My stay among typical Balinese‘s folks

For the last 6 days of my stay in Bali, I headed to Denpasar where Arya kindly agreed to host me. Arya is a former Balinese general practitioner who studied in Japan. She came back to Bali four months ago. While she might look young, don’t be fooled…. she’s one smart and educated woman. Holder of a PhD, she now teaches public health at a university in Denpasar.

You can imagine Arya is not only a smart woman, but a busy one at that. Despite this, she made time to show me around. With Denpasar being a hard city to travel in, mainly due to a lack of public transportation, I was pretty much glued to her for those six days. While she felt bad for the time I spent confined in her office, I actually enjoyed the opportunity to go out off the beaten tourist paths. It was a good illustrative of how travel memories are made not only by the sights you see, but also by the company you keep.

Bustling university life

I got to have lunch with her and her colleagues. All three of them had studied in Perth (Australia) and were fluent in English. I also got to attend one of her lectures and had a first contact with her students. Granted, it took place in Bahasa (the Indonesian language) which I do not speak, but I did pick up enough to understand the lecture was about a government initiative focusing, amongst other things, on fighting anemia caused by malnutrition. Under this program people can get free iron tablets. However, it seems the tablets taste horrible, which makes the program somewhat unpopular. In her lecture, she also put forward the idea that in order to combat malnutrition, more efforts should be put into growing and consuming local foods. Does this ring a bell for my Canadian friends? Finally, I also got to have an informal discussion with some of her students and together we compared the Indonesian and the Canadian health systems.

Busy plantations and markets

She also accompanied me to rice terraces and a coffee plantation, where one of the person in charge actually took the time to sit down with us and converse at length about the coffee plantations. We also discussed the Luwak Coffee making process. I have strong suspicions that this conversation would never have happened if I had gone alone as a tourist. When coffee beans, which grows in trees, becomes ripe and red, it is then eaten by a palm civet (a ferret like animal). The bean goes through its digestive track, which alters it. Once the animal execrate it, the bean is thoroughly sanitized before being roasted. This gives you the world’s most expensive coffee (although I have heard of this new process using the digestive tracks of elephants, which could be more expensive now). After tasting the said coffee, I can say the final product is a coffee much less bitter and much more velvety than the regular Balinese coffee, or any other black coffee I have ever tasted.

 (Tea and coffee tasting)

Next was a hike through rice terraces. It was extremely hot that day, which made the process rather physically demanding. We walked along the rice banks, careful to avoid walking on the rice shoots. Rice terraces are layered platforms built out of a hill side. They forms banks, which are inundated and in which the rice plants grow. A lot of water is required to grow rice, which makes the terrace system that much more efficient when you look at the way irrigation is done. The water from the top platform will flow down, ensuring efficient irrigation of the whole terrace system. I thought I understood the concept of rice growing when I looked at rice plantations, but my enchantment only grew when I stood before actual rice terraces. Comparing a leveled rice field to a terrace, would be a bit like comparing a countryside rock wall to the Great Wall of China.

(Hiking in rice terraces can get pretty physical, made even harder with the heat)

I also got to see a traditional market, bustling with life, without actually being harassed by vendors. This again was probably due to the fact people thought I was an expat living in Bali and was simply doing my groceries with my Balinese friend. It was obviously not westerner’s friendly as there were live chicken as well as whole chicken and pigs (complete with the head) for sale. As I looked at the stalls I could recognize some of the things, while some other items were unknown to me. This somewhat reminded me of farmer’s markets back home, but in a totally foreign way… Being in Bali, I wouldn’t have expected it any other way. This was a very good glimpse at everyday life.

Laid back and welcoming family

Another important moment for me was the day we spent in Arya’s family in a small village about an hour and a half away from Denpasar. She had not warned her mother of my coming because she didn’t want her mother to spend all day preparing for our visit. She wanted this to be a laid back everyday type of day. I got to taste all kind of fruits I didn’t even know existed like the mangosteen (which I absolutely loved), the snake fruit, the jack fruit and the durian (also known as the “stinky fruit”). We got to relax in a sort of elevated gazebo with no wall and I got to see her family temple. How incredible is it that every family in Bali has one of those temples at home. I’m not talking about a shrine here, but a full blown permanent structure. Granted, the size of said temples varies according to the family revenue, but still even a small temple is a temple! 

Her mother really went out of her way to make me comfortable and to be hospitable. She pushed bowls of fruits and cookies my way and insisted I enjoy a coconut to drink as well as a coffee. I was really full by the end of the visit! Yet, that wasn’t all, I noticed her slipping some sort of crackers in my backpack when she thought I wasn’t looking… But  I didn’t dare say anything, because it was such a well-meaning gesture.

