I changed my mind and instead of doing more favourite photos in this Bali 2009 post I thought that I would take you around the Villa and although we went out sight seeing a lot home is where the heart is and cool stuff happened there.

My parents have had this sign for ages it existed when my name was still my maiden name Liscumb. I am pretty sure I even asked my dad the exact story from the sign while I was in Bali but I was on vacation brain and I have no idea. It has been repainted since it was on the green fence that held my dad’s old horse in Prince George. The weather there did a number on it. I never lived in Prince George so we must have had it in Terrace too.

This is the view from the back of the house from the top storey patio.  That mountain there that you can barely see was very hard to capture.  I made many a mental note to get a photo when it was more visible and I forgot and never did. Things like that made the place feel more real because I was able to say to myself fuck it, you can get it on the next trip.

That patio is also where the Monday massages took place. Just had to call up the woman and let her know that there would be three of us. I got there on a Monday night so I missed that day’s massage but still got two in while there. Decent massage, little different from anything I’d experienced before, I’ve had full body massages but never had it include a full butt massage as in those hands slipped into my crack on way more than one occasion.

This is the front of the house from the steps leading from the beach to this wee gate. Before I had seen the house in person I had a really hard time guessing and even picturing how my parents told me it was set up, for some reason I had only seen photos from this angle.

Facing this way on the left is the office and a bathroom and the outside sitting area, on the right is the kitchen and the kitchen eating area.  You do most of your living there outdoors.  My dad asked me after I’d been there for a decent bit how I liked living outside. I remember saying I honestly hadn’t really noticed but loved it, probably from camping so much from such a young age and spending so much time outside as a kid it just seemed natural for me to slip right into.

I noticed while pulling the above photo for the post that a cup of MY kopi is in this photo, I had mentioned in my last Bali post – Part Tiga that none existed which I have discovered was an unintentional lie.

Selamat pagi – which means good morning, as I’m about to swig from my water bottle. I’m wearing what I slept in here so I know that it’s still morning.

I read a decent amount while I was gone, I never ever read as many books on vacation as I think I will BUT I would still bring the same amount of books plus my eBook because no matter where I am I want a variety of books to choose from which is partly what makes having an eBook so awesome, although I don’t use it much I know I will because I will eventually have to face that not cutting down on weight for trips to Bali just to be able to have a copy of a book is pretty silly. But right now I don’t feel like that.

While gone I finished Rant - Chuck Palahniuk, started and read Still Alice - Lisa Genova, Blindness – Jose Saramago, When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris and started The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood.  I enjoyed them all, although Still Alice has me convinced that I have early onset Alzheimer’s, for real, not being an asshole. And it was sort of interesting being around a bunch of rabid anjings and kucings [dogs and cats] having just finished Palahniuk’s, Rant.

One night I went to walk into the kitchen to get a drink of water or a bir IN THE DARK and a gecko fell off something from my opening the door and hit me in the face. I screamed like a pussy of course, it scurried off my forehead and I watched it run along well away from me. That was my only negative encounter with any lizards, although they are there and they are big, not tiny wee friendly looking things like the geckos, fucking lizards and I HATE lizards. I only saw one decent size so lets say medium lizard, thank fucking gawd.

Early evening here barbecue is being used for dinner, I can see the cover is off. Super bloody awesome cool thing about this time of day is the changeover between the birds swooping all over and catching bugs to the bats coming out and fucking annihilating the bugs. People ask me about the bugs, and there were a lot of flies, spiders, red ants, moths and mosquitoes but I was there during the windy season and so therefore the bugs for the most part kept off me.  I did have a few choice bites though, couple huge ones on my ass. I have never understood what it is with bugs and biting ass, but I always seem to get the biggest bites there.  And as mentioned right at the moment when evening meets night, you don’t even notice the changeover they look almost exactly the same as the birds, but the bats come out for the hunt and really they are your best friend if you want to sit outside as I am likely doing here it is fascinating watching them, trying to catch the birds accepting that their shift is finished as the bats suddenly emerge.  This is also why I FLIPPED when I opened the kitchen door as I wasn’t immediately sure if a bat was swooping by me or if it was a gecko.

