What planet! Is this?

Last weekend, I went with Dani to padang padang beach on the south tip of Bali to climb on some real rocks. The rocks were great: some kind of sandstone worn down by the tides.

The climbing was tough, my hands were completely sore afterwards, like they had been tenderised like a pork chop and then exfoliated with sandpaper. then again my hands are pretty soft (by my standards anyway). My forearms ached so that it was difficult to eat!



















Dani demonstrates his incredible strength and flexibility


Dani's Gibbon climbing club is named (in part because there are very few other Gibbon climbing clubs in the world) for a pet gibbon that Dani had when he was working as a forest ranger (?) in Kalimantan. He rescued it from a trap and nursed it back to health, and they got along very well -- one might say they were friends. They lived together, played and hung out together. They have since parted ways when Dani came to Bali to be a climbing instructor.

Dani climbs with about ten times the endurance that I do, traversing a particular wall and coming back. I fell off the wall after the first handful of moves: I didn't even have the strength to rest on the wall. Another point to note is that I haven't talked to as many girls in Bali as I did on that Sunday climbing with Dani.



















Girl magnet Dani hanging on the wall


I ate some amazing gado gado at the beach ($0.50), and watched the woman grind peanuts, lime, raw garlic, a chile, and a bit of sugar on a wide, flat mortar. This sauce went over steamed vegetables and sticky rice cake. So good!


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I went to a late nite mepantigan practice last week, Putu Witsen had invited some friends from Denpasar who turn out to be Aikido masters.

I found myself standing in a muddy mudfield in the rain that night, under floodlights, watching crazy Aikido men singing Balinese drinking songs while they pranced and danced around. There were sudden bursts of movement as they confronted each other, grappled briefly, and then sent one another flying in spectacular Aikido throws. It was surreal!

The Aikido men taught us some throws...the movements are incredibly complex. It's crazy how irresistible the force of Aikido is: it looks deceptively gently but is very physical indeed. One of the teachers demonstrated the steps of a throw on me that I didn't know, and even though he didn't mean to throw me, the strength and sureness of the move resulted in my being instinctively or inescapably throw to the ground exactly as he intended.

The whole time we were in the mudfield practicing throws, the men were drinking glasses of palm wine (and when I say drinking, I mean they were putting them away in a hurry). I had one or two (sipping slowly, to their amusement). After the mud session, we went back to Putu's charming bamboo shack for noodles and rice, and more palm wine.