Today is our last full day in Bali and we're going to squander it drinking and floating in the pool and watching duck parades and battling pirates.
As one does.
I started the day with a walk through the local neighborhood. I have mentioned Balinese traffic many times in this blog, but today, I was caught in a different kind of traffic jam.
A Duck Jam.
There are, as I have also mentioned, duck herders, who transport large flocks of ducks down the roads and along the beaches here in northern Bali. And now, I have video proof, non-believers! 3 very short videos, in fact.

As a bonus, you get to hear my extremely limited grasp of Balinese. The transcript, with translations, for those who care:
Omsuasiastu -  Greetings fellow human who speaks conversational Balinese!
Kenken kabre - How are you?
Babek! - Duck! (Because, really, that's about all I could say at that moment.)

As a side note, you see the duck herder for just a moment in the first short video. Look at the huge smile on his face. That was the usual reaction to being greeted in Balinese. It could have been my pronunciation, but I really think the people are just naturally very friendly and delighted when someone who is clearly not Balinese makes an effort to learn a bit of the language.

The last video shows the traffic jam this caused. I could get used to this sort of traffic jam.

I continued walking for a bit, enjoying the area and the smiling people.

On my way back to the villa, a guy stopped his scooter to chat with me. We had the usual discussion, "Where are you from? How long in Bali?", etc. Then he said,
"You teach me English, I teach you Indonesian!"
I have learned that you do not agree to things like this. You do not say, "Maybe tomorrow." They will come back tomorrow.
So I tried, "Yeah, we're doing great teaching each other right now."
"Okay!" he said, starting up his scooter and heading off. "I see you in the middle."
And he rode off, leaving me in a cloud of dust and confusion.
Meet me in the middle?
As my Australian friends might say, "What the fuck are you talkin' about, mate?"
I continued my walk back to the villa, pondering ducks and how many Bali Bangers I could make with the remaining rum (answer: plenty...). I walked for several minutes and then, rounding a corner, I almost walked into my new friend. He was off his scooter and smiling brightly.
"Shit," I muttered when he took off his backpack and put it on the ground. I knew where this was going.
He pulled out a bright yellow cloth - the same one he had been holding up at the beach wall of the villa a few days before. He unwrapped it to display the same cheap plastic trinkets he had tried to sell me then.
"Very nice! Make good gift!" he said.
"No, thank you. Selamat tinggal."
I walked off an, mercifully, he didn't follow me.
Just outside the villa, I met two guys who I assumed were gardeners at the villa next door.
"Omsuasiatu!" I said.
"Suasiastu," they replied. "Marrrrrrrijuana?"
"No, thanks, Boss," I said cheerily.
I opened the gate and headed into the villa.
We had heard that drugs were rampant in Bali - specifically  'shrooms. We had also read that 1 in 3 people trying to sell them are undercover cops. The penalties for drug possession are steep. Not as steep as Singapore, as we will see tomorrow, though.
I hadn't been offered any drugs in nearly 3 weeks, so, while it wasn't 'shrooms, I really feel like out vacation is complete now.
Once back in the villa, I had one final chance to enjoy the rice farmers next door. They were in their kubus, tooting their plastic trumpets and banging their sheets of metal to keep birds away from the rice. If you listen carefully in the video, you can hear the tooting that was a near constant background sound during the day here.

We did a bit of packing for tomorrow, but spent most of the day just relaxing in the pool and wandering along the beach.

And, as if the day wasn't already magical enough, what did we see while wandering along the beach?

But it got even better! We saw our final duck parade in Bali! I mean, unless one accompanies us to the airport tomorrow, of course. It would probably be difficult to explain at customs, but I'm willing to try if things shake out that way.

After the pirate attack and the duck parade, we were ready for dinner. Kerri had ordered an Indonesian dish called Beef Rendang, which was spicy and delicious.
I ordered grilled fish with Balinese sauce. That was the entire description, so I took a chance.

When Putu brought me the fish, I was slightly startled by its pre-chewed appearance, but it was delicious. The Balinese Sauce that accompanied it was a dangerous shade of red that warns of dire gastrointestinal consequences for any who dare to eat it.
"What is the sauce?" I asked Putu, noting its vaguely fishy aroma with top notes of volcanic, supernova heat.
"Chili, garlic, squid!" she answered brightly.
"Bagus! Suksema!" I said. "Good. Thank you!"
But that was a lie. A terrible, terrible lie.
It was not good. And, while I was very thankful for the meal that Putu prepared, I was not thankful that she presented me with an evil bowl of living pain.
I tried a tiny smear of the sauce on my fish and was immediately transported to a different and terrible universe of fish-flavored pain. The sauce, which I shall now and forever call Lethal Lava Sauce, was a bit warm in the same way that the universe is a bit big or that time is a bit long.
It was a nuclear explosion condensed into a pinpoint of excruciating agony on my tongue.
When my vision cleared and the steam stopped shooting out of all my orifices, I got up off the floor, wiped my running nose, and opted for the sambal mattah, a fresh hot sauce that I've really been enjoying in Bali, primarily because, while it is very hot, it doesn't actively try to kill me by dissolving my esophagus.

