Bali is looking up

Hello from Ubud, Bali.
We've thankfully moved on from Kuta Beach to a nice village called Ubud which is the cultural capital of Bali. We've seen a traditonal dance and heard cool gamelan music, also took a small trek around beatuful rice paddies where this farmer taught us how to properly eat a young coconut. So far the highlight has been a Balinese cooking class Gay and I took. We ended up being the only people taking the class so we started out with a private tour, led by a chef, of the local market then back to a resturant where he taught us how to make about 8 traditional Balinese dishes and also got to eat all of them. I'm still stuffed. It's been cool and we got some great pictures. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to upload these things.
Anyway, we've been averaging about $25/person a day which isn't bad considering we've set a $35/day/person goal, fully realizing some days will be more than others, especially in Japan. It's hard to judge how thrifty you should be. We want to have enough to last us for the entire trip, on the other hand we want to be able to do things we want without the weight of goig bankrupt. It's a fine line we're dealing with. As for now we're pretty much just going for it. If we see things we want then we just do it, everything is so cheap here anyway. Tomorrow we're going to take a guided push bike tour around a nearby village.

Bye for now...
Jon and Gay