Category: Uncategorized

I must admit I was not too keen to move on to Europe after our great Australasian adventure. I felt I was kinda done with Europe. Over the many years of travel and many family summers we have been to most European countries and seen most iconic sights. Besides, after the sweet solitude of endless deserted beaches who wants to battle the European summer crowds?

And yet, thanks in large part to friends and family, I managed to rekindle the old flame. Being visited by and visiting friends in Europe made me again see and appreciate the good old civilization.

Of course, seeing that we have two cute grandchildren in Prague, it only made sense to now make our summer travel base in the Czech capital. Did you know Czech Republic has been shortened to Czechia? A terrible mistake, if you ask me. Obviously nobody did. And I refuse to call it thus, even if Google maps does.

Taking visitors around Prague, especially those coming for the first time, is a very slow process, as every few steps people tend to stop abruptly and crane their necks looking at the magnificent views or intricate small details. Beautiful women surround you every step of the way, not only on the streets, but peering down from the many stone portals and graceful windows. Crane your neck further and far up you will see the silent silhouettes of the rooftop decorations. Stand on tiptoes to peek over the walls or through the intricate iron fences. As our Australian relatives on their first ever trip to Europe said, “I am just overwhelmed, every step I take, everywhere I look there is a new, more beautiful sight. I don’t even know what to photograph first.” Indeed, all you need to do, is look through the viewfinder framing fantastic shots where ever you point: the river with the rainbow arch of bridges, the sleek red rooftops, the patinated green domes, the slender black spires, the long white flights of stairs, the balustrades and the lamps, the old gnarled trees shading the flowering blooms, the changing leaves slithering down impossibly tall white walls. No need for a fancy camera, or thinking about composition, the pictures are there, postcard perfect, ready for the taking.

There are never ending delights of ancient stone arches covered in ivy or laundry,heavy wooden doors with intricate bras knockers, secret passageways and cobblestone courtyards, magical views of castle, churches, bridges, river. Since the first time I set foot in Prague as a young student I fell for Charles Bridge. In those days it was much quieter and much less crowded, of course. When I got married in Prague I dropped my modest wedding bouquet from the bridge into the river. From then on, on every visit, no matter how short, I make it a point to walk across the Charles bridge, stopping to listen to a dixie band or watch an artist paint.

coming to the other side on Mala strana (Lesser Town) you can continue your stroll through many old parks and gardens or by the banks of Vltava river, humming Czech composer Smetana’s most well know melody Vltava. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=exz6zD056zk

You can stop for a live concert in one of the magnificent churches or synagogues. You can walk in the old Jewish cemeteries and ponder about (in)humanity and the transience of life amongst the old moss covered tombstones. It takes stamina and good shoes to walk the cobblestone streets of Prague. When our feet and/or our necks hurt, we would stop at a coffee shop, a bakery, a beer garden, or a restaurant. Those got more ohs and ahs for the ornate golden chandeliers and decorations or art nouveaux paintings or vaulted ceilings or dark wooden paneling, tables and benches. We ate the goulash and the many kinds of dumplings, tried cheese and sausage at a local farmer’s market and of course tasted the old and new varieties of famous Czech beer.

Refreshed, we climbed many more stairs and took many more iphone pictures, even some silly selfies with cardboard knights and the stone faced castle guards. Along the way I forgot about the steady stream of tourists and the summer crowds. Indeed, all you need to do is step a few steps, or a few streets away from the major thoroughfares and the city is quiet and yours in its golden glory. Any time of the year.

Summer brain calls for light reading. Very little reading. So to say goodbye to Asia just a few sweet pictures of kids we have encountered on the road. Having fun playing with some Hmong girls in Thailand. Teaching them Itsy Bitsy Spider and tickling them until they are a heap of giggles. Their slighter older cousin is all grace and poise.

It is refreshing to see kids play, making their own toys, like this Balinese boy with a homemade kite made of garbage bag, can and string. If you are lucky to have a battered old toy or two you hold on to them tight. Sometimes just sand and a friend is enough to play. Showing off your sea jumping technique is fun, too. With captive audience on dry land especially. It is not all fun and games. Some kids have to start helping out early, like these two Sumbanese girls selling their moms’ wares. Soon they will start learning the craft themselves. While their brothers care for the family animals.

It can all be managed with good friends. And a few pet baby chicks. Such joy!Consider yourself lucky if you have chance to attend school. Visiting schools you see lots of happy kids wanting to learn, like these Balinese boys with fancy school uniforms.

And girls, too. They will switch to dancing clothes for their traditional dance class.

And concentrate so hard! So one day you will have your dream come true and dance at your family temple. Or at least help in the procession… It can be hard work so a little nap in your mom’s lap helps. Or just on a soft blankie… And wake up ready for a lovely day! Maybe you will have a visit from some friendly neighbors that came from across the sea. As we say goodbye to Asia we take along our secret weapon. Five knitted animal puppets that always break ice without words. Quack-quack and woof-woof are international language.

Off to good old Europe for the summer!

Even for a kunsthisterik of my magnitude it is easy to get “templed out” in Thailand.

One is surrounded by Buddhist temples at every step and they are all in one way or another the biggest, the glitziest, the emerladiest. Yet they lack the vibrancy and aliveness of Balinese Hindu temples with their constant stream of devout worshipers, offerings, flowers and ceremonies.

Except for a must do excursion to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep on top of the hill above Chang Mai we did not seek out the city temples intentionally. They were good landmarks to go by or peek into on our daily wanderings around the city that has grown tremendously in our absence of 30 years. Our memories were foggy and we did not recall any of the places from our first visit. We remembered the relief of coming to the cooler Chang Mai from stifling Bangkok, but alas, this time the temperatures up North were unusually high. Thank god our budget now allows for an air conditioned hotel room and the numerous Ubers are so inexpensive that we used them even for short hops from a restaurant to a museum to a market.

We had allocated a week to Chang Mai but we were not as enamored with the city as many other visitors, so we quickly started looking for excursions out of town. The sweet receptionist in our little hotel recommended a friend of hers as our driver and guide, in particular because she had a very comfortable, brand new car, with good suspension–a plus for Mirek’s back.

The best day trip we did together was to Chang Rai. With two of us the cost was just about the same to hire a private car or go on a day group minivan tour. The advantage of having your own car is, of course, that you can stop when and where you want, so we deviated the classic tourist itinerary a bit. We were delighted to find mushroom vendors by the side of the road. A Thai version of porcini?

For those who know me well, you know that come winter in California I am out in the woods of our neighborhood, picking inordinate amounts of chanterelles and foisting them on unsuspecting people.

