Most of last week was fairly uneventful. Sometime in the last couple weeks, we got a cat.
When I say we, I mean the whole villa complex, but it seems to mostly hang around our villa. I think the hope is that it will deter the rats, which I think it has a bit.
For a while, there were a few rats that were getting rather bold. If we left any food of any sort out, it would be gone in the morning. In fact, they stopped even waiting for us to be asleep, and as soon as the lights went out (ok, maybe 5 min after the lights went out), we could hear rustling. If we turned on the light real quick, we could see them dive off the table/shelf/whatever... In the day, we would occasionally see one run across a rafter or the edge of the room. The funniest time was when we got some massage oil from Yanti and the next day it was missing. I finally found it in a gap between the roof and the floor (it is an a-frame like roof) and it had a hole in it as if they had tried drinking it, then decided that they didn't like it.
Then Made brought in a cat, hoping it would help. Interestingly, the cat is barely bigger than the rats and I don't think it would know what to do if it found one. But, the good (kinda) thing is that the cat spends much of the day meowing, which I think scares off the rats. Plus, it makes its rounds throughout our room, around the outside areas, etc., which I think leaves a cat scent so that the rats won't want to be around as much.
We haven't seen any rats in the last week, although we occasionally hear evidence, like finding something that it knocked off of a dresser or something (they are not the most graceful animals in the kingdom, btw).
For those of you going eeew right now, please know that although there are rats around, we have never even been close to touching one. They are extremely fast and extremely shy. If they even think you are looking at them, they take off.
Thursday
Mat's Birthday was Thursday. Made had been saying that he would have us over for dinner sometime, and when he realized that it was Mat's birthday, he decided that it was a good time. Mat had been planning to go out for a steak, but didn't want to offend, so agreed that he would do that a different day. We went over to his house, which was a large compound that included several houses, a temple, and many common buildings for things like laundry, cooking, and storage. He showed us his house first, and then we went to his parents house, or rather outside of their house, on a living-room like porch (it had a tv and bed and roof). His parents, uncle, brother, children, nieces, nephew, and perhaps others were there. There were probably 12-15 of them and four of us enjoying a buffet-style meal. There was godoh, fried chicken that rivaled KFC, delicious greens, fruit, fish, rice, and several other things there. Everyone was extremely welcoming, especially Made's father, who did not speak any English, but insisted on continuously communicating with us, which was fun to try to guess his meaning, and then confirm with Made what he meant. He told us that River was a handsome first born. That several of the things on our plate were very good, and we should eat more of it, that we were not to clean our own plate... etc.... It was funny because Mat grabbed his plate to get more and Made's father stopped him, clearly telling him not to take his plate. After a little discussion with Made and translating, he gave Mat back his plate to go get seconds. As it turns out, he thought that Mat was trying to clean up, but once he realized that he just wanted seconds, he laughed, giving him back his plate. At one point, Mat took the fish-head that was on his plate and pretend to talk with it, using some English and some Balinese words that we know.
That got a roar of laughter from everyone! The highlight of the evening was Made trying to get his daughter (who is 12) and River (also 12) to talk to one another. He kept prompting each what to say next:
After dinner, we went back to the villa and mom and I got massages from Ketut (Mat had his birthday massage from Yanti before dinner).
Friday
After a lot of back and forth, Mat and I decided to go up to the north part of the island for the night. There are dolphin watching trips up there and we wanted the chance to see them. River and Mom went back and forth on whether to join but we finally decided on them staying at the villa and Mat and I going alone. We used Yanta, Yanti's husband, as a driver. Even though I used a patch to avoid car-sickness, I got extremely car-sick on our way to the north. It was probably a 3 hour drive, and for at least 1.5 hours, I felt miserable. I think that I hadn't but on the patch early enough and I hadn't thought to bring dramamine or anything else. Most of the second half of the ride was through the mountains with continuous switchbacks, which made matters much worse. Finally, we arrived in Lovina, on the north shore, and all I wanted to do was nap. We checked with a couple hotels and found one just next to the beach for 20$/night. We paid an extra 10 for our driver to have a bed instead of sleeping on the lobby floor. After resting a bit, and getting my bearings on solid ground, we decided to get some dinner. We walked down along the beach, passing dozens of vendors trying to get us to buy their wares. After avoiding all of them, we found a restaurant that looked nice. Mat had marlin for only a few bucks, and I, of course, had fried rice. As we walked back to the hotel, we saw a spa that was still open and decided to get a quick massage before bed. It was a pleasant place, but the massage was fairly mediocre. We were side-by-side and the massages were identical, you could tell because at certain times, they would do this thing similar to karate-chopping, and they were entirely in sync. There was no personalization of the massage whatsoever, but it was relaxing, so we didn't complain. They gave us some delicious tea afterwards and then we walked back to our room.
Saturday
We had to get up at 5:30 to see the dolphins. The boat left at 6. At first, nobody was up at the hotel and we were standing there, like they told us to, at 6 waiting for someone to tell us what to do, but nobody was there. We were only going to be there for 1 day and the though of dealing with that excruciating drive, just to miss the dolphin watching, was about more than I could take. Finally, a woman at the store across the way said, there should be a security guy in the lobby, so I went back and found that he had just gotten up from his post, curled up on the floor of the lobby on a make-shift bed of cushions. He told us to follow him to the beach and he dropped us off with a captain next to the pier.
