last night i ate swiss chad

tim here, i finally get to blog too.

and yes it is true and no it is not some sex pistols refrain.

last night at our fancy french/balinese restaurant the menu had lamb with swiss chad, so of course i had to have it.

monkey forest of doom!

so yesterday, we got up, emailed y'all, and then walked into town. two things i forgot to mention yesterday:
1. motorbikes. it's like that stupid bumper sticker in maine that says 'motorcycles are everywhere!' in bali, it's really true. everyone and their uncle is cruising around on some little bike or another, and most of the time, they have kids on them. no joke--the other day i saw a bike with a TWO YEAR OLD asleep on the front of the bike. yesterday i saw a whole family (2 parents, 2 kids) sandwiched in all together like a club sandwich of love. it is crazy. about half the people wear helmets, and NO one wears real shoes.
2. women with things on their heads. ok, i know i am probably being really provincial here, but you see these women (usually about 70 years old) walking down the street with laundry baskets, firewood, whatnot ON THEIR HEADS. i kid you not, yesterday we saw about an 80 year old woman trying to get a giant collection of wood and god knows what else onto her head, and it must have weighed about 40 pounds.

anyway, we went into town, and did a little shopping (i am working on the bartering skills) and i got some balinese shoes (like the ones jenn j just told me about!) and a scarf and we got some cool paintings, but the defining event of the day was definitely the MONKEY FOREST. TIM decided it was a great old idea to hit the monkey forest (i think it was an attempt to collect on my life insurance, but the joke's on him: i ain't got none!). so we each paid $1, went into the forest and BAM! monkeys everywhere, running around like little demons. we took a bunch of pictures, and at one point, when i was trying to get one of a little baby, its satanic mother came after me! i was at a COMPLETELY safe distance from the little bastard, and still she came at me, her pointy white teeth glinting in the sun (ok, there was no sun, but go with me here). i fled, in terror, and we continued along our road of fear. suddenly, as we're INNOCENTLY walking to the temple, a GIANT BOULDER COMES FLYING OUT OF THE TREES and barely misses us. we look up, and some other wretched monkey murderer is running away, LAUGHING! then, some crazy demon monkey feeder comes along with 90 pounds of green leaves, and suddenly, there are monkey devils EVERYWHERE, just like in the birds! they're coming out of the trees, out of the road, from under leaves...it was damn scary! we maneged to escape with our lives (barely), but i think i have lost my fondness for monkeys. the last time i experienced that kind of monkey-induced terror was when i was 6 and watching the wizard of oz with margaret ann sheridan, and let me tell you--now i know where the idea for those flying monkeys came from!

after the monkey drama, we went home and i took a nap (to try to recover my wits) and eventually we went to dinner. tim will provide more info on dinner, but i will tell you that i almost had a rumble with the wicked, nasty german hostess, who tried to bully us into getting drinks, then mocked me when i ordered one without alcohol, and then mocked me AGAIN when i started to take my drink to dinner. she told me a waiter could take it, and when i asked if she was sure (i can carry my own drink, for god's sake) she turned around and said to me, 'no one's going to drink it!' and laughed an evil laugh. OH NO SHE DIDN'T! she's lucky i was hungry and it was a fancy place or i would have kickboxed her head right off. and with these thighs, i could do it.

i. love. bali.

ok, i will admit it...i am in love, and i am not talking about old tim. i am in love with bali! this place is completely amazing, and despite being 637485643782 degrees and humid as frig, i still want to marry it. yay.

so tim and i spent three days in nusa dua at the nusa dua beach hotel, which was perfect. no, i mean it. perfect. the room was lovely, the food was great (apart from some sushi we ate which tim thought was suspect, but i thought was fine), the weather was great, and oh god, the people. they are so nice! not only are they beautiful looking (single girls, get yourselves over here, because the men are mighty fine--the girls are ok too, but you'd have to ask tim about that), but especially in nusa dua (here they're a little more reserved), they are always charming, always smiling, always beautiful. they are nicer even than the irish or the kiwis--or even NEW YORKERS!

so now tim and i are in ubud, which is in the middle of the island in the rain forest. a taxi driver from our old hotel droves us here, and he was very entertaining and chatty. i didn't ask his name (shame!), but he had all kinds of opinions on everything, including, and this is the most important one, i feel, that the bombing here was just as much an attempt to hurt bali as to hurt 'the blonde haired' tourists who come here. of course, we never think about the fact that bali is indonesia's crown jewel and other indonesians might be jealous of that fact. consider this and get back to me.

