The monkey looked upon River as one of its own

To start off, requests and resolutions...

I have been informed that it is easier on your eyes to read black on white
(or dark on light) and have therefor changed my template to an easier-on-the-eye one.

I have been asked for an easier way to look at just the pictures.  In the new template, you can click on an image and it
will open all of the images in a "gallery" with large images and thumbnails of others to see.

I have been asked to send more pics of where we are staying.  I don't have great ones of these yet, as I forgotten the request until now.  Here are some that we have taken...

Hanging in our bathroom, painted by Made

Our Bedroom, upstairs

Our Pool at night

A neat set of beads outside with butterflies

Our view out the back of the property

Pool in daytime, with Gun, pronounced "Goon", a very friendly member of staff

I have been asked to describe the food more.  I have since tried to take pictures of the food, but have failed miserably, only managing a single bowl of soup!

I don't know if it is my aversion to being "that person" who takes pictures of their food, or if I just truly forget, but I never seem to remember to take the pictures until it is too late.  However, I will do my best to describe some of the main dishes that we have eaten.

Nasi Goreng (Fried Rice, Nasi=Rice Goreng=Fried) 
This is a breakfast or dinner meal and is a dish of rice deliciously fried in coconut oil with mixed vegetables and chicken (or tofu and tempe for vegetarians).  The veggies seem to be a form of green, maybe water spinach or kale, and also carrots. Some people add onion, but I prefer it without.  There is always a generous amount of roasted garlic slices creating an incredibly savory flavor in which it is hard to find flaw.  You can have it as "Nasi Goreng Special" which means a fried egg on top. This makes it even tastier and the meal is almost always large enough to last two settings.  The best part is that this is the cheapest meal you can find.  Usually about 20k idr which is about 1.50 or so.  I have had this meal for well over half of my meals while here.  River is planning an intervention, saying that I am addicted.  In fact, I went 24 hours without it just to prove I could but promptly ate it at dinner tonight.

Mixed Pancake 
For breakfast, if we eat at our villa, we have the choice of Nasi Goreng or eggs and pancake.  The pancakes have banana and pineapple inside them and are more like a crepe than an american pancake.  They are quite delicious and are best with a thin syrup that they provide.

Burgers
The restaurant next door serves chicken/beef/tuna/tempe burgers that are, as best as I can describe, like burger's from the "Burger Stand" in Lawrence.
For those of you that aren't from Lawrence, the burger stand is basically a hipster joint, but as much as I didn't want to like their burgers, I can't help it, they are damn good!  The ones here come with the meat, a fried egg, lettuce/tomato grilled onion (if you like onion),  and a special sauce that River says tastes like the chipotle ketchup at the burger stand.

Fried Chicken
There are a few implementations of this, some like american, some like little crunchy popcorn chicken, all delicious and the coconut oil used for the frying makes it very tasty.  Which leads me to CHICKEN IN GENERAL, including eggs, is just delicious here.  So fresh and flavorful, which makes sense because the chickens are completely free-range, roaming peoples yards, playing king of the mountain with ducks, puppies, and other small creatures...

Barbecued Pork
Mat says it was delicious.  It was glazed and in small pieces served with white rice.

Fish
Mom had some kind of fish.  She had trouble eating it as it was served, in battered strips, sitting inside the body of the fish.
Mat had no problem eating from the dead fish corpse :)  Again, the coconut oil gave the batter a good flavor but it lacked seasining.

Fried Tempe/Tofu
Served as an appetizer for a buck or two at every restaurant.  A little bland, to be honest, but came with a sauce that we were told was "soyabi" (or maybe soyami?) that is addictive.  It is like soysauce with honey in it.  Online, it mentions horseradish and garlic, but I didn't taste it.

Godoh Goreng (Fried banana, or potato)
I saved the best food for last.  On the way back from seeing Esty, Made stopped and grabbed a bag of Godoh Goreng.  I think I already mentioned this but it is worth saying again, this was incredible!  Like tempura batter on potato and banana.  The potato may have been sweet potato, which I typically don't like, but the ones here are a little less suite than the ones back home.  The best part of this is that a bag large enough for a good snack for 5 people (4-5 pieces each), is only 10k which is about 75 cents.

