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24 January 2011

Staying with grandma

23nd January 2011

We’re staying for two weeks with Maureen’s grandma, who lives on her own except for a servant in a house in the suburbs of Denpasar, Bali. She is a unique and wonderful old lady, with a lovely sense of humour and a great delicacy about her.

It’s very different staying in a Balinese home. Firstly, it’s hot. There’s no air-con and we’re too far from the sea to be brushed with breezes, so shaded rooms with open windows and ceramic tiled floors are the only cooling influences. Lying on the bed going “ehhhhh” is a favourite activity. We’ve got hold of a rental car today, and the temptation to go out in it just for the blower is strong.

Yesterday afternoon we got a peek at the monsoon. The rain started with an abrupt and window-shaking crack of thunder, then came down in deafening vertical arrows for over an hour. Eventually it settled to a pitter-patter as darkness fell. It remains to be seen how often we’ll get rain, and whether it will still be monsooning when Tim and Vanessa arrive in a couple of weeks.

Another difference is the location, a long way from the usual shops, restaurants and distractions that tourists expect to stroll to from most hotels. We’re not quite self-catering; Putu, grandma’s servant, cooks meals for us and the food is good. But for drinks there is a choice of water, tea or coffee and that’s that. With the car we plan on doing daytrips, some with and some without grandma. It might be tough to last two weeks otherwise, and we’d definitely run out of books on the Kindle.

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One Response to “Staying with grandma”

  1. Nessa says:

    Awwww… we so can’t wait. We had a long day shopping in Kingston on Saturday and I now have new holiday goodies. Tim has new camera lenses so there will have to be lots of photo stops!!

    Will reply to your email later tonight. 6 working days to go!

    xx

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