Plevyaks in Bali

We realize that we have invited folx to visit us, but we don't know our way around the island ourselves, so today we start taking our host job seriously with a slow morning at the Tanah Lot Temple complex.  Tanah Lot temple was built to worship Bhatara Segara, or the sea God.  It is currently an active place of worship and today there are loads of locals waiting to attend a ceremony.  There are also lots of pretty vistas for tourists to sip cool drinks and take cool photos.  Dress appropriately please.

We visited the Monkey Sanctuary in Ubud.  10 groups of cute monkeys going about their Monkey Business.  Rams' selfies with the monkeys were officially sanctioned.  We also saw a rendition of The global, and timeless Frog-King story.  King gets caught by a god eating dragonflies and is turned into a frog.  He has to find a woman to marry him to break the curse.  I understand his perspective, but why would any woman agree to marry a frog?..regardless, the dancing and costumes were beautiful.

We are putting serious effort into meeting folks and building community here.  We have had 3 play dates this week, and last night a lovely Green School family joined us for dinner.  As we showed them around our rental, the mom said "wait. I've seen this house on TV!". She was so excited to see the guest house in person as she is an interior decorator and building a villa just north of us.  The whole place is beautiful but the gueat house is really outstanding. Ramses wanted to claim it as his bachelor pad, but those stairs are very Dutch ( and scary.) Here is the episode she forwarded to me.  Enjoy: Https://youtu.be/dBu2C3ihdAk?si=iOZn_5ABwd-o309Q

It's hard to believe we just finished the 2nd week of school (there are only 45) and it's our first weekend at the house.  We have not been cooking much except breakfast and Rams' school lunch, because there are so many great restaurants walking distance from us.  This one offered Cali Avo toast with amazing fresh fruit. Today, we are taking a lazy Saturday and enjoying our pool and waterslide.

We are starting to settle in.  There is a rocking good Naopli style wood oven pizza place 2 blocks over that is only open from 7-10 pm.  Tygr Sushi, 2 blocks the other way has fine rolls, but different than we are used to.  2 nice grocery stores are close as are 2 - 24 hour emergency rooms with ambulances!  We have everything here!  Today after doing a villa inventory with Wayan (there is a lot of beautiful art and antiques) we walked to the end of our street which of course is a beach, called Batu Bolong. Canggu is a sprawling beach community, made up of many connected beaches:  Echo, Pereranan, Berawa, etc.  Each main road goes from the N-S bypass, west and ends at the ocean. Earlier in our stay, we walked along the beach from  Finn's Beach Club  -  a high octane beach club with pools, restaurants, VIP area and bottle service at your lounge chair; it reminds me of the Day clubs in Las Vegas, to La Brisa beach club.  La Brisa is mo...

So, we fell in love with a villa, and we move.in Sunday! Welcome to the Villa Raja. We certainly feel like royalty.  The art and architecture is really over the top and it is much bigger than we need.  We are hoping that our friends new and old help us fill it with fun!  Care to visit?

Wednesday after a parent meeting, John and I asked Dedy, our driver, for a lunch recomendation.  We drove to Ubud and had a lovely lunch and after he suggested we visit a Coffee Plantation.  This is a small demo Luwak Coffee plantation representing a larger one East of Ubud.  Luwak coffee is unique in that it uses a cat relative, the Luwak (see photo below) to pick the coffee beans from the trees when perfectly ripe and  pre-process them in their digestive tracts, resulting in a low caffeine, smooth coffee.  Yep, you read that right.  The Luwak eat and poop out the coffee beans and we drink them.  We purchased some Luwak coffee for all our guests to try when they come over!  You are welcome!

Last time we were in Bali was 25 years ago with our wonderful friend Zeynep.  It was just a week of a 3 week odyssey curated by Zeynep. Every day was an adventure, and with a pocket full of American Express Travelers Checks, we didn't have a worry in the world.  We have now been here 1 week and boy how different it has been.  Moving here for 45 weeks, instead of staying for just 1 means figuring out the intricacies of long term housing (love to stay at Prime Plaza but the commute!) money (my ATM doesn't work here, luckily, John's does) communication (Google Fi works for John, but maybe I need an Indonesian number for banking?!?) phones (we registered ours at the airport, will it continue to work past 90 days? This is actually a big worry among new GS parents) visas (Rams needs to visit immigration... when?  We need to reapply for which one, when?).  Laundry, cooking, bedtimes and morning alarms... The list goes on.  We are sneaking fun in where we can and a...

We are midway through our first week and it's been ok.  We love our hotel.  The Prime Plaza Suites Sanur gives us enough room to spread out, a kitchen for breakfasts and Rams' spinach AND entertainment every night.  It's walking distance to everything in Sanur, which is a slower paced beach community.  The downside is that it is 1+hr to The Green School.  6 AM wake-ups are not popular, and with parent workshops many mormings, it's a family affair.  It's also odd to be sending my kid off to school amongst families on Holiday!  (They look at us oddly, leaving the resort with lunch box and school backpack.) We have a lovely driver associated with the hotel who takes care of us.  We are going to miss him when we move to Canggu.  We LOVE the coffee shop and food options on the GS campus, a benefit of having a big student body and parents who hang out all day (working in the parent co-work space). Slowly meeting folks and making friends too! ...

The Green School new family orientation was great, but there must have been 200 people there! The campus is sprawling and there were new things to learn all morning long.  We escaped after lunch with our new friends Rachel and Paloma and sought the refuge of the local Cat Cafe.  Aaaah!  Unconditional Love (or grudging acceptance)!

We are somehow up at 6 am Bali time (which is 15 hours ahead of San Francisco,) so time is just an abstract concept for sure.  I made Rams some Spinach to keep his INR steady. It grows BIG in the tropics! And I'm told it is delicious.   Full breakfast was too much of a stretch for this jet lagged chef so we headed for the local Parisian Cafe around the corner.  

The flight was long, but we slept and the food was yummy.  Thanks Singapore Air!

Duolingo tells me it has been 144 days since Rams was accepted to The Green School.  I believe it, but It feels like we have been preparing for ages.  Now we see our belongings for the next year pilled on the porch.  See you later SF!