Bali 3.2 - Walking through rice fields, catching up with friends and Luxury Spa

I didn't end up sleeping until approx 2am, and I'd had an idea that I might go to Yoga  and doing an early morning class, instead I decided to wake up naturally and was awake about 8.30am.  We had breakfast brought to our balcony at The Swan Inn Omelette for me (with lots of Garlic!) and pineapple pancake for Anna with some fresh fruit and coffee - really tasty!

We then went for a little walk around Ubud so that Anna could get her bearings - first all the way down Monkey Forest Road going past the actual Monkey Forest and then onto Hanoman and back around onto Monkey Forest Road an up past the palace.  Rachel had given us some excellent directions to her house - about 3K from The Swan Inn.  My favourite part of the directions was "past the bamboo house and you get to a little garden with a goat - you need to go down the stairs here and cross the stream"  We wandered through some gorgeous rice fields before finding Rachel's house - impressed that we found it first time!

Rachel is in a different house to the last time I came when she was still living with her In-laws and the house is much closer to Ubud for her.  It's the same slightly scary Balinese traditions with hard stone floors and steps which I'm amazed at the agility both Kiran and Maya were able to navigate.  Maya has just the same character now that she's nearly 4, as the last time I saw her when she was 2 - bright, cheeky and mischievous with a devilish sense of humour, but unlike last time when she was shunning speaking any English (whilst understanding every word!) she was babbling away sounding great and with no hint of a Balinese accent.  

Kiran is now 2 and still has a lovely baby face, but is definitely a little boy in behaviour and loved playing with the cars.  He is talking too, but his English has a hint of a Balinese accent - it's really fascinating how they are developing and I'm so jealous of how amazing their linguistic capabilities will be.  Kiran was lovely and when Maya spilled my cup of Bali coffee (just the grounds) he cleared it up with a cloth!

Kiran and Maya liked their clothes that I'd brought with me as presents from both my Mum and me and put them on straight away.  We got to meet Rosie and Robbie rabbit who are tiny and very cute.  

We went down to a nice restaurant with a good play area for the kids that kept Kiran and Maya busy for most of the time that we were eating.   Anna and me both had Tuna with vegetables, but we both think it was actually swordfish!  It was tasty and I had another soup - have had a few this holiday already - developed a taste for sour and hot seafood soups!

We wandered back up the road after poor Maya was separated from a Hello Kitty toy microphone from the restaurant and then walked back through the rice fields to Ubud and went on the hunt for a suitable spa for a massage.  Anna had a picture in her mind of the sort of luxury spa experience she was looking for and so after a few trips, leaflets and examining of treatment rooms we settled on the extremely luxurious Dala Spa.  In Ubud you can get a full hour of massage for approx 70,000 rupiah which is the equivalent of about £3.61.  Dala Spa was a little different of 450,000 for an hour so more like £23.18 - about 6 times as expensive, but in comparison to the last massage I had in the UK of an hour for £50 still extremely affordable for the average British tourist purse.

So you're probably wondering - was Dala Spa 6 times as good/luxurious and I have to say it was the *most* plush spa experience that I've had and I have tried out a couple of different places both for treats to myself and hen weekends etc.

First of all we sat in a wooden classic looking reception area and were served a cool ginger and lemony tea with a cold towel.  We got to choose from 5 different massage oils - I went for a lavender based one.  

We were then shown into the "Marigold" room and then taken straight into the "Ylang Ylang" room which was a bit confusing, but the room was beautiful and the whole place as we walked down the stairs smelt a strange combination of clean, eucalyptus mixed with the general Balinese incense smell that you get all over the place which hits you with a cool air in contrast to the humidity upstairs.

Both Anna and me were treated in the same room - I had gone for 90 minute massage selecting "strong" on the pre-treatment questionnaire for my pressure and Anna had gone for 30 minute body scrub and a 60 minute massage.  We changed into the paper knickers (lovely!) and sarongs and were shown the safe to put our belongings - although we didn't feel that it was necessary.  

We first of all had our feet washed in a wooden bowl of water to which the therapists stared intently at us whilst telling us what they were adding to the bowl - lime, ginger and then lemon grass - it felt at one and the same time decadent and a bit wasteful - you could have made a lovely Thai soup with the ingredients!  We had a quick foot scrub and then lay down on the really comfy treatment beds.  My massage was commenced by the therapist sounding a bell/sound bowl (useful I knew that when I heard Anna's I still had a further 60 minutes to enjoy!)

The massage was very good, but I was so tired that I definitely drifted off into some sort of subconsciousness several times so may not have been fully aware of it all - although I did really enjoy it and was incredibly relaxed at the end of it.  I definitely woke myself up at least 3 times snoring (my nose blocked after lying face down for 45 minutes!) so poor Anna had to cope with my snoring as background music mixed in with the "classic" that we had chosen on our questionnaires.

