Pai > Chiang Mai > Bangkok > Kuta Kooties > Paradiso Bali

We left Pai late last week after having one of the best pizza's ever outside of the tri state area (italian owner of the restaurant) and seeing our trekking buddies off who were headed in another direction. The trip back was much more pleasant then the trip up since we moved quickly and sat up front where the nausea is limited. We spent one more night in Chiang Mai where we walked the market and spent some time drinking rose tea with the tea guy and tasting all the dried fruits they had to offer. We each had a fried larvae because I feel I had to( had to!) taste at least one bug and that seemed more appetizing and less offensive than a fried cricket. I think maybe we should start importing the fried larvae, really. Jax are old and busted - larvae are the new hotness (Who am I kidding - Jax are the old and new hotness).
One night was spent in Bangkok where we had dinner at a local joint and ended up sitting with our Thai dopplegangers who were right around our age, Noinah and Apple (yes, Apple). We chatted with them for a while and learned some more new Thai words. I actually got email from Noinah yesterday, they'd like to keep in touch to work on their english. Everyone is about practicing their english.
We left for Bali early the next morning and encountered what can only be described as some bitchy ass French folk on the plane. Walking up the aisle, I could see there were people in our seats (which I had booked at the time of our reservation so we'd have a window seat together). I approached them, fully thinking they were american since the dude was in head to toe cowboy gear, boots and lariat with a silver cowboy and all. But when they started speaking I realized he was apparently a french cowboy. They were, I believe, trying to explain to me that they were in the wrong seats but their friends were in their seats and they wanted to sit together. Now, it was one thing if they politely asked if we might be willing to give up our seats so they could sit together. But this was flat out nasty-ness. The woman started mouthing off to me in french. I just looked at her stone faced and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about.". The friends behind said, "Iz an open plane, you sit anywhere." I said, "Um, it's an open plane, YOU go sit anywhere." So Liz got the flight attendant who was only moderately helpful (a bit demure to deal with the french). Eventually we stood up front while they tried to sort it out. We offered several times to move up to business class if that would make things easier, but eventually the flight was completely full and those french f's (pardon my language but their behavior was truly appalling) were shipped out to sit elsewhere. I'm guessing they saw us and thought we would roll over, but they were clearly guessing wrong.
In any case, it was not a highlight or a good way to start our trip. The flight was fine, and upon arrival we were taken to Seminyak, a beach town. After trying a few different places we found a 'decent' place to stay. We've learned that on Bali everything is beautiful on the outside. Gardens, palm trees, stone carving, the works. But inside things are not usually taken care of nearly as well. That first night we went for sushi then for tea at a cafe and ended up chatting with a guy who was sitting nex to us. Turns out his name is Jay and he's from Islip (for the uninitiated, that's on Long Island). Small world. So he gave us some insight. Then, we were walking the streets of Kuta the next day and he comes zipping up on his motorbike. Random! Liz had a fabulous massage by the pool where apparently the other masseuse was telling the rotund German man she was rubbing that he had a baby elephant in his belly. Ah, the Balinese!
Kuta is a dump. Kyle told me to watch out for Kuta Kooties and now I know why. We were disappointed and wondering if THIS was was Bali was about... street vendors harrassing you to buy their things, taxi drivers honking incessantly as you walk by trying to get business, piles of garbage washed up on the beaches which are filled with people. Lovely! We did spend one evening talking to our waiter until 1:30am which was really nice. We learned some about Hindu-ism and he was just a very chill guy. Good insight. But that made for an early morning when we were picked up to head to Nusa Duy which was lovely. We had our own pagoda where we did some yoga and just chilled out. We then headed to Dreamland Beach which was... well... dreamland. You go down a big set of stairs to get down to the beach which is surrounded by cliffs. The water is clear blue and it's extremely clean and warm. We got some chairs and chilled out much of the day there, swimming and people watching. We stuck around for sunset which was lovely.
We made arrangements to be picked up the following morning and to be taken to Ubud. For those of you who have read 'the book', this is the place where Elizabeth Gilbert stayed in Eat, Pray, Love while here. And I can understand. It's beautiful, green, quaint and lovely. The people are much more friendly and not pushy (although we do understand the steep competition for business in Kuta - we're not naive. But it's not exactly relaxing). We went straight for the library since our guide book said they had some good listings. The library is even freaking quaint. There, we met Rama who proceeded to take us around to a few different places to check out, and we settled on a great spot with a HUGE room, HUGE veranda, overlooking the rice paddies and pool. It's 300,000 rhupia a night which is around 33 bucks.
We went for a swim yesterday evening then for dinner and ended up at a warang (food joint) where a guy was playing some acoustic guitar with his friends. They shared their arak (rice wine that you pour and pass to the person next to you, similar to sake) and we sang to some Lynnard Skynnard and Chili Peppers (he wasn't too bad for someone who doesn't speak very good english). There were a bunch of people hanging out - random caucasion chicks they knew and balinese guys. One of the guys is living in NYC right now... he's a jewelry designer and is doing HVAC in Queens right now. Go figure. Anyway, he's here for a few weeks so we're hoping to meet back up and go to a beach with him and some folks if we can connect. We plan to stay here for a week and do a few day trips. We'll see what happens.
This morning we went to see Ketut from the aforementioned Eat, Pray, Love. He was supposedly her medicine man and mentor while here. He was just hanging out on his front porch like she said, toothless and yoda-like. Our taxi driver who we met last night hung with us while he gave us his shpiel and 'read' our palms which were miraculously exactly the same. It was fairly lame then he charged us like 10 bucks (or whatever we could give). He's a nice, funny old man. But the whole medicine man thing is a nice gimmick. He was trying to sell us LOVE POTION for god's sake. But it was an experience. We found ourselves for the second time in two days explaining to a balinese man (our taxi driver) what a 'schpiel' is. I think the word may spread like wildfire here. We have some photos of us on his porch together, it was an experience at least.
We then went down to Monkey Forest which is quite amazing... just down the street there's a jungle where there are 300 makaw monkeys monkey-ing around. It's insane - they're everywhere. In fact, one jumped up and clung to my bag. Liz will never forgive herself for not getting a picture of me with the monkey hanging off of me. The whole thing was rather crazy... in costa rica you're like "oh cool, I see a monkey over there in a tree". Here they were running around like dogs at a dog park. People were feeding them bananas and they would just climb on their backs and hang out. A little freaky.
It's now 6:30 and I at least will be going for an evening swim I believe. It's nice and cool here at this time of day although very hot early. We're hoping to take a class or two... either silver smithing or facial scrub making or something like that.
If nothing else, we're learning to chill out. In fact, we know how to say chill out/no problem in several languages now including Thai (Saibay Saibay) and Balinese (Sin Can Can). They just love it when we do say it. And we aim to please.
I apologize for my lack of clever-ness in this blog but there's just entirely too much information to share to be remotely funny. I'm sure only about 2 readers have even gotten to this point - my true believers, I thank you :) I do plan to do a blog about the lack of proper english signage in SE Asia which is really quite impressive. Look for it upcoming.
Ok, off to my paradiso of a home for a swim. Have a lovely Thanksgiving. We saw some signage about a Thanksgiving dinner going on around here and we may just partake in that. Ubud is a town of expats, so I imagine we'll find some Americanos to share some suckling pig (their specialty here) with. Hope all is well.