Our adventures with Wayan in Tabanan

We left lovina the next morning.  We had agreed with our dolphin guy for his cousin to pick us up, which was a mistake, always choose a driver that you know and like. Plus they all ask what your plans are and try to be your driver. He was a crazy driver, and talked about how he does motocross.   He had some road rage, and frequently stopped the vehicle to talk on his cell phone to a "stupid Russian" woman on our way to git git waterfall. Git Git waterfall was super fun! We found this water fall and started taking a few pictures when a local crossed the bridge near us and he started pointing to keep hiking the river.  I am sure he was like.. "Thats not the waterfall, you dumb white people".  

Beautiful Waterfall

I love us.

We hiked along the river, and found a cool gazebo.  I told Brian to run ahead so I could get his picture in it.  I then said to him "Is it worth it to come over there?" He looked to his left, and shook his head "Yes!" One of the prettiest waterfalls I have ever seen was in plain sight right from the gazebo.  We got some cool pictures of the step-like waterfall. 

You'd call that a gazebo, right?!

Git Git Waterfall

10 second timer. There were no humans to help us take a photo

When we got to the top of the waterfall, I decided to be adventurous and get in by the large waterfall coming down since I missed out the day before by the giant Sekumpul waterfall.

The pressure of that waterfall was amazing! That is about as close as I could get without getting sucked under

I like the top of that swimsuit. Thats why this pic is in here.

Brian was yelling in this picture. He liked getting in the water by the waterfall.

We then headed to lake Beratan where our driver dropped us off at the front of this creepy alley and he said go down there, and turn right to skip needing to pay the entry fee... Uh ok. He didn't tell us what we were going to see, just that it was a temple that we'd want to see.  We went down the alley way and it was raining pretty hard. The wind was blowing and it was so cold. So we saw a small shrine, and thought to ourselves, that was it?! Dumb driver...(more on this to come..)

The Creepy Alley 

The Temple our driver wanted us to see...

We headed back to the car and right next to the alley was a shop full of crazy animals, the luwak, iguana, Python, fruit bats, a bitey parrot, chameleon, and some scorpions. It was pretty fun to hold the animals. Brian enjoyed it more than I did.  We paid for the pics and got back in, and headed on toward ubud to meet Wayan. We got to Ubud and ditched the driver as fast as possible. We went to eat something for lunch. We found a little shack area right off the side of the road, and indulged in our juice drinks and food, all while discussing our weird driver. 

Yikes. That Fruit Bat's wings were scary and amazing.

Brian was holding everything. It took me a while to join in.

Yes Karma Chameleon was sung while holding it

Iguana

Yah, I wasn't about to touch that huge snake

...But I will hold the diseased Fruit Bat!!

We met Wayan after and he drove us to his home. Along the way, he explained some of their culture. He talked about him being the oldest male in his family. He is responsible for taking care of his parents and paying for their funeral and cremation costs. When we got to his house, we set our bags down, sat in his rice barn and chatted for a bit. We talked some with Wayan about religion and things, and he said now it is time for a rest, so we got settled, and ate some of Nyoman's delicious food. What was interesting was Nyoman didn't eat with us, she just served us. We hit the beds after dinner and slept like champs.

Check out this food Nyoman made!

Day 5

We woke up to banana pancakes and fruit. Well, not really.  We had to wake up a couple times to use the bathroom. It was hard because the bathroom was on the other side of his little compound. We did learn about how the traditional house is laid out with the temple as the head, main house the chest, kitchen and rice barn the belly, and bathroom the legs. We ate and headed out on a hike to see the rice fields, roughly two miles out through gorgeous countryside, sampling fruit and plants. We learned about rats eating the fields and if you say bad things against them (the rats) they will totally decimate your whole crop. Brian had to go to the bathroom 3 times while out walking.  Lucky he is a boy. I had to hold it.  

Rice Fields

Banana Pancakes with Pineapple

Wayan teaching me about the fields and the temple on the left

Panorama

Local lady carrying her grass offerings back to her home

Wayan asked her if I could try it out.

They got Brian doing some of the work in the rice fields

Wayans dad also got us some fresh coconut, and rambutan off the tree. We also tried some fresh chili. We got wayyy out there, and then rested playing the xylophone, and headed back. Brian and I were both really tired and dang hungry, so we devoured some more delicious food Nyoman had made. 

Coconuts

Break in the shade

The Temple Shrine on Wayans rice fields

Eating a Chili from the fields

The Finished product

My favorite meal! It was so good.