Drinks
Most mornings we drink pineapple juice, occasionally banana juice.  The pineapple is 3/4 froth and the rest delicious.  The banana is like a smoothie and very suite.
The coffee is too strong from but Mat likes it, a bit gritty at the bottom, but oh well.  Mat says that the coffee makes very pretty swirls when you add milk.
They have many other juices, and one that they call "mixed", but I am not as fond of it as it seems to have some cucumber in it.

I will try to remember to update you when I try new things and perhaps get pictures if I remember.

Wednesday
A lazy day.  If you haven't noticed, these come up about every other day.  Mat and I spent a good 3 hours working on analyzing the 30 or so spa pamphlets that we got the day before to decide where we wanted to go for our anniversary spa day.  Our 20 year  wedding anniversary is next month and so we are going to celebrate it a month or so early with a day at the spa where we will pamper ourselves with massages, facials, etc.  We implemented a scoring system for each pamphlet and finally narrowed it down to our 2 or 3 favorites and are pretty sure that we know the one we are going to. The reviews online are mixed, so we will probably go there before-hand and get Mat a shave and look around to see if it looks comfortable.

We spent time planning our next week, well by planning I mean deciding which day we would each get in-room massages (not to be confused with the spa-day).  We have budgeted an in-room massage for us on an average of every third day and we recently decided to split those to one per day instead of 3 every 3 days.  This is mostly because we all like the same masseuse ;)

As we plotted out our days, we also decided on which days would be "lazy days" (every other day) and which days we would try to do something.
While plotting this out, we came across our first pull-out quote of the trip...  This was me talking to Mat...

"The only bad thing is that you have to have a massage after not doing anything"

Later, when proposing an agenda for the spa day to Mat, he entertained me with the response:

"Don't you think that 7 hours of massage will be kind of fatiguing"

Oh, I know, you guys are all thinking "oh, to have their problems!"  I have to admit, this is paradise!

Mid-day or so, I worked for a bit, but found myself very sleepy and so I chose to take a short nap. When I got up, we took a walk down to the hotel just down the road.  Our host, Made, and a partner own the property down the road and he invited us to go enjoy the pool down there.
They had no guests at the time and so Made invited us, saying that it was a good time for us to look around.
   
Made's daughter (can't remember her name) walked us down and I asked if she like working with her dad.  She smiled sheepishly as if she didn't know how to answer.  I said "you have to, don't you" and she laughed in agreement.

 
The pool and property were very nice, but a little more upscale, which is pleasant but loses characters.  The pool had what would have been a built in Jacuzzi, but was not heated, but provided a nice sitting area looking over the rest of the pool.  There was a beautiful statue that embarrassed River (which made it even better).

 
Some of Made's art was down there as well, including a painting that I like a lot.  When I told him so, he said that he would give it to me.  I said that I would buy it, then he said "you can give a donation". I think that the money that he makes off of his art, he puts into his village.

 
On the way back, there is a restaurant (just between the two properties).  We stopped in to check prices and ended up staying for dinner,  even though it was only 4:30.  Their prices were just right (20k-30k for most meals, $1.50-$2.50)  The most expensive meal was roasted duck, which cost a whopping $5.00.  The environment was very pleasant with American music (very common in bali). There were signs like "Free beer tomorrow" and "I may not be perfect, but I have a lot of parts that are pretty great".  They were decorated with sarongs from the ceilings and the tables and benches were made from beautiful solid hard wood.
 
Mom was not with us for the swim, and so we brought her home dinner.  She was not feeling well yesterday, but woke up much better today.
 
During the evening, the masseuse came and I had a massage.  A great way to end a lazy day, so I guess there is nothing wrong with having a massage after doing nothing at all :)

Thursday
We woke up early today.  It was the first day that I set my alarm, although I awoke before it and turned it off.  We had breakfast at 8 and our taxi waiting at 9 so that we could go to the monkey forest before it got hot.
 
We arrived and tried hard not to be "those people".  You know, the ones that come with food and try to lure the monkeys onto them.  We followed all of the advice online and brought little more than a camera and a bag with locked zippers.  We also had two water bottles between us and mom's purse.
 
Mat work sunglasses with a strap and mom had her glasses.  We knew that those things were a risk, but took it anyway, figuring that we should be ok since we didn't bring food to entice them.
 
