Cub Scouts

Proof that I love my boys so much that I will do anything for them.

We had our Blue and Gold Banquet last night and Adam is here with his cubmaster getting more belt loops and arrow points.

Bali

Bali was a beautiful tropical island. When the Dibbs were describing it for us they told us it was like the Hawaii of Asia. It is a very different world on that island than the small world that I live in. Just coming in to the airport and getting a ride to our hotel at night was a scary thing. We got off the airplane to a dilapidated airport and when we got outside there were a lot of people hanging around trying to get us to pay them to take us some place. When we got in a taxi to go to our hotel, we stopped at the first stop light and a sad 5-6 year old begged outside our window. Joe gave him some money and then his mom came up to us with her 1 year old strapped to her and looked at us with sad eyes with her hand held out. After being in Singapore, arguably one of the cleanest countries in that region, Bali seemed quite dirty. There was trash all along the roads and graffiti in lots of places. There were dilapidated buildings lining the roads that often looked like they could use repairs, but even the new buildings didn't look as finished as they would probably look here. We had to pass 2 guard gated checkpoints in order to get into our hotel, and then a metal detector to enter the lobby. Once we got in, it was absolutely gorgeous. The next few pictures are taken on the grounds of the resort.


The view from our window, the beach is just beyond the trees to the left.

When you got away from the city, there would be large rice paddies, and they were so green and lush and beautiful. There was one area that we stopped at where they terraced a whole hill and the effect was breathtaking:

We asked our driver who owned this and he said it was owned by one family one large family.
Here is another rice paddy, the house behind it was not typical.Our driver was lucky, his father in law saved up enough money until he could buy a car for his daughter's husband so that he could be a driver. Our driver said that he lived with his wife and child, his mother and father-in-law, two aunts and two of his siblings. He did say that there was a garage to park his car in. For Bali it was a nice car, but for America it was just an average car- it had 7 seats, but was more like a station wagon than a van.

The roads were full of people on motorcycles. They did not restrict motorcycles to their own lanes, they were allowed to pass between cars. A two lane road would have 3 deep motorcycles then a car, then another motorcycle then another car. They had all learned to drive like this, and although it seemed very unsafe, we didn't see any accidents while we were there. Here is the view as we are stopped at a red light. In the rural areas it was even crazier, what would be a one lane road here was a two lane road with motorcyclists on either shoulder.
When you came to parking lots, you would see more motorcycles than cars.

The driver was often paying to park- even if we just pulled in to use an ATM, or he would pay a man who helped him back into traffic. In the little booths along the side of the road there were often jars that looked like Mason quart jars with yellow liquid in them. When we asked, the driver said that that was petrol-gas. The top of the jars would be covered with plastic like a plastic baggy. We saw all sorts of crazy things on the scooters- a family of 5, women riding side saddle so they could ride with a sarong, even a woman texting while driving the scooter. One woman had two small children with her, so she tied the youngest to her.

The other thing that surprised me about the country was how much trash was everywhere. We visited "sacred" sites that would have trash in the forest within the site. There were workers there, so you would assume that they would pick it up, but the trash had obviously been there for a while. Here is a picture of a large pile of trash next to a fairly nice river. From the looks of it, it wasn't a designated trash disposal area, but there it was. The rivers generally were very dirty and polluted and even the ocean and the beaches were fairly dirty.
This is a picture of the water directly surrounding the Royal Temple with all of the pagodas I posted about earlier. If you look at the water at the top most part of the picture you can note that all of the things floating in it are plastic water bottles. Since this is next to a temple you would think that would be a place that would be clean, but apparently it is not part of their culture.
I really did enjoy seeing a different place and to see how other people half a world away live!

Elephant Safari

I'm almost done blogging about our trip, but I have a couple more to go. On the last evening that we were there, we went to a Elephant Safari park. It is a place on the island where they have transported 27 Sumatran elephants. These elephants are native to Indonesia- to Sumatra, but not to Bali. They have created a "refuge" for them on Bali and they have even started to breed them, and have 3 baby elephants. Being that it wasn't the US and the legal restrictions are not the same, we got to get more close and personal with the elephants that we encountered. They let us feed them- we fed the baby elephants and they came up and ate right out of our hands. As you can tell from the expression on my face, it was a strange feeling.

Then they let us feed the big elephants and they even had them taught to do a few tricks. This elephant lassoed me with a wreath of flowers.

They would pose for pictures. You can see from the top picture on this page that the elephant took its trunk and cosied right up to my legs. It was funny.

Or they would hug us...

