Happy New Year from Bali

Gustatory sensations:dragon fruit, papaya, mangosteins, dried water buffalo, chicken sate, baguettes, water spinach, pork, rice, curries, onion, tomatoes, Ritz crackers, Milo cereal, sticky rice,coffee with condensed milk, rice, Los Bagels (just dreaming), fresh squeezed orange and tangerine juice,bananas, nasi goreng, scrambled eggs, rice noodles, noodle soup, phad thai from a street stall, spicy tempeh, and green mango dipped in chili/sugar/salt.


daily offerings in Bali


Voices in the past :Australian, Thai, Khmer, Laotian, Thai, Indonesian.Voices in the future: Thai, Australian  and..........Jan 13...................American!

Perrett Chatter: Zip up your suitcase we're leaving in 5 minutes. Is it the same time zone there? I'm tired of
sticky rice. How many days until we get home? THIS is my favorite place. Give me the camera. How do you flush this kind of toilet? I don't have the key, I thought you had the key. Wow, this is amazing. Can I use the computer? Guess what I beat Dad at Scrabble, AGAIN! I don't have any more clean underwear. Did you see that? Where's my ipod? Let's eat on the street. I love you.

Markets, markets, markets.....Khoa San Road, Bangkok: Eli goes crazy with the choices of 2 dollar surf logo t -shirts, Mel and Steph try the fish massage, letting fish eat the dead skin off our feet, Tom delights in seeing the kids soak up the street scene and take in this city he knows well. Siem Reap, Cambodia night market: Scarves of every persuasion piled high in hundreds of stalls. More t- shirts, jewelry, pants, toys, trinkets,
'same same but different' Luang Probang, Laos, Hmong handicraft market: hand sewn, hand glued,
hand woven, hand carried....rows and rows and rows of goods, set out each night at 5, then  packed up by 10, piled on the back of dozens of motos and driven back to the villages. 

beauty in Bali....everywhere

Mothers with babies: cooking, sweeping, washing, resting, thrashing rice,walking, harvesting rice, flattening bright green river weed destined to become nori-like crackers, tending market stalls, making tea, drying rice,
cutting hair, driving motos with their infant suspended in a hammock between the handlebars.

walking home in the rain after a mountain bike ride

Sights::Roosters in bamboo cages, at the ready for Bali's gambling obsession, cock fighting. 50 people in a funeral procession walking down the street. Full grown pig on the back of a moto on the way to market. Long stalks of rice filling up the trunk of a car, dragging on the ground as it passes us on bikes. Cambodian Taxi: a truck with 20 people holding on, sitting and standing on top of the bags of rice. The Ubiquitous white grain: being harvested, planted, thrashed, dried, eaten, made into wine, stored, separated, cooked, hauled, milled, and served everyday, everywhere, all the time. Asia= Rice

This is the food for 13 people for a whole day, plus the white stuff.