The boat was like a canoe, except twice as deep and half as wide. It then had two pontoons or something like that on each side to give it balance. I was worried that it would be bumpy, but it turned out to be quite confortable. It had a small engine and he took us probably a mile or so off-shore, where we met up with a couple dozen other boats. My understanding is that you normally pay twice for a boat to yourself, but we just lucked out that way. Our captain was great at pointing out where the dolphins were and moving as close as he could without scaring them. He called other captains, who charged right into where the dolphins were 'stupid'. The dolphins, in groups of 2-6, would periodically show up, diving in and out of the water. We got to see one do a twirl straight up and down (the picture did not come out at all) and another do a backflip, but most of them did the normal graceful leap out and then into the water.
The dolphin that did a backflip
This is the dolphin that did a twirl, I apparently got it at the very end
Beautiful Sunrise
We could also see an active volcano from Java spewing smoke into the air. Our captain said that it is rare to see that, as the mist usually hides it.
On the far left, the mountain that has smoke coming out of it is "Mt Singapore", an active volcano
They look like they are leading us somewhere
Not sure why I like this pic, maybe it is the symmetry
Dolphins looking like sharks
Several dolphins together
Pretty close up
One of our first views of the dolphins with the sun not yet up
Another pretty view
Our closest view
Our awesome captain
Preparing the boat to go out while it is still dark. This is our security guard helping out.
We stayed out for about 2 hours and eventually came back in. Back at the hotel, we had pancakes and then headed back out on the road, towards home.
We first stopped at a buddhist temple. Like others, this was surrounded by a Hindu temple. Unlike the others, this one was a little less clear where the Hindu ended and the Buddhist began...
Strangely, this was a mix of Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist figures
Next, we went to a traditional market half-way through the mountains. Yanta took a much smoother route, and I had prepared with double motion-sickness medicine and I had no problem with the drive. We found this market fairly similar to the shops in Ubud except that it was run by mostly Muslims instead of Hindus. That said, the only real difference was the clothing the vendors wore and the fact that there wasn't a single dong being sold in the shops :)
We picked up some fruit, carrots, and muscle-rub cream and then headed back on the road.
There are several hot-springs in Bali, and we picked one that is mostly used by the locals. Our driver brought us there telling us that he had never been here, but his son had come several times on class trips. It was nice, but wasn't the best hot-springs experience that I have had. I ended up changing off in a corner somewhere because the changing rooms, the size of a shower, smelled pretty rank. There was a nice open pool overlooking a creek with 2 waterfalls which was nice. The water was just warm, but pleasant. There was algae in the water, but it seemed clean enough.
They had these little cabins, each with a private stone-tub in it, for private bathing. We did this next. It was a little warmer and had one side open to overlook the creek, which was nice. The biggest problem was that there was barely any room around the pool, making it very hard to sit on the edge or anything like that. 
I hadn't been able to find my suit and figured that I had left it at the villa, so I wore a black snug tank and underwear which happened to have been black as well, so it looked like a suit. Later in the evening, it turned out that my suit was with us, just not where I had looked. Oh well, the only people there wearing actual swim-wear were tourists. The rest wore shorts and t-shirts.
That was our last stop, and so we headed back to the villa. Yanti was too busy to do massages, so Mat got one from Ketut and I napped most of the evening. By then, my eyes were feeling very tired and burning a little. I tried texting and found that I couldn't really read the words on my phone. I sometimes feel that way in the morning, but this didn't wear off. All small writing blurred and I suddenly worried that maybe I had hurt myslef by taking two different sea-sickness meds at the same time. One of them was from a local pharmacy and wasn't even approved in the US and one of them was the patch. I had checked that they were not in the same family so that I wouldn't get too much of anything, and had taken the risk, knowing that I didn't want to get sick on the boat or while driving. After realizing that my vision was blurry, I (with great difficulty) looked up the meds and they said that they make you more sensitive to the sun and could have a side-affect of blurry vision. I also looked up damage from the sun on your eyes and found that you can basically sun-burn your eyes either from looking at the sun or looking at the water that was reflecting the sun. I decided that this must have been what happened, remembering how unpleasant it was when we were looking for dolphins in the direction of the sun. I went to sleep, hoping that it would get better the next day.
Sunday, my vision was a little better, but now 100%. It still was tiring to work on the computer and I kept screwing up prices at the store, but by this morning it is much better and I feel more comfortable that I didn't do permanent damage.
Sunday
Sunday, we hung around the room most of the day and got massages from Yanti here in the room. After that, Esty came into the room and said "Made is waiting in the restaurant to talk with you. I have this file, so lets go" The order didn't make much sense, but we followed her, only to find Made at the pool trying to clean out things (dirty and sweaty). She stopped and told him to come with us and he asked us what is going on. "You aren't leaving tomorrow are you?" he asked. We told him no, Esty said we were supposed to meet him in the restaurant. We all followed her up to the restaurant (really just a large room with big tables) and when she opened the door, we found all of the staff and mom and River throwing flowers at us and saying "suprise! Happy Birthday" and singing us the happy birthday song. They had decided to celebrate the July birthdays (which included Made on the 17th or something) with a surprise party. They had gotten ice-cream, cake, flowers, and mom even made us pictures and wrapped them as gifts. The staff was soooo excited and most of the party was spent them and Made telling stories about how he was frustrated all day by not being able to find anyone to help him. The truth is, Mat and I knew about it but we played along very well, since it meant so much to the staff to surprise us. I don't think Made had any idea, he was VERY surprised, and started dancing what I could only call a belly-dance with the cake.
Made's Belly dance
Made and his older daughter
Mom and Esty
Speaking of which, we leave for home next Saturday and will be back to town by Sunday evening. I will try to do at least one more blog entry before we go, and maybe one after getting home (the conclusion of the experiment) and then I will retire from this blog.
Take care everyone!
Some ducks that I thought were photo-worthy
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