heavy), I have to climb across the net for quite a distance, unhooking and rehooking myself onto the loops as I go. It's proper physical work. My muscles are struggling and my knees are still wobbly from the fear of the fall, so that one of them shakes uncontrollably beneath me. This rather increases the pressure on my arms and I puff and wheeze and grunt my way across, the girls at the bottom still watching me worriedly. I doubt I am managing to make it look easy.

Finally I make it to the next, comparatively easy, bridge from the net to the next platform and M has made his way into the net, also screaming, though his scream, I note is rather less extreme.

"I like to think," he confides, "that mine was a manly, Tarzan like whoop. As opposed to a scream."

"Were you scared?" I ask

"Oh yes." he says.

I am elated and a little close to random tears of excitement, which are  rather unnecessary, and my knees are still shaking, but I am hugely pleased with myself. 

If I'm expecting it to be easy from here, I am wrong. 

I balance across what is essentially a tightrope, holding onto a dangling piece of rope, which I am clipped to. I wobble violently, knees still quivering and half way across I wobble so furiously, in a moment of blind panic that I nearly do fall. The logic, that I can't fall because if my harness doesn't register with me. Below, a picnicking Balinese family look up at me in terror. I don't think it registers with them either.

I make it.

Behind me M skips across like a little mountain goat come monkey, with only one wobble in the middle which is easily controlled.

I stand on a platform, unnecessarily hugging the tree around which it is built, for support, and stating in incomprehension at the next part of the course. It appears, unless my eyes deceive me, that it requires me to hop onto a series of thick vertical hanging wooden poles, each with a small horizontal foot rest at the bottom. They are, of course, some distance apart. We are 20 metres from ground level. 

"I can't do it. Nobody can do this." I say to M, "it's impossible".

"Yeah" he says thoughtfully, "it does seem to be a bit impossible."

We look around for our safety man, who is supposed to follow us around telling us how to do things when it isn't obvious. It seems he has lost interest. He's somewhere in the distance, nattering away to his mates. I consider losing my shoe again. In his direction. 

"I think you have to sort of stand and hold onto each pole" says M.

"I'm sorry." I say, "maybe it's time for this wife to get down now..."

I peer over the side of the platform, then think better of it.  There isn't really a way down. Unless I intend to do the Tarzan swing. Backwards.

"Come on wife" says M, "you're nearly there. And after this there is a nice zip line."

That is true. I like the zip lines. You get on, you lean back, you're in a harness, possibly you might get slammed into a tree but it seems unlikely that they've managed to get their calculations that wrong, and it probably signifies the end of the black run. Which I have enjoyed. But which will be even more enjoyable once it's over.

"Will you go first?" I ask.

M gingerly puts his feet on the first hanging log, wraps his arms round it, and steps off the platform.

"Oh" he says in surprise, "it's actually alright once you're on it."

And he's right. The challenge in this part is all in the mind. It's actually fine once you are there. Holding onto your first log. It's the first time, in fact, that you have quite been permitted to cling onto something with both arms. 

We make it across. And, despite a chilling moment when I glance across at a nearby tree and notice a long rope ladder which appears to reach up, higher than anything else, straight up onto a platform unconnected to anything ("what do you do? Just jump??!!"), it soon becomes clear that the zip line really does signify the end of the black run. In fact it is one with have done before at the end of the red run. You take the zip line forward into a net which you grab onto, and climb down to that lovely, sturdy, trustworthy thing called ground. Last time I hit the net quite fast from the zip line, so that the net knocked the breath out of me with an involuntary "ooof". Contrary to the way it sounds my masochistic little mind rather liked it. Certainly there was no chance of not grabbing the net! This time was no disappointment. I slam my chest into the net, making a 'whomp' sound as the net connects with my shoulder bone (we both have a rather beautiful array of bumps and bruises to show off by the end of the day, though admittedly lots of mine are from accidentally standing on my own feet during balancing acts). This time perhaps my 'oof' is rather exaggerated, because our safety man (who has rediscovered us now) goes back to give the all clear to M, and tells him that he 'should maybe use one of his carebenas directly on the wire as it might be too fast'

The result of this is that M sails with immense pomp and dignity into the net. But has much less fun in the process.

"Wooo hoo!" I say, "I did it! I did the black run! Now I need a stiff drink."

