I am reminding myself not to be discouraged that we didn’t do more blogging everyday.  It is good that I have something to practice for next year!  Thank you so much for all of your visits and comments on the site.  It was lovely to hear your voices from far away and helped ease the occasional longing for home.

First an apology—I am working on the last part of the Orangutan story!  I know that I have left you hanging but some of the shine has gone out of the piece and I need to just finish it and get it out to you.  This explains the long silence in my posting I think.  I figured if I couldn’t write that than I shouldn’t move on with the other experiences—but now of course I am overfilled with adventures and don’t know where to begin.

This morning I woke to the shuffle sounds of slipper feet out on the wooden walkway of our room.  We are staying in a 600-year-old temple with tatami mat floors; shoji screen walls and temple bells calling us to meditation.  Outside my window is a Zen rock garden—not a landscape for tourists, but a garden created by the monk to help him focus his practice.

We are having a fantastic time in Japan—first in hyperactive Tokyo, then on to the snowy mountain town Matsumoto, and now finally the temples of Kyoto.  I suppose it is the contrast of experiences, which sharpen the places for me.  The balance of modern & traditional, beauty & function, spirit & technology, fashion & faux paus define Japanese culture for me.

So as I wake up this morning—the last day of our travel adventure this season, I am thinking about I’ve learned from this amazing trip.  One big idea came just this week from the monk at the temple we studied with.  He said,

“Your whole life has possibility.  Moving forward this moment you have choices.  What you choose affects the future but also the past you are creating.  You are at your youngest age in your life right this moment.  To be mindful, live in this moment passing right now, but with attention to your past and your future.”

I feel like we have been doing this through our adventures with the kids—pushing ourselves to step outside of comfortable, crossing narrow bridges, asking strangers for help, walking around the corner, and trying new tastes.

There are 2 things my body does when faced with new ideas: accept or reject.  This goes the same for food.  In Japan, where desirable flavors and textures can be so different than what I am used to, I am aware of the basic accept/reject scenario each time.  The other morning I was faced with the traditional Japanese breakfast bento.

Arranged beautifully in lacquered boxes and bowls were compartments for each specially prepared delicacy.  There was the familiar bowl of rice, miso soup, cold poached egg, cabbage salad and mysterious pickle assortment.  One of them was black and slimy looking, one was maroon and shriveled, and a third was speckled brown and vaguely bean-shaped.  We have developed an agreement (and we all honor it, some with more enthusiasm than others) to try everything.  I can’t ask Max to eat something that I am not willing to taste!  Josh usually goes first and gives us a little information like “this one is spicy be careful.”

When I open my mouth to put in the wrinkled dark pink thing (knowing it could be anything from fish paste to horseradish) I have to push past the accept/reject door– firmly wanting to reject.  I chew and consider.

After the initial reaction to spit it out passes, I am left with interesting work to decipher the tastes.  It is a salty tangy chewy mouthful.  The flavor particles are concentrated as if dehydrated and when it finally meets my cheek and tongue they explode like peonies in bloom.  Boom!  Now my whole mouth is dazzled by sourness.  I’ve never experienced intensity of sour.  My eyes water and lips pucker.  With another swallow and swish of my tongue, it finishes.  The firework show in my mouth is over but rather than looking for water to wash the experience away, I wish there was another pickled plum to taste!

Traveling with the kids with the “adventure” perspective reminds me to stay learning and open.  Life is so much more complex and beautiful when you approach the world with curiosity.  There are so many places we’ve been these past 8 weeks and I am grateful for everyday that we had together.  I hope that our photographs and blogging has opened up some of these experiences for you.

But sometimes knowing what to expect is a bad thing.  It feels like we are doing the same things like going to the same restaurants and staying a Hotel Monterey Ginza again.  I am looking forward to our visit to Motsumoto and Kyoto because it will be our first time there.

The food has been great so far.  We have eaten out at some cool places.  Last night after our sento bath, we went to a tiny basement yakitori restaurant.  There were only 8 seats at a bar and one guy did the cooking, serving, taking orders, refilling water and cleaning.  He didn’t speak any English so we had to point at things to eat.  We all laughed a lot.  I have been trying a few new things like chicken yakitori and negima (chicken meatballs) and asparagus wrapped in bacon.  But like always, I  love to eat rice.