At another spot we got to taste quail eggs cooked in boiling thermal spring waters. Here instead of the usual slides and swings the entertainment for visiting children consists of fishing out little baskets of cooked eggs from scalding hot water. This little girl was quite adamant to make it work. And beaming with pride when she finally succeeded!I always enjoy shaking up the preset itinerary a bit and showing local guides some new places. So in Chang Rai I dragged my poor husband and our guide to a small, little known museum of history, started and manned singlehandedly by a retired teacher, originating from Burma. Even at the uttering of the word museum my husband’s eyes glaze over and he immediately starts searching for a bench where he could take a nap, but this museum and the very enthusiastic and knowledgeable lady guide showing us around kept him awake and engaged. I wonder if it was these kinds of exhibits? The museum had a most extraordinary thorough and rich collection of tribal dress from all corners of Thailand and Burma. Just the thing I love! It was a bit disorienting to find all the mannequins very lifelike, and of Western, Caucasian origin! Imagine my surprise and delight to find on a particularly handsome model a teeth festooned headdress of the like I had brought home from Burma many years ago! I might ask Mirek to wear it around the house more often! Perhaps I was sidetracking so much because I was actually quite weary of the temples awaiting us in Chang Rai. In particular the controversial White Temple (Wat Rong Khun). I read enough contradicting opinions about it that I was afraid it will be a kitschy disaster, for we have such refined tastes in art! 😉 Yet to our mutual surprise and delight Mirek and I both loved it! It was a spun sugar fantasy baked with a sure artistic hand of Mr. Chalermchai Kositpipat, who then took a giant silver frosting gel and accentuated the creation with a flowing wiggly line, his very distinct fluid signature. For his effort the artist who not only designed, but also financed the project to the tune of 1 million dollars got plenty of scorn from the Buddhist community and fellow artists. True, his interpretations, especially the surrealistic paintings in the main hall that bring in a number of strange pop icons such as Spider-Man and Hello Kitty are well, out of this world, as are creepy moss covered severed heads hanging from trees and really scary ghoulish hands reaching for you as you cross the Bridge of the cycle of rebirth, but they bring his message across. Your salvation lies in Buddhism you sinful human living in a hellish world. The hands are intentionally not shown here so you don’t have bad dreams or feel like we are trying to scare you in converting.

If the dude had not won me over with his sugar concoctions I would certainly become his fan after seeing (and using) his toilets.

The golden throne he created is about the most beautiful and interesting restroom we have ever seen on our worldly travels. You might not know, and might not want to know particularly, but we have quite an obsession with toilets and have endless supply of pictures. Look forward to a future post on this topic! For now here is the best of the best. We said goodbye to one controversial Thai artist and hello to another. Mr. Thawan Duchanee created a large artistic compound many (incorrectly) call Black Temple. The real name is Baan Dam or Black House. That is misleading as well as the whole project consists of about 40 structures, only some house or temple like. Altogether they are supposed to be another personal interpretation of Buddhism. The two artists couldn’t be more different. One exuberantly white and silver and gold, the other elegantly simple, black with a dash of white. Inspiration for many of his building seems to come from traditional folk architecture from all around Asia. We felt right at home standing in front of black structures reminding us of recent village visits on different Indonesian islands. The perfect cultural extension was his obsession with buffalo heads and horns that were everywhere. Including at the toilet. He too, like our other artist friend put much effort into the toilets, except instead of just one huge golden one, he designed a large number of small black ones. Each had very distinct and individual and anatomically correct 3D visual signage for male and female sides.

It was differently overwhelming to walk around this collection of art. Every few steps one came face to face with yet another unusual idea. Dare to open the door to the circular White House and find yourself face to face with an enormous crocodile surrounded by chairs made of black buffalo horns. A cozy meeting place for Game of Thrones kings…But the biggest jolt I got was when I wandered behind a large whale like (or was it a giant mouse?) structure and discovered two live buffalos. Um, OK, guys, I am backing off really slowly now. And then there was the Blue Temple. Nothing mystical or highly visionary and not scary at all. Just very blue and very fun! I am calling it the Mermaid Temple. Don’t you just love this rad blue merman with yellow mustache?

Oh, and I nearly forgot about the Red Temple. Just kidding, just kidding…

For my 5th birthday I received an old Swiss Railways calendar with twelve beautiful photos of railway bridges. It was love at first sight, with trains and bridges. For awhile I was torn between becoming a train conductor or a bridge engineer. As you know the bridges won, but the eternal flame for trains still burns bright in my heart.

As a child I travelled often by slow train on hard wooden benches with my mother and younger brother to visit my grandparents in the countryside and to this day I remember the muffled sounds of the “choo, choo” through the hermetically closed windows. No matter the soaring summer temperatures, they had to be closed or the soot would get into the compartment and ruin our clothes. Move fast forward to 1974 and the star studded (think Connery, Bergman, Redgrave) Oscar wining film “Murder on the Orient Express” shot on board of the luxurious train to Paris and my longing for train rides only intensified. Ah, I would have given my right arm to be on that train, even if only as the conductor uttering the famous words:

“Your ticket, please.”

In our modern époque it is not easy to enjoy travel on gorgeous rails. The original Orient Express has been disbanded, but lately revived with extraordinary lively prices. It can be even more difficult if your lifetime companion does not necessarily share your train interest, and you may have to work hard to convict her to get on board. Nevertheless, love, and marriage in particular, is all about compromise and if not every year, then at least once in a while (about 4-5 years apart) when opportunity arises my wife does give me a nod, if somewhat begrudgingly, and only if it does not break the bank. So here and there I can enjoy a ride and sometimes even an overnight ride on the train in her company in different corners of this world.

We are arriving to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport after a late evening flight from Singapore landing our tired bodies and battered duffel bags full of art acquisitions in a cheap airport hotel. Our plan is to spend a week in the North of Thailand in order to revive our memories of the first trip to Siam in our first year of wedded bliss some 30+ years ago. In January 1986 we traveled by overnight train from Bangkok to the jewel of the North, the city of Chiang Mai. As shoestring travelers from Eastern Europe we marveled at everything: the efficiency of the electronic ticket counter, the white linens and the food service on the train.

Here again is a rare opportunity to spend a night on the luxurious train (remember Orient Express?). Instead of flying to Chiang Mai, we will spend the day in Bangkok (my wife is already visualizing all those temples she will drag me to in 10 hours of daylight) and then get on the train No.13 and enjoy the ride to our Northern destination.

Next morning we leave all our luggage, but a small day backpack each in the airport hotel, and step out lightly, full of excitement (likely just on my side). We pick up our first class sleeper tickets in the Hua Lamphong Railway Station in downtown Bangkok. We are quite hungry by then, because our very cheap (but very clean) hotel does not offer any breakfast. As we step into the huge teeming hall we notice a small balcony. It is a franchise Black Canyon Coffee Shop with decent coffee and a great selection of pastries to satisfy our sweet tooth. Thailand is a great culinary country with endless food establishments, from street stalls to fancy restaurants. After our Sumba culinary deprivations everything is appealing. But fresh, crisp, flaky croissants – well, impossible to resist! I even order a second croissant! Why? Because where there is A WILL there is a WAY, or an EXCUSE. Before leaving Denpasar Hilton I checked my weight in the hotel gym. It showed barely 170 pounds (77 kilos). If that scale was not wrong, I must be seriously underweight. And therefore (how convenient!) I HAVE to increase my intake before reaching my next destination! One or two croissants extra should help, right?