As it happens I have not really been drinking since Langkawi, not, you understand because of the mammoth hangover I encountered last time, but because this was always the plan. I did intend not to drink in countries where drinking was not part of the culture. Bali is not Muslim, like the remainder of Indonesia, but by the time I for here I was already finding that, in the heat, alcohol is just not all that tempting. Plus it's expensive. And it makes me bloated. Drinking having become rather an 'every night' occurrence before we left (and at certain points since we left) I had been aiming to shift this into a "special occasions" pattern. Special occasions being rather loosely defined as being any time when it feels right and the alcohol in question is worth it.

And today, still wobbly kneed and dangerously 'cryey', is a special occasion.

I don't get my stiff drink. There isn't a venue for it in the gardens, so we walk around for a while, get drenched in monsoon rains, shelve plans to visit a water temple nearby because, well, it's all become a little bit over watery, call a taxi to Munduk, can't get one, get more drenched, walk into the next village, get offered transport but the usual passing entrepreneur, set a price, take it, discover he's also a dab hand at eco tourism, get shown some cloves and spice trees and some Hortensia and coffee plants along the way, book him to take us back to Denpaser via some temples and rice fields on Thursday, arrive at our homestay, shower, take a walk down the road, get put off by there being motorbikes (Still! Everywhere!), go to the Warung (restaurant) at our home stay for dinner and then - only then - do I finally get my stiff drink.

It's a Balinese rice wine named Brem. It's fantastic. We have a small glass each looking over the clear air and mountain view. And it's perfect.

The Blogs Will Come Out....Tomorrow

Tomorrow's blog will be really exciting. That's my excuse for today's.

Because I am basically going to tell you that we spent the day sheltering from the odd storm, running a few errands and catching up with blogs.

A slight touch of Bali tummy (M had it yesterday and it is very mild and, amazingly the first time we have had anything resembling a travelling tummy upset since we started) means I will chose to spend this evening smuggled in bed watching a film. After eating of course. Nothing stops me doing that.

So just hang in there. We have exciting plans for tomorrow.

And it's only a day away.

Homesick?

Really? Am I?

Before anyone from England becomes deeply offended at my apparent surprise, let me explain.

People had told me that I would probably get homesick at some stage and that I would become tired of travelling, jaded and longing for home. I nodded. I imagined being distraught, or desperate for something specifically English. A good cup of tea maybe, or a scone. That hasn't happened, though it's early days and I may find that more likely in countries that are harder work. I imagine roads with pavements will be nice to encounter again. And I wouldn't mind on the slightest if I never had to see or hear another motorbike ever again. Other than that South East Asia is one of the most easy destinations.

But certainly the homesickness I imagined then is not something I have so far felt.

Recently though, I have noticed a sudden rise in how frequently I spent time on Facebook.  Up until now I have barely looked at it. Why would I? I have so much to see and do here, I'm blogging already and I never really bothered with it much when I was in England. Now I find myself rifling through news feeds, commenting on posts and looking up old friends I haven't spoken to in ages. If I receive a message or someone comments on something, I have become really excited, lapping up even the most inane of comments and responding to them immediately. People who I have been thinking about find themselves receiving an email from me, peppering them with questions and enthusiastic affection. When rather unfortunately, the Balinese WiFi availability doesn't allow me to Skype very easily with my parents, I send a long email and then check obsessively for their reply. I hatch plans for all the great things we'll do when I get home, something I was thinking about anyway but now I find myself having to exercise restraint to stop myself from all but setting times and dates and planning outfits.  What is happening? I have always loved and enjoyed hearing from these people, but I am not generally so close and personal with the social media, at home and especially not whilst travelling.

Could this be homesickness?

I ask M. He observes that Bali has been the most tiring of the places we have visited this far, in it's sporadic nature, intense activity followed closely by nothing at all, with probably the highest level of traffic related noise pollution other than Ho Chi Minh city. It has taken more effort to find our way into Bali. Perhaps I am reaching out for the ease and familiarity of good old England.

Maybe.

But both of us are not quite convinced by that one. What makes more sense is the combination of internet unreliability so that contact is more uncertain and the fact that Bali is the first place so far where we haven't made a friend or had someone around to talk to. And we, me especially, are social beings. I am not quite sure why, as there are occupants of  the three other wood cabins, all of whom are English speaking and many of whom are long term guests. And we've said hello. But we haven't got talking. 'Getting talking' is a strange sort of happenstance, which requires a special balance of effort (you have to start it, you have to be bright and chatty) and luck (there is something you have in common, something makes you connect). I think we have been lacking one or the other each time we have spoken to people in Bali, though we have got on famously with some of our Balinese guides or hosts in Ubud. But, not to put too fine a point on it, we gave to pay them for their friendship because even if they wanted to, they can't afford (in time or money) to give it for free.

