4pm today the apartment should be ours!/ Finding a maid

Assuming everything goes according to plan, we will do the transfer of the apartment at 4pm today. At that time we get the keys. I've spent a little time organizing for the move to the new apartment today. The whole move shouldn't be that difficult given how little "stuff" we actually have. However, we do have food and other stuff we've purchased while living at the Fraser and we bought a bunch of supplies this weekend and so we have to move that as well. What supplies? Hangers, dust mop, cleaning cloths, a front door/entry rug, stuff to clean floors, an all purpose cleaner, etc. We bought the basics to get started cleaning.

Nearly all of the stuff that was ordered for the apartment has been delivered so that's excellent.

The plan is that our air shipment will be delivered tomorrow at 10:30 am. The air shipment contains the stuff that was packed up on May 27 and we haven't seen it since. It's been in storage here in Jakarta since July 31. We hope to be fully moved into the apartment within the next couple of days.  We will post an update once we are all moved in.

On the maid front, we decided the language barrier was just too great to hire the maid I wrote about recently. We really liked her despite the language barrier, but ultimately we decided we really needed someone who spoke at least some English.  We found out about another possibility over the weekend and met her on Sunday. She speaks English fairly well and is apparently an excellent cook and housekeeper. We are checking references and making sure she has a current KTP identity card, but if all of that checks out we might end up hiring her.

Pocari Sweat?

I've been meaning to write about this for a few weeks. So what is a Pocari and what might you do with its bottled sweat?

Don't worry, it's just a brand name for the local equivalent of Gatorade. However, there is only the one "flavor" and that flavor is sort of a mild citrus with an odd aftertaste. We've bought a couple of bottles of this and each time we giggle a little about the name.

We have given Pocari Sweat a try obviously, but we have not yet tried the ice cream brand "Dung Dung." I may have mentioned this before. We just can't get past the name. It even comes in durian fruit flavor. Durian is a very smelly fruit that you either love or hate depending on your personal tastebuds. I do not think I will ever be interested enough to try a fruit that is banned on public busses and in many public venues due to the strong aroma.

Watching furniture assembly and our new maid??

On Tuesday morning I got a call from our realtor/agent that a bunch of our furniture (desks, a table, a TV stand, a huge wardrobe, some chairs, etc.) had been delivered over the weekend while we were gone and that the men were on their way to assemble it- in an hour. She said she would ask them to delay some, but I had to get there as soon as possible without any notice. Oky was at Brad's office so he had to get here and then take me to the apartment. We managed to arrive in a little over one hour from my phone call. The men arrived shortly after we did. Oky was helpful to translate for me as the men had some initial questions and then also had questions on furniture placement. I was amazed at their efficiency. They didn't even read instructions but assembled everything and placed everything in several hours. They even moved a couple of pieces that had to be moved before they could place the new stuff. I also inventoried a bunch of kitchen items that had been delivered to the apartment.

On Wednesday afternoon I interviewed a possible maid. Her name is Iroh. She doesn't speak much English at all but she seemed nice and capable. Brad's admin Ibu Dian helped translate during the interview. Brad interviewed her this afternoon and we will probably hire her on a trial basis. I had hoped to have a maid who spoke a good deal of English to make shopping and interacting with workmen, etc., easier, but we are having a hard time finding someone like that. She has worked for two other expats and never really learned much English because one of the heads of the household spoke fluent Bahasa. There is incentive to learn Bahasa quickly, but it isn't going to happen overnight. In the meantime, there is Google Translate.

Taking care of the furniture issue and going through the process of finding a maid would not be possible without the help of Pak Oky and Ibu Dian.

Uluwatu- Sun Sep 21

After snorkeling and lunch we headed off to visit Uluwatu. It was a long trip because Padang Bai is on the eastern side of the southern part of Bali and Uluwatu is on the western side.

This is the site of another seaside temple called Pura Luhur Uluwatu. It was built in the 11^th c and is of the 7-9 directional temples meant to protect Bali from evil spirits. 

 Adi warned us that the monkeys here are more naughty than the monkeys at Ubud. He actually recommended that we remove our glasses/sunglasses and hats. So I tried to walk with Brad giving him clues as to the stairs, etc., as we walked through the area with the monkeys. We didn’t see any until we were all done walking the temple site itself.

