Home Sweet Om

99 days
6 countries
17 flights
18 cities
27 beds

So nice to be home!  New perspective.  Everything looks so fresh, so clean, so quiet.  In deep gratitude for all we have and enjoy here.  Family, friends, and home.   It was a wild an crazy journey. Meeting delightful locals who all seem to maintain a gentle calm even when they have to work so hard and toll long days.  Kindness is woven through their core.  New friendships created.   Appreciation for the wonder of the earth, it’s beauties and challenges.  Sadness for the ever evolving pollution and crowding, altering the delicate balance...

Thanks for following my humble writings and musings on the road.

Till the next trip, wherever it may be...

Lena and Ron

From Old...

To New...

Bali Blues

We have been terribly sick for the past week since our return from Pemuteran.  Miserable!  Racking coughs, feverish, weak, and completely unable to do anything.  Stuck in our room for days.  Now we had this romantic ideal of the “old” Bali style rooms.  Lots of gardens, fountains, high pitched ceilings, outdoor sitting rooms and outdoor bathrooms.  More of a natural connection with our surroundings.  Well, all that is totally unsuitable when you are as sick as we are.  It’s painful to have to go from your air conditioned room to your extremely hot bathroom outside a zillion times.  It is totally a bummer when you have a noisy freezing AC unit that doesn’t respond to the controller because it’s old and antiquated.  Somehow romantic becomes funky when the WiFi won’t work, and the bed is hard and the pillows dense and huge.  After five nights, in three different rooms mind you, we finally woke up yesterday and looked at each other with puffy sleepless eyes and said “We can’t take this any longer”.  We got up, got a taxi, went to town, and found a nice new modern hotel.  Clean bright rooms with beautiful indoor bathrooms.  Bargained alittle for a slightly reduced price, but really we were willing to pay almost anything.  Rode back, got our bags, paid our bill, and returned to our new digs.  That took every ounce of strength we had.  Took a really long shower, put on our fluffy white terry cloth robes, got into bed and didn’t come out of our room until this morning.  Started taking Z- Pak yesterday as well.  Tried herbal remedies, cough meds... nothing helped.  We were getting sicker and sicker.  So now we have surrendered to modern medicine, and hopefully will be strong enough and well enough to catch our flight on Tuesday.  Not how I imagined spending my last week in Bali.  

Taman Sari Resort ~ Pemuteran

Pemuteran ~ Bali

There is a yearly yoga event in Ubud called the Spirit Festival which attracts thousands of young yogini’s and others interested in meditation, music and youthful folly.  Ron and I decided to get out of town during those six days and we went to Pemuteran.  About a 4 hour drive over the mountains to the northwest.  Many hairpin turns and narrow roads.  The day we went it poured while we were at the highest points.  We were in the clouds.  I told the driver “Hati Hati” which essentially means slow or careful.  But as we got down to sea level, the sun was brilliant and the water the deepest blue.  We were pleasantly surprised how clean the water was as we had heard tales of dirty trash in the water and beaches.  But we arrived at a good time and it was lovely.  We spent six nights in a small bungalow in the Taman Sari Resort. It was very peaceful.  Manicured lawns and large frangipani trees.  Two pools and of course, the sea.  Water was warm.  It was very hot and many mosquitos.  We had to sleep beneath our netting for the first time on the entire trip.  The people there were all genuinely nice and the pace of life much slower.  We could hear gamalon music at night from far off as well as the prayers from the mosque.  There were many more Muslim people here being so close to Java.  Overall we had a great time.  Found a few nice restaurants to eat at other than the resort.  Sadly, toward our last couple of days, Ron started to get sick with sore throat, racking cough, and fever.  He was very weak.  By the time we checked out, he had just surrendered to the long ride back to Ubud.  Fortunately we had a great driver, comfortable SUV, and he was cautious and slow.  Stopping a couple of times for photos of the beautiful lakes, and detouring from the main road through an area where the fields of rice paddies were stunning.  Less traffic through the villages, and more local flavor.  We arrived back at our same resort, Alam Jiwa, to hugs and a big welcome from the staff.  Our room, the Hanoman (Monkey God), was filled with flowers.  We felt grateful to be back.

