Indonesia - Things to Do

Less is More
What is there to do in Bali?  Nothing.  That's the point, right?  We had even more nothing to do than most since we lived out in the rice fields.  After a good night's sleep in the type of darkness I'm no longer familiar with, we took a stroll into town.

Dodo got a fresh coconut which cost about a dollar.  No bargaining required.

Balinese Hinduism requires constant work.  Small offerings of flowers are put out three times a day in doorways, on statues and in the street.  I walked carefully so as not to step on one.

Ubud is a town of brick buildings and tight alleyways.  At the local bookstore I counted three shelves of English books, two German, and a few rows of French and Italian.  I heard more French spoken by tourists than any other language.

Even in town, where there was an open space, it was filled with rice.  These sproutlings looked to have been planted recently.

The locals were hard at work building large mannequins for the approaching new year on March 17th.  The Balinese calendar is a year and a half long and is punctuated by the Nyepi festival, which is celebrated with silence.  Absolutely nothing happens.  No noise, no travel, no stores open, no talking, no music, no leaving the house, no internet, no television, no radio.  The airport is even shut for the day.

We took peeks at the small hotels along our walk and decided that we had the best location.  The silence in the rice fields is hard to beat.

Ubud is known for its artists and artisans.  Most of the shops were selling paintings, carvings, statues and hand-sewn clothes.  Bargaining was suggested by our hotel staff.  Neither of us cares for bargaining much but we did ok.  The basic principle is to offer a third of their price and settle on half.  Dodo got her straw hat using this technique.