 Pool Buddha keeping watch over us. Today started with yoga, meditation, coffee, and a swim. Today ended with fire shooting out of my butthole. Our plan was to take a drive to Pura Ulan Danu Beratan, a temple on the shores of Lake Beratan. To prevent any possible mix-ups, I took a screenshot to show Putu the driver. In fact, I took two.
Putu arrived early, as usual. He had Wayan's mother with him, which was less usual, but very pleasant. We were never told (or, more likely, I never understood) her name, so I will call her Mrs. Wayan's Mom. She was a charming old lady, perched in the passenger seat up front. She was dressed up in a vibrant red dress, looking for all the world like my little Italian step-Grandmother. I smiled and greeted her in Balinese. "Rahajeng semeng. Ken-ken kabare?" (Good morning. How are you?) She smiled and stared blankly at me. "She only speak Bahasa," Putu explained. "Salmat pagi!" I said. "Apa kabar?" Her face lit up with a glorious smile. "Baik! Baik! Apa kabar?" (Good! Good! How are you?) "Baik, suksema." (Good, thank you.) And, with that, I was pretty much a spent force. Telling her that I like spicy food or asking her where the bathroom was seemed oddly inappropriate for the drive. We hadn't met anyone in Bali who didn't speak Balinese, but she smiled hugely every time I was able to force a balinese word into the conversation. I was a bit flattered that she told Putu that my accent was good and she was surprised I'd only been speaking Bahasa for 3 weeks. But now that I consider it, she could have told him that I smelled like a hot fish fart and that when I talk I sound like someone who'd eaten too much durian and then suffered a traumatic brain injury. I'll never know... Balinese people, as I have mentioned, genuinely want to know about the people they meet. Age, interests, family, home. It's all good. And when Putu told us that the wizened, crinkled old lady in the car with us was 60 years old, Kerri and I both gasped a bit. She's 7 years older than us. She looked ancient. She still had a big, bright smile and shiny, alert eyes. On closer inspection, I thought that maybe it was just a hard life lived primarily outdoors. She was doing all right. All along the drive, we kept seeing long bamboo poles that had pegs of bamboo hammered into the sides of them. They were piled along the sides of road in several places. We honestly must have passed 200 of these ladders along the drive. They build them right on the side of the road.  Putu explained that they were ladders that farmer build and use to gather cloves, which are common in this part of Bali. As we made our way to her village to drop her off, Putu stopped at a scenic overlook so we could see Twin Lakes, two gorgeous lakes (hence the clever name) nestled in a valley surrounded by lush green jungle. And people selling cheap plastic crap, cashews, and, in a distinct change for the worse, one hawker offering the golden opportunity to have your photo taken with his: 1. Giant python 2. Giant fruit bat 3. Giant iguana Aside from the small bats and the luwaks, we haven't come into too much contact with Balinese fauna. Kerri, who has a near pathological fear of snakes, handled herself quite well considering that she was within 100 miles of a huge python. She didn't cry OR pass out. "Do people swim in the lakes?" I asked Putu. "No," he said sadly. "Too dirty." And that is Bali in a nutshell. Gorgeous from a distance, but full of snakes, typhoid, and used diapers up close.  Beautiful from a distance, but you probably dissolve into a hissing puddle of goo if you try to swim there. We continued along our way to drop off Mrs. Wayan's Mom. The drive took us along a serpentine road with gorgeous views of mountains, rice terraces, lush jungles, and at least 8,372 shops selling Babi Gueling and 1 liter bottles of gasoline. Maybe it doubles as a dipping sauce? I'll never know. With smiles and a few words of Bahasa, wee dropped Mrs. Wayan's Mom off at the local market in her village and continued our drive to the temple, which was... odd. Gorgeous, to be sure. But very, very odd. The parking lot of the temple was full of tour busses, which is always a bad sign in my opinion. Tour busses mean tourists. Tourists mean crowds. Crowds mean dozens and dozens of Instagram people crowding each other out to get photos of themselves. This temple was the strangest temple/amusement park hybrid I could possibly have imagined. All the temples we've visited are real, active temples where locals go to pray and have religious ceremonies. All have welcomed tourists warmly and they all have areas that are off