We dismissed Gusti, and as is my custom now, I patted him on the head just to show everyone how much I feel about our friendship. It works too, as every time I do it, I get astonished looks from all the locals and Gusti, bless his heart, goes all red in the face. It's the little things like that in life that count.
Well what can I say, Ubud is so exotic. We wandered up past a plastic bag field where the locals play the girl game. What is it? Oh yeah soccer. Resisting the urge to join in and showing them up, we wandered up to a big old building opposite the art markets. Its pretty old and crumbly. Heaps of tourists taking pictures, probably to show how poor the locals are as they cant even modernize. I think it was called a team pal or something like that. Having a ciggy inside it we realised that there was nothing of interest or to do there. So we crossed the road to find the art market.
Dunno where that was either. We found a stinky overcrowded version of the shops at the Melasti end of Garlic lane, and a whole lot of sellers trying hard to rob us in daylight without guns.
I picked up a walking stick and was waving it around when I had the urge to break wind. Letting it out slowly I looked around and bugga me the sales guy was standing right behind me. He said in a very good broken English manner, how can I help you. I said in broken English kiwi hamuchisit or for the uneducated, how much is it. He looked me up and down and said loudly if you f@rted just looking at it, you will sh!t when I tell you my price. He was right Crikey, in Legian we buy nicely carved walking sticks for 65,000Rp, here I couldn't get them to move below 200,000Rp for real bad versions. I also saw a coupla smooth cast silver coloured geckos, but the robber would not go below 200,000Rp each for these and laughed at my offer of gratis. I later brought two in Legian for 60,000Rp each.
Gripping our wallets tightly we emerged from the maze and wandered back to the Inn. I took a coupla nice photos on the way of a building being erected, using bamboo for strops to hold up the second floor as it was being concreted. A nice one of plastic bag park, and an accidental one of my eye where I had the camera around the wrong way.
Sitting in our digs, we sank a few binnies and congratulated ourselves on being quite reckless in exploring the inner island, purchasing holiday homes, and going bravely where not many men or women have probably gone before. Speaking of going, after the binnies we badly needed to go to the toilet, so having a swim we were able to kill 2 birds with one stone so to speak.
Then we went past reception and waved to our staff and turning left we strolled along the road until we came to a little steep hill leading to a monk forest. We thought that we would leave seeing monks until the next morning in case they were busy praying, so we crossed the road and drank binnies and ate in a little restaurant to the smell of diesel and petrol fumes from the bikes, cars and buses struggling up the rise.
Staggering home (due to the fumes) we said our goodnights and I lay back and was tickled pink that we had experienced such an exciting day in the art capital of Bali, Ubud. And we had the monks living in a forest below us.
I rang reception and asked them to ring ahead to the monks and give them a heads up that a party of 4 was gonna drop in and say giday tomorrow. Life it just doesn't get any more exotic and arty than this.
Ianz