Great value beach town of Padagpai Bali

Wanted to get in some good snorkeling and ocean yet return to Ubud for the big Galungan ceremony so I went for 2 days to Padagpai a small harbor town on SE coast of Bali. Looked and around and found one of few beachfront ocean view rooms in town for great bargain of 40,000 Rp (about $5).










Found great seafood & other eating values in Padagpai. Scenic views of beach, harbour, ocean & islands from Kerti 2nd story restaurant across from beach, also at Blue Lagoon beach. And the Best Brownies in SE Asia at Topi Inn & Restaurant. I made exception to my no sweets diet for Topi's all natural 100% local chocolate & no flower brownie. Excellent!

Colonic Toxin Cleanse at Ubud Sari resort

As Contribution to myself and for restoring the Integrity of my well-being I did a 6 day "Total Tissue Cleanse" at a Spa resort that specializes in this here in Bali. Ubud Sari resort has various packages for 3 to 6 days in length and from basic without accommodation to all-inclusive with pampering facials, body wraps and various massages.

[Add pictures later]

I did the 6 day basic $314 package. This included daily Colon Hydrotherapy treatments by a experienced Nurse named Yani and her assistant technician Yanti, 3 sets of herbal supplements/ vitamins/anti-parasite bills each day, and one 1 hr foot reflexology massage. This is accompanied by limited fasting & lots of water & ginger tea during the entire 6 days and the following day. Also free dry sauna, herbal steam sauna, cool water jacuzzi, and hot showers with towels & sarongs are available as much as you like during all 6 days.

I ate a lot up until the day before anticipating going hungry.

But in reality I never really got hungry on my diet of fruit for breakfast, fresh fruit juice for lunch, fruit juice or lite vegetarian soup for dinner. Talking with another fellow faster, we wondered why we ate so much before. And even now 1 week later I am eating vegetarian & fish meals and very little carbs. I find it unnecessary to finish even half my rice and have given-up bread & chocolate. I even no longer add sugar to my tea or coffee. I never thought I could drink coffee black before and now I am. I just find sugar repulsive now.

I also maintained a very active adventure schedule the whole week with trekking, all day bike or rafting trips. Never ran out of energy anymore than I normally would have.

So I asked Yani questions during my treatments and there is a nice clinical chart display of potential unhealthy colon configurations on the wall. Their website & brochure describes the problems a unhealthy/plugged/spastic contracted colon can cause, and the benefits of colonic cleansing. I did this to detoxify my body & allow my colon to function more effectively. This will allow my free diving & exercise period to be more effective so that I can maintain enough sustained exercise for 2 -3 weeks to lose weight & get in shape. I also suspect my family suffers from effects of unhealthy colons and am experimenting to see if this will be beneficial for them.

Yani explained that different people's treatment goes differently. Some clean out whole colon in 1st couple days and rest of days are clear. Some like me are late releasers and major stuff not loosen enough to come out until days 5 & 6. I really felt a corner of my colon unblock & flow out kind of like an ice dam melted and suddenly the ice begins to flow. Ontologically I did have to generate being unattached & relaxed before the dam melted.

My pregnant looking lower abdomen did reduce some (mostly gas) but not as much as I thought it would. And as far as I can tell I did not really lose any weight. This seems rather illogical but perhaps I drank a lot of water just before I stepped on the scale the last time.

Anyway I have a calmer sense of myself and higher integrity with my digestive system and body. I also noticed I have much whiter healthier looking finger nails now, but that could just be all that time in the steam sauna. I'm mostly impressed by the major shift in my diet that I have naturally manifested with seemingly no effort. I really don't crave any foods except vegetable soups, fruit juice, and fish.

Well am soon going to Bali coast and then to Nusa Lembongan island for major free-diving & snorkeling to lose that extra 30 lbs and get in tip top shape. That will also be major Adventure.

Bali Legon Dance

Some pictures of Legon Dance performance at Royal Palace Temple in Ubud, Bali:




This performance is really a series of modified & shortened traditional dances.


Balinese dance and accompanying Gambolin music is characterized by quick jerky disconnected head & eye movements and stylized slower walking like dance steps.


I bought my ticket from one of the young ticket hawkers so he could make a small commission (my price is same as at the gate).

Contribution Trip Notes - I Manifest Responsibility

Ubud, Bali, June 28, 2007 - Today I Manifest Responsibility, insights, compassion & relatedness.
I wish to credit the Dali Lama for this posting and today's insights:

This morning I read "The Essence of Tibetian Buddhism" with my breakfast of fruit salad. When the Dali Lama was sick he said 'I have manifested illness today'. Wow, this is so great! I instantly got Responsibility as in the Landmark Education Charter at a whole deeper level: The willingness to be cause in the matter of ones's life, ultimately it is a context one chooses to live.