Of course there is also the more simple explanation. I have great friends and family. I haven't seen them in a while.

Yes. Maybe that's it. But if this is homesickness, I must say it is surprisingly gentle. I am not unhappy or unsettled and I don't yearn for Britain. I just think a lot about the people. And to be honest, if anything, it produces in me a sense of warm well being. Feeling affectionate produces endorphins, and thinking happily about how great everyone is just makes me realise, again, just how lucky I am.

If it's a sickness, I have to say I'm reaching too hastily for the remedy.

The Other Side Of Quaint

It is very tempting to mythologise Bali, or any place which seems to hail from a bygone era, before faith, superstition and tradition gave way to cars, gadgets and tower block offices.

But apart from the obvious ethical problems with such a patronising outlook, ("we all thought it was so quaint," said a European in that documentary, "but they were starving") you can't pick and chose the romantic parts of Bali's traditions. You have to look at it as a whole. And some parts are harder for a western mind to swallow than others.

Bad spirits, as I may have mentioned, are summoned often at ceremonies in order to give them offerings to persuade them to go away. When we happened upon a ceremonial dance taking place round the corner the Barong (good spirit) appeared to be defeated by Rangda (bad spirit). Following this, young men took it in turns to enter a 'trance' state and try to stab Rangda with a Keris (ceremonial knife thankfully bluntened). When they fail, Rangda, in the story being unable to be hurt, they turn the knife on themselves. It's a story. But it's not. I can't see whether the men are actually in a trance, (possessed by the good spirits of the original young men in the story), but we witness several women collapse, or have what looks like a fit, to be helped to the priest to receive holy water. They have, we are told, been momentarily taken over by good spirits, which is a great blessing to them.

I have to admit that watching this is a little scary, despite the apparent blessing - and I become a little pleased we are watching from a respectful distance on the other side of the road, if there are going to be spirits flying around. But before you shout "eek! The ocult! Demonic practices!" I might note that I have witnessed many and frequent such displays in Christian charismatic churches, in which people appear to allow the Holy Spirit to take control of them. Frankly, it scares me there too.

Rather more unequivocal though, is the recent discovery that the Balinese do indeed practice animal sacrifice. The bad spirits require them, it seems. And they have large appetites.

We did not, thankfully, witness any such sacrifice in the ceremony we attended. The goose and hen remained, at least to our knowledge, whole. The same cannot be said of chicks though, who our guide tells us are offered at family temples as part of certain rituals.

"We just pull their heads off", he says, casually.

I can't. I can't think about it. I just can't. But when M looks up animal sacrifice in Bali, he discovers a story about a South Indian restaurant we had been planning to go to. The owner, being from India, where they have largely abandoned animal sacrifice, tried to resist. When the leaders of the village came to see him, before opening his restaurant, they told him the ceremonies required. 

"That sounds OK," he asked, "but could I do it without the animal sacrifice?"

The answer was no. He wanted to do business and so in the end he agreed.

He had to sacrifice a dog and no less than fifty chicks, burying them in set places around the restaurant.

"So it's basically an animal graveyard" says M.

I don't want to go to that restaurant any more.

"But they will all be the same" M points out.

And they will be.

Once every one hundred years there is a very important ceremony in Bali, Eka Dasa Rudra, which aims to convert bad spirits into good and secure the whole world against being controlled by bad spirits and therefore ending. At this ceremony one of every single animal and bird in Bali is sacrificed to those greedy bad spirits. One of every animal. This includes endangered species.

That. Is an awful lot of animals.

I can't wrap my mind around it and ever since I have viewed every animal as see as being somehow in danger. I see chicks following their mums and want to tell them to hide. When dogs and cats are too afraid of me to stop for me to stroke them, I commend them on their sense. When I see a tiny kitten I am worried for its safety. When I see it again later on a lead with a family playing and making a fuss of it, I am momentarily relieved - and then worried. Do animal sacrifices include pets? Are the bad spirits that cruel? 

Obviously my vegetarian western mind would struggle with this. I am trying to avoid making a value judgement, just reporting my response. But if you thought the world would end if you failed to do it, would you?

And what (I don't personally believe this) if it were true? What if every hundred years we are saved from extinction by a people brave enough to face such harsh 'realities'?

You have to view it in context. The Balinese are no more a violent, bloodthirsty nation of sadists than they are a quaint little people who like to make things look pretty. 