and about the bombing and everyone who says it's unsafe here. DON'T BE STUPID. this place is gorgeous, and as the taxi driver said, terrorists generally only attack the same place once. except for london (as tim pointed out) which is clearly a much more dangerous and sinister tourist destination. ;)

ubud is, as i said, in the middle of the rain forest, which means it's much cooler than the coast, but today, wicked humid because it's been raining all night. our hotel is in the middle of a gorge, and to get to our bungalow, as have to walk down 106 stairs (yes, i counted), which means we have to walk up 106 stairs to get back up, which is a lot of damn stairs! on the other hand, the bungalow is overlooking the gorge, and has a very entertaining balinese sculpture with an extremely long...appendage, shall we say? dangling from our porch. his appendage is attached to his foot by a string, and i don't even want to venture to guess what his purpose is in life. last night, when we were getting ready for bed, there were a million crickets outside, and i SWEAR we have a monkey in our room, and while tim says no, he is AT LEAST kicking it on our roof. when we got back to the hotel last night, they had turned down our sheets and left us some reeeeeeally long incense burning. yay. i like incense, as long as it isn't gross patchouli stink. the incense helpd us sleep (or the crickets, or the monkeys), because i awoke this morning at 7.38 (yesterday i woke up at 7.37, the day before, 7.36--for REAL!), and then fell back asleep until 10.15! we've been getting up at about 8 for this whole trip, so there must be something in that incense to help you sleep here.

there are some interesting people here in ubud, and everyone has something to sell. walk down the street, and 500 men will yell 'taxi? transport?' and then mime a steering wheel. when you decline, they give you a big smile and go back to gossiping with their friends. we had the hotel take us to dinner last night (all of the sudden, a torrential downpour began) and our taxi driver drove LITERALLY 3 miles an hour to the restaurant, trying to get us to go on a trip with him today before he starts work. by the time we got to the restaurant, he had offered to take us to his house and give us a free painting (as long as we went to 5 million stores with him and bought everything in ubud, tim adds). it was KILLING me. i am the world's biggest sucker, and i am SO SCREWED when we get to vietnam with the child-beggars. anyway, on our way back to the hotel, we got a city taxi, who gave us his number before we got out, and sure enough, who greeted us at the hotel but a VERY SURLY hotel driver who was none too pleased to see us getting someone else's number. we were just trying to be polite, but hotel taxi man was unimpressed. i am convinced we will go to our room and find a horse head in the bed tonight.

back to child beggars...there aren't any here, but there are a bunch of mothers with babies strapped to them with the saddest eyes you've ever seen. AND, there are about a zillion stray dogs running around everywhere, scratching all their fur off. the good news is that some of the stores have kids in them after school (or maybe all day long, i don't know), and when you walk by, the kids light up and yell 'HALLO!' and then tim grabs me by the neck and drags me away. yesterday, we saw a bunch of kids playing 'badminton' in an empty room, using plastic chairs as a net. it was pretty cute. and, to top it all off, as we were walking down the main street yesterday, a little boy came running out of a shop and gave me THE MANNY! he gave me a one-handed manny, and i returned it, and then he turned to his friend and gave him a two-handed one. i am taking this as a sign from god that the red sox are going to come back, beat the frig out of the yankees this weekend, and FINISH THE DAMN YEAR IN FIRST PLACE FOR ONCE! even in bali, those friggers are taking years off my life.

the colors here are amazing--they are the colors in your crayola box that you think are made up and never actally exist in reality. i mean, come on. who the hell has ever seen fuschia in nature, and not just on ugly women's clothing (tim apologizes to you if i have offended fuschia wearers)? we saw it this morning, in the flower on our table, and then again, off in the distance in the forest. the plants are all bright peaches and pinks and whites and yellows and reds. it literally is like a crayon box!

and in ubud, anyway, all of the houses and shops have these little offerings in front of them, with flowers and incense. they are only about the size of my hand, and most of them end up stomped on by the end of the day, but they are quite lovely. not knowing much about hinduism, i am not sure what they're for, but they're everywhere. all the taxis have them in their cars, on the dashboard, and as i said, you have to be very careful not to step on them on the street.

but, so far, the best thing about bali is the banana crepes i had this morning at breakfast. (i can already hear my trainer crying about all the mentions of food in this thing, but hear me out.) DEAR GOD, DELISH! i couldn't eat enough of them (i had 4) and now it's all i want to have for breakfast ever again. the rest of the food is pretty good too... tim had duck and i had pumpkin/sweet potato ravioli in a curry soup last night, and yesterday we had lovely food overlooking the town temple. in nusa dua, we had one fancy meal in the indonesian restaurant, with some beautiful red snapper, and tuna and again with the bananas--poached bananas in coconut with honey ginger sauce. those of you who know me know if i eat and it ain't got chocolate, it gots to be good!

