A scooterhoot: from reef to volcano

Woohoo people, I write to you quick what happened in this week since my last post, because it was so much, and so exciting, and the upcoming week is gonna be even more so, that I better write it down now before it all overlaps and messes up and disappears under and around each other...

So last Tuesday morning, after saying See ya to Ubud...

Off on my own I was with my little scooter on those roads taking me right in the middle of the traffic chaos surrounding Denpasar, Kuta... and the airport. Right there I had to get - alive, without damage, and preferably in time to catch my Aussie friend Dom hopping off the plane.

All the time he secretly had been planning to travel to Bali and join me for my last week, but I never really believed he would seriously do it. Well.... he DID, because he hadn't left Australia for the last 10 years, because his big birthday is coming up and he deserves a present and a holiday and because had never been to Bali (while pretty much every Aussie has at some point!) and because he felt the strong need to just get out of his armchair.
... and so I decided to just take him with me on my scooter trip to Amed.
Amed on the north east side of Bali is known for its amazing diving and snorkeling sites.

That Bali traffic is just insaaane - but I know you don't wanna hear another whinge about polluted air and no road rules and danger and more polluted air. 

Having learned how to appreciate my own health SO MUCH, I was super duper extremely keen not to get involved in an accident - wide open eyes rushing from road to mirror ro road to left to right to road to mirror, ready to slam the brakes any second, and paying like 150% of my attention for more than 2 hours....

Imagine how tired and relieved I was when I let myself fall down on my bottom on the airport foyer's floor. 

BUT: The only damage I had was sunburnt arms! If that's not a success for someone who learned how to drive a scooter in Bali some two weeks ago, yay.

A while later, I got up on my feet again to give Dom a Hello hug, and with him in tow went to do the same thing backwards - get out of Kuta/Denpasar alive and then along the coast, direction Amed.

Dom sitting behind me was as excited and happy as a little boy on a school trip, wobbeling the little scooter around with his long arms and legs and giving me a hard time to keep the balance :D

After getting lost in the middle of Denpasar we made it out of the madhouse main traffic area and with the sun in our back, we whizzed to Padang Bai, a tiny fisher village about halfway to Amed.

Next day, after a bit more of getting lost, we reached our destination and spent a great time watching the stunning unterwater life in the reefs... You cross the pebbly black volcanic sand beach and wade into the bay and just right there is a wonderful coral reef with loads and loads of stunningly colourful fish cavorting around. Like in "Finding Nemo" or "The little Mermaid" :))))
Once more, dammit I have no GoPro or another kind of waterproof camera to capture all this for you!
And bummer that we missed out on snorkeling the shipwrecks there, but we were eager to get on our scooty again and feel the wind whistling in our ears.
But we could not have been further away from complaint.

 

The way home convinced us that we bought the full adventure package by going on this trip.

First thing, that "nice road" up to Mount Batur was the most horrible mountain goat track that has ever been called a road.
There was hardly any straight asphalt, mostly is was rocky, potholy dirt path with occasional patches of asphalt. Washed out by the rain and so steep that Dom had to help pushing up the mountain with his legs and I had to get off the scooter and walk several times because the poor littly scooty was struggling and straining like a chain smoker hiking the Himalaya. But it kept chugging along like a champion!
If it would have broke down on that steep remote mountainside track, we would've been slightly screwed :D

On the way down from the mountains on the other side then, we rushed straight into a police control. Thanks to the heavens that I was driving and not Dom, because I have an international driver's license and he doesn't. And the Balinese policemen are known for taking all the money they can get off you if they catch you driving without and international license. In our case, there was nothing he could make a fuss about, so we scootered off in relief.

About 11 km out of our destination Ubud, we hit another bump in the road. Balinese roads can be quite good but still your scooter takes a flogging about 10000 times on a roadtrip from countless bumps and deep edgy potholes.
So this particular pothole was the straw that broke our scooty's back - or put in a more realistic way, pinched it a flat tyre.
So we pushed our faithful flat steed to the next mechanic!

Back in Ubud, I was happy to be in the splendid company of the 9warung people again... last but not least because of the food!

Clearly to see, Dom loves it too

Angel!

And Joy, the puppy. (Puppyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!)

 

Seeing Angel and Joy playfully wrestling around made me feel like painting this

Traditional stone ornaments on the temples.
Ancient forms of good and evil personified in stone....

The four little native pigs, inhabiting the pig tractor I wrote about in the last post

And the fluffy ducklings! How much they've grown! They'rejust about double the size now.... but still sweet.

I can be a handful

I can be a nightmare

I can be a little bit crazy

A little out of maintenance

Hanging with the cool kids

No, it ain't gonna be easy.

But I can be your best friend

Loyal till the day ends

Like you never knew you deserved it

You know it's all worth it

You make it all worth it

Art, permaculture and good things coming

Hello out there!
"Ubud is a magical place", many people say it - and whether it's because some major streams of energy are crossing here or if it's some kind of placebo effect - I don't care, but my time here just flies by so fast, it's not funny.
It's a healthy mix of working and doing fun stuff (which is sometimes just the same), so I start with showing you the water bio filter system we built for one of Chakras customers

The water from the rice paddies comes in, sits in the first tank so heavy particles can sink down and make a sediment layer. There are also waterplants in this tank that filter it with their roots (they weren't in there yet when the photo was taken).
Then the water goes through the pipes into the big tank filled with gravel. In the pipes is something that we call "black cocnut hair', because it looks like balck hair and comes from the coconut palm. I don't know the English word for it and the Bahasa word I forgot :D
But it filters and filters very well, too.
Same as the gravel in which lemongrass, heliconia and bananas grow.
In the last tank the water is collected until someone needs it to take a shower or flush the toilet or whatever...