Cause in the Matter of one's life... Everything that shows up for me is my life and if it shows up in my life and I choose to be Responsible for my life then I also choose that it all shows up because I MANIFEST it to show up. Cause in the matter = Manifest. So great! I love this word Manifest!

So 2 or 3 days ago I manifested a sore throat then a drippy nose & some mucus in my lungs. Looking at this deeper I see that I manifested illness symptoms (I am not really ill) to stop my Strong suit of moving-on, so that I can rest & complete my internet uploading requirements; that is to be whole & complete.
From this insight I can have Compassion for my body & "self" that I manipulate myself back & forth to gratify my needs & wants for survival.

I also Manifested Raining today in order to have opportunity to breakthrough my attachment to sunny weather. So I looked at the rain newly, and the gray sky, and the exciting waterfall in the ravine, and the doves finding shelter under palm fronds. And my attachment to the sun and my complaining about the rain faded away. A relaxation, peace, and freedom arouse in its place. Then like magic, the rain subsided and the sun that had been missing for 2 days returned.

I Manifest breakdowns as opportunity for breakthroughs! Can life really be this simple & this powerful? YES, it already is (or rather you already are). But you must be Willing to be Cause in the matter of it ALL.

Galungan & other Ceremonies of Bali

Imagine having Christmas twice a year! Plus Easter every month, and prayers each morning at home and again at work. Then you begin to get the busy worship & ceremony schedule of the Balinese.



Galungan is their Christmas like occasion. They prepare a long bamboo with curved tip, covered in palm leaves with rice & intricate woven palm frond art pieces hung from it. This is displayed in front of their family compound sort of like a Christmas tree in the front window. The straight part symbolizes strength and the curved part symbolizes respect.


On Galungan morning the families go to the community temple, the women toting the day's feast on their heads. This is also an occasion to dress-up in their best traditional outfits.















Once inside the temple the food is blessed and sprinkled with holy water by the high priest or priestess. This process is repeated to bless each person. They then gather their offering/feast and proceed back home.












In the afternoon the children gather in small performance troops and go house to house performing a Barong dance & gonging similar to Chinese Lion Dance. They are rewarded with small amounts of money. So this is like Trick or Treat and Carolling combined.
[Photos to follow at later time]


Other Monthly lunar Ceremonies at local temples are occasions for villagers to parade to & from the temple with their offerings & musical instruments playing.

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Contribution Trip note 6-24-07

Found Christain Church, English service is at 0900.
Sermon is about Being of Service: Having more $ not lead to happiness. eg. Mrs Walton of Walmart fortune giving her $ and time to many causes and says 'that she wants to be known when she dies by what she did [caused] not by what she has.' This is key to Happiness.

Later I talk to sermon woman (her & husband from SF, California). I share my thyme of trip is Contribution & how ofcourse her sermone is about that. I share about Landmark Education and recommend for her when they return to SF.

Then 20 seconds later meet Ruslan Wiryadi the editor of new Ubud magazine who wants me to email him my Bali articles & pictures. Just the break I wanted to get publishing credits so I can submit my writing to National Geographic & other big time publications.

By being possibility of Contribution in service of others I am contributed to even more than I give... This stuff really works!

Contribution & Adventure Trip Notes 6-23-07

Ubud, Bali June 23, 2007:

• Being Unreasonable as access to Adventure. eg. my voice is saying "It's too far to 2nd rice paddy trek and you have a 2pm colonic appointment." But I go anyway. Leave 9:30am arrive at trailhead 10:30am.
• Contribution must me allowed. At road to Syan Terrace trail head, a guide boy want to guide me & I don't want but he guides on ahead anyway. I reluctantly gradually give up my concern about $ and see the value of his guiding. I accept his advice for alternate return route that adds value to trek. He interprets with a local farm lady who brings a refreashing coconut for me to drink. He even gives me a free lift on his motor bike as I'm obviously tired. Thus I make it to my 2pm colonic on time.

Wise Quote - June 21, 2007

Man needs escape as he needs food & deep sleep. - W.H. Auden

Contribution & Adventure Trip Notes 6-15 thru 6-19

Day 1 Ubud June 15:

• Being Aware = Being Alive.
• Openess & trust Essential to allow contribution. This opens up access to expanded adventure. Thus manager of Gusti's Bungalow suggesting Bike Tour occurs to me as Contribution & opportunity vs. selling & pressure.
• Contrast to ordinary view - Contribution (as sacrifice) vs Adventure.
• But openess/trust & view that others are Contribution must be a Choice. If I have to be open just to be polite then no real contribution is possible. eg. the 2nd & 3rd Artist wanting to sell me their stuff, and I pretend to listen & be open when I'm really just wanting to move on.
• Completion as Access to restoring power. Get complete each day with excess sales people, my talking too much to other tourists, my expenses higher than expected. I read the source document or Budhist handbook to get complete and have compassion for myself & others.

