After two full days of staring slackjawed at the hundredfold shades of green in the rice paddies and jungle surrounding our house we rashly decided to "do something". There are eleven (I counted them) extraordinarily appealing places to sit or lay on the patios and balconies around the house, let alone the uncounted places indoors, so this required the exercise of considerable willpower.
Twenty one years ago we rented a jeep and drove ourselves. We also rented bicycles. Both were wonderful. Today both would be idiotic. Traffic is now a pupil dilating game of dodge-em played by - and I'm guessing here - half the world's supply of motorcycles against an army of overloaded swaying trucks and pinball taxis. Instead we hired Willy and he drove us the 100 km to the water palace of Tirtigangga. On the way we saw how the hundred wood and stone carving shops of 1994 had turned into a thousand and how unrecognizable Ubud and Tirtigangga had become. Everywhere chaos and swarming and mounds of... stuff. In particular my eyes were drawn to the mounds of sacks labeled "semen". I could not for the life of me work out a rational explanation (they were shockingly large sacks) and I could not bring myself to ask Willy. I looked it up when we got home. Semen is Indonesian for cement.
But the countryside and villages and rice paddies were the same. No chaos. No swarming. No semen. Prepare yourselves, there will be a lot of rice paddy photos over the next few days. I can't really help myself. Mad green.
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