The most fun has been walking through Monkey Forest, a sacred temple site home to 400 odd long-tailed macaques. They are curious, naughty and shameless - my kindred spirits! You can buy a bunch of bananas at the front gate to feed them which is really fun and cute. They ran right over to get the bananas from me with their little human hands, and would tug on the bottom of my skirt and look up at me with their cute & innocent little monkey face if they wanted another. All this close contact with humans has given them bad habits, blurring the line between monkey and human behaviour. They will jump on you and steal anything interesting, and we saw monkeys playing with and/or eating candy, Gatorade, batteries, chips, even an aerosol can.
Ubud has offered a glimpse into the uniquely Balinese way of life. The people here are unwaveringly committed to their family, community and religion. The values and expectations here are clear and concrete, and not challenged, that is "just the way it is." I find myself envying the sense of community, the knowing exactly where you belong in the world, and I can't help but think that if we shared some of those values in the West, everyone I know wouldn't be having an identity crisis (or maybe just me!). That being said, a lot of Balinese never leave the village they were born in, let alone the island or the country. When a baby is born, the placenta is collected, placed in a coconut shell, wrapped in a white cloth and buried in the family compound to ensure a connection to the place of birth, so the spirit will know where to return to when the person dies. Identity crisis or not, I just can't imagine not having the choice to be, see or do what I want, and I certainly can't imagine giving up the experiences I've had, the places I've seen or the people I've met.
On a bike tour through the countryside, I rode through Balinese villages and stumbled upon what seems to be a universal truth, one that's held true for most places I've ever visited: women do ALL the work. I'm not just referring to the standard stuff like raising, feeding, and clothing their families, shopping, cleaning and nurturing, I mean full-on, serious manual labour. I've seen women harvesting rice, barefoot, under the scorching sun, walking in flip-flops with planks of wood on their head, hauling buckets of wet river dirt around and carrying a deflated Zodiak boat up 365 etched-into-the-side-of-a-mountain stairs (do you even know how much one of those things weighs?). What are the men doing? Sitting around gambling on cock fights and socializing (or the odd game of pool). No thank you.
Also on said bike tour, we made a little stop in the rice fields to see how rice is harvested (by hand! barefoot!). Being my curious self, I walked right into the field, straight to the action where I was greeted by a woman indicating that she really liked my pants - tugging on her pant legs, motioning to mine, and giving me the universally positive thumbs up. Thanks! Same thing from another woman, and another! Soon the whole group of them were flashing me their beaming grins, thumbs upping and speaking rapidly in Indonesian to each other and laughing. These people were really excited, and my pants weren't that awesome. I started to think maybe they meant they liked my big thighs, that they thought I was a hearty, strong woman. I casually asked the guide what they were saying and as a worried look crossed his face, he reluctantly replied, "Oh they think your pants are sexy." Ok, that's good. "They like your pants cause they can see your thing." Suddenly the puzzle pieces fall into place and I realize the commotion is over the tightness of my pants, especially in the crotch area. I guess they were just a little too risque for the rice paddy! (and just for your information, I didn't even have a camel toe!)
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