Last week I was in Muko-Muko. My translator (Nabila) and driver (Reko) were great to work with. I had a good time hanging out with them. She has the nicest teeth of anyone I have seen here. Women do not pray in the mosque on Friday. While we waited, Nabila showed me around the mosque. We were a great team.

The chief of the village invited me to vineyard (wearing yellow boots). It was a few houses down from where I was staying. I would never know it was there. Glad he invited me and I did not miss this. The vineyard is in their front yard. When you order coffee at Pojok coffee shop you can rest under the grape vines. I want one at my house. They got the idea from seeing people in Jakarta growing grapes on their patios. The rainy season here is too wet for grapes so they came up with the idea to cover their front yard and water and fertilize the grapes. The fertilizer is liquid. They use the waster water off cooked rice. Put it in this plastic container and let it ferment. There were no grapes when I was there. The owner showed me pictures of the grapes just before I arrived. They have 6 varietals. The vines were LOADED with grapes. Grandpa Pat would love this.

The family I stayed with took me to the river to ride on a river taxi. They thought I had not seen one. They were wrong! I told them we have (might be had now) one in North Carolina. Daddy and Momma took me a few years ago. The family asked if our river taxi was like their taxi. Not exactly. Their taxi was made of bamboo, water barrels, and plywood. I am not sure exactly how they rigged it, but they did not pull it across. When we got into the movement of the river they used the pulleys to turn it into the stream. The taxi just moved across. The only pulled the roads when it was too heavy or it need adjustment to move again. You should have seen these men and women riding these motorcycles onto the raft. It was a cross between Tom Sawyer and Motocross. I did not want to miss anything so I rode back across with them. Then back to pick up the family.

Saved the best for last! I love local markets. I wish I could bottle the sights and sounds and smells and when you opened this blog page you got all of those. The story is good but much better with all those senses. They always have something interesting I have not seen. This market did not disappoint. There were 2 Javanese Shaman selling potions and reading palms. I had to get my palm read. I am telling you these 2 men looked like they belonged in a movie! Not sure what kind of movie, but a movie for sure. Take a close look at the background in the first 2 photographs. You can see man crouching. The red thing in front of him is a man laying on the ground. The man on the ground is playing a dead person. He talks for a bit about how awful it is when die and what happens to you in the ground. The he puts the microphone on the dead man’s face which is covered up. The dead man moans and says how awful it is to be dead. It was great! The Shaman said–I do not make enough money. I lose all my money. I work really hard, but do not make the money I should for all my hard work. I need a better job. I do not need to trust people. He said he could fix all my problems. I told him I was good. I was a little worried what I might need to do get it all fixed.

The only thing left was to say goodbye to my host family and my twinsie.