Who’d be a bunny in Bali?
We tried to be good parents this weekend but things came together and plotted to confound us.
Brigid decided that an Easter egg was the right to thing give Bella, our teenager, and so went into the local deli and noting that the eggs were about $10 opted to buy a chocolate Easter bunny.
As you do.
We arrived back from dinner in Ubud last night to find two very satisfied dogs, licking the tinfoil and then going utterly spare around the property and across the furniture as the sugar hit.
Our friend Sarah had also bought Bella (and her kids) a choccy bunny. The same night she went to a school play and sat on her bag…bunnies inside..mashing said rabbits in her bag.
Messy.
In desperation I went into the local Hardy’s Supermarket this evening and found the very last little chocolate bunny on the shelves. It was Rp38.000 and I took it to the young girl at the check out. It can be quite a wait there. The concept of a queue for less than a dozen items is still alien in Bali, so I waited for 15 minutes patiently whilst the lady buying 40 serves of pot noodles was processed. The checkout girl, quite young, had also not mastered the art of entering the item once then changing the quantity to 40 and was running each one past the scanner individually. After a while you don’t blink at such things here.
Then it was my turn and she tried to run the bar code across the scanner a couple of times…to no avail as it was on the tinfoil wrapped around the bunny. She then smiled at me and decided to make the code more readable and, putting the bunny down, put her hand on it and pushed it flat. Chocolate oozed out the side of the now flattened foil and she smiled again as the reader responded. Cok!, I said, sekerang ini tidak bagus, Saya tak mau. Which roughly translated is what in gods name have you done..I don’t want it now. You must take it said she, no said I. She then rushed off without a word and the young guy behind me started laughing. Ten minutes later she returned, flat bunny, now with part of the foil missing, in hand. Ma’af Bapak, Mungkin Habis (sorry sir, it looks like it’s out of stock) she said with a grin and started to put the chocolate roadkill into my plastic bag and punched the total key.
No…I don’t want it.
You must take now, broken.
Yes, but you broke it.
Sorry mister, you must pay.
No…..
And she decided that I was a lost cause and demurred. I guess it went back on the shelf.
As Brigid said…this island can be very Harry Enfield.
Bella got a chocolate bar.
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1 comment:
Better than her licking the frogs... although Bella may not think so!
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