Back in Ubud, staying at a perfect eric place, ur, well, it is a little upscale, but it’ll do.

Spent a few hours yesterday being very patient with wendy. So far I’ve dived into town and picked where I wanted to stay, wendy follows and doesn’t argue much. So for once I’ll let her find a hotel. She doesn’t know the correct name, doesn’t know where it is, etc. several stops to check the internet for directions, etc. We end up way out of town, price is too high, rooms are too small, tons of mosquitoes. And worst of all? Some other guests are from America. I actually heard one say: “Naw, the Kechak is at night, bra.” Bra? Bra? Like in zoolander? Ewww. We don’t even get to the part where we negotiate about room price. With a big thumb down I finally tell her I’m going to go find a room for the kids, we drive in and find this place.

Dirty narrow path leads past a restaurant, through a narrow arch and into an unkept garden, rooms have marble floors, full marble tile bath. But not so clean, so yes, a little run down. Balcony looks down on a deep gorge that runs through Ubud, the same one that is viewed by Casa Luna. Best part, the place is in the epicenter of Ubud, right across the street from Casa Luna, just down the way from the royal palace and the grocery store. Place shares a pool with the neighboring hotel “Saraswati”, which is swishy and fancy and $60/night. What more does one need? Is a clean bathroom worth $40/night? Ha! I’ll post pictures of the breakfast they brought. Whoa! Full on bali hotel breakfast. Coffee, tea, huge fruit salad, omlette, toast, the works. Julia walked around the place, says that right below us is a room with a large veranda with outdoor seating. No AC, but Ubud isn’t hot so I don’t care. Only thing holding me back from a room move is that I enjoy the garden view, and like being close to the neighboring pool (35 feet away, a door through a high brick wall ornamented with plant growth).

After a quick dip in the pool we dress and head across the street to casa luna. I have the vegetarian nasi campur, which might be the yummiest thing I’ve had in Bali. Funny thing: Wendy asked the waiter what the difference was between the vegetarian and regular nasi campur, of course: “The vegetarian nasi campur has no meat.” Sweet answer, eh? Kids weren’t real hungry, we return early to sleep, then I go with wendy to make an internet deposit. We stop at a few spots. The first is fast but is 1000rp/minute for laptops. $6/hour! No way am I paying that outrageous rate! Second is 300/minute, but is phone dialup AND the modem isn’t working. We settle at Bali3000, 512kbit. 1 hour + small aqua + 18 megs of upload was… 20,000rp ~$2.15. I think they might have screwed up, but I asked them to check and they were sure.

Next morning Wendy wakes us up, she is carrying a black stormcloud of evil fury. Furious, she has had it with this hotel, she couldn’t sleep, the bathroom disturbs her greatly, etc. Fine, go next store. What is the problem? Why tell me? Julia notes later that wendy is again desperately searching for tickets to Singapore. I guess she really doesn’t like it here in Bali. Her ticket to seattle leaves several days after ours, she doesn’t want to be here alone.

So what am I doing now? Well, I was up late doing internet, went to sleep at about 10pm, feeling fatigued. Today I wake up feeling sick. I’m on my back in the room, blankets pulled up, feeling shitty and tired and sleepy, and my head hurts. Julia left me with wayan, we talked about the trip so far, then Julia returned with a screaming Niels, he doesn’t like walking with her. So now I’ve got him poodling around the room, certainly looking for trouble. Having a long running conversation about darth vadar, Anakin, etc. He rolls up a spare rupia note, I ask him if he’s darth vadar, he says no darth vadar only has place mats, referring to his common restaurant practice of rolling up his placemat and pronouncing himself to be darth vadar. Hmm. Ok, we’ve moved back to playing legos, him telling sories about the emperor getting thrown in the oven at the end, mixed with a little Wallace and grommet “Cracking Toast Grommeeet”.

Now he’s acting out a multipart theater involving Anakin, Darth Vadar, the Emperor and Obi Wan, I played the executive assistant head switcher since he only had two lego figurines, and Anakin frequently switched from being good to being bad. After one particularly arduous head-swapping, he composed a story for me, about his snorkeling adventure:

So I’m on my back, laptop propped up on my stomach, typing away. Pretty darn comfortable actually. Wish the hotel had wireless internet so I could surf from here.