I've got another picture-word imbalance. It was a long walk so we took lots of photos, but there's only so much I can say about rice. So while I post more pics from the walk, I'll talk about the Balinese language. The Balinese have spent a huge amount of time making their language as confusing as possible, by basing it on the caste system. As a Hindu culture, everyone belongs to a strict hierarchy of castes, which define almost every aspect of daily life. This includes language, so they've come up with three very different languages, one to use for classes beneath the speaker, one to speak with one's equals, and another to speak to classes above the speaker. I guess one benefit to being at the very top or bottom of the hierarchy is you only have to learn two of these languages, but overall this seems pointlessly complicated. Plus of course everyone needs to learn bahasa Indonesian, and many people need English given the island's dependence on tourism. Perhaps to compensate for this needless complexity, they've established extremely simple rules on people's names, presumably so expectant parents don't have to waste time thinking up baby names and can learn another language instead. But I'll use a discussion of names for a later post when I'm looking for some more filler.

By the way, in the distance behind the rice field, you can just make out the faint outline of a volcano. That's Mount Agung, Bali's biggest, and consequently most sacred, volcano. Mount Agung dominates east Bali, where Amankila, our next hotel, is located.