The wind-down on the 27th

And so all good things have come to an end for now in Ubud, the best city in Asia. Kate and myself have finally arrived home after 7 days for me, and 30 days for Kate. I feel slightly stressed once again that we are home, as tomorrow I resume teaching classes that I had left behind before I left for Bali. Kate would have loved the opportunity and the privilege to stay longer in Bali, but I cannot speak for her. She'll have to tell you in your own time.

The events that happened after Friday were not entirely mind blowing in what we can tell you, as the primary purpose of the trip had been achieved by Kate. She had taught her last class, so it was time to finish up her time at the Starfish Language Centre.

For me, it was a time to really nail some more scooter riding during the day time. I had a full tank of petrol to burn and was more than happy to drop Kate to places and just keep riding around the streets for the hell of it. Not giving way to other traffic when you are turning left and right has its own idealistic merits in Indonesia, but it simply would not work in a western society. It's almost like everything Balinese people do, they do it well, be it creating shrines to their god's, constructing and creating, even riding scooters!

One of the smaller, yet somewhat uplifting highlights of Saturday involved one of our Balinese buddies, Sadam, doing something very special for Kate, myself and Thomas. Sadam wrote a little something on the promotional sign out the front of CP Lounge that went like this:

TONIGHT: PATY
                     THOMAS 
                     BU KATE +
                     DAVE


Yes that's right. Promoted to the public of Ubud on Monkey Forest Road was our farewell "party". Unfortunately, our lovely friend Sadam spelt 'party' wrong, but understandably, the phonetics of the letter 'A' in Indonesian is actually pronounced 'AR', or so Kate tells me. Kate lets Sadam know about his little mistake, and the wonderful gentlemen comes back with a sign that read a little something like this:

TONIGHT: PARTY

                     THOMAS 

                     BU KATE +

                     DAVE

That much better, no?

And so we all had a great farewell part at CP Lounge, a place that has been great for Kate to meet the locals and new friends from all around the world. As an added bonus, one of the good bartenders, Bagus, put on a special fire twirling show with burning Bacardi bottles. We've got great photographic evidence of that too, so don't fret, you will be seeing them!

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Sunday belatedly arrived afterwards for me by Kate walking in the door at an ungodly hour of the morning, as I had gone home earlier than Kate the night before. After a few hours of sleep, Kate was up again, and was a woman on a mission:

She wanted to go and meet this guy.

Yes that's right, a medicine man named Ketut Liyer. As made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert in the novel 'Eat, Pray, Love'. This guy only lived about 500 metres up from the road from where we were staying, so we thought, why the hell not? We've got nothing to lose.
So surely enough, we rock up outside the house, and it's the exact location where they shot the film 'Eat, Pray, Love', which was really exciting to see! We took a number and waited in line for Kate to have her turn to speak with Ketut Liyer. He average about 30 minutes with each person he spoke to. He spoke to Kate to find out a little bit about her, read her palm, studied her back and her legs to help read into her life, and basically told her in a nutshell that she was very pretty, and very lucky. Still, it's a humbling experience to take away from her trip.

After this, it was to do some last minute gift shopping and begin packing to leave for the airport. Also, it was time for me to part ways with my beloved Yamaha scooter which had kept me close confided company for five delightful days. I paid 150,000 Rp for the bike (an absolute steal in Aussie dollars) and then Blue, our driver, took us down to Ngurah Rai Denpasar airport for an 8.00pm check in. Overnight flights are pedantically long when you are trying to sleep on an uncomfortable upright economy class seat, this really didn't help the fact that we were leaving such a beautiful place to live in. Kate can certainly back me up on this, cantchya Katey ;)

4 hours and 40 minutes later, we arrive back in Adelaide at 6am local time. Walking off the plane gave me a real chill down my spine... it was brutally cold thanks to the arctic winds blowing from the south that I'd forgotten about over the past week!
Going through customs was going to be fun, as we had a few things to declare: Gopal's drum and some Kopi Luwak. Unfortunately, we lost the Kopi Luwak, which was mean't to be Paul Sando's gift from Kate (sorry mate, we tried!), and Gopal's drum has been quarantined for 6 weeks. It's a damn good drum with an awesome response to the sound, and the craftsmanship of it is world class. Without a doubt, it was well worth it to pay the $60 fee to go through that long process because as Kate said so herself, it's the greatest gift that any friend has ever given her.

As soon as we finished up with border security, it was time to walk through the doors and reunite our families. Well done Kate, you achieved what you set out to do when you decided to do this way back in July 2010. I think I can say on behalf of everyone close to you and all the friends you made whilst on your trip, you made every soul that you met really happy that you were there in Bali, and that you gained the experience and wisdom of caring for others, no matter where they were from in all corners of the globe.

Dave xo.