Villa Sedap Malam.

Sedap Malam is the name of our home here in Ubud.

The name comes from my favourite Balinese flower, in English it's called the Tuber Rose. 

Such a heady pungent sweet fragrance which comes out at night. Malam means evening in Indonesian and Sedap means pleasant, tasteful and delicious. 

We have planted 10 Sedap Malams in our garden and house is full of them the scent comes out at night and gives a feeling of magic, speaking of magic one of my favourite things to do is look at the rice paddies in the evening and see the fireflies zooming around.

I have never seen anything like it. Michael Leunig said that they were all gone from Ubud and I'm so excited to say that we have them on our property, which tells me that not a lot of pesticide is used on our rice.....thank goodness.

Our Villa is three years old and was built by our neighbour Bapak (father). Wayan, his son is our housekeeper and between them and Ibu (mother), we are so looked after. They do everything from building maintenance, painting, gardening and cleaning, to security watch, paying our bills, picking up the laundry and booking transport the list goes on and on. They have become family and their children and grandchildren Putu and Made are always over to play and to see what they can score- either a Yakult, iceypole, biscuit etc. etc. We love it!

The villa sits in the front of a rice Padi alongside the river, the view is outstanding, ken and I both pray to the Gods that it will stay that way. Ubud has become a tourist hot spot and many rice padis have now been converted to villas, and in the last year the price for land has risen by 30%.

Magical things happen here all the time....also some pretty hair raising things as well, now we just take everything in our stride. The day we bought the house I opened the side door and a snake slid out WTF??#^*¥"!! and that was just the beginning. 

We have snakes,geckos,rats, dragons,rats, frogs, spiders, rats, chickens, random dogs bats and yes rats!!

I cannot believe that the princess me is so used to it now, it just seems normal, but I am relieved that finally we have the rats out of the house after removing the kitchen cupboards and ripping up the decking, they now live in the backyard feasting on the chicken food.

Actually they look quite cute, 4 year old Putu came over the other day proudly holding a dead baby rat CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!.... Can you believe that I'm still here? Well I love it,the occasional scream still comes out every now and then but quite rare compared to the early days.

We are very happy with our dream home but thought we might make a few adjustments, like putting in a Koi pond, don't know what happened but can't get to the front door now as there is not much earth left!! What a project, Ken is in his element though sometimes dumbstruck and thinking WTF have we done.

The workers come at 7am eat breaky slog away until 12 have lunch a bowl of rice and then all go and sleep in the Bale Benong,( the Bale Benong is a large outdoor mattress  built into a little pavilion, I spend a lot of my time there ) it's lovely Ken and I quietly creep around the workers whilst they are sleeping  and at the end of the day Ken sends them home with a Bintang, they are the happiest workers in Ubud. Did you know the average wage of a working man here is $7.00 a day, tops $10.00.

As usual I can go on and on but you will have to wait until next time.

Cinta J

PS: I have just found this blog I'm sorry I've been so slack it's been waiting there for 6 months now, can you believe how quick time passes? I have so much more to tell, and now that I think I'm getting the hang of this you might hear from me again sooner.