Bali Aboriginal Museum

Saturday December 1st, 2012

Trip to Bali! Holla! Host mother and I drove up there in the morning, wasting no time. Right as we got there it was immediately off to the gym. This time I was prepared! Sports, clothes, iPod and mental preparation, it was GO TIME! Bouncing around from one machine to another, I formed a system to enhance the level of output. The secret is in the music. ;) So far I have four categories:

(1)  Horse-riding stimulator

(2)  Treadmill

(3)  Elliptical and biking

(4)  The shaker

First up is the bucking machine of awesomeness! Can you guess what genre of music I listen to while riding this? Come on, it’s not hard at all. A cowgirl from Texas…experiencing a southern feeling she’s been craving…heightens it with… Yeah, you know. ;) Country y’all! The scenario kinda calls for a chuckle. Amidst Asians and Chinese language, here’s an obvious foreigner rocking out in her southern bubble of country. Like a garden of roses with a single sunflower sticking out dancing around in the wind. Ah, being a cowgirl is a blast. Yee-haw!

The treadmill. Take a two minute or so warm up with walking, then prepare to get pumped with K-Pop! This genre has so many energizing, up-beat songs that it perfectly creates the correct atmosphere. You don’t exactly go running to slow, graceful classical pieces. So! Get your South Korean on and let’s go run! It motivates me to go faster and passes the time in a flash. Some Japan invaded as I played one Sengoku Basara soundtrack song and hooooo-wee! I wasn’t running. I was sprinting! Ten miles an hour baby! This particular track absolutely requires letting loose and gunning it, being quite effective. Other than that, K-Pop is predominately for the treadmill.

But Japan makes a comeback in the elliptical and biking section with J-Rock. Many songs are very inspiring and more suited to these specific machines. Most any anime opening will do the trick. :P

The shaker doesn’t make you sweat at all. You just have to stand and endure. So, not much call for anything energizing. Therefore it is dubbed as the miscellaneous music machine. Though I think belly dancing tracks would be entertaining if such were in my possession. XD

Overall the workout session…L…O…V…E! It was the hardest I’ve exercised and the most I’ve sweated in Taiwan. How I missed the sweat-drenched shirt feeling! That proves you did a good job and can walk away with satisfaction and accomplishment! Yo quiero mas. :D

Afterwards was a reward of the spa. The water wasn’t very hot due to it raining and it being daytime (not night) but it was still good. Sauna time was had intertwined with naptime. Yeah, we both slept in the sauna. Sure it could be dangerous, that is if the room was really hot and steamy. This one was just ‘warm’ to me and not life threatening in the slightest. So it’s all cool. :) Shower, dry hair, yadda yadda moving on.

We ate a late lunch/snack of a pork sausage, sliced open for a cucumber sliver to be inserted there and wrapped in a rice bun held together with pig’s skin. Eh, not bad. The sausage was the best part, another thing I’ve come to really like in Taiwan. Health caution with that liking should be had. Bought at a very small food stand, it was the only thing we could get to because most food places were closed because of the rain and time of day. From what I could tell with my host mother, it was our only option. An interesting and not bad option though. :)

Nearby was a museum of archeology but more so dedicated to aboriginal people of Taiwan. I would say it was medium size but had some cool stuff. I adore Native American cultures so this was right up my alley. I didn’t read everything unfortunately (yes they had English translation) because that intense workout really wore me out and snatched away a huge chunk of energy. Here are some pictures of the displays:

A real lunch/linner was eaten AT A FAIRLY BIG Taiwanese shop. IT was completely empty of customers as a result of the rain discouraging people to go out. I was told it was usually bustling but hey, we got good service since we were the only ones. The dishes:

Some kind of seaweed soup

Btw, these are yellow oranges not lemons. I've noticed Taiwan has more yellow than orange oranges. Hmm, interesting.

Throughout the meal, two workers and a daughter of theirs continually talked to us hovering within the subject of foreigners, exchanges and college. The daughter wanted to go abroad for college so the mother was interested in talking about it. With fast Chinese going on, I didn’t really partake in the conversation, save of an 1/8 of it. And heck, I think there was some Taiwanese language going on, automatically making me oblivious. XD

Following the tasty meal, we went back home and took a nappie-poo until the father came back from his meeting. An instant noodle dinner with apple juice and nut snacks was consumed with some Wii Sports playtime. Duuuuude. The sword fighting game was the best! I’ve always wanted to try such a videogame on the Wii, a hack-and-slash that makes you feel like a samurai. Taking a moment to step back and observe my movement, I realized my actions looked like they were spit straight from an anime. Haha it rocked! XD

Before going home, a quick trip to the gym was in order as mother and I waited for father to finish whatever he did. Already having sweated enough for one day, horse riding and shaking ‘dem hips were the machines of choice. Good stuff.

That’s all folks! Bye-bye!