So, I’m not the best sleeper in the world, unless it is a bed fat chance that I will fall asleep in it around it on it, planes can suck it I hate them I almost NEVER get any sleep.  This day however, it was my third day there I think, I can’t have been there long because I am reading Rant I fell asleep not once but TWICE. UNHEARD OF. My dad caught me sleeping on camera so I can remind myself that I was able to get myself into a relaxed enough place for that to have happened. Adam gave me grief over falling asleep in the sun to which I quickly informed him that not only had I waited the PROPER amount of time before entering the sun after applying my sun screen, I also had a my stop watch next to my head to go off AND my parents also woke me because I told them how long I was doing my front for. SO THERE.

Basically Dr. Vegas stole my tanning googles and I’m stuck in sun glasses. Not cool little buddy, those will give me tan lines. I wore my contacts every day I was there because it was so bright that my glasses were useless. We have to make Dr. Fever some swim trunks and matching ones for Vegas because Fever is still wearing his country western cowboy hat from his days back in northern British Columbia.

CRAB IN THE POOL!

They hung out together a lot, they are brothers and both doctors – they have a lot to talk about. My mom commented on how much more worn Dr. V is than Dr. F and I was all dude, Vegas gets around, he travels, he goes to concerts, parties, weddings, he hangs with the ladies and he is with the band I don’t know what band but there’s a BAND and he’s WITH IT.

The gazebo is another awesome place to sit and read.

And watch the sun set from.

This photo falls under my favourite photos, I am photographing the lights from the fishing boats. Mine didn’t turn out, I suck in that lighting. The fishing boats are tiny seriously tiny outriggers. I will cover those in another post.

This is the only photo I took inside up stairs, that is primarily what my dad wears every day, retirement is so seriously hard as you can TELL. The windows in the far right there open to the front patio where you can watch the sunrise in the morning and watch the fishing boats come in.

These are our diggs when we go visit, my bathroom had no mirror while I was there but I didn’t mind, I can go a while and not need a mirror, for serious. If the trip hadn’t have been a surprise my dad would have put a mirror in for me but he couldn’t do little things like that, everything had to be HUSH HUSH HUSH don’t do ANYTHING to that bedroom because my mom is snoopy, really aren’t all moms though?

One morning near the end of the trip I was sitting cross legged on the bed text messaging Adam and I had JUST pressed send when my bed started to tremble and shake or more like slide back and forth, took me about as long as it did during the earth quake in Vancouver for it to dawn on me that it was in fact an earth quake. I yelled up stairs “don’t you feel that?”, it rumbled a bit more and stopped. It hit Kuta about 100 kilometers from us. Wasn’t one of the ones that caused major damage around that time in September but still, that only means the people in Kuta were lucky that day.

As I mentioned windy season, my dad has a shirt on so it was one of the cooler days, again with the kopi mug I see it, the afternoon cup o’ kopi I am now an unintentional two time liar. Oh right this is the ONE day it stormed, if you look out the doors you can see the seats from the sitting area pressed together and against the wall, the storm wasn’t long but it was EPIC. And if you look really closely you can see some water on the tile.  I wasn’t really sure about the tile when I got there because generally I do not like being barefoot anywhere and I was worried they’d be slippery. Best tiles ever, who needs shoes, that is all I have to say about those tiles and that it was a delight for the first time really in my life to be shoeless everywhere around the house.

Almost every afternoon anytime after fifteen hundred hours cocks come into my parents yard and help my dad with his gardens, they clean out the bugs, it is a sight to see. I don’t know why they go by cock there instead of rooster but they do and you can talk about cocks all day long. COCK COCK COCK. They are not like farm cocks or any cocks I’m used to, for example I DO NOT remember them being so vociferous in the Cook Islands where I did not stay at a resort, they were all over our house I have loads of film photos of them. The cocks in Bali NEVER SHUT UP.  They must really like the chicks and warring over territory.  I call this cock the cock dwarfer.

That concludes Part Empat. Catch up on the Bali 2009 series here: Part Satu, Part Dua and Part Tiga.