We then took a nap/rest, which was good as Brian was getting sick. We realized that we didn't pack any medicine and so Brian took a few low dose aspirin.  After resting for a bit, Nyoman taught a lesson on offering weaving, then we headed to the wet market and night market. The markets were amazing! There were so many sounds and smells.  We got to eat a really neat snack of rice and palm sugar with coconut and a few other Balinese desserts. 

Learning to weave for offerings with Nyoman

Finished product for offering an egg and rice

Night market

Yummy Yummy

This picture depicts everything fruity and delicious in Bali

We got home for dinner and Nyoman got us to try chilies. We all (even Wayan) were crying because of the spicy peppers. After dinner, we cleaned up and then we dressed up for the  traditional dress, and got to talk to Wayan about his marriage and the way their culture takes three days of celebration for weddings. Interesting fact: the husband could potentially get charged with kidnapping if the parents don't agree to the marriage of their daughter to the man, or if he doesn't send a notice they got hitched. 

See the delicious food?? Oh man, it was so good

:)

We hit the pillows hard again that night.  Of course waking up several times to go to the bathroom. I have never woken up from such a sound sleep thinking that I was truly going to wet my pants if I didn't go RIGHT THEN to the bathroom. Wayan and Nyoman were feeding us so much food and especially fruit and water.  I had to start telling Brian that if he woke up to go to the bathroom, he would have to wake me up too, or we would have an accident on our hands...

Day 6

We woke up for pineapple pancakes, then met Wayans driver he gave us for the day for a tour of the UNESCO world heritage rice fields. It was super pretty where we got dropped off. We loved seeing the beautiful fields and the cleanliness of the area. Sidetone: there is a lot of trash on the roads, or right next to the rice fields where they just dump their trash.  Its such a beautiful island, then trash piles scattered everywhere. 

Brian doing the Maren/Samantha pose

The rice fields were so amazing to see

I wish the beauty of Bali could be shown through pictures.  We did try

What a beautiful place!

This picture makes me so happy. You can see how much we love each other

Then, we went to some botanical gardens, where we had to pay again, which is where Brian and I got nervous about the amount of money we had with us... We didn't take all our money with us because we pulled out 13 million rupiah at the beginning of the trip. So we usually just kept about 1 million with us (about $100) rather than all of it at the same time..just in case.. Anyway, The botanical gardens were beautiful! Here are some pics of things we saw there:

Zen. Brian loves the sign in this picture

I wanted one too!

This tree was seriously amazing looking

Brian loves bamboo so we had to visit the bamboo forest

He seriously loved it!

We got dropped off at lake Beratan again to eat, there was a Buffett place that was like 140k per person... Um.. No thanks. Way too spendy for our tastes. So we ate lunch in a hole in the wall - chicken and rice / strawberry lemonade. It was delicious, and it was only like $3. We stopped at a station and paid for the worst toilet ever. Brian words, "...Wow. Corrugated metal door with a nail lock horrible pink tile with a squatter toilet, mold everywhere, and a built in dirty water basin complete with nasty water scoop. Needless to say I was grateful for my hospital grade hand sanitizer."  We then saw the REAL temple we were supposed to have seen the other day when going down the alleyway. The weather was better anyway, so I'm glad we stopped again. And we were honest by paying to enter. 

These little girls were doing balinese dancing. It was adorable to watch 

one of many beautiful pictures!

I have no idea why this bird was in the tree.

The temple we totally missed two days prior.

Yes, it is even more amazing than these pictures.  

Uhm...This is the gate we could have snuck in 2 days prior so we could see.....

This view!

After seeing the amazing temple, we had to skip the small monkey forest on our tour. We saw a 2nd temple, which is where Brian started dying on me.  He had a really bad head cold and kept falling asleep in the car. He said he was so hot in the car, and that he really just wanted to go home.  

Brian not feeling well.. :(

How cool is this temple though!?

Brian sacrificed for me and we went to the 3rd temple of the day: the Tanah Lot temple!  We waited until sunset and watched the sun set on the ocean while looking at the beautiful temple.  

Tanah Lot Temple on the Bali Sea

Amazing place to see the sunset. And a tourist trap

Brian

The waves that were crashing in was pretty amazing

Some girls stopped me and asked to take a picture with me.  This darn white skin! ;)

The site of the 2nd Tanah Lot temple

Awesome shot! Thanks Brian.

When we got home, of course Nyoman had delicious food waiting for us.  We were in bed and asleep within 30 minutes of eating.  Of course we woke up frequently to use the bathroom...no surprise there.  Our bodies had too much fruit and water apparently...