.We are enjoying shopping and are starting to get into the holiday spirit.  There are Christmas decorations everywhere and it is COLD here.  We are bundled up but it feels great to be cold after weeks in Singapore.

I  will post more in a couple of days when we return from the mountains.  We are going on a bullet train tomorrow and will visit the Black Castle.  I hope to see a ninja.

Bye-

Max

It cost me something to be out there in the jungle.  I didn’t know it until after we were back in Singapore, but I was using reserves I didn’t know I had.

The Kinabatangan is the longest river in Sabah, Borneo.  It is a wildlife haven and home to endangered  Orangutans and Proboscis Monkeys. The forest is in massive decline due to deforestation from logging, mining, and palm plantations.  The animals are in a losing battle for habitat.  Heading up to Uncle Tan’s camp felt like we were traveling backwards to a time and place where Nature, not people, was in power of the planet.

Living on the river, it seemed humans were the interlopers, permitted to exist at the whim of nature.  I was pretty low on the totem pole—down at the bottom was Me, and then above were the mosquitos,  then bigger insects (massive spiders, stinging ants, giant venomous millipedes), then further up various birds (songbirds, cranes, hornbills, eagles), then the sizable reptiles (red banded snake, python, monitor lizards, crocodiles) and then higher were the bigger mammals (civet cats and wild pigs and pygmy elephants)

and  finally the primates (macaques, gibbons, proboscis monkeys and orangutans).  But above and beneath all of these creatures was the forest and river.

We were staying on the edge of a forest reserve, all secondary dipterocarp forest. Endless varieties of ficus and cashew trees stand tall, competing for sunlight and roots gripping red brown soil. Lush vines cover every vertical surface.

The ragged border of trees still left on the edges of the plantations is called the “corridor of life.”  In the late 1990’s the Malaysian government instituted some conservation laws to try to help the wildlife and give them a protected line along the river’s edge.  The concentration of animals in the area is good for wildlife photographers and adventure tourists (like us) but not so good for the animals.

There is not enough space really for everything to thrive here and it feels a bit like the animal kingdom X Games. Nature said must have said challengingly to herself “how many biological systems can I possibly have concurrently before the whole thing crashes?” Because everywhere I look, I see photosynthesis, respiration, reproduction, consumption, decomposition, and elimination.  Life piled upon life.

I was never so acutely aware of my footprint until we stayed in the jungle.  I could see that I was just another animal here, needing food, water, and air.  I was living life at its most basic–consume and eliminate.

All potable water needed to be purchased from the guide’s cooperative store and as the days passed, the pile of 1.5 liter bottles stacked up in on our deck—visual marker of how much water we needed to live.  At the end of each meal, all the food scraps were collected in compost bags to be transported away from camp with the morning boat back to the city.  Our waste was washed away down stream using buckets of mud-brown river water.  I found the evidence of my biological self ironic since this was the least self- indulgent week of my life.

Our days on the river were pretty simple.   We woke early, around 5:00am, to insects calling the day to begin.  Then the birds began their salutations—songbirds I couldn’t see in the trees, but heard all around us.  The cacophony of the jungle throbbing and hunting for food urged me to slather on bug juice. I quickly packed a bag for our morning  and was cruising on the river by 6:30 am.

Our guide Teo was determined to help us spot a wild orangutan.  Knowing how keen Emma is to find an orangutan living in their natural habitat, he took us out each morning on a private boat with the firm intention to find one.  We traveled through small tributaries,  up river past the usual areas and deeper into the shallow parts of the Kinabatangan and still the orangutan evaded sighting.  We were not lucky enough to spot on this time but I am hopeful that we will eventually.  We did see some fantastic birds, lizards, crocs and insects.

After our early morning cruise we had a quick breakfast break (fried banana and honey with hot tea) we re-packed our bags for the workday.  Emma’s science project involved testing the quality of the Kinabatangan River.  Before we left home she used Google Earth to find a tributary that originated in the palm plantations flowed to the main river.  When we got here, the guides knew just where the tributary was and thought it was a likely spot to investigate.  She wanted to test upstream and downstream of the tributary to see if there were measurable differences in the water.  She set up a testing protocol and we moved between the two locations during the morning and afternoon.

We worked on the river each day for about 6-7 hours a day collecting data.  All five of us moved as a synched team.  Emma directed the project, and we were her support staff.  Max and Teo collected information about the pH, temperature, turbidity and nitrogen in the water.  Emma and another guide Jeff found dissolved oxygen and alkalinity.  I recorded all the measurements, GPS locations and photographs of the water sample sites.  It felt great to be working on a project that was vital — we all took our responsibilities very seriously and had some urgency to perform well.