Even though I’ve been back for a while now, it seems to be true, that Bali has a tendency to get under the skin of the people who travel there and into your mind in the simplest of ways. We just finished the kopi that I brought back the other day and I am already dying to go back for more kopi freakin’ kopi, totally bringing back four bags when we go together and thanks to the Bali kopi now i drink all my Canadian made coffee black. The last time I put cream or sugar in my coffee was the first morning I was in Bali, I listened to my parents who said it was fantastic kopi and I should try it black and being that I ate EVERYTHING that was put in front of me while there, which I know will shock more than a few people, I saw the kopi as no exception and now I drink black coffee and when I go back to Bali I will be called a black kopi drinker. So now I drink it black in both countries and I know the word in both languages and I know other words too I’m not showing off I’m simply trying to learn the language, so why not?

I don’t have any photos of myself drinking the kopi, the opening to this post is super misleading I do have photos of me drinking the bir but I never got wasted on it that was the mischievous sock monkeys Dr. Vegas and Dr. Fever getting wasted on the Bintang. When I did take photos of my food it was sometimes visible, it is a Pilsner and is a very good bir I enjoyed it almost everyday. No one paid me to say the bir was good, the bir is just good.

I did have a Bintang with this photo of my Bali fusion meal in Kintamani where the people are very poor and you find mostly restaurants all fighting for the best view, they are all buffet style with a real menu if you insist however being a high tourist area they gotta get you in and out fast. It is pretty high elevation wise and is actually cool there, I didn’t end up needing the sweater I brought that day, the only day I took one anywhere, but I did notice a big difference in temperature specially sitting to eat outside. Turns out I would not have needed my sweater anyway because they sell full on winter scarfs up there, totally tripped me out. We were leaving the restaurant and I noticed loads of tourists with these orange face cloths and they were steaming and seeing how I was still sort of upset for not getting steaming cloths to wipe off with at any time on my twelve plus hour flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong, I was all over this and sought out the orange steaming cloths, there was a table on the way out containing a huge pile and I quickly grabbed one and wiped my hands and face, I handed the cloth back to the pretty girl and said “terima kasih, sampai jumpa lagi, terima kasih”. (thank you, goodbye, thank you; I seem to be as repetitive in Indonesian as I am in Canadian, go figure.) I was left standing there and that was bad because I remember not being in the mood to be accosted by sellers that day, it does at times become extremely overwhelming so I turned to head back into the restaurant to find my parents just in time to see the girl dip one after the other then soak and twist drip and fancy fold the same towels from the same bucket of water and then return them to the pile on the table. I told my dad that I had just wiped myself down with who-knew-how many different people’s sweat and who-knew-what else to which he replied, “that’s Bali”. It was true, I had no witty rebuttal.

I am almost positive thanks to a lot of reconnaissance and a great girlfriend who dated a Hindu man for years that this is Hanuman. He is one of my favourite photos because of course I have aspirations of being tattooed in Bali and this photo was taken on my second day of exploring and I saw it through the lens and was instantly hit with THAT is my tattoo. I didn’t think I’d be smacked by something that I wanted to put on my body so soon into the trip. Little did I know that not only would he turn out to be a monkey but that he lead an army of monkeys and we make sock monkeys and we call members grunts of The Sock Monkey Army. This little guy spoke to me and when I read up on him I knew it wasn’t just a coincidence and even if it is who fucking cares I love him now, in some variation I’m getting him tattooed.

This guy walking down the beach was awesome, I saw him and did the run grab the camera tip toe sprint don’t trip on the tiles everywhere and break your knee or split your lip open get blood spatter all over my parents’ off white exterior everything to get this shot. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out considering I didn’t even notice the huge ass sickle sticking out the back of his pants until I had it offloaded onto my parent’s computer. The Balinese people are incredibly strong, I have photos of ladies carrying grape crates on their heads it takes four people to lift it up, yet one woman carries it. A tad mind blowing to see that for reals up close talking to them as I did on a photo walk one day with my mom, not sure if any of my favourites were taken that day though, I don’t think so.

The photo of this monk is from a temple the name escapes me but the Dalai Lama went there, he lives there more or less alone and the place is huge, I have numerous photos from this temple in fact this photo of me is also one of my favourites, I like how the sarong looks. It is disrespectful to enter temples in Bali without a sarong assholes do it but it isn’t cool with the locals, they cringe like when they see a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.