They are a complicated nation, contradictory and passionate, full by turns of love and anger, hatred and peace.

In short, they are human.

Work: Forget Your Back. Put Your Heart Into It

Another necessarily quiet day to pay for yesterday's activity.

I wake up thinking about work. In fact I have dreamed about it.

Hands up all those of you who instantly groan and comment on how awful it is that I am so stressed about work that even five months into a year of travelling, I still have it on my mind.

Wrong.

It was a nice dream. I enjoyed it.

There are plenty of reasons why I might chose now to dream about work. One is that the CPD (Continuing Professional Development for those of us who hate acronyms, set-number-of- hours-study-per-year-to-make-sure-I -haven't-forgotten-all-I-know, to those of us who hate business speak) requirements of my career mean that I need to have done something before August to keep my hand in, and I have been preparing to do that. Another is that, having begun to write Neville in earnest I am remembering that old thrill that goes with hard work and with losing yourself in something. And finally it might just be that I needed only five months and not the whole year to rest before I started to have a genuine urge to work again.

All well and good. I have said before that I think it is good for human beings to work, to achieve and to apply themselves to something. During the Great Travelling Meltdown I spoke to a friend who was currently on maternity leave and who said she felt that a dip in self confidence often comes when you are not, at least to our societal definitions of it, 'doing anything'. Frankly I think bringing up a child is harder work than most careers, where you will almost certainly be able to have a cup of tea at some point in the day, and where your colleagues tend not to scream at you and cover the walls in poo. Except on a really bad day at the office.

But that aside, I agree. We get our confidence from work. It doesn't have to be the thing you are paid for, it could be a hobby, tending the garden, doing the housework, going for a run. The teachers, back at school when you got separate narks for 'effort' as opposed to 'result' had it bang on the money. It is the effort which does us good, not necessarily the result. If you plough a lot of energy into something which no one appreciates or thanks you for, yes you might feel a but jaded after the event, but it doesn't change the sense of satisfaction you got while you were doing it. Which proves the point about parenthood of course, arguably so thankless that there has to be a day in our calendar to remind everyone to appreciate it. I have never appreciated my parents' efforts so much as I have since my friends have had babies. But it is, at 35, rather a delayed reaction.

I am rambling a bit. What I am trying to say, and have said before, is that I really believe that your work should be something you put some heart into. Easier in some cases than others. But we can't all work for charities or causes close to our hearts. I am often uncomfortably aware that if my business succeeds it will make the rich richer. But it also gives a lot to charity.  Equally we can't all chose to turn our hobbies into paying businesses. Some things just don't sell. Would I find it easier to put my heart into being a full time writer as opposed to an office professional? I don't honestly know. I think I work, primarily, for the people. And secondarily, for my own satisfaction. What the business is aiming at comes later. Is that bad? Tunnel visioned? Should I be buying, wholesale, into the 'company vision'? Its 'mission statement'? Does it matter? If I work hard and care about the result?

What I wake up with, ringing in my ears and following me into the shower, (though it gets a little sidetracked when I accidentally swallow some of the water - there is a strong whiff of drains in the showers here. Eau de eggs with undertones of 'matter'. You really don't want to be drinking it.) is one simple maxim. That if there is any relationship you put your heart into, it's the one with your work.

I'm off to write some Neville. And some blogs. With a side helping of The Companies Act 2006. You know, for the thrills.

Further Education

We spend the day visiting temples and local markets, ending up at Uluwatu temple watching the amazing Kecak dance in front of a stunning sunset. But mostly, what we do is talk.

And it's brilliant. One good conversation - I've said it before - is worth more than all the sight seeing in the book.

We have a guide. He is Balinese. And, once he realises we are interested, (though he is still surprised to find out exactly how interested) he opens the flood gates. And he power hoses us with information. And so all I can do is hose you in turn.

