Hello to all our friends and family. This is our second set of pictures from the cultural capital of Bali, a steamy town named Ubud in the middle of the island.

Our "hotel" room in Ubud (for $20 a night).


Having lunch on May 29 in an open air restaurant typical of all those in Bali


Princess Rebecca sitting in the royal palace.


Ari and Max make friends readily with the Balinese men who are wonderfully warm, gentle and peace-loving. Here are some of the rangers in a holy park "owned" by the monkeys


Traditional Balinese dance and music performances are truly mesmerizing. Choreographing includes eye movements as well as the movements of individual fingers. This woman both danced and played this long metallaphone from one moment to the next.



The lowlands of Bali have miles and miles of rice paddies that look like this, surrounded by coconut palms and banana trees. The 5 of us spent an afternoon climbing though the rice terraces. It's hard to see, but we have to walk along thin ridges of hard ground and then scale down the rice terrace to get to the bottom and then up again.


When we decided to take a walk through some of the rice paddies outside Ubud, we ran into this farmer who took us into his home (a shack in the middle of the paddy, showed us his animals and then when we got thirsty, he shimmied up a coconut tree and pulled down coconuts for us to drink from. Ari took this picture!


This is Lipah Village, a small fisherman's village on the north coast of Bali far away from the tourist centers of the south both geographically and culturally. The town has no phone lines, no post office, no public transportation. They did get an electrical linkup a few years back. No English-speaking person would have ever heard about this village except for the fact that just off the beach is the most magnificent coral reef in all of Bali. The sand is soft but pitch black (due to the fact that the sand was once hot lava that poured out of the volcano some millennia ago). The fishermen's boats are brilliant examples of maximal functionality with conservation of energy and materials. The boat itself is only about 18 inches wide (and made without nails), but to provide stability in the rough ocean, there are two bamboo riders linked on to each side with wood extensions. We had only planned to stay here for one full day. But the first morning, we woke up, walked out of our bungalow, put on snorkels and masks and stepped into the water to see the most colorful and diverse array of fish that I have ever seen in my life. Ari and Max were shocked to see so many fish so close. Somehow, we couldn't get ourselves to leave this town. Each evening we would eat with the villagers and listen to men play guitars and sing 60's pop (with the most incredible interpretation of English lyrics). A full 3 course meal with drink cost about $3. Finally, we decided that we had to leave.


After leaving Lipah Village, we traveled to the base of one of the active volcanos and walked up to the summit about 10 miles. Looking down from the summit, we could see the steam pouring out of vents in nearby ridges. We were on the same fault line that gave rise to a 7.9 scale earthquake over in Sumatra and so I was hoping the volcano wouldn't blow in the aftermath (obviously it didn't, yet).


Here's the family on top of the volcano. In the distance, you can see the rim of the older larger volcano that blew its lid off about 30,000 years ago. The volcano that we are standing on grew out of the middle of the crater left behind by that explosion. The old crater is covered in early morning mist.