Stay tuned for Part Empat where I continue to discuss my trip through my favourite photos.
Part Satu
Part Dua

On both former vacations, to the Dominican Republic and to Mexico, I went with all inclusive packages. The outskirts of poverty were only visible from the airport shuttle, in my head it resonated and made me sad but as that bus pulled up to the resort(s) all I could think about was that smell, that smell of vacation, man I love that smell, I didn’t even notice the ignorance settling back into the spot I kept trying to force it into on the bus ride, the shacks, the garbage, the rabid uncontrolled dogs and cats, the frailty of the horses, the cows the goats, the dirt on the children doesn’t make them any less cute, I pushed it away, I was on vacation!

When I went to Bali I was of course on a vacation, but for me because they’re my parents and they live there it isn’t just a vacation I have a home there I have my own bedroom, I can leave things, it is mine and Adam’s room. We are trying to learn the language, in essence Bali means something to me personally. My parents have chosen to live a life where they don’t leave everything up to staff members, they have two, one being a security guard who comes to the house at night; he also cleans the beach in front of their house before he leaves in the morning, my dad keeps it clean during the day. The house and the parents living there is to some, I’m sure, already considered ‘all inclusive’ but except for not helping with the dishes I did not treat it as such, I even got my own beers from the fridge. But on a serious note I’m going to inherit this house I still may not ever own the land but whatever happens there is a house in Bali with a piece of beach in front of it that will be ours.

The children from the school down the road play all sorts of sports on that stretch of beach because it is one of the only stretches that is clean in the area. If you are thinking Vacation and beautiful beaches and surfers in Bali most tourists don’t make it out of Denpasar or Kuta, my parents are way north in the village of Banjar, near a rather small tourist area called Lovina, where another small patch is also kept clean.

On one of the first mornings that I woke in Bali I could hear kids playing, I grabbed my camera and walked towards the beach gate to investigate the class of boys and girls, they were wearing their gym uniforms, most of the girls wore their hair in braided pig tails with pretty ribbons to tie off the bottoms, they were playing dodgeball, on this particular morning they didn’t pay much attention to me, but I was still obviously distracting some of the students so I snapped a couple of photos and went to get some coffee. (kopi) In the following mornings I would always check from a distance to see what games they were playing, one morning they were playing a form of net ball, with two kids on each end holding up wee garbage cans, it made me happy to see them playing sports.

During the day when we’d be out exploring the island it was impossible not to notice the amount of children of age that were not in a school. The fact that the children who do go to school go in uniforms make the disparity stick out like a sore thumb. The Balinese children are ridiculously, heart meltingly cute and they LOVE cameras, if they see you have a camera they are all over you to have their photos taken. This is why it was sort of odd that first morning when I was watching them play. One of the mornings shortly before I came home I ventured back right up to the gate and they started yelling halo and waving furiously, I said halo and waved back, the positive vibes off these kids are really something else, a smile broke out on my face and I quickly took some photos, the teacher was tolerating me, he had a seriously sweet moustache and a whistle, he smiled, I turned and walked away with halo still echoing at me until the whistle started to blow.

Sitting in the afternoon one day chatting my father made mention of some of the dilemmas facing a lot of the poorer families and why the children were out on the street and on the beaches playing during the day instead of in a classroom. Although schooling in Indonesia is said to be free to all children it simply isn’t, it costs approximately 5,000 rupiah a month about 50 cents Canadian. Each student is required to have four uniforms at a cost of 50,000 Rp each about $5.00 CAD times two per year. If the average family is making 700,000.00 Rp a month about $70.00 CAD and a bag of rice costs 200,000.00 Rp and lasts a family around a month it isn’t hard to figure out that the money required to send one or more students to school for a year just isn’t there.

Of the lucky children who do get to go to school many are forced to start working as soon as they graduate, this basically eliminates any chance they may have of moving onto university. Once that child can bring in income some of the families don’t have the extra money for university and can’t afford to lose the new income. It is quite sad to think that at only 1 million Rp per semester times two semesters you are only looking at approximately 220 dollars a year.

