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.
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