Yeah, overall it was still a pretty good trip. Culture shock isn't quite how I'd describe it, but it's close.
The Balinese live to appease the God's and the spirits... literally. It's what they do with their every waking hour, no matter what else they happen to be doing at the time. There are temples everywhere... and I mean
every where. Everyone seems to have one of one size or another in their houses, their offices and their places of play. There are little offering baskets, made from palm leaves, scattered everywhere... it's a cottage industry on display wherever you look, from all over the streets to the inside of taxis and even scattered around 5 star resorts. It's inescapable, as is the scent and smoke of incense.
For example, near our hotel there was a massage tent on the beach. When the ladies, from ages 16 to 60, weren't giving massages, they were weaving offering baskets... and this they'd do all day long from sunup to sundown. With all that weaving going on you'd think there would be a surplus of baskets, but no, they all are used. Constructions of temples is a non-stop ongoing process. Everywhere you looked a temple was being built, torn down or being rebuilt... usually larger.
One of the things we did was shop for Teak furniture. We rented a shipping container and tasked ourselves with filling it. At $0.20 on the $1.00 I thought this would have been a relatively simple task, but we only managed to fill half of it. We made out like bandits because Teak is so rare here... however, the government controls it there, and they're doing a very good job of managing their resources, so there's an abundance... sort of odd to see that as soon as it crosses the equator the price skyrockets. The wife did her research before we went, and I'm almost ashamed to say that we have ~ $30.000.00 worth of Teak coming that cost us less than 12k, shipping included.
