Bali, Week 2

We've had a much busier second week in Bali! We visited the Bali Museum in Denpasar, which was an interesting museum but a hassle of an experience. We took a taxi from near our villa only to find out that that despite the hundreds of taxis in the beach resorts there are none in the capital city -- which meant we had to pay the taxi driver to stay with us while we were in Denpasar. The problem was less about the money and more about the loss of freedom to just wander around. Next some men at the temple next door to the museum told us the museum was closed so the only thing to do was visit the temple. After being charged 10x more than any other temple we've visited we found out that the musuem was indeed open. Once in the museum there were endless numbers of men trying to sell us souvenirs or act as our guide. We finally surrendered to one and did benefit from having someone to explain some of what we were seeing. Who knows if we got accurate information but we did get answers to our questions, and as always with Jack there were lots of questions!
We also spent a day visiting Ubud, the "arts" capital of Bali and home to the Monkey Forest Sanctuary - an old temple filled with monkeys. The kids had a great time feeding them bananas and the grounds, despite being overrun with monkeys, are pretty. We also visited two beautiful temples on the way home: Tanah Lot (dramatically set so that you can only access it at low tide) and the Royal Temple of Mengwi – Pura Taman Ayun (surrounded by a moat and filled with the most amazing sculptures). The highlight of the day, however, was stopping to visit the family of the man helped us organize our stay and our trips in Bali, Kayan. (We met him through Philip's uncle, Robin.) It was the kind of experience we were most excited for the kids to have - to see how other people live.
Our last outing of the week was to the Bali Botanical Garden and to Treetops Adventure Park. It's hard to explain what you do at Treetops, but it involves increasingly difficult climbing adventures combined with "zipping" and swinging through the trees. Sam was amazing and just took the challenges head on. Jack was very excited until on level 3, 30 feet in the air with a tight rope to walk across, he decided that he was too scared to move a foot. Alas once up it's hard to get down without completing the course so I carried him on my back across the tight rope! All in all quite an adventurous day and quite a workout.
I have been hearing from Philip regularly. At this moment he should be heading from Everest Base Camp to Camp 1, the next camp on the trek. The weather has been terrible and he isn't sure they will make it all the way to Advanced Base Camp as planned, but he is feeling strong and is very excited. It is amazing to me that he can call me on his cell phone from base camp -- even in below 0 weather with high winds!