At the very beginning, we watched a monkey jump on a man's back, clearly after his water bottle. After a few attempts, where the man lowered and let him off, he finally acquired the bottle and was not about to give it back.  Shortly after that we watched one person after another experience monkeys climbing over their bodies.  There were tons of picture-perfect moments with the monkeys:

"Peek a boo"

"Where are you?"

Interested in Mat's shoe

"Mama, please stop pulling my hair!"

 

"yum yum yum"

 
Half-way through, we sat for a rest and before I knew it, one had jumped on me and then walked across to River.  It was an adolescent and stopped on River's shoulders and proceeded to groom him. I hadn't seen this with anyone else (they always wanted something with other people), but with River, it was as if he was one of their own!  Mat got the camera from me and got a few pics, unfortunately, there are none of when he was on me.  For me, I mostly  noticed the softness of the pads of its feet as he ran across me.  River said that he noticed the nails and the longer it stayed there, the more they slowly dug in.
 

After maybe a minute or two of grooming River, another monkey, an older one, perhaps the mother, suddenly ran up and tackled the monkey off of River.  This didn't cause any pain for either River or the teenage monkey, but was quite amusing to see.  It was very clearly being reprimanded.

After that, mom and Mat both wanted the experience and in small ways became "those people". Sitting in areas near groups, messing with fruit on the ground, etc. Sure enough, one got up on Mat and I got a pic.

Then, it went over to mom and tried to get her water bottle.  It was a pretty young one and was freaking adorable as it was practically nursing her water bottle.  Another showed up, about the same size, and got up on her too.  It was mostly interested in her glasses and also the collar of her shirt.  See the pics...

When we got back home, Made was amazed by these pics, saying "you weren't scared?"  "this is amazing!"  "This isn't normal!".  He told us that he was going to give the pictures to a friend at the tourist board and they may want to use them for advertisement of the monkey forest.

After mom and River got their pics with the monkeys, I was a bit envious and wanted a pic with me, and so I ended up being "that person". I dangled the water bottle a bit too nonchalantly and stood still giving them opportunities to come to me.  One did, climbed up and over me and then  grabbed my bottle from the ground.  I hollered at Mat to "get the shot" which meant that I let him keeping grabbing at the bottle.  Before Mat could get the shot, I chickened out and let go of the bottle, worried that he would bite me (the forest averages 3 bites a day and I didn't want to be one). He promptly ran off with the bottle.  We had read that you don't try to get it back and sure enough when we went towards him, he barred his teeth.  Sadly, he was just  a young one, and it looked more like he was smiling, which made us chuckle a bit.  In defense, an older one promptly barred his teeth  and hissed, right at River from only about a foot away.  This intimidated us enough to back away and give up on the water bottle.  However, a worker there though fruit at the monkey with the water bottle until it hit him dead-on and scared him into running off (or maybe he was chasing the fruit), leaving our green water bottle alone on the sidewalk.

We gathered our things and slathered ourselves (and water bottles) with hand sanitizer and headed out.

We had scheduled our taxi to get us at 1 and it was only 11 so after a quick jaunt to the ATM and grocery store nearby, we texted him for a ride home.  Our driver, Wayan Adil, is super nice, and today he had his 2.5 year old, Ketut, with him again. Ketut was a bit  less shy and repeated words, said hello and goodbye.  It was very nice to see Wayan protective of his son, as he would herd him away from the road when out of the car.  Interestingly, the child was in the front seat with no seatbelt, climbing around, but at least he wasn't on a motor-bike, which there were many small children to be seen on the front of motor-bikes.  Wayan had mentioned that he doesn't use the motor-bike when he has Ketut with him.

We got home and took it easy.  I read some of "The Dreamer" (Daniel Quinn), watched a bit of tv from my tablet (which I haven't done much yet), napped, worked a little, and then we walked next door for dinner. It's mom's turn for a massage tonight and she just finished that while Mat and River challenged each other to chess on knockoff handheld gaming console that Mat one from a claw machine a few years ago.

That brings us to now, where I lay in my bed, looking at what remains of a towel-swan that was robbed of his wings when I bathed earlier.  Mat is reading After Dachau (another Quinn book) and Mom is downstairs finishing up "Newcomer's guide to the afterlife".  She is the last to read it on this trip and we have all enjoyed it greatly, regularly drawing upon it in our conversations.