Indonesia: Bali, Munduk

The video at the end of the sun dropping at sunset is 🥰

Sunday 9th July

Drove to Munduk today, a place a little higher up to the central, Northern area of Bali which is fairly remote, in Northern Bali. We are skipping everything down South but spending 3 or 4 days here.

We arrived in our lovely homestay – one of our favourites. Nothing crazy different about it but a lovely room, it’s a family room (which means 8pm bedtime, eye roll!), but a nice balcony with a table and 4 chairs, hot water (woo hoo, a LOT of Java was spent with icy cold showers!). And the most lovely restaurant/ terrace area with the MOST spectacular sunsets. You can see the sea from here and it’s magical (again, see previous blogs, I am obsessed).

Settled in, then headed straight out for a walk amongst the rice fields – it started raining but nothing too dramatic because it’s hot. Lovely walk down into the valley but my gosh there were SO many dogs. And Henry is terrified of them. Luckily I had my hypnotherapy for my fear (not just a fear, it was a paralysing, I’ll walk 3 hours to avoid dogs fear), so we were trying to support Henry with our technique. Which is fold your arms across your chest (so he doesn’t flail them around), walk calmly past, and think of happy thoughts. Pretty tough when we passed literally 30 of the mangey things. They are ‘owned’ by the villagers but I read before we came that there is specifically lots of rabies in this area. Luckily we’ve had 3 rabies vaccines so would be fine with a top up, but still.

All the houses here have these offerings to Hindu gods – they are outside every single house with flowers, incense and rice.

The women wear traditional white tops and a coloured band around their waist, the men wear sarongs.

Can you see Cs bubble she’s blown with her leftover Ijen (bribery!) bubblegum?!

Deep breath, I will embrace the greys! 👇

Sunset from our dinner spot.

Monday 10th July

Another day, another beautiful waterfall! There are four near our hotel so we had a long, relaxing day visiting them all. Each waterfall has a LOT of steps down and therefore a LOT of steps up. A good chance to move our bums that are expanding in this no exercise, white carb diet. I miss running and exercise so much. We do a bit, but nothing near what I would usually do in London.

We bought some trinkets to send home (we are doing a parcel home in Denpasar), had a packed lunch AT one of the waterfalls, had a civet coffee drink and generally had a really nice chill day.

I *think* these are different waterfalls, but at this point they all look the same!

Eat your heart out bamboo forest, Japan!

H bought a DELIGHTFUL recorder/ flute thing. Honestly we are SO happy to have the dulcet tones of a recorder following us around. So sad we may *have* to send it back in our parcel home, haha! But really, he’s thrilled with it and negotiated down to half price so who are we to say no 😍We can save it for a special grandparent activity 🤣

A highlight was how we are all trying Ts personality types, seeing what we all are. No surprise, C is like T (a red) and H is like me (a green). So we had a chat about what it all means, how we can communicate better with each other, and how we like to be communicated with. It was better than any home school we can do. It’s a life skill learning what makes you tick and what doesn’t.

For example, C was feeling angry and a bit pushy/ shouty. So I instigated (I only bring out this big gun when things are really bad, haha!) my ‘game’ of 2 things we love about each other. It can be anything but it needs to be serious/ not taking the mick. Anyway, me, H and T did it but C was reticent and for her, the thought of saying stuff out loud in a group (even us, her closest group!) filled her with fear. Whereas for me and H, we are like bring it on, I love x, y, z, a, b, c and it fills us with love and happiness! So T and C had a good long chat about what it’s like to be a different personality, and she did her ‘love things’ to us individually. Also a really good lesson for me in adapting my style.

This is H doing his ‘I love’ things…

I must say, one of the biggest things we have learnt is we all know how to get along together and we are very forgiving of each other. I used to feel awful if I lost my cool with the kids and feel a terrible parent, but actually, we are all human. They lose their cool too, hit us and all sorts (in the extreme) and we all just own our behaviour. As long as it’s not a constant mean at each other, I’m learning that it’s okay to own up and say look I was out of order and I’m sorry. I hope and think our generation will grow and learn from being authentic with each other. Although I’m quite sure each generation think they do it differently and C&H will eye roll at our out dated parenting in 20 years, haha! But I think we are doing a good job, C& H are the most awesome human beings. I am so proud that they are both able to have an adult conversation, always ask astute questions to our guides and are generally enthusiastic about the world (and YouTube!).

Oh and to change the subject, the CIVET CAT POO COFFEE. Whaaaat! They basically feed civet cats with coffee beans and it makes them taste delish (apparently) after they poo them out. Totally disgusting and makes no difference to the taste of the coffee, haha!

I ran home school this afternoon, some English comp prep for C. We are nearly there on her maths curriculum and we are keeping up with English. Hopefully not too many gaps on arrival home!

Another gorgeous sunset.

I know I’m obsessed but how can you not be with views like this – you can see all the way to the sea from here!

Tuesday 11th July

Today was a driving waterfall trip.

Sekumpul waterfall which is fairly well known. Unlike yesterday, they have a hefty entrance fee with a ‘guide’ (which you don’t need). We were of two minds about going but glad we did, two stunning waterfalls. Our guide said they were swimming ones, but clearly they weren’t! Got pretty wet under the falls though, v cool.

It was reeeally steep – must have been 400 steps down and then up! Kids were troopers as ever. Their tolerance for a hike/ step is very good now!

Had lunch at a street food place where we had sate pork and rice. V simple, quick and exactly what we like.

In the afternoon, we went to visit a coffee plantation run by a 5th generation family. It was nice, had a little wander around the plantation. His daughter was there who was very cute (age 5) and the kids played with her for a while. We helped the guy set up a business Trip Advisor account so he could increase his footfall. So many small businesses could use some social media help.

Another one of those sunsets!

Wednesday 12th July

Trip down to Denpasar today before flying out to the Komodo dragon islands.

First we stopped at the ‘floating temple’. It was still pretty early so we saw lots of locals performing ceremonies and playing music. Apparently its full of tourists by the afternoon. Kids were like MEH another blo*dy temple, so they hung in the playground and we had a really nice time together – snatched moments like that are basically our date night, haha!

Next we went to the UNESCO Jatiluwih Rice Terraces. We werent expecting great things but actually they were stunning and we had a lovely walk. I say lovely, H was desperate for it to end as soon as we had started! But he got into the spirit of things. It was surprisingly quiet tbh, I guess most people don’t do the longer walk.

Finally, we stopped at the 700 year old Banyan tree for lunch. They had a bakso soup stand next to it so grabbed some quick lunch. All the drivers want to take you to a tourist place which is slow and meh. So we try to spot roadside stalls to go to instead.

I’m looking a bit pensive here!