Bali Day 2

I have been to a new place called Taro or Gula. Where we are now according to the lodge's printed matter, but TripAdvisor's Travel Map doesn't know those places. Today I looked on the back of the keycard folder and found Tegalalang and was able to pin it. It is North of Ubud.

The sound of elephants woke us up before the alarm went off at 6:30am. I had looked out at about 3 am when Clay got up to pee and with a single light in the center of the park had been able to see one elephant lying on its side. There are 31 elephants here. Seven are male. Four were born here and are under either 7 or 4 years old. We can only see about 20 or so of them, but that is a lot of elephants!

We watched elephants until 7am and breakfast time. Breakfast was about 5 doors down the path or lane. It was a buffet and comprehensive and tasty. We ate on a balcony overlooking some new to us elephants. It was nice until the sun hit us! At 8am, we were scheduled for elephant bathing (aka swimming with elephants). After seeing all the floating and sinking poo not to mention frogs in the pool, we had decided against. We told them no swimming and the guy lead us to a bathing area with garden hoses and brushes. OK, I was up for clean water. I scrubbed one side and a family scrubbed the other. When I got near the butt, the elephant moved her tail to the opposite side, I could see she was dirty and I figured that was my signal to get in there and scrub. So I did. Clay just about lost it. He was like, What are you doing? I said she was dirty and signaled me to clean there. Clay agreed, but clearly he would not have done it. Then we got down to the bathing pool and I saw all these people sitting on the necks/heads of elephants. Clay was telling our guide we would not do that, when I changed my mind. I knew I'd always feel bad later if I missed my chance. I already had my watch off, so I emptied my pockets and took off my glasses and bracelet. I went on Gigi with a mahout. It was excellent! I only got wet up to the crotch. I am so glad I went. Riding on a bare elephant is totally different than no that big bench. It was still scary even in water. It is a long way down even to the water. I found I couldn't sit up and hold the rope they gave me when she was walking. I couldn't keep my balance. I leaned forward and put both hands flat on Gigi's head. He told me to sit upright so I tried again and failed again. I couldn't maintain the horizon. I explained to him Meniere's and that I needed to feel my place in space to keep my balance so he scooted forward too and told me to do what I needed. Oddly even, my tremor is still exacerbated by the experience over an hour later. I thought the tremor might be calmed like horse therapy or swimming with dolphins that you hear about calming people. I guess it either doesn't work with elephants or else I just found the whole experience too exciting and haven't settled down yet. Our substitute spa experience hour is in about 30 minutes. Clay is refusing to do that too. I will go.

We have decided that this was worth whatever we paid for it months ago. We still haven't figured that out. Today a Indonesian Rupiah is worth about 12 to 13 US Dollars. They must have revalued the currency between now and the time we paid because our paid invoice and receipt reflect over 12 million rupiah. There is no way we paid that in today's currency valuation. Neither of us remember what it was on my Capital One Visa, but it wasn't anything extraordinary. It was expensive but not crazy.

So from 10 to 11am, I'll be in the spa. Clay says he's staying in the cabin. But I'm leaving him the keycard in case he changes his mind. I'll come back to shower one last time and change clothes again. Checkout is noon, followed by lunch. Our pickup for the 2 hour drive back to Benoa and Sirena is at 1pm. We have had a pretty special experience in Bali with Sumatran elephants of all things.

I'm back. Clay did stay in and made me take the keycard. The spa experience was fine, though they were upset about Clay not coming. I had the 60-minute Traditional Balinese Massage. I enjoyed it. She accompanied me back to the room with a tray of hot ginger tea and a serving of Balinese cake. It was not cake. It reminded me of gulab jamun,,but it wasn't quite like that either as it was gummy and chewy. Anyway, Clay got to taste it. He also cut open and ate some odd fruits from our welcome fruit platter. One that was spiny turned out to be a lychee. One that was orange looking and oblong turned out to be a passionfruit. The apple, grapes and strawberry we took with us to lunch to feed to the elephants. We left behind what we thought was a lime. The elephants were very excited about our room fruits and got pretty physical and grabby! They sucked the fruits down so fast, I don't think they could have tasted them.

Lunch was a buffet and was pretty good. They had a lot of local specialties so that was good. Clay ordered a giant Bintang beer for $5 USD and got change! Our ride was on time. We arrived in about an hour and a half. So we were in good shape. We brought our daypacks to the room and went out to the dock area shopping stalls. I had an idea of finding a nice local batik blouse. When we were walking to the parking lot to the car on arrival a vendor had chased me with a beautiful hand batiked fan with koi on it. I was hoping for something like that which would remind me of Bali. All the vendors had pretty much the same shirts and they were not hand batiked. So, we ran the gauntlets of relentless Indonesian vendors for no reason. The good news was that they evidently had rules and they could not chase or follow or loudly harass you. They had to get you into their stall and then no rules applied. I learned the rules after the first stall and didn't make that mistake twice.

Before we left Bali, the captain came over the loud speakers about the rough seas we could expect. He said it would start right past the breakwater and get worse towards early morning. He didn't think it would get better until late tomorrow. I really hope he's wrong.

I tried to buy laundry tokens when we got back onboard. They guy wouldn't sell me any unless I was doing laundry right now. OK, I told him I'll do it now. I got 4 tokens for 2 loads. Unfortunately, the laundry room was absolutely a zoo. We went 3 times over a couple of hours and each time we were told by the people in there to forget it. After the rough seas warning, I plan to try laundry again on the afternoon we are in Broome. Don't tell. I hope people are mostly ashore.

Photos from today are linked in yesterday's post.