I write this now as I wait in the airport waiting for our flight to Cambodia. Wow… what a great time we had in Bali!!!
Let me start at the Green Camp. Jay has been talking about for like 2 weeks! When we first arrived there we were hustled to our ‘Yurt’ (#7 - a place where we slept)) and then led to the gathering area which was outside. We then listened to the final parts of our introduction (we had missed the start) while drinking from coconuts! Our first activity was learning how to make the Balinese offerings which are squares of banana leaf about the size of my hand. The next thing we did was have a race to see who could balance a basket of oranges (actually they were filled with only two) from Point A to Point B without dropping it and make it there the fastest. If you dropped it you had to restart -a powerful incentive to try your best! I made it the whole way first by speed-walking. Though even I would get creamed by the old woman in the pictures we saw that had like a 10-15 ft. tall thing with tons of fruit and flowers!!!
That night we played games around a fire one called Leader where you and everyone else try to copy a chosen leader and the Detective has to figure out who the leader is. The other one we played was called Black Magic where the ‘Magician’ has to try to guess a chosen object that the crowd and the assistant choose and so the assistant is like “is this the object?” and the ‘Magician’ has to wait for the special clue/pattern that he and his Assistant know. In this one, the clue was the object after a black object thus Black Magic!
The next day we went on a hike through rice terraces to a river where we visited some traditional Balinese houses but I wasn’t really listening and was chatting with some of the other boys there. We also saw dragonfruit plants and went swimming in the river! The current was really strong and so it was kinda like rafting the Aying River when we got to swim in the water! After we ate lunch out of plastic containers (consisted of rice chicken and some kind of egg) and headed back.
Later we got to make natural dyes and I got lucky and got one of two spots in ‘The Blender Group’. Unlike Max and all the others, Jay, a boy named Caleb and I didn’t have to slosh wooden or stone pestles and mortars clubs - but we got to use a blender to chop em up! I got chosen for tumeric cutting and blending. There was also beet root, charcoal, green leaves and flower pedals to make other colours. While I was cutting and chopping the tumeric I found out Caleb and his family also lived in Oakville and went to a school like 2 blocks from JWH!! I also found out they were on leave too for a year which was also pretty cool! Jay just reminded me that the parents are teachers at St. Mildred’s in Oakville and they are doing the same kind of trip as us! Soon once everyone was finished making their dyes we started to paint bags that were given to us. I made sure to use lots of orangey yellow because that was the dye I made!
After bag-painting we did Laughing Yoga which was as hIlarious as it sounds and we learned that 2 minutes of laughing is apparently equivalent to a half hour on the treadmill! I know right!
Later we did MUD WRESTLING!!!!! It was awesome!!! We got to take down the instructors in knee-deep mud and wrestle the heck out of ourselves! After showering up and drying off we had another full-filling dinner (ha!) and this time we went on a night safari that I don’t think was very good! No sir because all we saw were snakes and lizards and geckos and the way the guides held them like pinching their heads really tightly. UGH I actually hated it! Next day we went to the same place were we made our natural dyes and we built bamboo egg slides trying not to get our egg to crack and make our slide the highest at the same time! Ours actually ended up cracking halfway down the slide but meh!
After that we packed up our stuff and left the Green Camp. We drove back to Three Win and got the rest of our stuff and then headed to our next place called Pering Guest House or something like that. We stayed there for two nights one of those which I will write another Blog about so keep watching our Blog! After two nights we left and went to stay in Kuta for the night. Once we checked in at the Grand Istana Rama Hotel and headed down to the beach. We admired the sunset then Max and I split up and went roving for drinks! I managed a beer bottle of Sprite for 10k ($1) and Max got a Fanta for the same price and a Bintang for Jay at 20k ($2) and then we headed to a restaurant for dinner and then back to the hotel!
Then we woke up at 3am to be where we are now at the Airport and it’s 6am an hour before our flight takes off so I better get moving!
Cambodia next!!!
Sullivan
P.S. Thank you SO MUCH Mason for reminding me about Magnus Chase - the new book by Rick Riordan! I am loving it SOOOOO MUCH so far!! Somehow I found it in Bali so it should be everywhere in Toronto!!!