August 1 2010
This morning we said farewell to our palace digs and have now taken up lodging at Cendana. There's a pool, and spa, and restaurant and drivers, and tours, and all kinds of other great things. We signed up for a tour tomorrow. From 9am to 5 in the afternoon. First stop, Elephant Cave, Goa Gajah. After that a whole slew of other sites. I'm looking forward to it. After checking in to our new hotel, and finally getting a good clean fresh water shower, we headed down to Monkey Forest. The place is insane. Monkeys are everywhere. (Hence the name, Monkey Forest.) Stealing your stuff, robbing you of bananas or any other kind of food you may have on you. It turns out the little ones aren't so bad it's the big ones you have to really watch out for. Their fangs are around a couple inches long. Here, at the forest, they sell bananas outside so you can feed the monkeys. You can lure them to hop up on your shoulder but there are some that just want to play on you even without the bribe of a banana. Ashton got pooped on and that was pretty funny. I love monkeys. They have the cutest little hands and feet and they will sit with you just playing with your fingers. Also here in monkey forest are a few temples. It's really interesting. Any one can go in but they have to be wearing traditional Balinese attire. They were preparing for a special ceremony tonight. It would have been interesting to attend. After monkey forest we wandered back up the road stopping in the occasional shop and then ending back at the market. I love the market except for, once again, everyone tries to rip off the tourist. And then they make you feel really bad like you are the one trying to rip them off. I don't feel bad for long though. There are a few things that I’ve seen in which I really want. Well, lets be serious there are a ton of things I really want. One is this blue carving of Ganesh. He is the Hindu god with the body of a man and the head of an elephant. He's also kind of expensive. $800,000 rupiah. Currently it is $1usd to $8,900rp. But I'm hoping maybe we can talk them down a little. Another thing I’d really love are these puppets. There are two kinds, a pair of traditional puppets that look like dolls, they have sticks attached to their hands connected to hinged limbs so the puppeteer can move them. They're really cool. The other puppets are shadow puppets. Yesterday I bought one for $80,000rp. Not bad. They are made of a flat piece of leather and have intricate cut outs for the light to shine through. They too have hinged limbs so that the puppeteer may move their arms. While here I'd like to find some silver jewelry as well but haven't seen anything I'm really taken with. Ashton found some spices to bring home, two different types of curry, and some others. I bought some vanilla beans mostly cause they smell wonderful. I have no idea what you do with them. I'm sure we'll be back to the market again though. Afterwards, we came back to our hotel to relax before dinner. Ashton chose the restaurant tonight. His decision was based on the fact that they had a tv playing the formula one car races. The food was pretty good. We both had curry. Mine, prawn Balinese coconut curry, his green chicken. I really like the curry here but it's more of a soup than a sauce as they make it Indian style. (I love Indian curry.) We grabbed some snacks for tomorrow and it's 10 o'clock now, time to say goodnight. We have lots to do in the morning.
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