Day 4 Ubud June 19:
Balese people believe everyone has 2 spirits - One God that gives voice saying Yes you can, and One Demon that gives voice saying No you can't.

Bali Bicycle Eco Tour

A colorful offering on the dashboard of our minivan ensured a safe & comfortable lift up to Breakfast at scenic lookout point at lake Baktur. An ornate Garuda mythical bird decoration guards the Coffee & tea while breakfast was a standard buffet of fruit & Bali banana pancake and scrabbled eggs.

We tour a small botanical garden before starting to bicycle. We see vanilla, cocoa & coffee plants. Our tour guide shows us how they hand roast, crush, and filter out the coffee grids from the coffee bean shell.

We taste the local handmade Bali coffee & hot chocolate.

Next comes tasting real fresh local fruits including ripe chocolate. White large seeds of the cocoa fruit are the size & shape of garlic cloves and have a tasty sweet white flesh similar to the Mangosteen fruit. After eating the flesh what remains is the hard dark 100% chocolate nut. The nut itself does not really have any taste; chocolatiers add sugar & milk to the processed chocolate oil & powder to get chocolate candy.

A Bamboo factory is our 1st stop as we bicycle downhill on small village roads. We see them separate the hard sheath for weaving mat & walls from the wood and pulp. “Nothing is wasted”, says our guide. The bamboo wood is used as cooking fire fuel & the pulp fed to live stock.

Bamboo grows incredibly fast. Here we see a sapling that will be 3 meters (10 feet) high in 1 month.

We also get a lecture about typical Bali family compound & life. Cooking house is on East wall with door facing west, meeting platform in center, family houses on south & southeast, old people housing on west, and family temple on NW corner. Unlike in the West, in Bali it is the youngest child that inherits the family property and thus is the leader of the family.

Antique statues made to order! The boy make 8 "antique" statues a day.

Next stop an ancient village Temple with Balinese architecture & special Hindu paintings. The Temple is organized to represent the 3 realms of Bali: Sacred Mountain interior, common fertile flat land, and adventurous surrounding sea.

For energy snack I enjoy a ripe green banana, a variety that is common in SE Asia.

We stop to view rice harvest and threshing to separate the rice from the harvested stalks. Harvesters take a break and enjoy some water that we give them (Contribution).
This is where we had our 1st casualty. One guy of our group lost control while stopping and toppled over injuring himself on the bicycle and roadway. He was helped up, was treated on the roadside & courageously finished rest of the trip with us. Later an older lady also crashed on a tight turn. She finished the trip inside the following support van.

We stopped at the optional ending point just after crossing a small dam. I could not resist, so the others watched as I crossed thru the shallow river. Once on the other side my companions told me to start back from higher up so I would go faster. I did this and realized they just wanted to see me create more of a splash and get wet! (Adventure)
Due to our 25% casualties and that most of us had already seen it, we skipped the Monkey Forest sanctuary in Ubud and drove directly to our buffet lunch at a nice open air restaurant just East of Ubud. A good selection of local dishes and relaxing companionship conversation was a nice way to end our tour. I share Landmark Forum with several people who express interest and say they will checkout the website.

Thanks for your Comments; Answers to some Qs

I am encouraged to see that people are leaving comments. Thanks. So to address some common questions about this BLOG:
I upload pics & stories when I both have access to high speed internet and make time to do the writing, organizing photos & uploading/editing my blog. It takes me about 2-4 man hours to organize, write & post an article. So it does also cost some $ but internet access is not expensive here in Bali or later in Thailand.

I am currently in a internet blitz mode getting all the uploading I can done. Tommorrow or next day I will be moving on to coastal Bali & then to Nusa Lombongan a small island off the coast. There is no fast internet there, only slow expensive email internet.

So i will soon be entering a couple week no growth period for my blog site.

Bali Whitewater Rafting

Going over the edge and plunging down the 4-foot drop our raft buckled in half sandwiching me between Alli & Chad up front and the two guides beside & behind me. Water poured in, the guides rebounded off me, the raft flatted out, and we were floating along now gently down the Sungai Ayung River again. This was 3 minutes into our rafting trip and one of only three or four serious Class III drops.

Lovely waterfalls & narrow Jorge walls, a rockslide, and free floating are some of the other highlights of our morning float trip. This is definitely Adventure showing up in Ubud, Bali on my 2007 Contribution Adventure world tour.

The toughest part of this trip is the extreme descent & ascent of the hundreds of stairs down & back up the ravine. At least there is a fun open-air tram up the last bit.

A welcome shower, changing room, and tasty lunch await us at the top. I didn’t bring a change of clothes or a lot of mullah but Alli & Chad gave me 25,000 RP ($3.50) to buy a nice cotton Hawaii type shirt in exchange for my emailing them my photos of our rafting. Thus another expression of Contribution is exchanging and sharing.