limits to tourists. None, before today, had included gelato stands, a food court, paddle boats shaped like ducks, or places where you can rent "Real Balinese Cloths" that you can wear to pose in front of a theater style mock-up of the spirit gate located at the entrance to the temple. It was the Indonesian version of the "Olde Tyme Wild West Photos" that you can get a a certain sort of low-end amusement park in the US. The line of Instagram people lined up for photos at the real spirit gate was long. The line at the fake spirit gate was much, much longer. I will never understand people. But I don't need to. They were happy. I was happy. All was well. There was an absolutely stunning temple with 11 roofs located on a small island about 20' off shore. This is the temple that appears in all the tourist information about Pura Ulun Danu Beratan. It was stunning, but, as it was an active temple, it was off limits. Almost as wonderful as the temple were the dozens of Instagram People who had set up elaborate photo shoots everywhere there was room.         We made our way through the sweating throngs of Instagram People toward the food court where I was about to learn a hard lesson in pride. Kerri ordered nasi goreng (rice) and I got mei goreng (noodles). The food was really, really inexpensive. Even by Balinese standards. That possibly should have served as a warning. "Medium or hot?" the waitress asked. Kerri looked at me meaningfully. The fact that mild wasn't even an option should have served as an additional warning. It did not. Not to me, at least. "Saya sakar padas!" (I like spicy!) I said happily. And stupidly. I would live to regret those words.
My noodles were ferociously hot and I suspected that awful, terrible things were in store for my digestive tract soon. If I survived, which I wasn't looking forward to. Kerri offered me some of her drink, but, fearing that it would simply turn to steam in my guts and kill me in a huge gas explosion, I merely whimpered and whined for a few hours. We pushed our way through the ever thickening crowds of Instagram People and found Putu in the parking lot. I asked him to please take us to Pepito's, the tourist grocery store, as I was in desperate need of Arak, juice, and Happitos. If my intestines are going to kill me, and they definitely want to, I'm going to fill them with alcohol-based deliciousness on my way out. Perhaps the drink will serve as an offering to the gut gods and they will simply let me be engulfed in flames and die quickly.  I didn't get a good photo, but on the way home I saw my new favorite sign. "Attention! The road is so dangerous." Back at the villa, we swam and I worked hard to prevent my insides from turning to a charred lump of intestinal lava. Arak, a high proof alcohol, seemed ideally suited to dousing the flames and by the time Komang and Putu (the cook; not the driver) came to make dinner, I was ready for it! Kerri gently reminded me that we had ordered separate meals yesterday and that I had ordered mine spicy. "Bring it," I said, tossing back another Bali Banger. "You are sleeping outside tonight," Kerri warned. "If you poop the bed, we'll get a bad review on Airbnb." "Pfffft, " I said, eating a delicate forkful of the hottest food I have ever eaten in my life. "Are you okay?" Kerri asked as tendrils of smoke swirled from my nostrils. I wiped the tears from my eyes and nodded. "Fine," I mumbled through my swollen lips. All my hard work withe the Arak was undone and I was a quivering wreck by the end of the meal. I loved it.  Delicious and dangerous. After we ate, I asked Putu about the prodigious amount of spice that Balinese people enjoy. "If you made that at home, would it be that spicy?" I whimpered. Putu laughed and shook her head no. "No! No! No!" So, I was tougher than a Balinese person? Oh yeah, baby! I'm the champ! I... "I used 5 chilis in yours," she continued. "At home, for family, I use 20." I cannot imagine the money they must spend repairing the melted toilets in their homes. After dinner, we sat up on the balcony to watch the sunset. Hundreds of bats swarmed, flitted and danced around us, darting between us and all around us. I tried to ward them off with my fire-breath, but my aim was off. I spent the evening gulping water and sweating from my Balinese dinner which, it turns out, was like the kids' meal for the locals.  Sunset obscured by bats.  Kerri spent the entire evening in mortal fear that she would be killed by a high-velocity bat to the head. Tomorrow, if I am still alive, we will be having real Balinese massages.
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