The hours on the river working together were satisfying because we all had important roles.  It was truly a team effort.  I think both Emma and Max were surprised that they could work so cooperatively when the need was great enough.  I can’t tell you the results of her data—you’ll have to stay tuned for her science fair project.  But I will say that after running tests for three days I have a deep appreciation for scientists in the field.

The nights were the hardest on the river.  Living so close to the equator our daylight hours were almost exactly 6:00 am to 6:00 pm.  When the sun went down it got dark quickly—raising the curtain on the main event for most jungle critters.  In a kind of audio track replay of the dawn, the bugs cranked up again at dusk.  I can’t really describe the sound because there are so many parts to it.  The cicadas, frogs, geckos, night birds all screamed to each other: “Eat here!”  “Don’t Eat Me!”  “Take me home tonight “ “Don’t I look fantastic?”  and the classic “It’s a marvelous night for a moon dance!”  But the pounding, chirping and throbbing in the air felt like Jungle MTV. The warm still air shimmered with sound.

Because it rained a few hours everyday, it was pretty wet everywhere.  We were living above the mangrove swamp on the banks of a river so we had to get used to pervasive damp.  Sometimes the wet made walking difficult but as long as we stayed on the raised boardwalks we didn’t have trouble with leeches or mud.

The boardwalks to the bathrooms were creepy at night.  In the shine of our flashlights swarms of ants marched across the walkway.  Occasionally our light caught a reflective wet shine of hunter spider (ones as big as Max’s fist) waiting, poised for action.  As our footsteps approached they skittered back beneath the deck and waited for better prey to pass.

It was this part of the trip—getting ready for bed with seeming normalcy—tooth brushing, face washing, last trip to the toilet, tucking the kids in—that was the most stressful.  The dark was a living, lurking thing. Each night I could feel the anxiety building in each of us.   Like a backpack, we carried Fear around and then once back in the cabin we set it down and sleep fitfully beside it.

Did I mention that our cabin had walls and corrugated roof  (no doors or windows) and foam mattress and mosquito net?  I’ve reached the end of the amenities now.  Pretty basic accommodations, but in the dark with our fatigue  it didn’t really matter.  The kids layer down in their silk sleeping bags, and by the light of their Kindles, I tucked the mosquito net around their mats.  The funk of our unwashed bodies and wet clothes hanging but not drying filled the air.

I lay there into the hot thrumming night waiting for unconsciousness.  I did manage scraps of sleep, from about 10 pm to 3 or 4 am.  Then I lay awake listening for danger.  I knew that this was completely irrational,  I can’t say I understand it even now.  But the Mama in me was on high alert at all times during the night, watching over my young.  I wanted to sleep. Badly.  I needed sleep.  But knowing things were hunting us drove the seductive, clingy longing for sleep out of my head.  Instead I lay, rigid, attentive, on alert.

On our last night after we were all in bed, Max lurched up and started thrashing and smashing about.  He was trying to squish something that fell on him—but he couldn’t find it.  I climbed into his mat and tried to help but it was all too much and he was at breaking point.  He said plaintively “Mama I don’t like it here.”  And that was really it. Although we all pushed ourselves during the days seeking adventure, at night Max just wanted to feel safe and cozy.  In the dark, after days of wet and hot and work and Spartan meals of rice and tea, Max was just done.  So was I.

Just a day (that felt like an eternity) later we got off the river and checked into a proper hotel in Sepliok.  The kids were so considerate to let me have the first shower (or perhaps they thought we would all benefit from my bathing?).  We ate French fries and drank ice-cold water in the restaurant.  Then that night we settled down on proper beds with clean white sheets and a fan cooling the room.   Max slept for 11 hours solidly.  Emma joyfully put on clean clothes.  And I texted Josh to let him know we were safe.

Hunger and fear and exhaustion and I are all better friends now.  I didn’t realize how much effort I used keeping us all moving forward, staying positive.  While we were there I was too tired to write in my journal, too focused on the next activity to be reflective. Perhaps it was a mental strategy to protect myself from dwelling on my discomfort.  The kids were similarly affected–not complaining or fighting with each other.  Maybe they were just too exhausted, but now I think that they knew that I didn’t have any extra patience for their squabbles. I wouldn’t recommend taking your kids to the deep jungle to find cooperation and peace but I guess it worked for us.