Sitting in the gallery we have plenty of time and a great vantage point to look down and around and I can not miss the striking similarity of the station’s architectural style with the stations built in the Golden Age of Railways. A huge light filled station lobby is holding a thick crowd of passengers waiting for their trains. The main and unusual feature here is a large area accommodating passengers resting on the floor, while many benches are empty. Besides the ubiquitous round clock (currently under repair) underneath the steel arch roof I can also see another familiar feature of old stations – a large oil painting of the monarch or whatever important official of the time, hanging in a prominent place on the lobby wall. From our distant seat in the coffee shop I could have easily mistaken the person on the painting for Kaiser Franz Josef of Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The main hall of the Bangkok station also brings me back to the Prague’s main railway station, surprisingly named after US President Wilson. Except that the BKK station’s cleanliness would win by a significant margin over Prague’s. Similar structures built for the new colonial railways brought new global architectural fashion movement to all continents. Once we were astounded to find ourselves in Maputo, the capital of the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique, in front of a beautiful Beaux-Arts railway station that must have been flown in directly from Paris. You might remember it from the movie Blood Diamonds. Popular culture attributes its design to Monsieur Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, though it was in fact designed by Senhor Jose Ferreira da Costa.

Speaking of Eiffel, you likely know him from the, what else, Eiffel Tower, but also the design of the Statue of Liberty. Another proof of the statement that “There is no justice in this world” and “Hard working engineers get screwed over”. Mr. Eiffel may have been the owner of the Eiffel engineering company, but did not design the tower. In fact Mr. Eiffel was a relatively lukewarm supporter of this project when two of his company’s senior engineers approached him with the idea. While he was the engineer for the structure holding up the statue of Liberty, it was a French sculptor Bartholdi who designed the famous lady. Not to go too far from our Californian home turf, Joseph Strauss may have been a great promoter of the Golden Gate Bridge, but was not experienced enough to design a suspension bridge and therefore its design was actually executed by New Yorker Leon Moisseiff of the Manhattan Bridge fame.

But let’s get back to my dream train travel. As the sun was setting over Bangkok my excitement grew exponentially. My memories of our trip 30+ years ago were very vivid with a butler bringing hot dinner and setting up our beds with fresh sheets, the vibrant green landscape rushing by behind the window. I remembered the smell of freshly made coffee in the morning. No, it was not espresso then, yet. A typical romance for the guy deeply in love with trains. I am not actually running mini trains in our California family room torturing the rest of my family with my hobby. It is more about inching close to experiencing the top of its class in this 150 year old railway business, the Orient Express movie golden standard of my dreams.

I did make other attempts over the years. Most turned out to be quite the opposite of my ideal. The train from Dar-es-Salaam to Arusha, Tanzania with our first honeymoon night in Africa and the sunrise view of Kilimanjaro. Hemingway’s heroes and heroines would not approve. The three miserable days and nights ride from Kunming to Guilin and on to Yangshou, southwestern China on a communist sleeper train. Each morning at first light we were awoken by the loud music blaring from the speakers, playing revolutionary songs for the rest of the day.  Six passengers (stacked on six rock hard berths) to a compartment without any compartment doors, the train full of smoking, coughing and spitting Chinese fellow travelers. Not exactly a fairytale experience, but ending in the unforgettable fairytale landscape along the Li River. The train from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes on the way to Machu Picchu, testing your comfort level with the lack of oxygen.

Am I going to experience what I have been dreaming of for so many years this time? Will the excellent tourist standard in the Land of the Thousand Smiles persuade my wife that the build up to this was worth it? With love and admiration she will turn to me at the end of the journey and say, “Dahhling, you chose well, I will never doubt you again!”

Well, to be honest, it was not even close to my expectations. And I think I am on terribly thin ice with my wife now. The first class on train no 13. is not very luxurious by any means. Just the opposite. The furnishing is quite limited. No framed Picasso painting can be found on the walls, but it does have the plug to charge our iPhones, a sign of the new information era, and a hanger for my shorts (yes, I changed to my travel long pants PJs).

They serve dinner (we declined) and breakfast (we ate it hoping it would warm us up – for details read on). Regarding breakfast, I would describe its temperature as lukewarm, but positively above freezing temperature. The food was preservative laden, and the coffee never arrived. Overall – borderline garbage. For delivering all food in plastic containers Thai Railways would not get any environmentally friendly awards. No china, silverware or similar signs of first class. It felt quite like the first class on United Airlines domestic flight. Even the attendant was a brusque, older woman, never cracking a smile.  I guess she has reached her quota of allocated 1000 smiles in her early twenties.

There were certainly enough lights to read, which we did until our fingers froze. As for the personal hygiene there was a tiny sink to wash your hands and brush your teeth. There was actually one shower in the car but I did not see any volunteers using it. The ultimate relief space was located at both ends of each rail car behind sliding doors. Inside of its limited but relatively clean environment you could try keeping your balance over the western style bowl or use your sharp shooting accuracy over the Turkish hole in the floor!

Due to my back surgery I reluctantly chose to sleep in the lower berth. What did I find extremely depressing with my lower berth? While costing me THB200 (about 6 bucks) more than my wife’s upper berth, it provided much less impressive view of our compartment or outer world behind the window (even if it was dark most of our way to Chiang Mai) than from my wife’s cheaper upper berth! What a shame! Did I say there is no justice in this world?

After the heat of Bangkok I was afraid of extreme temperatures on the train. My fear proved to be well founded, BUT not exactly. We decided to travel very lightly for a week and we left behind in our Bangkok Airport sleeping den almost everything with long sleeves. We made just two exceptions. We took our light waterproof jackets since there were possible rainy days in the north and I carried my long pants PJs for cold nights in the Golden Triangle (how could I be so wrong?). I was worried we might suffer a heat stroke if our compartment air-conditioning would not work.

Well, it worked way too well! By midnight we unsuccessfully tested a few options to shut it down. We turned knobs and levers. Some were missing or required extra force. At 2am I woke up the Englishman next door. He should have traveled with a screwdriver, shouldn’t he? The English started Industrial Revolution, after all! Well, this guy clearly did not. And so the temperature in the compartment continued to drop. By 4 am we exhausted all our clothing extras. We put on our waterproof jackets, and underneath extra T shirts.  We enhanced Thai Railways blankets with the allocated towels. Luckily the towels were dry, as we smartly opted not to take a shower. By 5:30am I observed the first signs of frostbite on my extremities. Shortly thereafter I considered praying for increased train speed to break the record of earliest arrival to Chiang Mai ever! My companion usually keeps her body much warmer so while I prayed, she was looking for the phone number to text an emergency message to Chiang Mai hospitals, as we may had need for immediate medical assistance upon arrival. When we finally reached our destination, we slowly stood up and collected our almost empty backpacks (everything was on, remember?). Slowly, steadily we tried to straighten up our limbs and I hesitantly moved my upper torso a few times to the left and to the right to see if I was able to bend the frozen platinum rods in my spine. Then we helplessly crawled off the train onto the balmy platform No.1 of Chiang Mai Railway Station. WE MADE IT after all!