We spent the remainder of the evening packing and burping up steaming cloud of squid-scented pain. We took a break to relax and watch our last sunset in Bali, while my tongue and intestines slowly smouldered inside me. Tomorrow, we start the ordeal of heading home.

After yesterday's spicy meals, I spent a relaxing morning conducting a campaign of military-grade firebombing of the toilet. I'm sorry you had to read that, but I'm more sorry that I had to experience it. Will it teach me? Will I still eat tooth-meltingly spicy foods?
Of course I will.
Just, not today.
I had a cup of coffee to douse the flames, read a Dharma talk, and was doing some yoga when Wayan, the gardener arrived. I think he must have thought I was having some sort of medical episode.
"Mr. Marrrrrrrty?"
"Selamat pagi, Mr. Wayan!" I said, untwisting myself from the patio.
He eyeballed me strangely.
"Arrrre you okay?"
"Yoga!" I announced brightly, hopping up and brushing the ants off my butt.
He nodded and let is pass.
We chatted of this and that for a while before he started his work for the day and I started my complete lack of work.
Or so I thought.
I went for a stroll on the beach. While listening to the soothing waves and exploring the new batch of Pepsodent tubes, diapers, and water bottles that had washed ashore overnight, I discovered something amazing.
Just below the high tide line, I found a half exposed nest of turtle eggs.
Since we visited a turtle conservatory for about an hour, I am obviously now a marine biologist and I knew that this was not good.
In fact, I suspected that this could better be classified as Really Bad.
Naturally, I sprang into action and started taking pictures to show Kerri.

I quickly ran back to the villa to get Kerri so we could BOTH take pictures.
"What's up, Mr. Marrrrty?" Wayan asked as I dashed by, picking bits of plastic garbage from between my toes.
"I found a turtle egg nest on the beach!" I yelped.
I took him out to show him. Since he is from Bali, and we were in Bali, he would naturally know what to do in any situation that occurred in Bali.
He looked at the turtle eggs, nodded, and started back toward the villa where he grabbed a maddox and a shovel.
"Are you going to make an omelette?" I asked, my brilliant wit shining through even in this dire emergency situation.
"?"
"The turtle eggs. Are you going to make an omelette?" I asked again.
"Ommm...?" he cocked his head and looked at me as if you might look at a child who is desperately trying to be funny, but is failing so badly that you can't even fake a smile.
My comic genius is lost in translation here.
"Wait!" I said. "I want to get Kerri."
He shrugged and sat in the shade while I raced inside to get Kerri.
We all walked out to the turtle nest together and Wayan began digging a deep hole far above the high tide line. We then carefully dug up all the eggs, put them in a bucket, and relocated them to their new, luxury accommodations.

After they were covered up, Kerri and I celebrated their safe relocation with a Bali Banger in the pool while we awaited our real Balinese massages.
I've never had any sort of massage, so I don't have any frame of reference for comparison. Two women arrived on their scooters and dragged lounge chairs up from the poolside into the shade to serve as massage tables. Since they both had very limited English, I was able to focus almost exclusively on the excruciating pain that my masseuse was inflicting on ever muscle in my entire body. It made it difficult to convey the concept of "You are killing me... please stop..." and, with the notable exception of my ceaseless, piteous whimpering and the occasional rupturing of one of my less vital internal organs, the entire hour-long massage session was almost totally silent.
She poked her thumbs or elbows or some sort of heavy excavation equipment into soft parts of my body and then just kept pushing until she his something hard: a bone, an organ, the lounge chair on the other side of me.
I'd like to say that I was relaxed and felt great after they left, but, in fact, I felt like someone had taken out theor frustrations on me with a ball-peen hammer.
When they finally packed up and went off to hurt other suckers, Kerri said that it is important to drink a lot of fluids after a massage to flush toxins from your body. While my body, as previously noted, had been subject to an inordinate amount of flushing already today, it was decreed that Bali Bangers were imperative to our recovery.

We floated around in the pool and hydrated until Putu arrived to make dinner. She made an amazing noodle dish called Bakmi Goreng and a veggie dish that I love called Gado Gado.
As I went to the table to sit, she pointed. "Where you sit?"
I pointed to the seat I had planned on using and she placed a plate of Bakmi Goreng at my spot. She put another dish of the same food in front of Kerri.
I pointed at mine. "Padass?" ("Spicy?")
She nodded and smiled.
"Scali Padass?" ("Very spicy?")
She nodded again, her smiling widening.
I pointed to Kerri's plate.
"Tedak padass?" ("Not spicy?")
Putu shook her head. "Tedak padass."
My sphincter quivered as I sat.
"Her, Kerri?" I ventured as she picked up her fork.
"Not a chance," she said. "Enjoy your burning butthole, tough guy."
And I will.
Dinner was delicious and, mercifully, not as hot as last night's nuclear option. We assumed that she was going to make a serving of each meal for us to share, but she made two of each and, again, there was way too much food.
I brought an untouched plate back into the villa after dinner and wrapped it up to put it in the fridge for breakfast.
Putu suggested we could have it for lunch and kindly cancelled the lunch order we had already placed for tomorrow.
We spent a quiet evening trying to wash the massage oil off ourselves.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Bali and we intend on enjoying it to the fullest.