At the end of the treatment they sounded the bell again and we sat up and slowly got dressed again and sat back down in the reception area and had some warm tea and a cinnamon biscuit.  We settled the bill - a bit weird as they produced the card machine with just a prompt for my pin - I declined as I wanted to check the amount that I was paying first!

We sleepily and very calmly wondered back up Monkey Forest Road and stumbled into Dian Restaurant for dinner and sampled some Brem which is a local rice wine and then I had some more seafood soup and some Cap Cay - Chinese style vegetables with chicken served with rice.  We went for a quick drink at XL Shisha Lounge which was busy, noisy and had football on TV screens and live music and wasn't compatible with our very relaxed states and so we went back to the hotel and organised our flights to Lombok and worked out what we needed to do to get to Gili Air - still debating either public ferry or private charter boat! 

A screenshot of my favourite question about travelling to Gili Air!

On the walk back we booked a cooking class for the following morning at 9am at Bumi Bali.

We'd stopped off in a supermarket earlier in the day to pick up a drink and I'd spotted one of my favourite things about Bali - Mangosteens and so for equivalent to about £1.50 I'd bought 5 and put them in a plastic bag to take home - thank goodness for the bag as when I took them out of the bag on my bed about 50 ants came out with them too!  The fruit was fine, but I had to shake my sheets outside to get rid of the unwelcome passengers!  

I also thought I'd be brave and try mung bean juice - interesting flavour and texture!

Balinese Batik and Japanese Dinner

Saturday morning I had booked to do a Batik class with I Nyoman Warta - booking was quite interesting as I'd had to wander into his house in person on Thursday at Jalan Gautama No 12 and speak to his son as his wife didn't have enough English to understand what I was asking!  I wrote my name in a book for Saturday and the money I wanted to pay which denoted the size of the Batik that I would be doing.  Anyway, weirdly enough it turns out that I had been trying to book with the very similarly named I Nyoman Suradnya who is at number 10 (i.e. next door!) and had emailed on Tuesday, but not received a reply, which is why I had gone along in person to book.  Just a bit confusing to have two Batik artists next door on the same street with nearly the same name!  You would think that they might try and differentiate themselves a little better!  The benefits I think from the class I ended up taking accidentally are that it was one to one tuition and cheaper from what I can tell from looking at the other teacher's website.  

So I arrived at the class and there was an Australian couple picking up their completed Batik (reassuring as it was literally his house that I'd gone into for the class!) and after a little confusion the teacher gave me some paper and told me to sketch.  I was at first a bit taken aback, I had though that a class would be very much him teaching me, maybe showing me examples or giving me some stencils to use.  I haven't really done any sketching since I took a drawing workshop at Buns & Roses last year!  I sat looking a bit lost for a while and so he suggested that I drew what I loved about Bali - I said that I loved everything and then I thought about the one thing that I love more than anything - Cats!  I took out my IPhone and scrolled through my saved pictures before coming up with the one of Pocky below to base my design on.

I started off by sketching the outline of Pocky with her paw draped over the side of the chair, but slowly changed the chair into a branch and made the underneath into a pond using some of the pictures of the fish I'd seen at the Holy Water temple to inspire me (as well as copying some of the pictures that the teacher had on display).  I also put some Frangipani Flowers in the top corners for decoration as one of the things that I love about Bali is their fragrance and the fact that *Everything* is decorated with flowers and often they are Franipani.  Here is my initial sketch.

After my sketch on paper I was then given a frame with cotton stretched over it and I had to transfer the design in pencil onto the fabric.  Nyoman told me not to worry if the pencil showed as the Batik process would hide it.  He then gave me a sarong to wear (I think to protect my trousers) and showed me how to apply the wax to the lines on the design that I wanted to keep white with a special instrument called a Chanting or Tjanting.  I practiced first on some paper and found it fairly easy to get the hang of, you just need to angle it right so you don't get too much wax rushing out at once and move it with confidence along the lines that you want.  Similar in technique I think to icing letters onto a cake.  Here is the next stage of my Batik with the sketch outlined in wax and a picture of the pot that is used to melt the wax.

Nyoman then provided me with 4 different pots of coloured dye - red, yellow, brown and blue and showed me how to apply the dye which you can do fairly freehand and don't have to worry about staying in the lines!  I used the brown for Pocky and then swirled a lot of the colour around with a reassurance that the next layers would add more detail.  Here is another process picture.

The next stage was pretty simple - applying some green coloured liquid over the whole screen - it looks like he's doing it for me, but he just showed me what to do and I filled in the rest!

