Well it’s our last day in Bali and it’s almost time to get back to real life.  It’s going to be hard getting back to the traffic, noise, smelliness, and hordes of people in Jakarta after the lush, beautiful scenery here.  This morning, the four of us went on a white water rafting outing on the River Ayung.  It was great fun and a first for all of us.  The hardest part was walking down the six hundred or so steps to get to the river.  The fact that we were already wearing life jackets and helmets and carrying oars made it even warmer.  But then we got to float 11km down the river for an hour and a half looking at some truly stunning scenery.  The guide in the back of the boat did most of the work, telling us to paddle occasionally so that we felt like we were contributing (and so that we could at least pretend to earn our lunch which was waiting for us at the end).

Yesterday we were all set to go see another museum in town when one of the hotel staff assured us he could take us to a better spot.  So he drove us over to an artist’s colony situated on the edge of rice paddies where we had fun browsing.  There were tons of paintings there, many of them really beautiful.  And although there was no entrance fee, we didn’t really come out ahead because we all found some things to buy!  TP is getting good at bargaining, although we can’t imagine having to haggle over prices all the time.  Thank goodness for price tags.

One final note.  They have some games in the library here for guests to use to entertain themselves with.  One of them is "Baliopoly" which is funny for two reasons.  The first is that they have bungalows instead of houses.  But really, the best part is that instead of Jail in one corner they have Immigration.  "Go directly to Immigration, do not pass go!"  Pretty funny considering our past experiences.