Sleep, godesses and rice

Hmmm, holidays. How good is sleep? (Yes, this is coming from the girl who just had a three hour post lunch siesta). What can I say. It was recommended by our teacher after the final course in our cooking class: black sticky rice with palm sugar syrup and coconut milk. Brilliantly food like this is classed as good for you here. Hurrah, can we stay?

This morning was our cookery class. Which was ace, but first a little about last night and our breakfast.

Illness was reigning last night, DW continues to have the flu (and last night had a temperature of 38.4 degrees which a man in the cookery class said was enough to make you sterile - most alarming) and I had the taxi drivers words of 'don't drink the ice' resonating in my mind (say no more). But, this was not to discourage us from heading out into Ubud to find somewhere to get a bite to eat. Food after all, is king. Plus, I had just had the best massage EVER so was feeling nice and relaxed.

In yet another 'have I mentioned this trip is magical' moment, we stumbled across the Ubud Jazz Cafe. Brilliant (ok, quite good) live jazz and delicious treats, which we washed down with more mineral water than the waitress could entirely believe! Do make a trip if you find yourself in Ubud, it's an indoor-outdoor place (ie roof but no walls) and delicious daily specials such as the parmesan encrusted chicken (DW's) or the potato and roasted garlic soup (mine). For once I walked rather than stumbled home and we woke this morning feeling materially better. Hurrah!

Breakfast was served on our little terrace, I had the banana and coconut crepes with palm sugar syrup (high in vitamin A!) and DW had eggs. The fried banana is ordered for me tomorrow - mmmmmmm.

Food is very important here as is the combination of ingredients - something must be sweet, sour, salty and hot - all at the same time. If you are the host you do not eat, it is only for the guests.

We then went to the cookery school. Not quite a cookery school, more a talk and then a 'here's some we made earlier' so not masses of learning (unless you had never seen some of the ingredients fresh before) but you do come away with a cook book so I have a number of treats I will be whipping up on my return. I just need to build a barbecue that can burn coconut husks and find a shop in London that sells banana leaves and I'm away.

We did learn that turmeric is the amazing wonder herb which cures bites, cuts, cancer, heart disease and many other ailments. You can buy shots of the juice here as a health tonic, which we are off to buy - as soon as we stop being lazy and lolling around at our hotel.

Ubud is not quite what I expected. Our hotel is hugely peaceful and serene but the town is still quite busy and touristy.

DW wants me to put in some Bali facts so here you go:
- it is just south of the equator (yet, raining at the moment)
- it is 80% Hindu here so all around you will see offerings to the gods and beautiful carved statues
- offerings are placed a minimum of daily in front of doors and are made of woven baskets containing predominantly contain food, topped with flowers and incense
- DW claims he read in the guidebook that the last tiger here was killed in 1940 (although I'm sure this was a fact for HK...)
- the cookery school claims Bali is the home of cloves (Zanzibar also claimed this title when we visited)

Right, enough 'facts', off for a wander.