Chicken nibbles
(Chickens with offerings in Ubud: Bali, Indonesia)
I am up again shortly after 6am, just like yesterday. The sounds of the forest outside the hotel window are difficult to ignore once dawn has officially broken – for me, not so much for Ying! There is the almost digital chirruping of crickets, the constant rush of water from a nearby stream and don’t even start me on the birds; they are probably very beautiful, though I hear them far more than I see them. Speaking of animals, they are in abundance here in a way I have never experienced; yesterday as we walked along a nearby ridge on the hunt for rice terraces, we spotted little champagne pink lizards all over the place, about 3-4 inches long, larger 1 foot black ones with yellow patches wither side of their bellies and one monitor lizard that had the appearance of a small Komodo dragon, he was at least two or three feet long. He caught us out of the corner of his eye and sidled out of our way.
The invertebrates are a cause for consternation for me as I Noticed a spider hanging between two telegraph lines yesterday morning – obviously that should indicate it was large enough to see even twenty feet above the ground. It was enormous and looked like a black starburst on the pale blue of the sky. It must have been almost a foot across and looked extremely menacing, large enough to capture one of the bees around here that are the size of small birds. The butterflies however are certainly an insect I don’t mind coming across and never have I seen such variety or frequency outside a butterfly farm; huge nut brown ones, black and neon ones, little round yellow ones, red ones, ones with flashes of green, cream and white ones, speckled ones and all of completely different shapes and statures. More domestically, the dogs and chickens roam the streets, completely at ease with one another. We caught this pretty pair picking at the edible elements of the morning offerings. Almost everyone on Bali is a Hindu, from what we can gather and each morning we have noticed these little square leaf wrapped offerings being set on the pavement outside homes and businesses, possibly as a form of blessing. Some of them have a teaspoon of cooked rice resting on them, or a broken cracker or biscuit hiding underneath flower petals or fruit. You can see a little banana behind the speckled cockerel’s foot. I think this bantam cockerel is one of the prettiest I have ever seen. He appears to have nuts and chocolate chips for markings and he was a delight to watch, hunting for snacks with the concentration of a raptor.
The chickens, like the birds are often heard but not seen – we have had a couple of massages and throughout the relaxing session, there has been the crowing and bickering of fowl. In a related event, we have seen a pair of men on two different days sitting by the roadside, holding their cocks. They were sitting cross legged with a standing cockerel in their hands while both birds were making a terrible din. It is entirely possible that they were just sitting and allowing their pets to enjoy some social time, but it all seemed very bizarre.
Mosquito bite tally: 2 (one well behaved one on my leg and then the one on my foot I had yesterday. It is so swollen that Ying agreed you can watch my pulse turning the swelling from red to white with the pressure. It is utterly disgusting).
– Today Rosie and Ying are travelling from inland Ubud to the sea around Bali’s East coast, Indonesia –