My head was churning with this information I am seriously bad at math and these were easy numbers even for me. My dad is already a part of the Rotary Club in his area, the Rotary Club are heavily involved in community work and trying to bring a bit of extra education to the people as a whole. Between speakers coming in to talk about everything from the prevention of AIDS, road safety, the importance of beach clean up projects and also with reading projects for the children, the passage of information to the locales is spreading slowly, but it is at least being spread. I attended a Rotary Club meeting when I was in Banjar and was very impressed by the dedication to the cause and also that my father was a part of it. When my father mentioned that he had ideas and had mentioned it to a couple people already about starting a charity to get some of these kids into university and into elementary school I said pretty much instantly that I wanted to be involved. Because Adam and I are not having children it seemed like a no brainer to me.

We have been brainstorming ever since, we still have a long ways to go but have a basic idea of what we want to achieve with the charity. The name we are using right now is Bali Education and Ecology Foundation. Our main goal will be to provide children, who have the capacity and willingness to learn, an opportunity to attend school and/or complete their education.

As a result the children will have a greater opportunity to obtain meaningful employment and escape the cycles of poverty that are prevalent and to a degree hard to picture. The education will provide the opportunity to be a more productive and constructive member of the community. Due to the foundation’s emphasis on the environment it is our hope that this will lead to the promotion of environmental awareness in the communities to the benefit of the whole island of Bali.

This is where is starts with a desire to help, we have already had a couple people offer to help us get up and running but we need more, if you would like more information on our principles and goals and how we plan to put all this into play if we manage to raise some money, or information on how you can help us start this baby up, you can leave a comment below or email corinnal [@] gusgreeper dot com.

Also, stay tuned for Part Tiga – Where I talk about more cool stuff I did and saw.

If you can believe it we discussed whether or not I should remove the pin from the tail of Dr. Vegas, it holds it on, and I was worried they would take him away, I did remove his mask as shown above, he wore it in the beret style or not at all until we arrived in Bali, our final destination. Taking the mask off was a no brainer he looks like a bank robber minimum with that thing on. Adam said I should take the pin out, but I thought of babies, remembered that I was a cloth diaper baby and so there must be moms out there using pins in the diapers and not all Velcro. I realize that Dr. Vegas is a sock monkey and not a living thing but even though we were discussing it, and even though I had a vivid image of standing there while they humiliated Dr. Vegas by making me remove his tail and how odd and embarrassing it would be for us both, I decided the tail was staying.

First thing is that yes I did just say arrived in Bali, and secondly on the return Dr. Vegas stayed in the checked luggage. And to make a possible long tangent short I will just quickly add that we haven’t pinned a tail on a monkey in years the crotches are sewn with precise and sometimes intense whip stitches and the tails are also sewn on with a few extra whips of the stitch for added strength. Dr. Vegas, like his brother Dr. Fever, is one of the originals when we didn’t even know they took two socks to make we just made what we thought would look like a monkey.

I didn’t even tell the vast majority of my closest friends that I was going to Bali because the trip came out of no where and was a secret surprise of monumental proportions. Top Secret. Mission surprise mom for parents 40th wedding anniversary went into full affect. I figured even though I know I can trust my friends that it was best to say nothing, my mom is pretty up on my online activity and there were a lot of missions to action before take off.

I won’t lie I was incredibly nervous and discussed the trip in therapy and with Adam. After all of the intense drama that happened at the beginning of the year it was a bit daunting knowing that he would be staying home this go and I’d be alone with my parents for over two weeks having no idea how things would be with my dad, we didn’t even actually speak until the trip was already booked and my parents were in Denpasar where the internets are a little bit faster so we could see one another and we had a Skype conversation actually speaking in code part of the time while my mom was there and none the wiser, it was the first time I’d seen him or heard his voice is close to a year and here I was about to show up at his house invited or not I spent one minute freaking out like HOLY FUCK I’M GOING TO BALI and the rest like HOLY FUCK will things be okay with my parents and I?

