The Bali Experiment: CatPoopChino (or Cappuccino?)

=============PREFACE=====================
I apologize to anyone on here offended by this statement, I would usually keep my political views to myself, but I am just happy at this moment that I cannot help myself.

Up until now, we have been entirely in the dark in regards to news out of the US. In fact, our driver here has told us about things he has seen on tv occasionally and we have not had any idea about it.

When I got an email tonight from my brother about the Supreme Court Decision yesterday, I was brought to tears of joy (no pun intended). To know that everyone can exercise their civil right to love whom they choose, and express that legally and spiritually with a marriage is monumental.

I knew this day would come in my lifetime, or at least my son's, but I have to say that I didn't know it would be soon, and I couldn't be more overjoyed.

I am extremely proud of my country today.
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So, I guess that it has been a whole week now since I wrote! We didn't really have a whole lot going on during the week, so I didn't have much to say.

Last Monday, Mat and I started working again, and so between that, and suffering through a daily massage, we haven't had a lot of time to play around with silly things like blogs! :)

Did I mention that after we found Yanti, the new masseuse down the way, we decided to budget in a massage every day! My logic was that if I just worked an extra hour a day, we could afford another massage each day! Sounds reasonable, right? The flaw in that logic is that she booked us at 3-5 in the afternoon, and when you add the half-hour walk down, even if we stagger our walks down, we suddenly have cut 2 hours out of our day. On top of that, when we get back around 4:30 or 5:30 after having walked a mile each way and relaxed to a massage, work is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my job (and I am NOT just saying that for my boss' benefit :) ), but when we get back from the walk up the hill, a nap seems awfully appealing. And after a nap, dinner sounds good, and after dinner, well, maybe an hour or two of work, or maybe a promise to yourself that tomorrow, you will get up early and get more done before the massage...
wash, rinse, repeat...

Anyway, I finally justified to myself that I would catch up a bit on Sunday and not stress over it.

I am not sure when it was, probably last weekend, but we found a new restaurant just a quarter mile down the hill. It is called "sugar's" and is a villa/restaurant/pool owned half by a balinese man and half by an Australian. They have great food, great atmosphere and are as cheap, or cheaper, than our next-door restaurant. They have a beautiful circular pool in the middle of their compound, next to the restaurant. In the restaurant, the seating area consists of a living-room like area, with wicker couches and chairs, a library, and a tv. There are also tables in a lower sitting area, but we haven't even considered sitting there. They have at least 7 dogs there. There are two very big dogs that hang out in the restaurant and pretend to not realize that you have delicious food on your plate, but once your done and you pay, you noticed that they have cleaned every spec from your plate. There are another 5 dogs in a shaded pen between the restaurant and the kitchen. I am not sure why they have so many penned dogs, but they all look the same, and look kind of young, so I am guessing that they were a litter that never found a home. We have been at Sugar's almost every night for dinner now.

So, in summary, our last week has mostly been:
Wake up
Eat breakfast outside on the porch together
Go up to room and work
Around 2:30 or 3:30, head down to Yanti's for a massage
Get massage
walk home
take nap
walk down to Sugar's for dinner
eat
walk back
maybe work a little, maybe watch tv on tablet, maybe play peggle or scrabble cubes....
sleep
repeat

Saturday, day trip
Today, we finally went back out to see more of Bali. Adil picked us up at 9 and we first went up to the Ceking rice terraces.

These terraces are an example of Balinese rice farming. This particular farm belongs to 5 families who work together to farm it. It has become quite an attraction as it is quite gorgeous. Most of the rice fields around here use various plastic bags, scarecrows, or noise makers to keep birds away. The noise makers are neat but the plastic bags make a field look kind of like it is full of trash. At these terraces, they didn't use the plastic bags, which made me wonder if they have more problems with birds. However, when I realized that as a tourist attraction, they almost constantly have some people walking through the paddies, we are actually probably helping keep the birds away.

Our Driver, shelling rice

As we were leaving, Mat got suckered by a 5yr old girl selling post-cards. She said that they were for school, and when he asked her favorite subject, she lit up and said excitedly "I like math!". At that moment, he couldn't even consider haggling and paid double what he should for some postcards. There had been another girl, maybe 13, following mom trying to get her to buy some, and when she saw Mat buy from the little one, she came back to mom, now in the car, and said "you not buy from me?" and pointed to Mat buying from the little girl, and mom finally gave in, but haggled her down to half the price that Mat paid the girl.

Now, before I go into the next section, a little background...
On our last day-trip with Adil, we had a quite funny, and quite long, discussion about "Luwak Coffee". For anyone who doesn't know what this is, I know I didn't, it is a kind of coffee that is first digested by wild nocturnal cat-like animals (Luwak/Civet), and then pooped out, and then collected, cleaned, shelled, roasted, and brewed. We had discussed this for an hour or so on our drive, making one joke after another.

So, on our way out of the area with the rice terraces, we noticed a "lowak coffee free testing" sign and Mat said "Hey, pull over!"

We were greeted by Wayan, a nice boy working there who will hence-forth be known as the poop-master or p-master for short.

P-master walked us down some lovely steps that took us into a clearing in the woods with a display set up to show the process of the cat-poop-coffee.
He showed us one of the Luwaks and all the steps to produce the coffee.

Apparently, the coffee is considered better because it has had some of the caffeine removed do to the digestion and they also think that perhaps the Luwaks pick the better coffee berries and so the droppings have only good ones in it. Later tonight, River asked "who came up with this? Who said, lets go roast some cat poop?!" I looked it up and it appears that when Dutch colonists brought coffee to Indonesia, they forbid the locals who worked the crops from picking coffee berries (the outside of coffee beans) for themselves. So, they found a loop-hole and got their coffee from the jungle floors by searching through droppings!