The next stage was very simple - he asked his son to rinse the screen for him and then he dried it off with a cloth and left it in the sun for a few minutes to dry.

We then sat down next to the melted wax again and he showed me how to use a normal paint brush to block out bits of the picture that I wanted to stay that colour e.g. some of the fish scales, parts of the Frangipani flower and the whole of Pocky apart from her eyes that would be black and would be the last colour to go on.

The next part was really good fun - sweeping loads of paraffin over the main parts of the picture for "cracking" - basically I coated the whole of the "water section" and the "sky section" with a layer of paraffin.

The next bit is also fun - you run your finger nail underneath the paraffin covered areas to create "cracks".  

When you are happy with the cracks a layer of darker blue dye was put over the entire screen with a bit think paintbrush.

The paraffin cracking process is then repeated and this time red dye is put over the whole picture, first some more areas are blocked out with wax to keep the same colour such at the flowers.

The process is repeated again and this time black dye is put over the entire picture with special attention to applying it to areas that I wanted black such as Pocky's eyes and the fish eyes.  I also did some cracking along the tree branch to make it look a bit like wood.  To make sure that the dye made it all the way through, it's applied to the back of the screen too.

And then finally it was the big reveal, to remove the wax I had thought it would be a case of complicated ironing off of all the wax, but it was actually much  more straight forward - you just dunk it in a big bucket of hot water and it melts off into the water!

They washed it a couple more times to remove all the wax fully and then it was hung over a tree to dry and I chatted a little more with Nyoman who has limited English beyond teaching Batik, but was able to tell me about how he'd been due to exhibit and teach in Holland, but then his sister died and he had to cancel his plans to save for her cremation ceremony and then he had been due to exhibit and teach in Germany and then his father died.  He really was a lovely teacher and so genuine - all along he said that if I wanted a break and to come back later he wouldn't charge any extra as he charged per piece and not per day and how he felt it was important to only teach small groups at a time so that people didn't make big mistakes and were disappointed with what they created.

  

After my Batik had dried I paid Nyoman and walked back to my hotel room for a well earned cool down and break (Nyoman had even sent his son during the lesson to buy tissues as he could see I was so hot!)  

Rachel came over with Kiran who had achieved a record 2 hour nap!  It was getting into early evening so we decided upon an early dinner and walked over to her favourite Japanese restaurant - Kagemusha which has a lovely view over the rice fields and she'd often seen cats in!  I tried some local rice wine - Brem which was only 10000 rupiah (60p) per glass and was surprisingly tasty and we both opted for Bento Boxes for our main courses which came with loads - Miso soup, noodles, rice, vegetable and prawn tempura, chicken and some vegetables and pickles.  Kiran enjoyed the food, but enjoyed pulling himself up over the rails next to the ricefield and shouting with glee!

Right at the end of the meal we saw something that I've wanted to see since I first arrived in Bali this time - a Tokay gecko!  They are basically bigger versions of the small lizards that you commonly see running around all over the place, but make the most noisy and strange calls at night that sound like they should be made by a bird - you can hear them yourself Here.  And here is a picture that I took before this particular Tokay snaffled a moth it had been chasing. 

We walked back up Monkey Forest Road stopping to pick up some Snickers flavoured ice cream for dessert (diet starts when I get back to England, or maybe Leeds at least!).  We decided to grab a glass of wine and so went back to Arts Kafe which was fine until the band started playing complete with Bongo drums waking Kiran up who had very easily fallen off to sleep in his sling.  Wine in Bali is not cheap - it was 75000 rupiah in Arts Kafe which is particularly pricey and usually about 35000 rupiah, however in most places it's about 185000 a bottle which is what we paid for a bottle of Hatten White Wine in Arts Kafe - about £11.  A local beer in comparison is only about 15000 rupiah or £1.  Rachel walked back with a sleepy Kiran, I finished the wine and grabbed a grape juice and some water from the shop on the way back before heading to bed at an unheard of time for me at 10pm as I was totally exhausted!

Day tripping, temples, photo opportunities and tourist prices!

So again another blog entry to first be written out on WordPad as the internets aren't quite working at XL Shisha Lounge - I can log on with my Iphone and Blackberry, but not the Netbook - weird!

So today I didn't nap - hooray!  Probably a good idea too as I couldn't sleep until 2.30 am last night and ended up watching Horrible Bosses which was...erm...horrible really.  It lacked any particularly interesting twists, and likable characters and probably the only redeeming feature was realising that Colin Farrell had been playing a particularly despicable character and looked nothing like his normal attractive self.