Stay tuned for our final adventure at Sepilok—in which Emma and Max have a dream day with Orangutans.

Emma was planning on sending the funds to the orangutan reserve.  But after talking to her science mentor about possible research projects for the year, she was determined to get back to Borneo by hook or by crook.  So she made a proposition: Could we go to see the Orangutans if she paid for the trip herself—and while she was there could she do some science and learn more about the environmental issues?

I agreed that we would check out the travel options and make a budget to see if it was at all possible. After some inquires and a week of waiting, we were stunned by an enthusiastic response from a nature camp on the Kinabatangan river.  They offered to sponsor her and be our hosts; complete with a private boat and guides at our disposal to help Emma with her project.  Suddenly our trip became a bit more complex as Emma planned a field study to learn about the water in the river.  She wanted to discover more about the orangutan’s habitat.

We were all excited about the opportunity to return to Borneo.  Josh wouldn’t be able to come because of work, but he was very supportive of the project.  He made some emails and set up a meeting for Emma to present a really big check to the Sepilok Rehabilitation Center.  The countdown began!

Bags packed with lots of mosquito repellent, cameras, batteries, silk sleeping bags, raingear, flashlights and science equipment; we traveled all day from Singapore and arrived in Sandakan on a rainy evening.  We checked in to the base camp lodge and were delighted that the science equipment we shipped from home made it. Emma opened her testing equipment almost reverently.

She was ready to get down to some serious work.  Then Emma and Max practiced running some water testing procedures until bedtime.  After a short night sleep (too hot in our claustrophobic room and to keyed up about the trip) we were ready to go up river.

The transport van drove north and west into the fields of Borneo.  We caught sight of muddy red roads cut into the earth.  The two-lane road was slow as oil tanker trucks lumbered up hills.  As the afternoon rumbled along, clouds in the distance grew darker.  Vast swaths of land cleared of forest were planted with oil palms.  For almost 90 min we drove deeper in and there was nothing but hectare after hectare of palm fields, refueling stations, and palm oil processing facilities.

The palm plantations are essentially green deserts—although they are green and growing, they are agriculture areas where no wildlife can live or travel.  We had been here before and the deforestation was something we expected.  It didn’t make Emma angry like last time we came.  It started raining and I felt like crying too for the loss.  There was resignation in her face and after a while she didn’t look out the window anymore.

When we arrived at the jetty our guide Jeff called out to us to get our rain gear on.  We were going to get wet.  I was a bit worried about our equipment (although we had cameras in dry bags) I didn’t want to get anything damaged by the rain.  Backpacks on and rain ponchos covering us to our knees we climbed down the steep muddy riverbank on a tree laying in the mud with planks nailed across for treads.  There at the bottom in the churning brown river was our boat.

The guys were smoking, hauling and loading fuel.  One of them sucked on a plastic tube to start a siphon transferring the diesel from one container to the next.  Max looked at me with huge eyes—shocked that the guy would put petrol in his mouth.  The rain poured down insistently reminding us to get in and shut up.  We quickly arranged ourselves in the boat, keeping it balanced with our bulky bags.  Emma was reluctant to let anyone handle her science box and she kept it tucked between her feet.  The boat was only about 4 m long with bench seats, no roof and a big outboard motor at the back.  As soon as we were seated the boatman opened the throttle and away we roared upriver.

I heard Emma say to Max almost casually “If the boat were to go down which way would you swim?”  Max looked thoughtfully side-to-side as the boat rocked and motor roared and rain poured.  Both kids knew that crocodiles, poisonous snakes and scary bacteria lived in this river.  So the game wasn’t really for fun, but actually a stress reliever.  “That side” he replied. “I could climb up the bank,” he added pragmatically.

And then for the next hour they played the “what side of the river game” as we sped along the Kinabatangan river and the rain kept falling.

===================================

Stay tuned for more from the river!  I’ll post more with photos from the river tomorrow!

Love patty

Many of you may remember that two years ago we took the kids on an amazing adventure to Borneo.  We tried scuba, hunted for Rafflesia, released newborn leatherback turtles to the sea, and fell in love with orangutans.  Since that time Emma has diligently raised $1000 to support the Sepilok Rehabilitation Center for orphaned orangutans.  We are headed back there to present the donation to them and to spend some time upriver learning more about the environmental issues in the area.