When I finally got enough strength in my legs to look like a bipedal human again, I looked around and I realized how little the train station has changed, but how much WE changed over the years. As the much younger travelers were passing us to catch the first tuk tuk or Uber or Grab to their hostels, airbnbs, surfing couches or whatever, we wistfully recognized the youthful enthusiasm. As we matured in our travel style, our physical abilities and willingness to drag with us everything we may need declined. As our travel budget ballooned and we could get rid of  sleeping bags and pads, we realized that what you do not have in your small backpack is what you do NOT NEED. Now I was delighted to see the youngsters with backpacks easily larger than their upper torso. I knew what they could do in emergency if their money ran out. They could pack their bodies in their backpacks and FedEx themselves COD home to their support centers or whatever they call their parents. And in a deep corner of my heart I did envy them.

With some fun, mostly unrelated photosApologies to the faithful followers and readers if you have seen this post before. I am quite sure it was posted two months into our travels but I have just discovered it in my drafts with a notice of failed upload. Ah, technology! So I am uploading it again with the hopes that the information is indeed relevant and interesting to old and new followers alike. 6 months down the road we’ve had some luggage and shoes damage and some lost items on the way, but all the rest is still valid. I fully intended to do a 1 month on the road reflection, but a month went by so quickly, we had no chance to reflect. So here are some helpful things we learned after 2 months on the road. When I asked my husband about his take, he gave his characteristically sarcastic answer:

“We are not divorced—yet.”

Indeed, if we (I confess, me in particular) had any qualms that we will get on each other’s nerves spending 24/7 on the road together, we find that as usual, when we travel together, we get along better than at home. With less everyday life stressors (shopping, cooking, cleaning, taking out trash) we are in a better mood to begin with. Then there are so many shared stimulating experiences: beautiful nature and art, encounters with interesting people that give us new fodder for discussion and bring us closer. It helps when you and your travel companion have similar interests and daily routines—we are both early birds at home and on the road, too.

Here are some other things we learned:

–The time is NOW

for using the toilet. If you have one available, use it even if you don’t have to, because you have no clue when you will come across another one.

for topping up the gas in your car. As soon as the tank is bellow half, stop at the gas station. Even if it is NOT on the driving side of the road. Unless you like living dangerously and get a thrill from coasting on fumes in the middle of nowhere.for buying something. If you need it or, god forbid, like it, buy it. No, you won’t find it somewhere else, and certainly not cheaper. And most certainly you will not come back to get it, because either your road does not bring you back or you will have forgotten where that cute stall/store/street was where you saw it last. You know the one with that nice lady. Yeah, that one. She would have been quite happy to sell it to you right then and there.

–Travel is not conducive to dieting

Eating is a big part of traveling. For the foodies of the world it might be the most important. But even if you don’t live to eat, it is hard to prevent gaining weight. Finding whole wheat bread and fresh salad is a lot harder (and less fun) than having a chocolate croissant or a big plate of pasta. While it is fun and a great way to explore a culture, eating out can quickly become a chore. It is a challenge to find three meals a day and time them so they will coincide with the native timetable. Many places even in big cities have strict meal hours. One of our worse times finding dinner was in Hunter Valley—a renowned wine (and food) destination of Australia, where most restaurants were operating only from Thursday to Sunday and those that were in business closed by 9 pm and would not seat anyone after 8:30.  We found that two main meals a day were enough, with a big breakfast we would have a late coffee and an early dinner, with a meager breakfast offering a large lunch and a very light dinner. For a nice change we also started making sandwiches and buying fruits and drinks for a picnic lunch on the go.

Also remember that most people become crabby and some downright mean travel partners when hungry.

–Baggage

The combo of a small backpack and small duffel bag with wheels works great. But the duffels are not inflatable, dirty laundry takes much more space than clean. Half of the large plastic Ziplock bags Mirek used for packing his clothes are not working anymore and are letting air in. Ksenija’s packing cubes work great. Think about all the different compartments, zipped areas and side pockets of your luggage and designate them as (logical) carriers of the same things consistently. (Your toiletries and pajamas do not go on the bottom of the bag, they are last to go in and first to come out at the new lodgings). Soon you will be able to blindly reach in and pull out the right item, instead of having to unpack everything because you don’t remember where you stuck that thing. More wisdom on packing next time.

–Clothing

We have everything we need and can wash clothes on the way often enough. Despite traveling in the summer we were surprised how handy the long sleeves, compact goose feather jackets and water proof shoes were. Some of the cotton and even silk tops get surprisingly wrinkled when packed, so choosing microfiber, rayon or polyester clothing is wiser. New polyester is very different from the old. Xtra Tip: Take more underwear than you think you need (it is small) and two pairs of PJs (to have a clean one when the other one is in the wash).

–One night stay

If you come to your lodgings in the evening and are only staying the night and you will be leaving right away in the morning it is not worth dragging the whole luggage with you from the car. Just stick your toiletry bag, your PJs and a change of clothes into your hand luggage, in our case a small backpack. Then you will not have to repack the luggage in the morning and lug it back.

–Planing vs. not planing

On the big scale of things more planing ahead is necessary.

If you think you are totally free to make up your travel plans as you go, you might be surprised (as we were) that visa requirements or airplane check in rules can force you to have tickets bought ahead of time. For example getting on the plane to New Zealand or Indonesia is impossible without a forward ticket showing that you will leave that country. Australia does not care. We had to quickly buy a ticket from Bali to Thailand on the spot at the Darwin airport when leaving Australia as the Australians would not let us board the plane to Bali until we showed proof that we will leave Bali. We were told it was because we would not get a visa at the airport if we did not show them a forward ticket. Which was not true as we got the 30 day visa on arrival at the Bali airport and no-one ever asked us to see the onward ticket.

For short time planing of places and activities we had to change our usual style.  We have been used to planing many details on our short overseas vacations when we only travelled for 2-3 weeks. On a year long trip it is impossible to study everything in detail ahead of time and plan out everything. We now use local information centers or recommendations from friends and hosts to decide where we want to go or what we are going to see and make some hotel/Airbnb reservations on the fly a day ahead or even the same day. It can be a bit stressful at the beginning, but we are getting the hang of it.

–Digital guidebooks

We did not want to lug heavy paper guidebooks with us so decided to buy digital Lonely Planet for our iPads. It seemed cool that you could only buy certain parts of Australia for example and not the whole country guide. Nevertheless we quickly realized that we really did not like the digital version as we found it hard to find and mark places in it. So we read some of it ahead on the plane but ended up not using it much while in the car. I would have preferred a printed copy. You can cut it in chapters and only take with you those that you need and chuck them as you go to lighten the load.  Same with a map. While I love Google maps for navigation I still prefer a printed area map to get the whole view of places and distances.