• Though it generally means very little now, in terms of social standing if not wealth, Balinese society is divided into four 'Castes'. The Sundra caste covers manual laborours, craftsmen, farmers etc. The Satrua caste is for warriors, the Wishna, for those in government and the Brahmana, who are priests. Though there was a time when children had to follow their father's into the same line of work, keeping the caste line intact, this is now more relaxed, though in many cases a family does continue in the same area, talents and aptitudes as well as materials and contacts tending to be passed down. Only the priests must have a male child to continue in this work, and if a family of Brahmana contains more than one boy child, they must chose only one to be a priest. Other than the priests there is no caste, wealth or occupational distinction made in the temples. Everybody makes the same number of offerings and attends the same ceremonies, regardless. In the temples, our guide is quick to note, everybody is equal.
• Within the Sundra caste only, children are given set names depending on the order of their birth. The first born son is named Wayan, the second Made, the third Gnyoman and the fourth Ketut. There is a similar system for females. At the birth of a fifth child, the names go back to Wayan, though with an added 'balik' in the name to distinguish from the first Wayan in the family. (This rather explains the fact that it seems as though everyone we have met has been called Wayan or Made!)
• The other castes don't distinguish order of birth, but do have a special 'caste' name within their full name to designate their caste. 'Agung', for example, designates the governing Wishna caste. So our friend Agung Rai has ancestors who governed.
• Every regency in Bali (of which there are 33) is governed by a specific local council, and customs and religious requirements may vary between them. This applies especially to death. It is common however for the dead to be buried initially for a period of up to five years, on the anniversary of which the bones are exhumed and cremated, to assist the soul in leaving the body. After cremation the ashes are taken to the Bat Cave, a holy place in the East of the island, where the ashes are scattered and a special ceremony and prayers are held to request that the dead person, on their reincarnation, be returned as a member of the same family (though this may be generations later).
• Moksha, the state in which a person has transcended the cycle of birth and reincarnation, is very rarely achieved except in the case of very holy aesthetics or hermits.
• After a new baby is born, it is taken to see the priest who reads the baby's hand to divine the identity of the reincarnated soul, which may also dictate the baby's given name. I am unsure how specific this process is, and whether the divination is of the caste or occupation of that soul, as opposed to it's actual name.
• In every village there are three temples, (Pura) one, the Pusa, is dedicated to the creator, Brahma, another, the Desi, to Wishnu the protector and finally the Dewa, dedicated to Shiva the destroyer. Though it varies I get the impression that Shiva is often considered the most important.
• The number of offerings to be given per day may depend on the regency and the type if work done by the individual. But generally at keast two offerings are made, in the morning and afternoon. They consist of small palm leaf baskets containing flowers, in the ascribed colours for the relevant God, crackers, possibly coins or maybe a cigarette. Before eating the first meal if the day, a portion of the cooked food (usually rice) is offered to God. This is generally eaten by stray animals. Which seems to be fine. God can take many forms and, I think, is present in everything including animals though I may not have that part exactly right, because it turns out that people here do perform animal sacrifices, sometimes in quite a big way. (More on that another day).
• Dance is used both as an offering, a summoning of good or bad spirits to be thanked or appeased, a method of recalling Balinese to their faith principles and as entertainment. Some dances, costumes and masks are so sacred that they are only used in ceremonies, others can be used for fun or for profit (70% of Bali's income is tourism, the rest agriculture. They don't export much.)
• Market sellers in traditional markets have their own market sellers' temple, called a Melanting temple. They give an offering at this temple prior to opening and pray for a successful day.
• Babies must attend a special baby temple before they set foot (literally) in the other temples, which in practice means when they are three months and can walk, to be blessed and to seek permission to enter the main temples.
• Education in Bali is free for Kindergarten and Elementary school (which they leave when they are thirteen). After that education must be paid for.
• There are three main types of ceremonies (yadnya). Dewa yadnya are for offerings or summoning of God. Pitrna yadnya for human dead and Manusa yadnya, human ceremonies, including an entreaty four months from the due date of a new baby to keep the baby safe, a baby ceremony at three months, birthdays, weddings and teeth filing ceremonies. These human ceremonies are held in the temple each Balinese has in the centre courtyard if their house. Only Dewa ceremonies happen in the village temple and Pitrna at the cemetery or bat cave.
• Every year, a ceremony is performed in which a cow is thrown into the ocean to appease Dewa Baruna, the God of the sea and to protect against tsunami. Whether this was done prior to the 2004 tsunami and whether it worked, I do not know.
• Tanah Lot, the temple erected on what looks like an island of rock in the sea, is the site of a fresh water spring, in the sea. It become impossible to reach at high tides which cover the spring situated in a cave underneath. Yet there is still spring water. The water is deemed to be holy. The site is absolutely beautiful. 
• The gate to the temples, like a wall split in half, is known as a Candi Bendar and will neautralise bad spirits as you walk through it. The second wall in the centre of the courtyard, opposite the Candi Bendar and blocking direct access to the main alter is there as a second block to bad spirits - as they can only travel in straight lines.
• Tourists have no manners. Our guide is amazed and grateful because I hesitated at the door of a temple, unsure if I am adequately dressed. Apparently many bikini clad tourists just walk in. We watch the amazing Kecak dance (traditional dance telling an extract from the story of Ramayana, with the show totally stolen by the bare chested men who chant 'kechak' all the way through to provide both backing music and props (they are the forest, the magic circles, the monkey army) and the dancer playing Hanuman who kicks (with happy health and safety free abandon) balls of burning coconut husks around the stage. The tourist audience turns up late and leaves early in a constant stream. I am horrified and embarrassed. The performance is only one hour long. When it finishes, and the lovely man who introduced it, saying he was good so many nationalities could be here and that this dance would strive for peace amoung them, comes back to wish us all goodnight, everyone simply packs up and leaves, so that he becomes swallowed up in a leading crowd, still trying to talk through his microphone and drowned out by the noise. My blood boils. I'm not sure I want peace. I want to rush up and round people up, herd them back to their seats and then nail them in place. Or make them have a go at kicking fire in bare feet. While I look bored and talk over them and leave. "What's that you say? You got burned and need medical attention? Oh I'm sorry I wasn't really listening.  Had something really inane I had to say to my friend. Anyway I'm off now, if you could just move your dance/agonised writhing out of my way. An hour is such a long time, you see. It's nearly as long as I take to eat dinner. And who could possibly sit through that?
• Rant over. (It was nearly as long as the performance). I can't adequately describe how fantastic Kecak is so here is a little treat. This is the opening. Sorry it's not the fire dance. We didn't record that. We were kind of too busy ducking the fire balls.....