Breakfast was a Jaffle - basically a banana and honey toasted sandwich with fruit salad again.  Rachel, Made and Kiran came and picked me up at 9 am and Made was our driver for the day.  We went up towards Kintamani and found that a lot of tourist viewpoint places are now charging tourists just to drive past!  We first of all took the opportunity to take pictures of the lovely rice terraces which really are beautiful.

We then stopped so Rachel could grab some breakfast whilst we enjoyed the view over Mount Batur  What I particularly enjoyed was that you could see a piece of green forest surrounded by black ash from when the last eruption had occurred and wiped out the vegetation around it.  

Tourist prices are very different - we paid nearly £2 each for a very basic coffee and Rachel had a banana pancake for about £2.50 - in Ubud this would cost around half this.  Made however as our "driver" went into a special room and got buffet breakfast for free for bringing us there!

We stopped off on the way to buy some fruit from a really pretty fruit stall.  Rachel let Made do the negotiation to get a better price and bought some mangosteens - which look like tiny aubergines, but when peeled reveal something that looks almost like a peeled bulb of garlic and tastes a bit like Mango.  I really like them.  I also got to try something that looked a bit like a date on the outside, but almost like a passion fruit on the inside and tasted like plum.  Neither Made or Rachel knew what it was called!  A very sweet little girl was also trying to sell us a basket in between hiding behind the fruit.

Made then drove us to the Holy Water temple - Tirta Empul - Tampak Siring Temple and I put on the sarong that I'd brought with me from home that I'd worn to Rachel's wedding in 2009 and Rachel lent me a sash.  The temple was really beautiful and the water comes from a volcanic spring and you can see the water bubbling up through the bottom of one of the very clear pools.   There are several springs which you get into and pray at each spring before moving onto the next.  You can get right in, but even though I had a change of clothes it did seem like it would be a bit of a hassle, so I opted for dipping my hand in and splashing water on my face.  We got accosted around the temple by some excitable Malaysian ladies who were desperate to have their photo taken with us...or rather Kiran!  On the way out it was quite sad as you have to walk through an area of shops and there are loads!  Rachel could hear that they were shouting out prices to the Indonesian tourists in front of us of 5000 rupiah (c35p) and then "one dollar" to us!  Rachel bought a nice hat for Maya to make up for her staying at home.  I felt almost guilty for not buying anything as everyone was trying very hard and they had obviously spent time in building up their wares for sale.

We then to grab some lunch at a place that one of Made's friends had recommended and said did some Thai food.  It didn't do Thai food and whilst I had a good set meal with a soup starter, Nasi Campur main and banana fritters with ice cream and gorgeous caramel sauce, it was pretty expensive - 165000 rupiah and Rachel was very disappointed with her soup that was tiny and 35000.  Madea again went to the "drivers" area and probably had a much better feed than we did!  I did like my main course and my dessert was particularly tasty!

We then went back to the house and I got to see Rachel's office and the new kitchen.   I didn't get to meet her cat Queenie though which was sad as she's been missing for a few days - but she did come back tonight hooray!  Rachel then dug out the wedding video which I'd not seen and was interesting.  It brought back lots of memories from the first time that I visited including Coddy's awful Abe Lincoln style beard and me before contact lenses!   

Rachel put Kiran in the Halloween pumpkin sleepsuit that I'd bought for him and we took some lovely posed photos of him next to a pumpkin that she'd picked up earlier on our trip.

Made then dropped me off at my hotel and I got a well needed shower before working out that I can Skype Coddy from an app on my IPhone - he showed me the cats and I showed him around my hotel room and I decided on my next venue for dinner - XL Shisha Lounge.  A trip adviser review complimented it on having "lots of Pillows" what more could I want!

I have also planned out a bit more what I'm doing for the next 5 days I'm here (can't believe that it's going so fast!  Tomorrow I'm going to do a Yoga class at The Yoga Barn - I'm going for the beginners class as I don't trust myself to know what I'm doing otherwise even though I've been doing yoga for about 6 years!  The class will be 110000 rupiah - about £6/7.  I'm then going to have a massage somewhere good.  

Then I hope to go to the Kecak fire dancing display at 7.30pm.  On Friday I will be doing a bike tour Banyan Tree Bike Tours - which I'm a bit worried about as I sweat so horribly here just walking around that I'm going to be soaking wet by doing any physical exertion!  Hopefully it will be ok - Rachel reckons it should be mostly downhill.  

Then I'm trying to get booked onto a Batik class - from I Nyoman Suradnya - hopefully Rachel will let me pay for her to come too as a thank you for being my personalised tour guide/chaperone. I am then keen to go back to Tjampuan with Rachel for a spa day - maybe we could fit it in on the same day as Batik?  Other than that what else do I want to do?  More shopping, maybe a day at the beach?  So much to fit in and so little time left!  I might just have to come back again very soon!