Location: Uluwata, Bali, Indonesia
Today was dedicated to boat appreciation; however, today wasnt like any other boat appreciation day; today was MESSY boat appreciation day. Get ready for this one because its a doozy.
As with messy boat appreciation day, a handful of jobs that are typically not seen during regular boat appreciation day become apparent. Some rational folks like myself volunteered for easier jobs like sweeping and spraying the laz, while other folks volunteered to clean the gray water tank with Gabe (Im looking at you, Olivia). Shortly after this dynamic duo was formed, my appreciation of the day occurred. As I was coming downstairs in search of an extra dustpan for cleaning laz, I saw Gabe opening the gray water tank while quietly exclaiming to Olivia just loud enough for me to hear, Oh great, this season it smells garlicky. Several hours later, Olivia came up to me and said, Hey Will, Im holding your broth right now, and smiled at me. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what she had just said, but when I realized that she meant all of my shower sludge, I threw up a little in my mouth at first and then stood up straight and gave her a heroic salute. These guys are just cut from a different cloth.
In addition to cleaning out the laz, I decided on opening up a bilge cleaning business with Austin. We spent hours taking out items from the bilge ranging from bedsheets, oil pumps and buckets, fire hoses, random bits of spare line, and shoppe vacuums. We also both wore pink shorts, and I even took the initiative to document our grand opening by asking Kackie to take a picture of us together (which was truly an unprecedented occurrence because I never take pictures of anything). So yeah, thats how good it was, guys.
After boat appreciation, we hopped on a bus to go to what is colloquially referred to as the monkey temple, formally known as Kecak Uluwatu. Before entering the temple, our bus driver told us to beware of bringing personal items like sunglasses because the monkeys would steal them. While I had set aside a pair of designated glasses for the monkeys to steal earlier in the day (photo attached), I ultimately decided against this plan to interact with the monkeys because I deemed it too much monkey business to get them to interact with me forcibly.
Boy, was I wrong. Once arriving at the temple, I found the monkey business occurring to be absolutely out of hand. Throughout our brief walk of the temple, we saw monkeys guarding and gatekeeping trash cans, successfully stealing and ripping apart sunglasses, and tinkering with tourists by jumping over them and teasing them. Still, even with the monkey business in full effect, I enjoyed touring the temple.
At 6 pm, we headed to the main stage for the infamous Bali Kecak Dance, which was composed of about thirty male dancers sitting in a circle chanting the words cha cha, rhythmically creating a hypotonic sound, representing an army of monkeys communicating with the gods. The dance was performed at sunset, with the backdrop of the oceans azure contrasting nicely with the vibrant colors of the fabric the actors wore and the mounts of heaping fire at the end of the show. The woman dancers moved their fingers very unnaturally. This was the story I got from the performance: a good guy monkey king (white) helps rescue the princes wife from a demon king (red), and the good guy monkey king saves the day. There was also a red money king, but god knows how hes involved. The white monkey king employed many hijinks by scurrying around the platform and messing with peoples hair and clothing. Some were more pissed off than others, although I was just glad he came to where we were sitting.
For my nightly squeeze question, derived from a long-winded conversation about hip-hop I had the previous night with Sidney, Iain, and Beck, I asked everyone what their rapper name would be if they were in the game. Answers included: papa wrench (Iain as boat engineer), fruity loop (Spencer), coco captain (Tomer), yung alfredo (Beck), beatmasta fresh (Gabe), and money sign hillbilly willy money sign (yours truly). To end squeeze, I had us all imitate the cha cha chants from the Kecak Dance, and that was that.