Roosters, Elephants, and Monkeys

Villa Mantra has many many things going for it; the view, the atmosphere, nice people. The one thing, however, which tickled our annoying bones, was the schedule our neighbor roosters had for when they thought dawn supposedly is. Hey 5am is perfect, we get up around 6 anyway.. but this one particular cock starts his routine around 3am and doesn't finish til around.. well I don't think he stops until he gets killed and eaten, which I imagine frequently now. 

   We are mobile now! With a Honda moterbike rented for the rest of the trip, we can travel all around Bali if we want to. On the video camera we got a little clip of us going on our first trip with Emily on the back filming. We might get a clip on the Iphone and post it for all you people who cant wait. And it really still is a crazy experience. With just two lanes of traffic there can be up to six vehicles lined up at a stop light. Their are moterbikes and scooters everywhere so if there is free space somewhere, it is fair game to take it, and this includes opposing traffic lane. Ahh I'll just let you guys watch the clip next time:)

Just to the north of Ubud, we checked out the elephant park after a wrong turn sent us through some beautiful rice paddies (we just kept driving it was so cool!). Riding these guys looked awesome but was way too expensive. They were quite friendly though, and liked to explore around with their trunks a lot when humans were nearby, probably looking for food. So after the crazy show with painting, sitting up, soccer and basketball (with circus music of course) we fed some bamboo for a little up close and personal time with Tina (Eat the FOOD Tina!). The legendary Monkey Forest was super close to us, and the first time we went we got loads of videocamera footage of monkeys crawling all over Emily to get her bananas. I found this quite interesting that she was all right with this, yet freaks out when their are a few bugs on the ground. Matt, those things have fangs and are goddamn scary, and there is no way I am acting aggressive towards them just for a good photo. Em did get bit though and now she is in the hospital for rabies. Kidding! We did go back once again though with the phone, and lured some monkeys out of the park with bananas for some snaps for you folks.

 

Here, I saw the monkey too late, and right after it dove at me and tried to eat me.

Right after the failed attack from the monkeys, we decided to relax at the porno museum. This guy Blanco painted many naked women and the guidebook described it as such. It cost us 50,000 Rb to get in (about 5CAD) which was expensive compared to the Monkey forest (20,000) but we immediately got our moneys worth by seeing a tonne of birds of Paradise. They perched on us, look!

Stay warm up there! Beaches and driving next!

Getting over the pond

Hello Friends and Family!

Our trek over to Bali meant stopovers in San Fransisco, Tokyo, and Singapore, amounting to about 40 hours of travel time. We decided to skip the few days visiting in Singapore because our connection there was unavailable for hosting and we wanted to get all the travelling done at once.

Bathrooms turned out to be a highlight in the airports, as in Japan, Emily was able to check in and choose what meal she wanted from her bathroom console (not really). But just look at the controls from the picture she took! In Singapore, the urinals had little flys to aim at which is pretty cool too... maybe even cooler. Speaking of Singapore, that's where I got busted for carrying a butterfly knife in my luggage! Fun times getting detained and questioned at 2 in the morning. Good thing Em and I are awesome negatiators and managed to convince our Singaporean friends that we are in fact not butterfly knife wielding Canadian Gangsters, but travellers who didnt check the side compartment where my brother Matt stashed his camping knives. (We got to keep the fishing knife!)
Below is a picture of us still looking good before boarding our final flight.

So I am typing this in Ubud, a town in central Bali, which will be our base of operations for the most part. Our friends Denton and Megan live here, and it is also where we will volunteer at a local school. The place we are staying at is amazing. Called Villa Mantra, it is off the main road, has a kitchen and pool, and surrounded by coconut and banana trees. From our bathroom we can see many rice paddies and the farmers collecting from them. While watching them collect, I got a wave from one of them, and after covering up I waved back :))

Monkey Forest today!












Paddies!












Bugnet Bed!