BALI

Nyuh Kuning ~ Offerings

Alam Jiwa ~ Nyuh Kuning

Ubud ~ Bali

We have been in Bali almost two weeks now since leaving Vietnam.  We took an hour taxi from our guest house by the beach at 9am to the Danang airport.  Flew to Singapore and had under an hour to run to our gate and catch our evening flight to Bali.  Arriving is always a happy moment for me.  Watching the final colors of the sunset from the air as you approach the island, circling around and coming in over all the new lights and bridge, is just a wonderful feeling.  Visa was easy, and as we walked to the baggage claim holding hands and very happy there was a young woman with a placard with my name on it.  Turns out Singapore Airlines didn’t get one of our bags onto the plane.  Two out of three made the flight but mysteriously one didn’t.  We had to go to their desk and fill out forms and they promised they would deliver the bag to us the following day.  And they gave me 500,000 Rupiah in compensation, about $35.  We didn’t mind because it was our super heavy duffle and since we had our personal bags, we didn’t really need it.  And we got paid not to carry it!   Our driver was waiting for us and off we went into the night on the hour plus drive up to Ubud.  The delay at the airport cost us and by the time we arrived at Alam Jiwa Cottages, it was almost 10 pm.  A very long day.  So we canned our idea of going for dinner and just had two Bintang beers brought to our room and settled in for the night.  This trip we were staying in a different area than we usually stay.  The small village of Nyuh Kuning is quiet and very pretty.  Two streets, one in and one out, lined in huge frangipani trees and they were in partial bloom.  The trunks have stag horn ferns attached and it is just charming to come down the road and see the canopy of flowers.  Our room second floor had the old style traditional pitched bamboo roof, huge bed with netting, a day bed, and a large veranda with another daybed, a marble topped round table and chairs, and even a small writing desk, chair and two lamps.  A kind of outdoor room.  Our bathroom was huge, with the shower partially outdoors because of a opening in the wall.  We were happy and grateful to be here.  We awoke with the sun, and went out onto our veranda, and were amazed at the vista over the rice fields and in the distance, Mount Agung.  Usually shrouded in clouds, we felt Bali’s welcoming.  So amazing listening to the sound of the stream just below our room, the birds coming to life, and the scent of incense in the air from the morning offerings.  The gardens were lush with flowers and greenery.  Many small ornamental  ponds had beautiful pink waterlilys opening in the sun.  I loved our resort with only ten rooms because it was “old style” bali.  Winding pathways along the edge of the stream, individual buildings with one upper room and one lower room.  Privacy, space, and beauty.  It was also very quiet as it was back off the road a short walk down a narrow drive.  We ordered coffee to our room, and it arrived with the serene smiling face of Wayan, one of the waiters.  Then we had our first morning swim.  Breakfast is served on your veranda.  The owners of our guesthouse are the owners of Cafe Wayan, one of the oldest restaurants in town.  So they are very generous in their breakfast offerings.  Fruit, yogurt, fresh breads and croissants.  Jam and honey. Then your choice of eggs, or in my case, Nasi Goring- fried rice with eggs on top.  Tea, coffee, and to our delight, fresh purple dragon fruit smoothie.  Heavenly!  After all that we tend to wander back to the pool and hang out, swim laps, and take it slowly.  It is very HOT.  And humid.  You have no choice but to take everything slowly.  An old friend once said, if you get one thing accomplished in a day that’s good.  Two things accomplished and it’s amazing.  He was right!  So later than morning we ventured into Ubud center, about a 15 minute drive from Nyuh Kuning without too much traffic.  We bought SIMcards for our phones and my iPad.  Around $45 for all three devices for a month of data and phone calls.  I put my iPad in a plastic bag just in case it rained.  We decided to walk back home. Now the area we stay is on the opposite side of the Sacred Monkey Forest.  We have either a short walk through the forest, or a taxi ride around the town.  So we walked.  We knew they charge a small fee from tourist to enter the forest, but we also knew there was a motorcycle path the locals take to get to town faster.  We thought we would outsmart the money collectors, and walked on the motorcycle path.  Not as easy as it sounds.  Many cycles on a path about 5 feet wide winding through the trees.  And, HUNDREDS of monkeys!  Not a very comfortable feeling.  Unlike Curious George, these are wild creatures, in their element.  We were walking at a brisk pace when out of the blue a large adult monkey came from behind me and grabbed my plastic bag out of my hand!  I freaked!  My iPad!  I saw my iPad slip out of the bag to the ground while the monkey held onto the bag.  In a flash I screamed “No” and bent down and grabbed my iPad.  The monkey was about a foot from my hand holding onto the bag.  He hissed and showed his teeth.  Little fucker!  He really scared me.  Needless to say you really cannot take bags into the forest because they think you have food.  I haven’t walked through there since.