Literally blowing sunshine out my ass...

Finally finally finally. I did a fast and a colon cleanse. Above is the machine at work. On me. Yes!

As it turns out, I'm as healthy as I suspected (yay!), and though it was good to see the dead worm go (anti-parasite medicine, after India, here I come again), I don't feel the urge to rush back. The big news is that I can fast; I've always been so afraid to even try. OK, I only did it for two days, but hey, that's the longest I've ever gone in my life. And what I noticed was how amazing food tasted after that. So the fasting, now that's another story.

Since time immemorial, fasting has been a tool of spiritual seekers. Now I feel, finally, it is one that is open to me. If I can ever access it. Meanwhile I'm going to finish the Tutmak brownie (not as good as at Kaffe) and Indian chai (better than Kaffe).

Water Sport Dilettante

Bali is renowned for its surfability, and since I left Qatar the first time in '06 I've meant to come and try it out. It helped to finally make it here, but after a failed attempt (the beach where I went to try surfing hosted a cremation ceremony just moments after I rocked up, at which point a Balinese woman told me how she'd injured herself in these very waters because you're not supposed to swim in them), I started to wonder. Did it really matter all that much?

Then I met this guy John, who agreed to show me how to surf if I'd help out his yoga practice. That seemed, in my best surfer girl speak, like a rad plan. Or would it just be totally awesome?

At any rate, then he starts texting. And calling. And generally getting a little too enthusiastic for my liking. Finally I agree to meet him here in Ubud just to chat and he doesn't show, but P does. P is another surfer I met who offers a lesson. He's not interested in yoga. Even better. At last I managed to peel my lazying self out of Ubud for Seminyak. It was time to learn to surf. Then I got the Bali kiss.



That's right, an enormous burn from brushing up to the blistering hot tailpipe of a motorcycle.

"Don't go anywhere near the water," people said.

How could I not?

Besides, I was interested in P for more than surf lessons, though he turned out to be a wonderful instructor. I got up on that board every time out, though I only spent about a half hour to 45 minutes in the water. More than that and I started feeling weird about the blister bursting. It did not.

So I decided to go scuba diving.


Thanks to my scuba partners Niky and Jeff, seen above, I drove on my own Northwest through Bali and saw amazing jungle and seascape.




The visibility and underwater life here is incredible. We saw angel fish, trigger fish, sea lion, blowfish, black tip reef shark, brain coral, crazy bright blue starfish coral thing, ginormous grouper, beautiful beautiful.

On the drive home at one point I looked up and it appeared I was riding under a bowl full of stars.

And, dully enough but true, the blister has kinda deflated but not really burst. It's not hot or itchy or painful to touch.

Things with P fizzled quickly too. So what have we learned from all this?

Just fucking do it.

Cooking Class -- Casa Luna

Janet Neefe has lived in Bali since the 80s. "I met my (Balinese) husband my second day here," she tells those of us assembled in her gorgeous cooking studio, set amid palm trees and frangiapani. I bet her garden is killer. Everything else about her is. She's written a book about her experiences, heads up the Ubud Writer's Festival, and runs the Casa Luna restuarant. As she stands and extols the virtues of island cooking, her Balinese helpers chop and cook and generally keep things rolling. It's a bizarre dance, one that leaves me feeling a little queasy. The food is yummy, but I couldn't reproduce it.

Shopping in Ubud...yes, it's a basket full of penises.

Give thanks -- the water returns

In Bali the rice paddies are irrigated by a water management system built around temples. The allocation of water is determined by the local priest. Subak, as it is known, is the oldest, continuously used irrigation system in the world, functioning since about 1023.

Last January, the system broke.

Penastanan -- a village set in a rice paddy nestled between Ubud and the Monkey Forest -- has been dry all year. The fields have gone fallow or been planted over with corn. "It's usually a very feminine atmosphere up here," my yoga teacher Rachel Hull, who lives here full-time, told me when I arrived. "Burbling water. Lots of frogs. It's eerily quiet now."

She told me they were going to fix the system in a week, but I was skeptical. And I was wrong. On Monday night the local temple held a re-opened the cistern. Since then the water has been snaking its way through the fields. Slowly slowly. I'll record the sound when it starts again...

FV goes to Bali.....

Ubud -- the name means medicine in Balinese.

Seekers come here from all around the world for healing. You've got your raw food, organic this, yoga that... you can even take Esalan Institute courses or get your astrology chart done.

You can still get cheap massage and rooms -- it'd be a great place to come with a lover, fuck loads and then get back to the massage table. Barring that, I feel a bit like a bull in the China shop. Ah, to be a cock in the hen house instead. Well, hope springs...

I met my inner Buddha. She was a real bitch.

From today's Washington Post.