–Navigation

As I said Google maps are great. They cover pretty much every corner of the Earth, though you of course should not trust them blindly. Very cool to have features that let you search on the way for gas stations, groceries or coffee shops or input an extra stop on the way to your destination. But remember to set up your route before you start your car trip, thus the driver will get instructions immediately as he pulls the car from the parking area. And the navigator does not get the blame for getting lost in the first few minutes. Also oftentimes the carrier might not work when you start driving and you will get really frustrated when ‘No place/route found’ message flashes across. Damn it, I know there is such a place as Sydney! Google maps route now works even when there is no signal, and you can use them offline, but only if you set it ahead of time while you had the signal or wifi in your room.

–Cheap flights

Think twice if the cheap flight is worth it and how cheap it really is. Oftentimes the cheap flights leave at a horrible time of night or from a minor, NOT centrally located airport that will cost a fortune to get to. I am badmouthing you, Stansted! The cheap companies will also try to recoup their money by charging you exorbitant amounts for your seat assignment, bottle of water, old sandwich, and of course baggage. They WILL stoop so low as to weigh your hand luggage and make you take things out or make you check in the whole piece. The hand luggage allowance is getting smaller and smaller, now down to 5 kg (11lbs). Buy baggage allowance when you book the ticket, because last minute at the airport it will cost you a whole lot more. Rather buy a little more than not enough. It will cost you only a few $ to go to the next level and you will need it for all the souvenirs you were not planing to buy.

–Budget, what budget?

Our travel budget app has not been touched since installation. But we did save all the receipts and went through them at two different stages. So far our daily average is good and actually bellow budget. Piece of budgetary advice: Once in a while BLOW it. Think what makes travel special and memorable for you: an 8 course meal at a famous restaurant, first row tickets at a concert or musical, a romantic suite in a 5 star hotel, a helicopter ride…and no, it can’t be all of the above, unless you are on a millionaire’s travel budget.

–Take a Break

If you are an intense traveller like us and like to pack a lot in your days and are on the go, go, go take a day or two of down time every now and then to decompress and make space in your head. Take the time to think of the past experiences,  look through all the photos you took, write a long email or a blog post 🙂

–Photos and Notes

I used to write long detailed travel diary entries in my younger days. It has been fun going back and rereading some when I was cleaning out our house before the big trip. It is incredible to see how quickly one forgets. Some of the entries went back to my first trip to the US when I was 16 years old.  At the end of that diary I claim I like America, but can’t imagine that I could ever live there. Haha!

I got a recommendation from cousin Nadine for a great app for travelers called Trip Rider, where one could make plans, keep a diary, upload pictures, share with friends and family and at the end even print a booklet online of the whole shebang. I knew I would not use it, (see above on the Budget app) so I did not download it. But I have been keeping just a quick running tally in my iphone Notes with Dates and 3 main visited places/activities for each day, adding where we spend the night and any names of important people we stay with or meet.

Every few days I also delete most of the crappy pictures on my iphone. (About 90%). I find that long airplane flights are really a good time to do that. The ones that are left are being stored in separate Country folders and also under Collections where they appear with helpful dates and places where they were taken. And then they somehow magically get up in the iCloud, where I hope no storm can erase them, until such time that I buy a new phone and try to transfer them. BTW I absolutely love taking photos with my iPhone7. The quality is just great and the few extra features as fun Live Photo or Portrait Mode brings variety. Cropping and a few filters if you want to play some more. I have now had a few pictures printed in a travel magazines in a large format and they look (professionally) great!Flowers in portrait mode (with blurred background)

Use it

Put sunscreen on your face in the morning and mosquito spray on your ankles in the evening. I still forget too often and currently have a sunburn and itchy ankles.

–rentalcars.comand booking.com

Best websites for finding best deals on cars and hotels.

No, we don’t get a cut for recommending them. I wish. Our blog is not famous enough. (Yet.)

–You know you are on a permanent vacation when you have no clue which day it is today. And you don’t care!

Ahead of our arrival I emailed our guide Yuli, asking if she could arrange an audience with the Queen of Rende. Extraordinary vibrant textiles brought us to the island in the first place and I was well aware that the best traditional weavings were to be found on East Sumba and the best of the best were in the village of Rende, and the pinnacle of all were from the queen herself.

In the best of Asian tradition of never saying “No” to anything, Yuli wrote back saying she would. So the very first day after our arrival I was very excited to head to the village, but as the tall traditional thatched roofs came into view Yuli admitted she didn’t not know the queen and had no idea how to get her to see us.

“Leave it to me,” I said. “I am good at weaseling my way in.”

Turns out it was easier than we thought. We were welcomed and presented with the visitor log by the very cousin of the queen. After initial exchange of pleasantries I pulled out my iPhone and started showing her the photos from the textile gallery in Bali where years ago I first saw the extraordinary weavings from Queen Eti. I had a photo of a beautiful woman weaver but when I said I would like to meet her, the cousin said, “No, you don’t want to meet her! She is just a slave!”

“Um, OK then, how about meeting the Queen?”

When I shamelessly dropped the name of Jean, the American owner of the Bali gallery we were whisked to the “palace” right away. Well, it was really just a nicer version of the traditional house, more intricate and made out of many buffalo hides and wood in addition to bamboo, and flanked by stone sculptures with layers of powerful animal carvings.

The woman who came out to greet us with a smattering of English bore close resemblance to her cousin, but was older than her, wearing gold rimed glasses. She was very gracious and elegant in her dress and demeanor, even if I could not call her regal. But then, how many queens have I met in my life? Waiting for the tea to be served

Rambu Eti was the daughter of one of the last kings of the nearby village of Pau and was at birth betrothed to a noble boy from the kingdom of Rende. While she was studying at the university on Java for her degree in education she got a call from her father that her mother had died and she had to return home to get married.

Dutifully she honored her obligation and married the young man. She proudly showed us the photographs on the walls of her palace porch depicting her ancestors, her wedding and her husband. Soon after marriage she realized that raising children and rice was not enough for an educated young woman and that weaving could become a good source of income and respect for her and the women in her kingdom. She perfected old techniques and invented new patterns and combinations using only natural dies and now her creations are sought after by discerning international collectors.

Seeing my enthusiasm for weaving she kindly unlocked wooden cupboards and chests and had old treasures brought out into the light. She showed us teaching tools-reed and cotton patterns for especially difficult raised pahikung weavings that she combines with regular ikat designs.

Those were secret patterns only allowed to be used by the queen and her trusted weavers, passed down upon the queen’s death to worthy weavers. She told us they were the tools to teach her children.

“Oh, her children are weavers, too?” I asked.

No, actually her children, two daughters, were university educated, one of them a dentist and the other a lawyer.

Yuli whispered that “children” was a synonym for slaves.

Quickly catching on, I asked, “How many children do you have in your household?”

“Oh, I had forty, but when my daughter got married I gave her five. Some where educated themselves as they took turns taking care of her when she studied on the mainland. I gave them special permission to study, too.”

Though slavery has officially been banned in Indonesia there are de facto slaves or at least very indentured servants still in existence on Sumba. Lack of education and jobs keeps people “in service” to their masters, who keep them in clothes and food, making decisions about their lives as if they were their children, never allowed to grow up. Yuli told us that those with gumption might be able to escape to the mainland where there are more job prospects. Same goes for brides who want to avoid arranged marriages or couples who don’t get the blessings from their families.