ok chitlins, tim and i have to go kick it hardcore in ubud. today's mission is to find tim some dirty duck. then tonight we are going to some wicked fancy restaurant where i already reconfirmed once, but they are still sending me a fax to be sure we show up! crazy.

i will leave you with the only indonesian i know: terima kasih for reading my blog. (that means thank you, silly!)

the end of HK and bali of love

so, after the last post, we went back into the city so tim could try out the subway system. the HK subway appears a lot like the san francisco muni--all bright and colorful and vaguely reminiscent of the 1970's with its color scheme. it is also very fast, very quiet and very clean. i think i like the subway. now that i think about it, everything in hong kong is very clean. everywhere we went, it seemed like someone was out sweeping something. and, i think i could probably ride the subway there in sandals and not come home with pitch black feet like in new york. always a good thing.

anyway, we went into central and found a noodle shop where we sat next to a very nice lady who informed us that her prawn noodles were delicious (v. true), and then gave us the lowdown on all the noodle shops in the area. ours was the best apparently (thanks, time out!), with a bowl only costing $2, as opposed to the place across the street which charged THREE! tim liked the man next to him better, though, since he was openly drinking from a hip flask. we then went down by the ferry port and wandered around, and then took the ferry across the harbor to kowloon. the ride was surprisingly rocky, but since it was so short, no one seemed to mind. when we got to kowloon, we looked for a satellite phone, with no luck. most of the people we asked about it looked at us like we were growing second heads before their very eyes, and then said, 'uh, no. we don't have satellite phones' as if we were asking for 300 grams of coke or something.

after that, we went to the peninsula and looked around. we contemplated having tea there, but after seeing the lobby and knowing a) what we looked like and b) how much money we had on us, it wasn't going to happen. instead, we fled and took a picture from outside. we went back on the ferry to wan chai, and then took another nap. napping was central to the first few days of this trip, if you didn't notice already.

we got up for dinner and tried to go back to the ferry area for dim sum, at another time out-endorsed eatery, but when we got there, it was full of people and the hostess yelled at us in a chinatown bus voice, 'NO DINNER!' so instead, we ran away to times square and had sweet and sour pork in a very americanized restaurant.

yesterday, the city had hoisted the level 3 cyclone warning for tropical storm damrey, which sounds much scarier than it was. the good news was that damrey broke the ungodly heat and humidity, and even started a nice breeze. we didn't have much time in the morning, so we went to a local hotel for lunch, which was half-fried, half-boiled noodles in a gelatinous sauce ( i can already see collette cringing at the mere mention of gelatin), which we ate while being closely inspected by the staff, who all stood about five feet from the table and openly stared at us.

then, we got the bus to the airport, and got a nice surprise when we got there! i am officially starting a list for the beautiful men of cathay pacific. #1 was thomas, the TV-fixer. #2 is sam tse, the check-in agent who GAVE US AN UPGRADE TO BUSINESS CLASS when we told him we were on honemoon! sweet classy molassy! o, sam tse, if i hadn't already married tim, i would marry you! so, we bought some postcards, and then got in our plane and had a very relaxing, enjoyable and delicious flight to bali (which also saved us money on dinner! hooray!) we had an adorable flight attendant named sally who kept calling tim mr. haley, which was just hilarious, as well. don't you all think he should change his name?

oh, one interesting thing happened at the airport. while we were getting ready to go into security, this african man with lots of bags stopped tim and told him he couldn't go through security with all his bags, and would tim take one through for him? uh, yeah, dude. i told tim he should have said, 'only if it's full of METH!' but he didn't. too bad.

so we got to bali, and everyone here is beautiful and lovely and it smells pretty and the flowers are gorgeous and our room is stunning and it's really hot. it's not too sunny, and the beach isn't great, but i don't even care because i am planning on lying like roadkill on a chair for the next two days until we go to ubud. i already finished the book i made tim buy me at the airport (on beauty, by zadie smith, whom i hate on principle because she is a year older than i am and has already published three wildly successful books, which makes me hate her even more because the books were actually pretty good and i just can't stop myself from buying them, which makes me hate her even more, and which ultimately just makes me hate myself, which is just no good to me), and i have already read the two tim is working on now, so it's just me and the ipod for the next two days. and if tim can teach me any card games apart from go fish, we can play cards, i GUESS.

days 1, 2, 3 in HK

so i think i fell asleep as soon as i got on the plane. tim woke me about an hour later for a drink, and i had drool cascading down my cheek (? how it got there, i am unsure), chin and neck. BET HE WAS HAPPY TO HAVE MARRIED ME! i drank my juice and promptly fell back asleep. before i did, however, i had a small fit about my TV not working, at which point i was rescued by thomas, the angelic chinese flight attendant. he brought me a drink and fixed the screen so that i would watch such cinematic gems such as the interpreter and sin city. thomas, i will name a child for you one day! apart from watching those fine films, i spent most of the flight asleep on tim's lap (fun fun fun for the husband!). a great time was had by all.

