bali orchid garden

Amy and I both love orchids, and Bali has an entire garden devoted to them (over 2K species, http://www.baliorchidgardens.com/), so we decided to go the other day.

The guide book told us it was about 3km away and contained a vague map, so in the words of Gimli from Lord of the Rings: "Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?" (yes, I know that reference makes me a dork). Instead of taking a taxi (which are ubiquituous), we decided to walk there around 12pm (or 12:00 because they use military time here) which is close to the hottest part of the day. Ngurah Rai was the road we took and is an artery that connects Sanur with Kutah and Ubud. There are very few rules of the road, making the traffic pretty chaotic and dangerous. This is especially true for pedestrians, because there really aren't sidewalks and the concept of shoulders doesn't exist. To exacerbate the whole situation, people park in what would be the shoulder, so you have to walk around them, putting yourself square into the street. It was still a neat walk though because there were rice paddies, furniture builders and stone carvers all along it. We stopped in a few of the shops. The map of the area, which seemed pretty straightforward at a glance actually turned out to be vaguer than we thought, so we got lost for a while, but after asking a few people directions and getting burned by a motorcycle muffler, we finally arrived sweaty, dehydrated and ready to see some orchids.

We paid the entrance fee (50,000 Rupiah; thx to Lauren + Brent + Madi), were given orchid flowers as lapels and were off. We started exploring the gardens, but were soon greeted by Iwayan Gedewidiantara (yes, that is all one person's name). I wouldn't be spending so much time writing about the orchid garden unless we had met him because not only did he take on an awesome tour of each and every plant there, so much about Balinese culture and various things to see. He even sat with us after the tour for cat poop coffee. The concept of the drink is that the cat eats raw coffee beans, their stomachs partially digest the beans which are then collected and brewed all for your tasting pleasure! Amy took a million pictures of the flowers (how Amy), but internet connections are rather slow here, so we're doing our best to upload what we can. Iwayan was really into Green day, so we're going to send him a thank-you mix tape of American music including My Chemical Romance.