Munduk

After some minor laundry drama we departed Ubud yesterday, sad to leave our lovely accomodations but glad to be on the way to see something new. It seems that the service that had done our week’s laundry had done a bang up job washing, folding and delivering our clothes. But there was a problem: our underwear had all gone missing. But just as we began to contemplate finishing out the trip with only one pair of underwear each, the AWOL undies arrived and we were on our way.

Now it’s 3:30 p.m. chill-out time and I’m sitting on the balcony of our lumbung (actually a replica of a lumbung, or rice storage barn) in Munduk, Bali. Court is reading on the bed under the mosquito net. And I think the girls are downstairs on the porch plugged in to their books or iPods.

Munduk is a village nearly at the top of Bali just north of the caldera of Gunung Batukaru. I’ve been told there are only four lakes in the whole of Bali--three of them are in this caldera. At 1000m its much cooler up here and the green hills are covered with vanilla, cocoa, coffee and clove plantations. We’re staying at a facility created as a joint venture between the village and a tourism school offering student training and rustic but quaint rooms set amidst clove trees.

In a few minutes Court and Anna are headed out for massages and later we’re going to learn how to make some kind of Balinese cakes. Yesterday we learned how to make rice flour pancakes and watched a group of local kids taking their traditional dance classes. Courtney and a reluctant Anna actually participated in the dance classes--although Anna wished she could just disappear when the instructor grabbed her and pulled her into the lesson. Anna’s at the age when she’s embarrassed by everything.

Today we took a three hour trek through the plantations and forest to a couple of impressive waterfalls. From a couple of spots on the ridge top we could see across to the volcanoes of Java. Tomorrow it’s back to the South and a few nights in Sanur. We’ve been in Bali for almost ten days and it will be our first beach time.