around the world in 180 days

            Bali has kept us busy, even though we’ve stayed out of Kuta and we haven’t gone to the beach once. I’ve done about all the shopping and haggling I can stand for a few days and I’m ready to leave tomorrow, which is convenient, because we do.

            We took a cycling eco-tour today, which was much better than I’d expected. It was designed to give some insight into Balinese culture and Balinese ecology. We visited a plantation and our guide, Darma, showed us some of Bali’s native plants and told us their uses, be they medicinal or edible. We tasted some Balinese coffee and afterwards were in a small gift shop when one of the salesmen tried to sell us some. I told him we’d been in Guatemala recently and had bought some there, so we didn’t need any, and he invited us to compare the two. Unfortunately for Bali, Guatemala’s coffee is much better, although I didn’t tell the salesman this. Balinese coffee is bitter, too much for my taste.

            After the plantation, we hopped on bikes and coasted downhill for a while. We stopped and visited a Balinese housing compound, where generations of a family live together, aunts and uncles, grandparents and grandchildren. We’d visited Putu’s home (our previous tour guide) and it was interesting to see the contrast between his home and the more typical home we saw today. Putu’s family is dong well for themselves.

            Our tour finished with an enormous feast, with all of the best Balinese and Indonesian foods: smoked duck, satay, fried noodles, gado-gado, and peanut sauce made from real, fresh peanuts. The peanut sauce here is phenomenal. I could eat it alone.

            Us Minnesotans may like to pride ourselves on our niceness, but the truth is, people are just as nice and even moreso the world over. In Guatemala, we were invited into a stranger’s home for 10 days and treated like part of the family. In NZ, we subsisted on the kindness of strangers and here in Bali, the people are warm, friendly and easy-going. All day today, as we passed children and working people, they would smile and wave and say “hello!” to us. Minnesotans are nice, but we don’t have the market cornered.