There are three main ‘castes’, maramba (royalty), kabihu (freemen) and ata (slaves) in Sumbanese society. It is hard to get away from the limitations and trappings of your caste. It was no surprise when we visited another royal house in a different village to find the dentist princess from Rende married to the prince of that house. The other two princely siblings there were married to an Australian and a Scotsman. We couldn’t stop laughing when Yuli told us the family spread word that the husband was a Scottish prince.

“No royalty in Scotland since 17th century, my dear,” we told her. “And as for the (white) Australians, they are all descendants of convicts.”

Surely these village kingdoms must be the tiniest kingdoms in the world and the least royal. When I asked Queen Eti where her husband was, she said he was working in the rice fields. “Many children’s mouths to feed,” she explained, “no time for retirement.”

When she saw how interested we were in the sculptures and the stories behind them she had one of the “children” bring out a few that were for sale. We had a great laugh together over a sculpture of a woman, that was used as a sugar cane press with a significant body part used as the repository of the sugar cane. We agreed that men everywhere in the world had a similarly working brain. There was talk about bumble bees intoxicated by the sugar cane juice and of boys in the rice fields unable to work when a pretty girl walked by. Just like with birth and death, sex is considered a natural part of life and nothing to hide. And breasts are definitely not a sexual object, but a useful appendage to feed the children. In old times men and women, both, went bare chested. Like in Bali and many other islands women only wore a sarong and a beaded necklace.

In fact in one of the villages we met an old weaver and dyer that still worked in this old, traditional outfit.

Yuli was very excited to come across her and see her special lot of indigo color in a clay pot, as she herself was reviving old dying techniques.

Some Sumbanese women today proudly wear a beaded necklace with a mamuli, an omega shaped, stylized anatomical female symbol. Or in fact just a cheaper version of a mamuli, as original golden mamuli were in the past worn in stretched out earlobes. They were given in at least the quantity of eight as a special and expensive gift to the mother of the bride by the groom and his family to acknowledge the pain of giving birth to the bride and as a special thanks for bringing up the bride. I think it also was the gift acknowledging the pain of loosing a daughter.

Being made of gold which per legend originates from the hot sun they are very powerful and as such are kept in the treasury with other special objects such as drums made from human skin to be only brought out every fall for the special traditional village festival when the whole clan gathers.

Besides mamuli, other gifts, such as buffalos and horses are expected by the bride’s family and in return are exchanged for woven treasures and pigs. As such the gifts to the bride’s parents are really a bride wealth not a bride price, though Yuli told us a nasty husband will throw into his wife’s face these words: “I bought you with the buffalo and you should work hard for me like a buffalo.”

The exquisite woven cloths given in exchange were usually not worn but saved as treasured items speaking of wealth and rank and the best ones saved for many years and only used for wrapping a body at the funeral.

No girl could get married until she learned how to weave and weave well on a simple back strap loom, as she was expected to not only keep her husband in good clothes, but to also provide the family with an endless supply of quality weavings to give away during ceremonies.

Every pattern and animal shape used in the weavings as well as stone, wood or bone carvings speaks of a symbol and the traditional Marapu cosmology.

They even show up on old women’s tattoos.

Besides the ever important (and demanding) spirits of ancestors there are many deities and nature spirits worshiped and appeased, but the main one is, according to Yuli, a dual male and female entity: Ama Namawgolu =Father Create –

Ina Namaravi=Mother Take Care.

Turtles are symbols of the queen, she must be wise and walk slowly and elegantly as a turtle. Lions and horses are symbols of kings and their strength, white cockatoos connote wise royalty. If you know what you are looking for or at least have someone to answer your questions you can get some glimpses into the past, too. For example in the weavings there is a motive of a skull tree with heads that the headhunters brought home, to capture the spirits of the killed enemy.

Not only animals but also colors were prescribed in dress, common men could only wear blue and white,

the royal ones also red and black, and if you dared to defy the convention you could be killed for the transgression.

Luckily those times are gone now and I was allowed to try on one of the best dresses that Queen Eti had made.

Learning how to walk like a turtle…

In the olden days one could, just by a quick glimpse of the clothes a person wore, immediately know exactly what their station in life was and where they came from. Nowadays T shirts and Western clothes dominate even in the villages and traditional clothes are only used for very special occasions. We were lucky to drive through a village preparing for a special church celebration and see some spectacular outfits.

As much as I hankered for any and all of the pieces Queen Eti showed us, our travel budget did not allow us to splurge. “Don’t worry,” whispered Yuli, “I will take you to the biggest shop-a Women’s coop, and you can pick your favorites there for better prices.”

So we drained the last of the tea from the cups that one of the “children” made for us and said goodbye to the queen. We left with the hope that the young girls will continue to learn how to weave their stories, their beliefs and perhaps a bit of modern creativity into the sumptuous Sumbanese cloth.

“I have to think of a good name,” said our guide Yuli one morning as we started our day. “My sister just had a baby boy.”“What kind of a name?”

“Well, we have two names in my village, a Christian one and a tribal one.”

Local animist Marapu religion is not recognized as one of the official religions of Indonesia, that gets marked on everyone’s identity card, so people choose one of the others. (Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism).

“My Christian name is Yuliana,” explained Yuli and my home name is Leda Tara.”

“Who chose your name?”

“My mom, but it is actually up to the baby to make the final decision.”

“What do you mean?”

“We will have a baby naming ceremony when the boy will be three days old. Would you like to come and see for yourself?”

Would we ever! For such a special honor and privilege we wanted to play our part so on the morning of the ceremony we stopped in town and got a selection of cakes. Yuli purchased a number of live chickens and put them in the back of the car.

“Are we sacrificing these or eating them?” I asked.

“Both,” she replied. “But first we will say sorry for killing them and ask for forgiveness. In Marapu religion we believe everything has a soul. Even stones and trees. When we cut the wood we ask for permission. If you don’t get permission from the wood, the killed wood might kill someone.”

We also wanted to give the baby a gift, so we headed for the market. Yuli suggested a small pop up mosquito net in blue and I could not help myself but add a little blue outfit for the baby and one for his older toddler brother. (We heard he had quite a hard time sharing his mom.) Thomas the Train Engine and Cars are popular themes on Sumba, too.

The ceremony was held in Yuli’s parents house in the village. The house has been only partially rebuilt with a flat roof after a recent big fire that burned half their village. We were introduced to a number of relatives, old uncles who were the Rato Adat (shamans) and civil leaders of the village and old aunts, amongst whom one was chosen to have the main role in assuring the correct name was bestowed upon the baby.

You see, the baby is put to the breast of an old woman while incantations are intoned and the baby’s new name is called out. If he suckles, it means he accepts the name, if not, another has to be offered.

No village visit or ceremony can be conducted without the basket of beetle nut being passed around on the outside porch and everyone’s teeth and lips colored blood red. I dutifully tried it in he first village we visited but I could not build up even a slight buzz, because I gagged on the incredibly bitter tasting nuts right away.