Just so you all know– we’ll be camping in the jungle (we are told the cabins are “rustic” without windows and doors)  Emma’s seen some photos of monitor lizards hanging out in the campsites. (yikes!) Also spotted are civets, crocodiles, wild boar, snakes, leeches and the occasional wild orangutan!  So we have high hopes for some amazing wildlife.

We will have our cameras, journals and playing cards but no computers so you will all have to wait for our blogging to resume after a week.  I don’t know how we will “unplug” (esp. Max!) but I think it will be a wonderful experience.

Send good weather our way (we hope that the monsoons hold off one more week!) and we will see you in a week!

love p

And now we begin the travel brochure portion of the blog. Those of you are in dire need of a vacation but cannot take time away, please avert your eyes.  You are warned that extremely beautiful and relaxing pictures will follow this message.

Our trip across Bali to Lombok and then onto the tiny Gili Islands was long (6 hours of car, plane, car again, boat travel).  Josh was pretty irked by these travel arrangements. I made them in the comfort of our living room and I didn’t take into account the (in)flexibility of airline travel in this part of the world.  It’s really easy to get cheap flights but changing them is a bit of a pain.  In addition we didn’t have to fly at all (except for my aversion to boats) and would have saved $$ and time.  But oh well.

As I type this I am sitting in a cabana on a white coral beach looking out across cerulean blue waters just covering the reefs teeming with fish.  This is our third day here.

Hot.  We are all grateful for our AC bungalow at the end of the afternoon on the beach.  It’s got to be in the high 90’s here on the sand.  We are drinking lots of bottled water and fresh juices.  Josh just ordered a Watermelon, Emma is getting a Mixed Juice (papaya, banana, pineapple) and I am getting a Lime.

Our first day here, we rented snorkels and walked up to the top end of the bean-shaped island.  We are staying at Gili Air—the closest Gili to the mainland—according to the guidebooks it’s the moderate one.  There are no raves (like the “hip” Gigi T) but some choice of restaurants (and Wi-Fi!! Unlike the undeveloped Gili Meno).

We are here for the snorkeling and the beauty of the reefs didn’t disappoint.  Starting at the top and basically floating with the currents down along the eastern edge of the reef, we swam with turtles, shimmering fish and healthy corals.  No sight of seahorses (sorry Raylene!), as there isn’t much sea grass around.  The water temperatures vacillate depending on the depth of the reef.  Close to shore, it’s so warm as to be unpleasant, and then cools as we got out to the edge of the corals.  Max was my buddy for the snorkel and we both liked to hunt for the cool water.

I like to see the sunlight shafting down through the water.  It’s almost like a church underwater with the colored light reminding me of stained glass; the peaceful breaths I take holding Max’s hand, floating in a glimmering world.  But because we don’t have an underwater camera, those sights are stored in my heart.

Anyway, I can show you shots of this sleepy little paradise Gili Air.  There are no cars or motorbikes here.  Transport is by foot, bike or little horse carts.  “Rush-hour” consists of 2 horse carts in a row traveling past us on the sandy “road” by the beach.  There are a number of restaurants and bungalow lodgings, sprawled along this quiet shore.

Our little bungalow here only has salt water showers and salt water swimming pool.  This makes it easy to remember not to drink the tap water when we brush teeth!

This part of the trip is so different from the many cultural activities and learning adventures of Bali.  Here our big decisions are, pool or ocean?  Dinner at “Scallywags Organic Beach Bar” or the slightly more exotic Chill Out Café?  Which fresh fish grilled over coconut shell charcoal to eat? Walk around the island going north or south?

So now I am off to swim again in the sunset and cool blue water. Tomorrow we leave for our last night in Bali then “home” to Singapore for a few nights.

I like to make friends when we take trips.  I’ve been lucky to find boys my age all around the world.  On this trip to Gili Air I met a boy name Tye from Darwin Australia.

Tye’s a real character.  His mom works at a night market running a restaurant stall so afterschool each day he gets to hang out at the market.  Tye goes to a circus school and is learning to unicycle and juggle with fire.  He and his friends go to the market and are street performers!  They have a big show and tell jokes.  They juggle knives and play with fire.

I met Tye because he was staying with his mom at the same resort as me. It was kind of funny that we kept doing the same things at the same times in the same places.  This is not a big island but there are at least 10 restaurants and we chose the same ones.