when we got to HK, we were informed that it was 90 degrees at 8pm. deee-liteful! we walked through the airport--a shiny, modern place (and the largest covered space on earth, for the engineering dorks reading this) and waited in the customs line. when we got to the window, we were greeted by a rather severe looking gentleman who appeared immune to our innocent traveler charm! w.l. kwok, customs agent to the stars, was having none of it. he didn't ask us a single question, which is a good thing because otherwise i would have had to confess to carrying 4 luna bars in my bag. mmm, delish.

our hotel is also sparkly and new, much like most of hong kong. coming in on the fancy digital train, it looked as though everything was enormous with neon lights. it looked exactly like something out of a sci-fi movie (something i could have watched on my thomas-enabled TV screen on a plane somewhere). in daylight, however, it's not quite the same. it's more like midtown nyc crossed with athens, or san jose, costa rica--a bunch of superflashy buildings next to decrepit, eastern bloc looking buildings with laundry dangling outside.

we awoke yesterday and went for breakfast in the hotel. when we discovered it was $15 each, we decided to CHOW DOWN (not that it takes that much for me to make that difficult decision). here is what i had for breakfast (the longer you read, the weirder it gets): rice krispies, a croissant, green salad with thousand island dressing, fried rice, and a variety of delicious dumplings. i also had some of tim's sausage. tim had all that with baked beans. yuk. fried rice for breakfast is surprisingly good, and sweet/savoury dumpling-thingies are even better--try them if you can! pork bun owen, you would have loved this meal!

after breakfast, we checked our email briefly and then walked into town so tim could see his first work of art at LERA, the bridge at chater park. i was expecting a little footbridge, but it was a pretty good-sized overpass with fancy beams! i have some pictures of tim stroking it and smiling foolishly, so i will try to attach those at a later date. since it was approx. 200 degrees and 600 percent humidity, we were guzzling water like fools, and we decided not to push ourselves too much. we walked through chater park (a charming little place with various pools and lovely greenery) and we hiked up (by hike, i mean walked uphill) to the peak tram. the peak tram is (duh) a tram to victoria peak. it sounds like a great idea, until you get on and realize your life is literally being held by a wire. eek. also, it's a steep climb. we walked around the top (smog like that i've never seen), took some pics of the city (which you can't really see, b/c of the smog) and had some mango sorbet at the haagen-dazs. listen man, it was 95 degrees!

we went down on the tram (perhaps scarier than coming up) and walked through hong kong park, which is bigger than chater park and has a cool aviary with some crazy-looking birds. at this point, we were tired and hot, so we went home to the hotel and took a nap. tim slept for about an hour. i slept for FIVE. (listen, man, i've had a rough month!) when i finally awoke (sans drool thankfully), tim was starving, so we walked over to times square (a sort of chinese miniature version of ner york) and had dinner at a lovely place called water margin. i'm sorry to focus on food, but in my opinion, it's the best part about the city so far. foolishly, i decided to try the delicious looking chicken appetizer they gave us. OOOOH! SO SPICY! I WAS CRYING! of course, despite the fact that i literally couldn't breathe through my mouth for 20 minutes, i decided to try it again. and again. and again. i am like pavlov's dog, if pavlov's dog was my parents' dog finn. the thing is, it was REALLY GOOD. it just burnt the hell out of my mouth.

for dinner, we had some (very bland, fortunately) clams in rose wine, and then deep fried prawns with chili sauce, and then (praise jesus) fried rice. o, fried rice, savior of my tongue! how i love thee at every meal! we then walked through the square and went home for bed. tim is loving this hotel because for some reason, they have premiership soccer on all day long. i am loving the hotel because they had desperate housewives on last night at 11pm. it's surprising how exciting the english language can become when you're surrounded by chinese, or how hilarious soccer can be when narrated in chinese!

so, today. i am about to be kicked off this computer, and then we are going to a noodle shop for lunch, and then will get the ferry to kowloon to look for a satellite phone. then, if we find one, we will spend all our time calling people and pretending to speak in chinese. it would help if we at least learned hello, please and thank you, however.

so that's it! we're going for dim sum for dinner, so charlie owen, we will have a pork bun (or 5) in your honor. sorry this is so long, but i am covering multiple days, and we only just arrived so everything's still exciting. give me a few days and you'll be getting 'woke up. ate. walked. slept.' thanks for reading, guys! see you in bali, or perhaps tomorrow (if you are verrrry lucky)!!

ps. die yankees, die!