I got to hold the cute new baby while the new mom was free to run around entertaining and serving guests. When Mirek very sensitively and sensibly enquired if she perhaps should not rather take some rest and someone else could step in to help, we were told it was not necessary at all. The birth was quick and easy and she was practically like new. At least the rice harvest was over, so she was not expected to go straight back to the rice paddy.

Indeed, the new mom looked very happy and at ease and if we had not noticed the elastic belt she wore around her stomach, we would be hard pressed to identify her as the woman who gave birth just three day before.

After sufficient amount of beetle nut was chewed and we drank our alternative black tea, we moved inside where on the centrally located cooking heart the fire was ablaze. The women in traditional hand woven sarongs congregated around the heart and the men with their machetes on the bamboo bench periphery.

Plastic plates with offerings of rice and bank notes were set all around and then the Marapu priest started chanting. The baby continued to sleep through it all. The chosen old woman picked him up, and in an attempt to wake him up unwrapped and jiggled him. She lifted the still sleeping baby up into the air and down again three times calling him by his new traditional name, his grand father’s name: “Bora Duka, Bora Duka, Bora Duka!”

She whipped out her breast and offered it to the baby. Nothing. She wet his face with some water-nothing. Tried the third time without luck.

After some more chanting by the shaman a back up name was offered. Lede Kadi Wano was a great grandfather’s name from the father’s side and on the third try the baby latched on and suckled. He accepted the name and in the reverse logic the ancestor also agreed to share his name with the new baby. Much cheering ensued!

To celebrate the successful naming, the first brown chicken was ritually cut with a long knife across the neck and bled into a prepared bowl. Then it was taken to the fire to singe its feathers off.

If you ever heard the saying Running around like a chicken without a head, I can tell you that it is a real thing, and to our shock the killed chicken went into the fire with a lot of flapping around. The shaman, who acts as an intermediary between the earthly and spiritual realm, then had the chicken, thankfully now truly dead and unmoving, cut open to read his entrails and predict the child’s future. Everyone was happy to hear a healthy life and a good future was predicted for the baby boy.

We had a hard time watching all this but all the little kids present seemed to have no problem at all, even though just a short while before they were playing with the very same chicken in front of the house. The harsh realities of life on Sumba are taught early. You want to eat a chicken, you better be able to stomach its killing. No, bloodless chickens do not come from the supermarket fridge.

After the same fate befell the second, white chicken, we begged to be excused from remaining slaughter and lunch. We had to recuperate before we were to visit the funeral ceremony in the afternoon.

While the naming ceremony was an intimate extended family affair, the funerals on Sumba last three days and are a huge public displays of filial piety, ostentatious wealth, and status in society.

Hundreds or even thousands of people, dressed in their Sunday best attend and expect to be fed. Numerous buffalos and pigs are killed not only to feed the guests but as a vehicle to send the deceased soul into the Marapu Heaven and as a gift to the ancestors awaiting it there with a big banquet.

As some years back we attended another funeral ceremony in Toraja, the highlands of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, we were quite apprehensive to see the Sumbanese way of saying goodbye. The slaughter in Toraja was extensive and while I am willing to accept animal sacrifice as part of tradition, cultural identity or religious belief, I do find it very hard to accept the needless and prolonged suffering of animals. The buffalos seemed unaware or resigned, but the pigs were neither. The gruesomeness there was mitigated by the beautiful costumes, processions, singing and dancing, but here on Sumba things were much less elaborate.

At the entrance to the deceased’s village we were relieved to find the elaborately decorated buffalo still in one piece.

But just a few steps further we came across his fallen comrade. We told Yuli we would not be staying long and preferably not for the second buffalo’s demise. The pigs were done in the previous days, their jaws prominently displayed in the middle of the village.

As foreigners we were quite a welcome diversion amongst the guests and the family greeted us cordially.

After tea we were offered the visit with the corpse. Mirek stepped back but I did follow the young man to the other part of the house where I mimicked my condolences to the widow, who was sitting next to a heap of cloth and bamboo.

“Do you want to meet the dead man?”

“Ok,” After all I came so far…

The covering was taken off and I found a face of a small dark man in a sitting position, his body wrapped in layers of weavings. The Marapu corpses are buried in a fetal sitting position, the Christian ones in a prone.

“We only keep the body for three days in West Sumba, but in East Sumba they sometimes keep the dead people in their houses for years,” explained Yuli. It was so in Toraja as well, where I visited a matriarch’s well embalmed corpse complete with wire glasses and black purse. Her daughter very respectfully knocked on the door before entering and politely introduced me to her mom. A loved one is not truly dead until the correct rites are performed and the soul is accompanied to heaven with the sacrificed pigs and buffalos. But in Toraja no megalithic tombs were built, the dead were put above ground in cave niches. In Sumba the loved ones might be gone, but they are never out of sight and forever part of the community as their giant tombs are right in the middle of the village. Kids are playing on them

or laundry drying or horses tethered. It takes years for a family to save enough money to give a proper funeral with the sufficient amount of sacrificed animals. And this is just part of the cost. The other is the cost of constructing those huge carved megalithic tombstones. We have seen tombstones weighing up to 70 tons and hundreds of men must be fed and entertained during the months it takes to drag them by hand from the quarries. Reminiscent of the Egyptian pyramid construction the enormous stones are dragged with the help of rolling logs underneath. Sometimes a crane is brought from the Mainland for help, but few can afford that cost. Well, no one can really afford the cost, period. The family debts incurred and passed down by the obligations of traditional funerals are crushing the Sumbanese families and keeping them in poverty.

By every ginormous tomb there is a small flat stone-a slave grave. It used to be that the personal attendant to the royalty was killed to serve the master in the afterlife. This is not done anymore, now they wait till the slave dies of natural causes. Excuse me?

Yes, you heard that right. Slavery still exists on Sumba. Everyone is born either into a caste or royalty, freemen or slaves. But of that in another post.

Our return from East Timor back to Bali felt almost like coming back home! At the Denpasar airport we breezed through the immigration, knowing well which was the shortest line. Walking out of the arrivals hall we were not anxiously looking to find transport and bracing ourselves for the onslaught of taxi offers. We had our driver waiting for us and he kindly stopped on the way at Coco Supermarket so we could buy some milk and breakfast staples.And then as we arrived to our House in Hidden Garden and were welcomed by our landlady, our gardener and tail wagging Luna, “our” dog, it felt like being back home. The cleaning lady had left a packet of freshly laundered clothes on our bed and the fridge has been stocked with our favorite tropical fruit–mangosteen. The usual late afternoon practicing sounds of the neighborhood gamelan orchestra and the cooing of our resident pair of doves in the garden brought us right back to our daily life. The slender grey doves with polka dotted necks coo in the afternoons, the classical chorus of all the other birds warble at first light, about six in the morning.

