8AM. We meet Gusti, our guide for the day. Quickly the conversation turns to colors, and he talks about how central colors are to his believe system. Colors are used to express yourself at occasions like celebrations, ceremonies and funerals. Not fashionably and randomly, but specific. Each color has a meaning. For example, black stands for sad, the bad in the world. White stands for happiness and goodness. Outside, you can sometimes see or experience only black, or only white. Inside, black and white life within you every day. They can't kill each other and therefore they have to live with each other. Our heart is what balances these, looking for goodness when hardship is around. It our responsibility to pursue goodness, the white, and if we are successful 80% of the time, this is a beautiful world to live in. How's that for the start of your day?

Today is a day where Gusti explained a lot about Hinduism on Bali. It is a truly fascinating set of believes that inspires goodness in every little way. Once aware of its traditions, you see evidence of people pursuing good all around you. I couldn't possibly put into words the stories he shared, so I won't, for fear of misrepresenting something this special. So I will largely stick to describing the sites and experiences of the day.

A brief history on Balinese Hinduism, though. It is the religion of 85% of the people of Bali. It came to Indonesia in the first century through traders. However, the believes were blended with believes already in place to form a unique form of Hinduism found nowhere else in the world. Gusti being a very spiritual person visited India to learn more about Hinduism, and found it hard to understand their believes as it is rather different from his own upbringing in a lot of small ways. How exactly it is different wasn't clear to me, but I was touched by what I heard and saw of Bali's form of Hinduism.

Today we visit temples and rice paddies and we sample the world's most expensive coffee. It starts with Besakih Temple, aka Mother Temple. It is an impressive sight indeed. At 1,000 meters high on Mount Agung, it is the main temple of Hindu religion on Bali. It is comprised of nearly 100 temples. The system of temples is such that families have their own family temple where they pray, have a group temple for their community or a group of communities, and then there are a few public temples. The Mother Temple must be visited on certain occasions, and before you do, you must visit your group temple at the complex. So every group has a temple here. It makes it a most spiritual environment.

Mother comes from the Hindu believe that second after God is mother, since mother gives live. Hence the Mother Temple. It is special to see Gusti confirm things with mom instead of dad during the trip.

Unfortunately it was a wet day with a couple of heavy rain showers, so we have few pictures of Beaskih Temple.

Lunch was overlooking wonderful rice paddies. Rice paddies are farmed in kind of a cooperation kind of way. Once you're in, you get the benefits available to the greater group, like the best possible prices. People coming in to take advantage of just the good of the system are easily overshadowed by those who take part of the whole. Nice balance.

We visited a coffee plantation where the world's most expensive coffee is made: Luwak. The main factor driving the price is the uncommon and hard to scale method of cultivating the beans. You see, they are using a number of civet cats to go find the absolute best beans in the plantation. Usually they pick Arabia with a smaller mix of Robusta. The cats eat the beans, digest it, and their poop is collected by the farmers, washed and roasted. Something that happens about the natural fermentation of the fruit in the cats' stomachs seems to make the difference. Now, we tried it, and I have to say, it is easily the best coffee I have ever had. It is very smooth and doesn't taste burned or really bitter. If it weren't $180 per pound, I would have seriously considered bringing some home to share with you.

Our second public temple, Tampak Siring, was another beautiful complex. Many more lessons, but the main to me was the holy spring water temple. People come here to bathe themselves for blessings (not to wash away their sins). They may take some water home, sanctioned and blessed by a monk, for a celebration in their village or at their family temple. It's a good place to visit if you're ever here, but make sure you have a guide who can help you understand to full relevance of the site.

Our final stop, per our request, was Gusti's workshop. You see, in addition to being a guide, he comes from a long heritage of woodcarvers, and his other job is therefore that of an artist. We visited his family's workplace, and mom and dad ended up selecting something they wanted to take away from Bali: a piece of art that commemorates their 50-years together as well as this trip with the family to Bali. They found it, see pictures.

The day ended with a buffet at a usually highly recommended restaurant, with more Balinese dancing. Somewhere along the way, we had all forgotten it was Christmas eve, and naturally dinner arrangements would be a little different. What a wonderful feeling of letting go!