DECEMBER 30…A Tour of Bali and the handcrafts

Today is New Years Eve in Bali and we are taking advantage of a heavy traffic day to kick back, stay at “home” in our paradise villa, listen to the frogs, play with puppies and catch up on blogging and emails.  2 weeks of solid running non stop catches up with you .  The down time is a good thing.  To start, I got a few of the floating market photos ready to show you.  They are now at the bottom of yesterdays blog post

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PHOTOS I FINALLY GOT LOADED OF THE FLOATING MARKET IN BANGKOK

Now on to our day yesterday….we  did so much in our first day in Bali I can hardly remember everything.  Our guide took us everywhere from bead shops, to rice terraces with a lot of great food in between stops.  We drove the backroads and local villages, taking the least traveled routes by tourists….actually for high season we hardly saw any tourists…the sign of a great guide!

One of the highlights was a stop at one of the most unusual coffee plantations in the world.  The Balinese coffee called “Luwak”.  The beans are eaten by a civet….wild cat like animals, and half digested and fermented are harvested from the civets dung.  OMG I had to try it.  See the links below for lots more info about Luwak coffee.  It is considered the best and most expensive coffee in the world.  Buying directly from the plantation I purchased an few ounces of  beans.  It sells for up to 600.00 per pound in the U.S.  Worth EVER PENNY in my humble opinion!!

Other purchases from the day were some handcarved horn earrings for Liz’s birthday (Happy Birthday on Jan. 1 Liz)  a huge painting of abstract balinese women…all in orange tones for our living room, Some batik goodies, shell and farmed exotic wood beads, and 2 Balinese silver pendants!  You will see in many of the photos below the incredible wood and stone carvings we photographed on our drive to the volcano.

OMG each village had their own style and all the villages were artisans.  I am seriously thinking of having some animal pendants carved from my original designs to resell to you all on my website.  The quality is first rate and the prices and not to be believed.  I purchase a  handcarved bone ring with 3 frogs on it directly from the carver for 6.00…insane!

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