Attitude Pic 'n Mix

Today, like yesterday, is spent writing Neville and writing blogs.

Somehow, on these days when we are in self inflicted exile, blogging and trying not to bankrupt ourselves too much, we are listless and unhappy. I suppose that follows. We have not, in any other country, had so stark a contrast. We have not had to go to such extremes of intense activity and absolute stillness. It's exhausting and not ideal, though this is hardly the fault of our lodgings and our lovely host. It's a location problem. Or a refusing to ride a motorbike problem. Call it what you will. The forced extremes create grumpiness in both of us on the days we are 'resting' and also drive us to extremes in our own perception of the situation depending on the hour if the day.

Low points occur:

- first thing in the morning, when M gets up to join me and I am buzzing from another fruitful session with Neville in the cool early hours - and appears to fall asleep when I read him an excerpt.

- late morning, when the strain of doing nothing except blog yesterday and today hit both of us and we begin to try to plan other trips, in my case obsessively, with mixed success, underlining the sporadic nature of WiFi here, and the fact that M has run out of credit on his Indonesian phone card.

- mid afternoon, when the heat builds up and becomes unbearable and we hide in the house which is only marginally cooler than outside, even with the air conditioning turned to its lowest setting. We both acquire a headache. Neither of us gets much blogging done.

The high points occur:

- in the early hours of the morning, when I write outside for three impassioned hours on Neville the Novel, and with only the birds for company.

- in the late afternoon, when the heat finally defeats us and we go out to face the traffic and try to find somewhere, anywhere, with working air conditioning. I am ready to simply hang around in the supermarket. But we find a place which sells doughnuts and iced coffee. It's depressingly western, especially in this, very local, area. But it's blessedly cool.

- in the early evening, when we return to find our host waiting for us to take us out with him to the beach. He drives us to a tourist beach in Kuta and yes it's covered in westerners, but they are cheerful westerners, rather than the grumpy bickering ones we personify today, and the view and the sunset is stunning. We have a beer (I break my self imposed teetotality because the occasion, for many reasons, seems to demand it) and we play word games and chat while the sun sets in front of us.

Mid evening, when we drive hone and see a ceremony at a nearby temple which gives us hope of possibly being able to stroll there later and catch some ceremonial dance and then our host sticks his head through our door and says "this air conditioning - it is not working properly. I will get someone to fix it." 

(We had mentioned it before, but our host, thinking we meant that it was just a little slow on the uptake, explained that the wood cabins, with their gaps and cracks and heat absorbing wood, were hard to successfully air condition. He didn't realise quite how hot it was getting in there.)

And of course I haven't mentioned the fact that he dropped by earlier, with a little savoury cake he had picked up while he was out for us.

We have a great host. And maybe, just maybe, we could be cool.

Seems to me that the high points were all the important things. And the rest is just a little bit of tourist moaning.