Thing Jamb

I have swam 50 laps each morning for five days now and tripled my other invented yoga like exercises in the pool. I got to see the wonderful blue Ulesses butterfly by the pool this morning as well as a bright yellow on the top and black and white striped on the bottom butterfly. I captured a photo of two butterflies... the staff called me over to see them “making larve” as he called it. They are blue black on the top and white with black veins on the bottom. The others were to fast for me to capture on my camera.

Next... I rode my motorcycle out to Sayan to get my fresh juice from my new favorite little local warung/juice stand. They were tutup (closed) so I tried a new place. On the way back into Ubud I ran into a Thing Jam — about 25 Volkswagon Things parked on both sides of the road causing major pandemonium. The roads here are very thin and barely fit cars each way so when someone parks, or dumps a big pile of construction sand, or any other strange thing in the road it gets interesting with people trying to coach a bus through a hole with a 1” clearance; sometimes the Balinese men physically pickup a car and move it. The traffic around Ubud has gotten really bad especially in the middle of the day. I was going to head one way but drove off in another to avoid the jammed up traffic and ran into another road block... construction this time. Later way up the road it started to pour rain so I pulled over and sat in a little grocery store and watched part of a seriously over acted Indonesian soap opera with the cute young clerk until the rain calmed down.

I hoped back on the bike and road off in another direction where I decided to visit one of my favorite places outside of Ubud called, Tegalalang where the rice fields are terraced and always beautiful. The road to Tegalalang is lined with shops with mosiac mirrored disco balls, mannequins, plates and Buddhas, carved wooden figures of animals, Buddhas, giant wooden tarantulas, totems, furniture, lamps, hammocks, colorful kites, etc. Once in Tagalalang I drank a bottle of water and enjoyed the view for a while having a nice conversation with an Indian couple from Seattle. I noticed that the sky was starting to turn black so I hoped back on my motorcycle to try and beat the rain back down the mountain to Ubud.