On TV the same ceremonies seemed to be going on in Jakarta, with a little more pomp & circumstance of course.

Local area competitions, like log rolls & tree climbing races, etc… seem to be the entertainment of the day on a local level, more so than the parades you might find in the states.

At my house, the family piled into the car with our cousins, and drove ½ hour out of town to a well known bamboo bungalow restaurant perched over fish & shrimp ponds and nearby rice paddies. A lot of eating is done while sitting on the floor here in Indonesia. The table was not quite 2 feet tall.

The menu consisted of basically anything that was swimming or crawling in the waters beneath us. It was actually a cool atmosphere… I just don’t do so well, eating critters that I can recognize as looking back at me.