Here, if your legs were covered, you were give a sash to wear to honor the traditions. And we watched a performance of a Kecak dance/theater. They gave us a written account of the plot with its five acts. There is no speaking during the play. Fifty men wearing just a kamben sit around in a circle and chant a lot saying Kecak a lot and during the play they provide background noises and chanting. There were only a few actors. I got confused right from the start because having read the story I couldn’t understand why there were 2 female characters. Only later did I re-read the text and discovered that one of the female actors was actually a deer. Ahh!  The funny element was an actor portraying the character of a white monkey. He was funny. There was a pretty bird character as well.

This was a great site to watch the sunset as well. The sunset happened during the production and was pretty. Enjoy!

Snorkeling at Padang Bai- Sun Sep 21

Our first snorkeling trip in the Indian Ocean. Wow!  Except for the issues about changing before and after, this was great. Even my rental snorkel mask didn't leak. The boat was a traditional fisherman's catamaran. They put a small motor on the back and the guide, the man at the motor and the two of us filled the thing. Very narrow but deep top to bottom.

Off we go. There were a lot of clouds but there was still plenty of sun to see in the water.

We saw so many types of fish. Here are just a few I could remember:
pinktail triggerfish, white spot damsel, bird wrasse, naso type tang (not sure which species), hepatus tang, lined or clown tang, saddle butterflyfish (Chaetodon ephippium), solderfish, bluestriped grunt, needlefish , Moorish idol, even a small stingray or skate.  Here's a couple of the fish we did see.

Not our photo

Not our photo

The coral was in pretty good shape as well, and it was mostly stony corals including some brightly colored purple and bright green ones. We also encountered what was probably larvae of the thimble jellies. I could feel stinging on my arms constantly and I could hear a faint crackling each time I felt the stinging. Was I hearing the nematocysts firing? I doubt it, but I definitely heard something. Brad didn't get stung. The guide just had a couple of stings. My mask, though it didn't leak was pretty badly scratched and caused everything to be slightly blurry so I couldn't see the larvae in the water. Brad said he could see something. Anyway, when I got out of the water I had little red marks on my arms. Within 30 to 60 minutes the marks had faded. I never had any itching so no big deal.

This trip was the last for our underwater camera. The guide dived down to take a picture of us from below and he either exceeded the limit of 16 feet or he hit the door latch or something.

 Shortly after this shot was taken, the camera quit working. We later opened it and there was a little water just inside the o-ring gasket so it probably got far enough inside to fry the camera. I put it in rice for 2 days but the camera still won't work. The SD card was still fine, however.

Here's a little anemonefish nestled in his or her very own anemone.

The hotels grounds- miscellaneous photos

Here are just a few photos of the grounds of the beautiful hotel.

Museum, rice paddies and the Temple at Batuan- Sep 20

If you're paying attention to the dates you will notice that we visited many sites today. Some were just quick stops like the terraced rice paddies.

Others were longer like the Don Antonio Blanco Museum. He was a Spanish painter who came to Bali to paint, married a famous Balinese dancer and raised his family here. Apparently he was famous and after Blanco arrived, other artists came to Bali to be inspired as painters.

We also visited the Temple at Batuan Village. It was built in 11th century, but underwent major changes or renovations in the 13th and 18th centuries.

On the left is Adi, our guide. We both wear the traditional kamben wrap.

Ubud Sat Sep 20

Ate lunch at a place called the Dirty Duck Diner. It was an open air restaurant where, guess what, they actually serve dirty duck- a crispy, spice covered duck dish. The ambiance of this place was terrific. This was the view from our table. You can see part of our table in the picture. There were working rice paddies right there.

Visited the Ubud Monkey Forest. They are actually long-tailed macacques.

Ubud is an inland region in the mountains. The Monkey Forest is a sacred Balinese Hindu site -the site of Padangtegal’s Pura Dalem (a temple). 

The monkeys are all over the place. There are even three distinct macaque territories, the place is so large. There are human caretakers who feed the macaques things like sweet potatoes, and cucumbers in addition to their natural diet, etc. Visitors of course try to feed them all sorts of things. We just left the monkeys alone and they left us alone. 

And let us not forget about the bats.  We saw this group of  bats trying to sleep amidst the rafters of one of the buildings. I have no idea what kind they are but they looked like small fruit bats.I should point out that we saw large flying fox fruit bats at the Bird Park as well.

There was even a short trail to see more of the forest.