It was also nice not to have people in the village staring at me so much, which I will admit can get tiring. I got a different type of attention, one of heartfelt curiosity and interest. This was a much better representation of Bali’s fabled hospitality than what I witnessed in Ubud or Kuta. I got to learn so much about life here.

I was really fascinated by the teeth filing ritual, which seems as important of an event as the first communion for Christians. The canines represent the evil aspects of human nature, such as lust, greed, anger, insobriety, confusion and jealousy. The idea is that with this teeth filing ritual, in which you literally file away the tip of the canines, you become a better person. It's a rite of passage, from what I understood.

How to treat a snake bite

After my harmless encounter with a venomous snake and my visit to the Reptile Center of Alice Springs, I've decided to share with you the first aid that comes with treating a snake bite.

First, let's start with the things that you shouldn't do :

• Do not use a tourniquet, there is no need to block off the blood circulation completly and this could do more harm than good by causing more death of tissues
• Do not attempt to suck the venom out, this could actually be more detrimental than anything, even more so if you do so with your mouth - two patients instead of one anyone?
• Do not make incision or try to cut out the injection site, but really why would you want to do that, this method like the above have been shown not to work.
• Do not raise the injection site above the heart
• Do not apply a cold compress

Now, what you should do :

• Ensure you are safe first, you won't be much help if you get bitten by a snake as well.
• Call the emergency services, if you can. If not and if you are with a group, the fastest person should get help.
• Immobilize the victim, who should avoid movements that would accelerate blood circulation and accelerate the propagation of a potential venom. It is crucial to keep the victim calm. The victim should avoid walking and be transported.
• Remove constricting object, like rings, since the area will likely swell.
• Wrap the area tightly with an ace bandage. Start below the bite and work your way up, you want to cover the whole limb. Do not wrap to tightly. If you had a bite on the forearm for example, you would bandage the whole arm, but not close off the fingers, because by monitoring the fingers you can establish if your bandage is too tight.
•  Splint the limb to immobilize and prevent movement, further preventing propagation of the venom. 

The bandage should look something like this. Once you're done you can splint it as taught in first aid classes.

It's commonly heard that you should bring the snake with you for identification and administration of correct anti venom. However, you should not waste time hunting for the said snake, which could just put the helper in danger. Bring it if it's already dead, but don't waste time hunting it. The doctor can identify the snake with a machine that analyze a sample taken at the bite site or, without said machine, based on the symptoms displayed.

And, finally, just for fun here is a picture taken with a very gentle reptile at the Center, where you can learn all about reptiles and snakes of Australia and beyond. This is where I learned about this piece of first aid.

How I survived the flipside (or how I panicked for nothing)

When I was in England, I was scared I’d look the wrong way and be run over by a car as I was trying to cross the street. That was because they drove on the opposite side. In Dublin, Ireland, I briefly thought about renting a car, but decided against it and opted for buses. While I was no longer afraid of being hit at a street crossing, I was not quite ready to drive on the flipside.

This time around, we decided to go on a road trip up the East Coast of Tasmania. While I was still very anxious at the thought, I decided to get behind the wheel. If we were to go on this road trip, I was not going to trust two strangers to drive the car registered under my friend’s name. As I have a lot of experience driving in all sorts of conditions, I figured it would be better if I at least took the wheel to get us out of the city. 

I was a bit anxious at first. The brake pedal of the new rental car was very sensitive, which didn’t help; the first time I applied the brake, I nearly hit my head on the steering wheel from the force of it. The French girl’s inconsiderate comments on my driving only increased my stress levels. It was already hard enough to drive on the flipside in a city I didn’t know with a new extremely sensitive car (which was automatic – I normally drive standard and I kept wanting to drive with both my feet). When the girls started commenting, I was ready to throw the keys out the window and run away very dramatically. But don’t worry, I didn’t turn out to be a nutcase.

Thankfully, things got better quickly and I realized that it really wasn’t that hard. In four days, I only managed to drift in the opposite lane once… But I did have to keep reminding myself that the middle lane had to be on my immediate right. 

Other difficulties included judging distances on the passenger side, avoiding activating the windshield washer blades when I wanted to signal and keep my left feet off the pedal (this one had more to do with just driving automatic). I thought roundabouts would be much harder to manoeuver than they actually were, it was all pretty straight forward in the end.

After 4 days of driving on the flipside, I must say I’m getting used to it. However, I would have needed more time to get used those crazy tassie’s roads… Snake-like highways with a limit of a 100 kms! Some of the unexpected curves were a nightmare as I didn’t have much time to bring down the speed before taking them on. Needless to say, there is no daydreaming while driving on Tasmanian roads.