After we pet the big elephants, they had a short show. The elephants shot basketballs at a hoop, kicked soccer balls into goals and even did a math problem. It was cute. At the end, we got to go on an elephant ride. Sumatran elephants are not as big as African elephants, but they are still quite large. Each elephant would carry two people and was led by a trainer. Our trainer had been with this elephant since they got him from the wild 12 years before. He was originally from Sumatra, but had moved over to Bali with his elephant. He said that he rented rooms in the neighboring town because the houses were too expensive. He was preparing to go back home to Sumatra in 6 months to farm on his family's farm.

It was quite a fun adventure, and after all that, they fed us a meal. It was probably the best meal we had on our whole trip.

Hindu Temples

One of the things that we saw the most of in Bali were Hindu temples. They were everywhere- as we drove down the streets of the towns nearly every block had a temple. They were most often close to the homes, probably each family or family group had a nearby temple. In the more urban parts of town there would be a small alter or sculpture of a God next to a business and usually you would see an offering placed in front of it. After the Ubud monkey forest, we went to two other temples. I don't know the name of the first, it was between Ubud and Denpasar, it was a fairly large temple, and we were required to wear sarongs in order to enter it.

All of the temples had a large facade and doors that lead to the inner portion of the temple. The doors were always closed- they were entrances for the Gods that the people are worshipping. Usually they were very ornately decorated with sculptures and wood carvings. The orange that you see in all of the pictures is the color of the brick that forms the walls.



Inside the temples were many alters with pagodas on top and many statues representing the different Gods. They were often labeled, just not in English.

This is an ornate wall in one of the rooms.

The temples were open to the outside air so they were subject to the heat and the humidity, so often there was a lot of green moss/ mold growing around. There were also pavilions in the temples that were obviously used for ceremonies, some had more artwork, even paintings in them, others had musical instruments similar to xylophones in them. One had people selling something, but we didn't go over and find out what.

Here is an inner court with a turtle god of some kind. When we walked up, a couple of turtles jumped off the side of the island and into the water.

The Balinese people are well known for their arts- one of which is wood carving. These ornate doors showcase that talent.

The other big temple that we visited was the Taman Ayun Royal Temple in Mengwi Badung. It was built in the 1600's and here they worship their royal ancestors. It is one of the more notable temples in Bali because of the multi-tiered pagodas on top of the separate alters. Before we entered we were reminded that women are not always "clean."

Here is the main entrance to the temple. In this temple, we were not allowed to go into the inner court, but instead we walked around the outside along the wall where we could look into the inside and see all the alters.

We were, however, allowed to walk up the steep bell tower.

A view of the inner court showing some of the pagodas.

After being in the country for several days and seeing how many temples and offerings the Balinese people make, it is clear that they are a very religious people. It was good to be reminded that God knows all of his people and that there are multiple ways to find Him in this life.

Spa Day

Since I had to Google "Bali" when the Dibbs asked us if we wanted to meet them there, I had no ideas about what to do once we were there. Kim, however, had lots of ideas from friends they have met in Australia who have been to Bali. They had the name of a driver who would drive us wherever we wanted for $40 a day! They also had a good idea of the things that we would want to see while we were there. The first day there we spent the morning at the beach and then went to a spa for some pampering.
Before we went to the spa, we stopped at this "fish spa." Basically it is a big aquarium filled with little fish that like to eat dead skin cells. When you stick your hands or legs in they swarm around you and start eating the skin. It is a little bit disturbing to feel, and you get more used to it as you go, but it always felt a little strange. All four of us sat at the same tank, but at first they preferred my legs almost 2:1. Over time they evened out. When we removed our feet from the tank, they felt really smooth. I still had large patches of dead skin on my feet since I don't regularly pay attention to them. They would only allow us to do it for 20 minutes at a time, and we only did it once.
Then we went to a spa. The spas there were SO cheap. The men got massages, but Kim and I are both not big massage fans, so we had a manicure and pedicure done. It was funny because although the women worked really hard, their skill level was not very high and so my french manicure looked about as good as I could paint myself. I wasn't trying to impress anyone and it was nice to relax. The men got done with their massages so they thought they would like a pedicure too. It wasn't like when you get a spa pedicure in the states and they massage your feet, they basically smoothed out some of the dead skin and painted our toenails. Joe had his painted black and Brian went for silver. I have to say it really bothered me to see Joe's nails painted, probably even more that it bothered him.

This is us waiting for our driver outside the resort.

That night we went to a beach near Denpasar and went to a restaurant that cooked us fish and we could eat it right on the beach. It was beautiful.