Travellers are strange fish
Trip Start
Jul 05, 2008
1
7
30
Trip End
Aug 30, 2008
Ubud,
Indonesia
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Rewind back to the cremation from the previous entry. I was standing on the death-sidewalk next to a very sweaty German family : mom, dad, and 3 young kids all under 12. Dad is thristy and goes looking for a beer. Fair enough. He returns with a bottle of Bintang, the Indonesian beer, that comes in 1L bottles. The whole family clusters around him as he pries it open, with an air of desparation, using a key. He takes a swig, then passes it around the family. Even the kids drink it as naturally as if it was a bottle of spring water.
Scene Two: Desensitization
I was walking back to the hotel and saw a woman (tourist) kneeling beside a sick dog and gently stroking it
Kuta Beach, Bali, Indonesia
. There is a vet there, part of a Balinese animal welfare group. The woman is crying. She speaks perfect Bahasa. The vet administers what I gather to be a lethal dose of something to put the dog down. The tourist pets the dog as he passes away. The vet closes his eyes. The worst part is that I remember passing this dog on my way into town earlier. He was obviously ill in a way that anyone who's been to Taiwan would recognize: thin, bald scaby patches, not moving, etc. The thing is that I saw so many of those dogs in Taiwan that this one in Bali didn't even register to me. The scale of my desensitization was brought home by this random tourist who called the emergency vet for a dog she didn't know or own, and stood their grieving for its death.
MORE BALI PICTURES:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=50922&id=512559754&l=265a2d6c8f