We painted some more chairs in 9warung! Beautifying something practical that will be used daily, seen and sit on by all the people coming to eat Thony's food...
So happy, could do that all life long. I forget time and even hunger... :D

Check out Ethel's art! Inspired by the movie Ashes and Snow
It's amaaazing...

It might not be very hard for you to guess who painted this chair...
I like Frangipanis.

Sunday treat for the whole family including volunteers: dipping into a friend's pool with the most awesome view...

Mama, Babba, wouldn't that be a place for you guys to retire? ;)

Hati Hati, careful, cuteness overload, We got little ducklings!
52 of them, on this photos just a day old, will roam free in the rice fields very soon, where they will be pest control, fertilizer, and aeration at the same time, AND they'll do the weeding too! Hardworking little dorks!
And all this is chemical free, as green as it gets and involving a minimum of work.

Chakra herding his ducklings

We were building a so-called "pig tractor" as well - a square bamboo fence structure for two small native pigs, 3x2 metres. Put the pigs in there and they will happily plough the ground for you. Fertilizing and compost-eating inclusive. When they are done with this patch of ground, you just lift the whole structure and carry it 3 metres further down the field, so the pigs can care for this too. No pertol eating and oil reeking tractor needed, and for sure no digging and sweating with spade and pick.

Later on Chakra, Kadek and his volunteers will also build a structure for chickens, covering the same surface, so that when the pigs are done and moved on from one 3x2 metre patch, the chickens can take over it and fertilize and scratch and scrabble the soil until it's nice and level.


And me? And now?
I can't believe it but it is totally true: my three weeks here are over. I'm sad and I don't want to leave. It's incredible that this was only three weeks - it felt a lot longer.
I will miss all the people, especially my favourite Swiss!

But in a good week I already have my plane back to Australia to start my second year working holiday, which will start absolutely bombastic with a Nahko&Medicine for the People concert in Byron Bay with dear Dom.
So tomorrow I'm moving on. The plan is called "Scooter tour to Amed to go snorkeling"! which sounds adventurous and promising, also because: I will not be going alone!
Picking up that same dear Dom at the airport tomorrow :)

Ubuddies

Volunteering in Ubud!
With Chakra, who has thousands of permaculture projects going on,
Kadek, who supports him with superman handiman skills,
and last but not least Celia, a multilinguistic Swiss with loads of energy and ideals
www.thkbai.wordpress.com


Taking over Ubud on a scooter...



First I let Celia drive me around but now I have my own scooter and practice everyday... Yes Mama, the traffic is crazy, Yes Mama I am wearing a helmet always, and Well, me and my scooter, we've only fallen into the ricefields once... not to be repeated. ;)


Kadek the supermaaaaan! Delicious "shoshorp" on the head and always full of shit

Piggies! Oh people how can you eat them? They're so sweet. And maybe they are going to be a "tractor", ploughing the fields ...

Bamboo workshop

Making a Balinese style alang alang roof for the bamboo structure that was built in the workshop

Bee workshop

Learning about bees and their massive importance, how to easily keep them and how to build a bee villa for them to live in

Ubud and its art... countless galleries and studios everywhere, displaying more interesting artwork of more talented artists than I could ever look at

Similarities?

 9warung

9warung is the name of the restaurant that is just 2 minutes from where we live - and it's the grooviest restaurant ever! The food is all vegetarian, ridiculously delicious and unexpensive, but the best thing are the people there. I go there almost every day and you just have to sit around for a while, and something interesting or someONE interesting will appear and make the evening unlike any other evening.

The ceiling of 9 Warung! Ever seen so many massive passionfruit? Ever seen so much passion?!

Chef and warung owner THONY! With his *awesome* photosmile and a new cake creation so delicious that Celia had to eat a whole knifeblade full of it.

On Ricardo's last evening. His goodbye present was a custom made T-shirt with the quote from him "be an angel"

(he used this term on a little jar he put up to collect donations for Angel's (the dog's) shots against her fungal skin infection)

We took heaps of pictures - so this is part of the crew!

"9 Warung - be an angel!"

Crazy girl Celia, she unhooked a safety pin from her pants, took a potato, handed both to Ricardo and *badaaa* let him stab a hole in her earlobe.... Why not? ;)

Grubby all over, sweaty, hot, thirsty, hungry? Tough girls don't mind! :D

 Another sweet character who can always be found in 9Warung is "Joy"!
Isn't she such a super photogenic little cutie?! Naaaww puppy!

On the day of the Bee workshop I also got the chance to cuddle with this little sleepy sausage... <3

There is so much more to tell and write and go on about - but it's time for the warung now.
It's what I wanted: being busy, doing things, meeting people. I realized that I didn't want to sit on the beach for 2 months alone with my thoughts. So here I am, having been getting lucky again, and enjoying it. Time is a funny thing - just yesterday I was sitting in Lembongan thinking that 51 days take forever, and now I have barely 3 weeks left. It keeps wow-ing me!

Every moment is a mystery to me
getting pretty good at listening
Every moment is a mystery to me
getting pretty good at honouring 

...

HEEEY BY THE WAY!
Tristan Prettyman put her new album on soundcloud and I AM BLOWN AWAY!
Love it love it love it!
https://soundcloud.com/tristan-prettyman