Wandering Browns

Gamelan! Yay! Our last night in Bali, we hired a babysitter and went out for dinner at the hotel. Every night, they have a Balinese night market, giant buffet, and cultural performance. Typically it is held outside in this cool terraced area at the hotel, but since it was off-and-on raining all afternoon, it was moved to the Watercourt restaurant. Because we have been living at Hyatt hotels instead of a house this year, we were presented with special butterfly VIP pins and were shown to a very comfortable cushioned booth right in the middle to best view the stage area. The buffet spread was overwhelming! There was a ton of meat, which made Austin very happy, but also a good array of salads, including the traditional Indonesian salad Gado-Gado with peanut sauce, of which I ate way too much. There were different rice and noodle dishes as well and potatoes, which I had not eaten in quite a long time! Austin liked having pork, since that is hard to find on Java, and I enjoyed eating...

We walk in the door, Landon says, "Buddha!" Which I'm pretty sure is not a normal 2-year-old vocabulary word! We ventured out of the bubble of our hotel room and area to go on a tour of the National Museum of Indonesia, which happens to be across from the National Monument of Jakarta. The tour didn't end up being on the same day, but we are glad we had an excuse to get out and learn more about Indonesia. Map of Indonesia and its different ethnic groups Model toddler Before we saw any exhibits, we stumbled upon some sort of conference taking place in the lobby. There were dancers dressed up in traditional costumes, so we waited around (and Austin took some phone calls from work) until they performed. Landon kept busy by trying to destroy fragile things in the gift shop and running around in the copious amounts of open space. When the traditional dance did take place, I could tell it was a less experienced, less practiced group of dancers...

Big sculpture with fountains around it Whilst searching for things to do in Jakarta, I came upon Mini Indonesia. I thought to myself, "Definitely a tourist trap, but a cool place to get an overall feel for Indonesian architecture, culture, animals, etc. before we go off to what the city-folk dub as the middle of nowhere." So off we went. It was only slightly unsettling that the Concierge asked us why we picked Taman Mini when there are other things to see, but really my reasoning was that it looked like a big place with plenty of space for Landon to run around without worrying about him ruining something at a museum or getting ran over by a car. He seemed to think that was an OK reason. We decided to just get a ride there and call the hotel back when we wanted a ride back. In hindsight, not a great plan, but I guess we were safe and it worked out alright in the end. Anyway, our driver was disappointed that we did not want to pay for him to wait for us outside the gates....