When the poop-master finished telling us about the process, which actually seemed fairly sanitary, surprisingly, they offered us to try any of their teas or regular coffee for free, and get a cup of Luwak coffee for about 5 usd. It seems the sign was a bit deceiving, but we didn't care, we were having fun.

We got one cup to share.

They also brought us a set of 8 teas, 5 coffees, and a hot white-chocolate drink. They also brought us plain coffee to compare with the Luwak. We all tested everything!

In fact, River's first-ever experience included Cat-poop-chino (as the poop-master called it)! He tried sips of each of them and thought they were all bitter, but said that the Luwak was the best, not as bitter. He also thought that the coconut coffee was ok. The worst was the ginger coffee, which to River and I was a mixture of ick and ouch, see below! (Mom loved it!)

The rest of us felt like the Luwak went down a lot smoother as well. It didn't have the bitter aspect that coffee has.

They had all kinds of herbs and spices growing and showed us each, and let us smell it all, right off of the trees/bushes.

cinnamon leaf

We had a lot of fun making jokes with Wayan and then they brought us to their shop. Gosh-dang cat-poop-coffee is expensive! A small jar, maybe 8-12 cups worth, was about $25! So, I bought some lotus-oil for Aimee (our masseuse back home) instead which was priced more reasonably :)

Back in the car, we headed south again to see Tanah-Lot, a water temple. I don't know much history of it, maybe I wasn't paying attention when we were told, but it is a beautiful temple just off the coast, where the priests have to wade to it at low tide. There is another temple, I forgot the name, in the same complex, just a couple hundred meters away. It was on a rock that sat in the water with a natural rock-bridge over to the land. Even though it was much simpler, I found myself very drawn to it.

The smaller temple

Between the smaller temple and Tanah Lot. View to the east of smaller temple. The black stone at the edge of this rock is where we sat for pictures (below) of Tanah Lot

Again, the west of smaller temple, more inland

To the west of the smaller temple

Mat forgot that he had turned his hat around to take pictures. When he saw these pics, he said "I wish you'd told me!" (laughing at himself)

Tanah Lot

Pretty girl at Tanah Lot :)

River, worried about falling off the cliff.

More of above...

Telling River silly secrets to make him smile for camera

A happy little family at Tanah Lot

(Mom stayed at an overlook near the entrance because her knee was hurting)

Adil

Before leaving, we bought some shirts at a shop that had prices better than in Ubud. Mat got several nice short-sleeve shirts (soft cotton button-up shirts of various colors with batik designs on the collars and cuffs). I got a two-piece Batik outfit that may be more of pajamas, but are very pretty and comfortable. We also picked up a hat and a few T-shirts. Mat now has a shirt with Mickey-mouse in Bali on it :) Mom got a t-shirt and a few sarongs.

After Tanah-Lot, we headed to Pererenan beach. I had found a recommendation for it online and we found it to be a nice beach without too many people. I just realized that I didn't get any pictures of it because I left it in the car with our clothes and phones, but you could click here to see someone else's picture if you like.

We ate some very yummy food at a warung next to the beach and then Adil, after talking to the owners of the warung, told us we had to walk down a ways to where it was not as rough, just a couple hundred meters. He walked us most of the way and helped us cross a little creek that flowed out to the ocean to get to where we could swim. He then went back to the warung to wait (and apparently watch us get tumbled in the water). The water was quite rough and we all took a bit of a beating, but mom took the biggest tumbles. There was one wave that rolled her in, then out, then back in before she could stand back up. At one point, I looked over and Mat and her were holding both hands, trying to stay standing, and the next thing I knew, they had disappeared and then their heads were bobbing in the water.

We didn't stay too long, as we had accidentally left the sunblock in the car. We had enough, though, as it was a lot of work to fight the waves and the under-tow.

Mat was smart enough to change for the ride back. Mom, River, and I decided to go back in our suits with our clothes on top, which were mostly dry from our walk back to the car. Until we sat down, we hadn't realized just how much sand had embedded itself into our suits. The ride back was not the most pleasant ride I have ever had, but we survived.

When we got back, we tried to take turns showering, but the power kept going out, which runs the pump, so it took us about 2 hours to get completely cleaned!

Once clean, we had our daily massages, this time in our villa, which I had arranged the day before. Yanti brought me some muscle-rub balm which she had got for me at the market the day before. She also brought Brokop bundles which are wrapped herbs used during a certain massage (which I tried yesterday). It was like hot stone massage, except with herbal pouches. I had asked to buy some of each and she picked them up for me today when she went down to Denpasar (about an hour away). She also brought me some native fruit, just as a gift. They were called Salak and were kind of like the consistency of a potato (starchy), with a flavor between an apple and a plum.

Mom got Ketut and we had Yanti. It was a bit awkward because while I was getting a massage from Yanti, Ketut came to the door, not knowing whether she was doing mom or us today, and I had to answer the door wrapped in a sarong with the other masseuse behind me. (Mat was downstairs at the time). I felt like I was being caught cheating on her, so I tried to play it cool and invite her in to meet Yanti. It was a very awkward greeting and then Ketut went downstairs. Oh well, Ketut is still coming here every day, mostly for mom, but also for us on days when only one of us goes down to Yanti's.

That brings us to now, where I sit at the computer as Yanti finishes massaging Mat and Ketut is dowstairs with mom and River is with me upstairs playing monopoly on the tablet. We may go down to sugar's for a late dinner when their massages are done, not sure...