Digging

Our much awaited film, Digging... is now finished.
Enjoy.

Elephant Ride

Elephants aren't native to Bali, but they are
found in Sumatra and Borneo.
Yesterday we went on a one hour ride
at a park here in Bali.
It was pretty wild.

Here's a link to some pictures:

Elephant Ride

Thoughts on Ubud and a photo essay

We live 3 km from the centre of the town of Ubud in Central Bali.

Yesterday I shot a photo essay about how to get from our house to central Ubud. Click on the picture of the monkey to open a new page which will take you to the essay. The pictures are in order so the slideshow feature is recommended. For advanced users I've also mapped the photos on google maps ... you'll see a map on the right. (If you're wondering why the picture is of a monkey...you'll have to click on the monkey to see!).

From our house to the centre of Ubud

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Ubud:

“Ubud is located amongst rice paddies and steep ravines in the central foothills of Bali. One of Bali's major arts and culture centres, it has developed a large tourism industry. Ubud has a population of about 8,000 people, but it is becoming difficult to distinguish the town itself from the villages that surround it.”

All true.
Ubud is beautiful and there is lots going on.

But it’s also a total tourist trap... especially since part of the book (and the movie) Eat, Pray, Love is set here.
For us that is good and bad.

First the good:
*Lots of good food choices at decent prices. Most restaurants have a kids menu that offers western food, so Janet and I can eat more exotic fare while the kids have spaghetti (like last night).
*The two grocery stores are pretty good and have cereal, pasta, parmesan, even pesto!
*Most people speak a bit of English… which is good as our Bahasa Indonesia is not great yet, but slowly improving (especially Emmet).
*It’s very pretty. Lots of great views, especially in the ravines and heading North.
*Lots of yoga for Janet.
*Friends for the kids: lots of kids from their school live in the area.
*We are in the foothills so the weather is not as hot as the coast. It’s mostly been about 28 or 29, which has been nice. We sleep with light blankets on at night.
*Ubud is very central. The mountains are North, the beaches South-West and South-East. A good place to be based to explore Bali.

And now the bad:
*Traffic is bad, especially now in August. This is high season for tourism and the main roads are very busy.
*Walking with the kids is not possible. The roads are too busy and narrow. If we go out, we have to call a driver.
*There’s lots of tourists… though not around our house, mostly in central Ubud.
*It’s a fairly long drive to the beach. About 45 minutes when the traffic is good, can be an hour or more if the traffic is bad.
*There are snakes. No one is bothered by this, except me (Peter). I don’t like snakes. I’ve only seen one so far… and it was small. Oh well. Apparently they don’t bother people.

And that’s it.
Mostly good, some bad.

Come and visit and see for yourself!
The next post will be about where the kids go to school… the Green School.
(Unless I finish the “Digging” film first).

Bye for now,

Peter

A week in Beijing.

Okay… so as I mentioned… we hit China on the way to Bali.

From A week in Beijing

Here's Janet with some thoughts about our time there.

...

Our Novotel hotel was near Wangfujing (Beijings ‘ramblas’), so we headed over on our fist night to stretch our legs after our long flight from Vancouver. There were large billboards written in English reminding locals that filling out the census was of great importance in order to run the country. The wording was intense, reminded me of Cuba. 1.4 Billion people can’t be wrong Mr. Harper.

From A week in Beijing

We pushed our way through a very crowded shopping street revealing this country for what it is, a capitalist dictatorship.

Rising most mornings at 2:00 a.m. we visited the top sites for as long as the kids could manage. The Great Wall (we went to Mutianyu), The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Tiantan park (where the kids played a racquet sport with a local), Yashow Market, the Temple of Heaven, The Pearl Market. We also saw an acrobat show at the Chaoyang Theatre, visited the Lama Temple, The Drum Tower, The Silk Market and The Olympic pool (The Cube)......we journeyed through a Hutong by bike and had fantastic food massages. We ate roasted duck at Da Dong (NY Times best rated restaurant in Beijing) in under 30 minutes, shared a mongolian hot pot, hit up a western style cafe called Caribou where the kids ate bowl after bowl of penne and I drank my first latte in days, we chowed down on fantastic food at both Jin Ding Xuan (cantonese) and Din Tai Fung (dumplings).
By weeks end our lungs were thick with smog (they call it Grey-jing) and we were all hacking and had sore throats. We were tired of the traffic, fatigued by the harassment in the markets, done with Myles and Austin posing for photos and ready to see something green (I scouted for a bird the whole week and never saw one).

But we’re glad we went… China is unlike any other place. And that’s cool.

It was also good because it made the kids eager to see some green after all the grey.

Bring on Bali! We chanted...

And best of all for Peter, it allowed him to finish his film, Digging, which will be up here in a few days.

Click on the photo below to go to an album of photos (with captions) from China:

A week in Beijing

All for now...

Janet (and Peter)

The first post!

Alright.
So we are here... been in Bali one week.

And finally getting the blog started.

I'm going to start where we are today, and then
work backwards a bit, to cover the last two weeks.
Starting with China, and then with our arrival here last Friday.

Many of you have asked about our film we shot in China...
"Digging." It will soon be out. Hope to have a link to
it in the next post... maybe by Monday or Tuesday.
Might be our best film yet (certainly the longest)...

But let's start with today.
I'm sitting in our amazing house just outside of Ubud, in
South Central Bali. The internet connection is a bit
wonky, hoping to upgrade soon, but not bad.
Here's a google maps link to where we live.
The blue dot is our yard.


Here's what the house looks like.

Our house in Bali.

Click on the picture to go to a Web Album with more pictures.

The house belongs to Lawrence Blair, who has
lived in Bali for about 35 years. Here's a link to him. Very interesting guy.


The good:
the house is beautiful, all made of wood, which
is unusual here. The wood is 150 years old and was brought
from Java about 15 years ago... it was a rice granary.
Anyways, there's lots of space,
there is a huge yard, an amazing pool,
super comfortable beds, a nice kitchen...
basically the kids couldn't believe their luck
when we arrived. We couldn't either.
It's also right next to about 2 km's of never
ending rice paddies which are fun to walk in.
Right out the back door.

The strange:
We have staff. A lot of staff.
There's Nyoman, who, well, you pretty much have to call a maid.
She's worked here since the house was built 15 years ago, and knows it inside out.
There's a head gardener and an assistant. Both called Wayan.
One of them comes everyday.
There is a pool guy - Agun Alit - who comes and cleans the pool every morning.
And... there are two guys from Java who built the house
and also did the renovations the past year to get the house
ready for us... Johnny and Tukur, and they right now are living
in the small staff quarters in a corner of the property. Crazy.

(We're trying to figure out what to do about driving...
looks like we'll have a plan soon, but the driving is another
entry in and of itself and we'll get to that soon).

The not so good:
Rats. They come at night.
Janet's seen a few in the kitchen.
Everyone has them in Bali.
We make sure we put all
our food away... they are a bit
smaller than the sewer rats you
might come across in Canada. We
try to think of them as large mice.
Oh well.

The traffic... challenging to get around
Ubud right now because it's high season
for tourism. So lots of traffic. We are told it
will calm down in September. Looking
forward to that.

Okay so that's enough for now...
upcoming entries will cover:
Our one week stop in Beijing (and a film we finished there).
A film we made on Savary Island, BC.
The kids school here (pretty cool)
Our new dog Bene.
Driving in Bali.

If you find any of these topics uninteresting,
let me know and I won't write about them.

All for now.

P