Day 261: Visa Renewal in Densapar — An Afternoon at Bambu Indah
Today we had to tend to some bureaucracy. If you stay in Indonesia longer than 30 days (like we are), you have to renew your visa after two weeks here. So we had to drive into Densapar, an hour and a half away, and go to the big immigration office.
We’d find out that we’d need to return two more times! Not sure that it’s worth all this hassle for the 36 days we’re in the country, but I could be very wrong.
The drive to Densapar wasn’t so bad because the kids listened to their audio books.
On our ride, Teddy and I were remarking that our hotel’s host, Billy, has awesome English. He’s Balinese — and claims never to have been to the US and says he doesn’t watch movies — but he has an almost flawless American accent and way of talking.
As we were talking about him, our driver Nyoman jumped in with, “That guy’s not Balinese.” And we corrected him — he is — we’ve chatted with him a lot.
“He’s not a Balinese. He’s a lady boy.”
Oh gawd. Okay.
“Have many boy friends.”
We acknowledged that pillow talk is the best way to learn a new language well and left it at that. Poor Billy. Being gay SUCKS in so many parts of the world.
Once at the immigration office, the whole take-a-number, wait-for-a-bureaucrat-to-stamp-your-forms nonsense was annoying and we were there for an hour.
But we had a fun afternoon ahead: We headed back to Ubud to check out Bambu Indah, a ridiculously cool jungle hotel designed by the same visionary architects as the Green School. You can book a daypass to have lunch, explore the grounds and swim in its pools.
Pulled up at around 1 pm, signed a bunch of forms that said we wouldn’t sue and that our kids would be quiet. Then we headed down to the river.
To get down, you walk a ways, then take a bamboo cage elevator about six (?) stories down a narrow well-like hole in the ground. At first it was exciting, like, “Look at this charming bamboo elevator!” It was just big enough for the four of us to scrunch together inside.
As it started to descend, though, I got nervous. It was a cage-style elevator and the shaft was just a dirt-walled tube. It was slow. And it kept lowering and lowering, so slowly. As we looked up out the roof we saw a shrinking circle of sunlight high above our heads. *shudder*
At last it stopped and we were free.
To get to the river we walked along footpaths and bamboo bridges and up a spiral staircase.
Who’s the brunette? 
Look at this place!
We had a delicious lunch. At one point we were all thirsty (were served nothing to drink until halfway through the meal) — but were too embarrassed to pull out one of the giant plastic water bottles in our backpacks. We’d be sent to Bambu Indah jail!!
Then we checked out the swings.
We also checked out this rope swing! Teddy went first, then Willa, then James.
On his second swing, James came to the surface shrieking crying with a gushing bloody nose. Teddy jumped in to get him.
Turns out — and this is not the first time it’s happened — he’d freaked out because water’d gotten in his goggles and he couldn’t see. Had nothing to do with the bloody nose — didn’t even know he had a bloody nose.
Sigh.
He got back on the horse and jumped a few more times. All this despite the fact that we’d seen a giant lizard swimming in the water earlier (eek).
He also had some funny lines throughout the afternoon:
“Lie-berries are famous for quietness.”
“Do you only get goosebumps when you’re eating gooseberries?”
And this one, a propos of absolutely nothing: “Everyone says, like, ‘my mom’s the best’ or, like, ‘she’s the best mom ever.’ Can’t they just, like, have a VOTE?!” Gratuitous use of “like” aside, it was pretty random and funny.
When Teddy followed up with, “If there was a vote, who would win?Mommy?”
Nope. “Augustus Gloop’s mom.”
Who??
He reminded us that Augustus Gloop was the wretched, spoiled boy in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory whose mom gave him anything and everything he wanted. Ha!
Speaking of funny, Willa came up with a good joke the other day at Monsieur Spoon, where she tasted her first-ever croque monsieur. Q: “What’s a frog’s favorite food?” A: “A croak monsieur!”
We spent some more time relaxing at Bambu Indah:
Here are some shots of the buildings (there’s a lot more than this — worth looking online).
Back at our hotel, we were desperate for some peace and quiet and solo time, so we took the hotel up on its offer to bring a DVD player and selection of DVDs to the room. The kids picked “The Incredibles” and were thoroughly delighted with the movie for an hour and a half while we got kid-free time to read, write and catch up on email.
We got to bed pretty early.
MISC:
It’s official: James knows I exist — and likes me! He started this year a total daddy’s boy who wouldn’t give me the time of day, and it was a running joke that I was desperate for a hug or a cuddle or…anything!…and wouldn’t get it from him. Now all that’s in the past. He is now an equal-opportunity snuggler. I love it.
Our tolerance for critters is so much higher these days. I remember audibly gasping in horror last year when our friend said she found a cricket in her bed in Brooklyn. These days we brush the ants off our toothbrush each morning and go to sleep with geckos chirping — chirping that’s definitely coming from inside our bedroom, not outside. We even saw a baby lizard in/on my side of the bed during the day that we shooed outside — if that had happened at the beginning of the year we would have flown home (or moved hotels).