Cathay Pacific rules, I had uneventful flights, on the way down I watched, The Proposal and The Hangover.  The Hong Kong airport was fun to hang out in minus the SARS mask invasion, not as intense as ET but how long will it be till they are all in full suits? Given the choice between the fear injection you receive every two minutes in all American airports – “please report any suspicious looking persons and unattended baggage ….” –  I’ll take the SARS masks, then I can hide my suspicious lookingness anyway.

When I stepped off the plane in Bali I was smacked in the face with the distinct smell of gas mixed with heat mixed with exhaust, I know crazy right? Not the typical vacation smell which is one of my very most favourite smells on the face of the earth.  I thought it was just the airport but everywhere smelt explosive to me and this isn’t just because they sell gas in bottles right on the side of the road so close to your vehicle you could grab it, but it probably doesn’t hurt either. I thought it was shitty wine at first but nope, bottles of gas. I got stuck in the airport for an hour and a half, fuck man I was beyond grumpy, beyond freaked out that my driver would be gone, my head was pounding, my eyes hurt, the ceilings were way low, at first I got in the wrong visa line, I was so hot and light headed I probably could have dropped dead from exhaustion if I had to wait one more minute in the let me in the bloody country line, all I knew was that there would be a dude there with my name on a sign to drive me to Singaraja on the opposite side of the Island another three and a half hour drive minimum away and I had already been traveling fifteen hours ahead in time for more time than that. BUT HOLY FUCK IM IN BALI! Hence this is where I stop complaining.

Even though it gets dark relatively early there around 18:00 hours and we didn’t get out of the airport till 16:30ish that initial drive all the way north from Denpasar in the south was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on. I covered a wide array of terrain from areas of intense traffic like I have never witnessed before, Bali has a scooter per every person in Vancouver and then some, through areas of nothing but rice fields and mountain views, scooters buzz by in every direction, they pass on every side in every direction, you quickly learn the horn in Bali is as valuable as the entire vehicle, be it scooter or car.  It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between someone honking at you because they are pissed off or just giving you courtesy honks as they literally fly by you. By the time I got to my parents place I was having an extremely hard time figuring out why they waste the paint to make non passing areas across the island it is almost comical that they bother.  It was dark when we hit the famous Monkey Forest coming over the mountain and it had started to rain but I saw one or two sitting around eating bananas and knew I would be back to that area anyway.

Driving over the mountain can make even the strongest stomach squeamish as I later learned when I relayed my trip over it to my dad who confessed it had almost made him yack a time or two. It is uphill switchbacks and downhill switchbacks, with let us not forget scooters and fast drivers passing at every free moment, tight turns in one and then the other direction that open to more switchbacks, basically if there isn’t a roller-coaster designed with thoughts of that road in mind, there should be.  To say there are statues and temples everywhere would be an understatement, you don’t buy a chocolate bar when you have a few extra rupiah in Bali you buy a temple and then you buy a chocolate bar but you offer to the Gods, trust me I have a photo.

The road you turn off of just outside of Singaraja reminded me of being up north, it is dirt, with full size tire pot holes and it isn’t finished being built yet, it probably won’t get much better than it is it’ll just get driven on more as more people move into the area so it will get wider on its own. It was oddly comforting even though I was far, very very far from visiting my parents in Prince George. We pulled up to the house and after I did almost fall over, Jackie, the driver grabbed me, with legs made of what felt like twigs I made my way to the front area of my parents house, having been staring at it in photos for almost a year saying this moment was surreal would be accurate.

I walked toward the outside sitting area where I could see my parents reading from their eBooks. Other than their lights (power saving I might add) it was pitch dark almost 19:00, my mom didn’t even hear me approaching, it is the windy season there and it was whipping up a fuss, my dad had of course heard us pull up and was waiting, finally I said “Hi Mom” but even when she looked over it didn’t register and so I repeated myself, still, oh wait, we have recognition but it didn’t take away the disbelief.  But how she starts to wonder out loud as she starts to realize I’m really there having made it into hugging distance. So she is crying and I may have shed a wee tear and by this time my dad has already gone to get my luggage and pay the driver and did I mention that HOLY FUCK I’M IN BALI!

To be continued…. with pictures!

all photos from Bali – 2009