Goodbye cruel corporate world

My sixth day in Bali, I booked a trip on my own to go cycling through the countryside.  We started partway up a volcano, but it was only for momentum.  It was a workout and a half in 90 degree heat and blazing sun and I look like one of those drunk Australians that is always all red but you can't tell why.   It was a group tour, something I have never done in my life (groups).  I won't even take group spin classes at the gym, I will just ride my bike all by myself and think about things.  And stuff.  Only children are a bit weird that way.  I was picked up at my hotel at 6 a.m. with a van full of people.  There are some foreigners in Ubud, but not a ton.  Apparently this is not the tourist season and the only other people here are Russians and the ever-present drunk Australians (from whom I will catch major hell as I plan on tacking another week onto my trip and going there to see them in their native habitat).  I got into a van with two Japanese (kawaii, neh!), a German couple, and three single women my age.  One from Holland, one from the UK and one from Germany.  We started talking and found we had all quit our jobs to travel.  This was on top of the people I met the day before (men and women) who had done the same - all from pretty high pressure jobs.  It is like an entire class of professionals gave a collective "fuck you!" to being a wage slave.   We bonded immediately and set off on our trek which started at sunrise on the volcano.  We had breakfast (I can't believe the fruit here - snake fruit, rambutan, 64 kinds of bananas, pineapples, papaya, star fruit, bread fruit, durian - it is all I have eaten for days) and then headed on our bikes.  I love the countryside here more than the beaches or towns – it seems more real.  Cities are cities are cities, more or less.  Cities in the tropics are cities in the tropics, beaches have sand and water and smell like suntan oil – the countryside in Bali is amazing.  We snaked our way through snakes, rice paddies, villages, cows, mopeds, and hordes of children waiting to give us a high-five.  One of our group ate it hard on her bike being over zealous with the high-fiving.  On the way down, our guide told us about some interesting laws and customs.  I <3 labor law, but civil rights/social justice law is up there.  He told us about a friend that had just gotten MBA – married by accident.  Which, of course, means he knocked someone up.  Apparently if a guy gets a girl pregnant and refuses to marry her, they send him to jail for 3 years.  My inner/outer/arounder feminist says “fair share of the blame” but I do cringe a bit for the guys.   We stopped at a Coffee Luwak plantation (I now refer to it as “kitty coffee” and hope you will too) to watch the coffee being born.  The guide shook the civit’s cage (the one on display) to show it to us and said, “wake up, this is your job, no sleeping on the job”.  They are nocturnal.  Then a bunch of real kitties came out of the plantation.  The Japanese girls and I screamed “neko!” and lunged for them.  They saw we liked the cats and kept bringing us more until we literally had to put them on our backs so they could all be cuddled simultaneously.  I took a bunch of pictures of cats……..  Oh! And I got some coffee so I can throw my friends a kitty coffee party when I get back!  Helloooo kitty! We were able to stop a few places to meet local people – a village of mat weavers, a village of carvers, an ancient banyan tree where they were kind enough to grab a giant cane spider and allow us all to cop a feel.  They handed it to me and I said, “no thanks, I had those suckers living in my shower for four years in Hawaii, I am good”.  Later in the day, I met up with the other single travelers for dinner.  They were all headed off to exotic places like Lombok and the Gillies – places I have never heard of.  I thought I was adventurous, but these chicks were hard core.  I think they convinced me to add another week or so and check out Australia or New Zealand since I am already all the way over here. I went into town the next day to get something to read for Nyepi day which falls on Saturday (Friday for you) since the island is shut down.   In town, the means of greeting appears to be to say “taxi” or “transport”.  I am tempted to raise my hands to my lips in greeting, look them right in the eye and say “taxi” back, but that would be too smart-assey even for me. Aside from books, I spent most of yesterday looking for someway to transfer my photos from my camera to my computer.  I admit I am in a jungle down in a developing country and really shouldn’t expect to find a radio shack, but nothing works.  No cables, thumb drives, card readers – I am just going to have to wait until I get home or maybe to the tourist hub.  A Turkish woman and I sat at the internet café for about an hour and a half yesterday trying to do the same thing.  We were both baffled.  Again – jungle = no radio shack, but that doesn’t mean I can’t kvetch. On Saturday, the whole island will shut down – the ports, the airport, police roam the street arresting anyone who is outside or too loud or has too many lights on.  I even heard rumors they will shut off the power, but I don’t know if that is true.  Expect to see me running from the military at gunpoint on the front page of the Jakarta Times as this is the first time I will ever have shut up for more than 5 hours unless sleeping and even that is doubtful.  The next day, I headed to Seminyak to see them launch the effigies they will burn at sea to banish the evil spirits before the day of reflection.  I am staying in another villa by the beach and am looking forward to the launching of the demons.  I imagine it is some kind of anime army of Styrofoam (let us not think of the environmental impact here, nor the irony, of burning thousands of Styrofoam effigies to cleanse the world and harmonize with nature) floating out to do take our sins away.  Let’s just let it be.