Back in action!

     Sorry about that three-month gap. Although it's more than four weeks since we flew back to France, there are all sorts of reasons why I haven't been blogging. A streaming cold, jet lag (I'm over both now) and the need to get some kind of handle on a garden that had turned into a jungle--as it always does--in our absence. Anyway, those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them.
     So, a très vite recap...
     On January 9, we flew from Toulouse to Amsterdam to Singapore to Denpasar, Bali's main airport. Long-haul? Oh yes, indeed. Kate (our daughter) had arrived there two months earlier so she knew the system when her definitely tired parents fell off the plane into 30 degree temperatures and what felt like 100 percent humidity.
     She whisked us into a "meter" taxi and soon had us checked into a hotel. Before long, we were sipping what would be the first of many Bintangs, the fave beer in Indonesia.
    We'd landed in the heart of surfing 'n T-shirt 'n beads 'n incense country. "You won't like it here. It's full of drunken Aussies." So the next morning, Wayan, a driver Kate knew took us an hour or so north through increasingly jungly conditions to the town of Ubud.

      If you've seen/read the Eat, Pray, Love movie/book, you know what Ubud looks like.... or at least its rice fields.
      Now I've got you safely to Bali, read on....