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We drove to a little town where many townspeople were waiting for us. Ladies put these hats on our heads and skirts on our waist and we had a parade with this crazy dragon leading us through the town.

I see I have put the monkey Forest Sanctuary photos out of order and I’m too lazy to move them around so here they are. This is a sacred area inhabited by hundreds of long tail macaques who have a symbolic Place among the Balinese Hindu culture. We were instructed not to have anything hanging on our purses or backpacks, no sunglasses, no water bottles, and we were not to look them directly in their eyes. Even so, we had one incident where one jumped on Desi’s backpack and tried to pull off a little stuffed keychain. It didn’t get it.

Back to our local Town tour and our cooking class. Lucky to have Peter with us who is a professional chef.

Tom and Gaby were in charge of making the mashed potato patties.

More monkeys.

Before our cooking class they showed us how they made the headdresses with about 15 lb of fruit. Then they made us try it on. Very cool.

We made tiny little baskets of flowers as an offering to the Gods and then we went into their statuary, picked the god we wanted to receive our offering. I chose the ancestral one.

Removing the stems from the spinach in that bowl was the only thing I contributed to the dinner. Peter took over the rest of the soup making.

Terry volunteered to go into the mud to plant the tiny rice plants. She was almost up to her crotch and could barely move. I’m glad I didn’t volunteer. The funny thing is the man stuck in about 25 little plants to show up how it was done. As we were leaving I saw him plucking them out of the water for the next show.

We were offered the opportunity to plant the rice here in this paddy and Tom vehemently told me there was no way Hell he would partake. His people did this as subsistent living for many hundreds of years and he had no intention of planting rice now that they had clawed their way out of that poverty. Understandable.

We had another demonstration of a woman shredding coconut, cooking it in that dirty fire, wrapping it in banana leaves and serving it to us. We ate them without any gastrointestinal problems.

This is the meal we all prepared. The soup was great and the potato patties were fine too. They serve alot of smashed chicken wrapped around the end of a bamboo stick as you can see in the center of the plate of food.

Here are the offering bowls we made to offer the god statues asking for their bessings.

There was a wedding happening at our hotel while we were there. She looks like a native; he looks like a white boy — not that there’s anything wrong with it.

We headed out that evening to yet another local meal and at a palace and another blessing with rice. This man was the son of the king. He had two teenagers that were enthralled with Wi-Fi and their phones. The older man sitting in the back was his father. And again they insisted on putting a sarong on us.

I was entralled with the wood carvings the father had done. He unlocked a building and all this beautiful woodwork was there. His children have decided they are not interested in wood carving so the art will die with him.

He worked in teak and mahogany and he also used what’s called crocodile wood. The outside is all bumpy like a crocodile skin but the inside was a beautiful light wood which got darker with age. The first picture are of carved puzzle boxes where you have to pull out a pin, slide it sideways before you can get into the box.