We have put some of our own touches on the house: set out some newly purchased wooden sculptures in the garden and living room, a new tea pot and special bread basket on the dining table.Since we first met 35 years ago we shared many places and right from the start tried to make them our home. Of course the familiar, uniquely your objects make a house a home, but home is also a sense of belonging and being safe to be you. Coming home where you are accepted and loved for who you are, even and especially if you had a terrible day and you are in a horrible mood.

One Mother’s Day I got a gift of a photo collage with a sentence: Home is Where Your Mom is. I was glad that our girls expressed that feeling, because I knew it well. For many years after we were married and had a home of our own, I got on my husband’s nerves by saying I was going home, whenever I travelled to Europe to see my mom and my family.

Being at home means having daily routines. Breakfast has always been a special time for us, a time before all hell breaks loose in the daily grind of family and work. No matter how early our day begins, we always have breakfast together. Much easier to do so now, of course. In the land of rice and noodles we managed to find our traditional breakfast staples: olive oil, tomatoes, cheese and fresh bread.

Every morning, just shortly after sunrise, before the killing heat of the day makes it almost impossible to walk around, Mirek leaves the house for a short ten minute walk tothe Daily Baguette, a French bakery shop on Ubud’s Main Street to pickup a loaf of fresh sourdough with a crust you don’t find often in places where baking has not had a millennia of tradition.

After a few weeks in Ubud we learned how to master the rather rigid layout of the main streets and make use of narrow alley shortcuts without car traffic. Which does not mean the way is danger free, there are motorcycles of all shapes and sizes, squeezing through. They are everywhere, clogging the roads and taking over the sidewalks. A motorcycle or a Vespa is a transportation mode for old and young. There is a family sedan model too, carrying families, large and small. All sorts of compositions can be spotted: a typical family with dad, mom and two kids squeezed in between. There are moms with tiny babies in their laps, and dads with a toddler standing up in front of them, holding on to the steering. Don’t be surprised to find that there is a special day dedicated to blessing the motorcycles, in addition to cars and anything else metal. On that day they are especially lovingly washed and bedecked with flowers and offerings before the priests come around for the ceremony.Having no wheels ourselves we brought out our laptop and added it to the other household items that were covered with a yellow cloths and blessed by our very own Manku.“How old do you have to be to drive a motorcycle?” we ask our driver upon our last foray into the countryside.

“The official age to drive a motorcycle is 17,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Mirek asks as we pass the kids going home from school. We are just overtaking two motorcycles with the tiniest of girls each driving their friend home. Yes, the Balinese all look much younger than their age, but even the driver agrees that one of the girls could not have been more than 8. He is quite shaken and very upset with the parents who allow that.

“Kids used to walk to school,” he says. “Nobody walks anywhere any more and all they do is eat junk food, play video games and get fat!” We felt right at home with this one.

We are not brave nor crazy enough to rent a motorcycle, the traffic being what it is, with the addition of boys playing soccer, dogs taking a nap or picking a fight in the middle of the road, chickens running around like well, a chicken without a head, an occasional escaped pig being chased by the whole extended family… Every so often I see a Westerner bandaged up on their knees and chin. Invariably it is due to a motorcycle accident.

Walking the small alleys around our home it is hard not to notice that dogs do not bark at us any more. The “residential street dog”

on the corner, where you turn to our compound’s gate just keeps on sleeping as we step over him, without even opening an eye. And the one that got the name of “Rémy’s brother”, because of the likeness to our dog back in Californianow barely looks at us with the just slightest vestige of suspicion, where before he not only barked at us, but chased after us as we were passing! And when we return back home, Luna is at the gate with a question in her eyes,“Where have you been? I have been waiting for you!”

If we run out of our favorite Javanese loose leaf black tea, we know where to get more, as well as where to get cheap and tasty Indonesian take out and where to go for decent pizza. Buy one get one free on Fridays! We know all too well which ice cream place has the best passion fruit gelato. We know which bank ATM spits out the most rupiah, where we can print a document and which post office is opened the longest.

We could easily just hang around at home and enjoy the beautiful garden. There is always a new flower

or animal making a welcome appearance.

A small black lissome snake (water snake, not dangerous, but stay away from the green ones), a decent sized monitor lizard, or a green chameleon. (Perhaps it is not a chameleon at all, as it does not seem to change colors). Different sizes of geckos, with their distinct “Ge-cko!” cry and different species of frogs making an array of somewhat embarrassing sounds like farting.All of interest to Luna, but it is the squirrel in the tree that really makes her crazy. Who knew one would finds squirrels on Bali?

We do make sure that when it cools down somewhat we go jalan-jalan (walking about). We have mastered the four different greetings according to the time of day and all neighbors responds in kind with pleasant smiles. I was hoping to find a private language teacher, but despite a few leads, it did not quite work out. I bought a pocket booklet of Easy Indonesian, but then most people here speak Balinese first, Indonesian second.  And enough speak English that the impetus to learn was diminished. As usual, I find that knowing greetings and how to count to three and how to tell a parent that their kid is cute goes a long way. I did try a few different yoga classes, but I guess no guru presented itself. Perhaps the student was not ready!?Another thing on the list that we did not accomplish is having a famous specialty of Babi gulig (suckling pig). We actually went to the well known Oka restaurant right in our neighborhood, but after getting in through the back door and seeing the killing grounds and pigs turning on the spits we kind of lost the appetite. They looked a lot cuter in the flower bedecked sculptures.A few times a week we go to the movies, sit on our favorite couch and order raspberry gelato and lime juice. It is funny, but we are starting to run into people we know; downtown Ubud is not that big and the expat community is neither.

We must be becoming somewhat part of that community as well, for we were just invited to our first fundraiser. (A great excuse to buy a new dress! And no high heels needed, by local custom it was a barefoot affair.) We are so lucky not only to have found a beautiful and comfortable place to live, but that it comes with a landlady who is worldly, highly educated and knows many people of interest, both local and expat. She was born into a diplomatic family and was educated in the West. While her family was Muslim, she is a devout Buddhist with good knowledge of Hindu Bali religion. You can imagine the enlightening conversations we have. She designs beautiful patchwork bags-it is fun hanging around and seeing her creative process.She is also quite indulgent and is willing to invite friends over for lunch or dinner, so we can meet some interesting people from the world of writing and photography. They can answer some questions from their perspective, though sometime the answer is, “The longer I live here, the less I understand.”

Such gatherings give us a great opportunity to cook. We have always loved hosting people, the more the merrier. Barbecue on the back deck, or dinner around our big dining room table, with long discussions over extra bottles of wine is the best way we know how to spend a weekend. There is something primal in breaking bread together, which helps you really get to know people. No, a cocktail party just doesn’t cut it. So we are scouring the shops for staples to make potato marjoram soup, or fried chicken schnitzel and sweet peas. A stack of crepes with cherry jam was the latest specialty.

It feels good to answer the ever present question, that follows right after “Where are you from?”,

“How long you stay Bali?” with,

“Two months.”

“Wow, two months, that long time.”

Not long enough, really. It is nearly time to leave. The only consolation being that we are already looking at coming back next year.But now it is time to turn the page to our next adventure- the Island of Sumba.