We got to know Tye’s mom and we played every day. They invited my out to snorkel with them and that was really fun.  But there was one problem.  Tye kept making me crack up underwater and so my mask flooded when I smiled.

Tye just turned 11 so we are about the same age.  He likes skateboarding, stick juggling, computer games, Percy Jackson and swimming just like me.

I felt so lucky to meet a friend like Tye on my trip.

For the Balinese, this daily practice is basically a ritual of giving back what has been given to you by the Gods. It is an offering of gratitude to the richness of life. Making offerings appeases the spirits and brings prosperity and good health to the family.

To the people we’ve met, it seems this practice is a very natural and ordinary thing to maintain a good relationship between people and spirits.

As many Balinese believe, the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu are all manifestations of one supreme spirit. Good spirits come from the mountains, and the seas bring demons and ogres.

In Bali, where the mountains meet the ocean, sits a perfect junction of the two.  This sense of seeking balance is ultimately what drives Balinese life

In addition, there are the spirits of the dead. Balinese believe in reincarnation of the spirit.  The spirit separates from the body is an evolving process that (like rice or water or the moon) is but merely a continuation of cycles.

All basic principles in Balinese Hinduism revolve around obtaining balance and harmony between the different elements in life and afterlife. The key to balance in life is obtained through a harmonious relationship between the spirits other human beings, and the nature that surrounds us.

Offerings are made twice daily; in the morning and late afternoon, by every household and business. Sometimes it’s actually difficult just to walk on the busy sidewalk in downtown Ubud without accidentally stepping on them!

Women do most of the offerings and they have such artistic sensibility.  I find it extraordinary how many different types of offering baskets we’ve seen all made with the same materials.

Everywhere you go in Bali you can find women sitting around chatting while putting together quite exquisite baskets and trays and other ornamentations for ceremony.

Creating offerings, although perhaps mundane to the Baliense, captured my heart. The more closely I looked at the importance of them the more their beauty and simplicity intrigued me.

We asked our (patient!) hostess Made (sounds like MA- DAY) to teach us how to make them.

Some baskets are simple squares made from young palm leaf, while others are more elaborate decorative creations.

We spent about an hour, with her and I have a newfound appreciation for the offerings.  The details and time involved are amazing. At the end of our session, I held up my off-centered slightly wonky offering basket to Made.  She said “You Ok!  Not good, but not very bad.”  Emma was much more adept and earned a “She get good!”

Made said that her household requires 22 different locations for offerings.  A woman of the household makes these twice a day.

She fills the offering tray with flowers, rice and stick of incense. There are special prayers, hand motions and flicking of holy water.

For me it is a beautiful moment, a glimpse inside the daily spirit of Bali.

Before we left for our trip I chose to study rice.  I learned everything I could about it.  When we got to Bali it was great to know so much because I could teach everyone about the process of growing and harvesting rice.

My favorite breakfast is banana pancake with coconut fuzz on top.  Our cook Made made this everyday for me.  I tried it at other places, but hers was the best. I think it is something we can make at home.

In Bali the amazing terraces make it a perfect place to go biking.  Riding on these rough trails we had a great time.  When we were riding in the rice fields, the tracks were really narrow.  I was riding so quickly I didn’t see Emma or Mama or Daddy the whole day.

In Bali, people believe that there are gods and spirits and demons that will punish them if they don’t lead a good life.  Everyone prays to the gods and they build temples to honor them too.  The women in the village spend 30 percent of their time making offerings and doing ceremonies.

In the temples there are a lot of carved demons.  They serve to protect the people and the temple from evil spirits.

We took a cooking class.  People in Bali still use old tools like mortar and pestle in the kitchen.  I was making peanut sauce for the satay.  After we finished cooking we sat down for a big feast with all the people in the class.

In Bali there are a lot of different kinds of fruits so they make lots of fresh juices.  My favorite juice is lime but in this picture I have a mango juice.  We liked to have juice when came back from a busy day out.

All the fruits here are fresh and delightful.  My favorite is the mangosteen, the “queen of fruits.”  This plump, perfect orb of deliciousness makes my mouth water every single time I think about it.  We got to have mangosteens everyday in Bali.  I had to eat them right away– I couldn’t savor them.  I have no self-control!

Our trip to Bali was one of my favorite places that I have ever been.