Beaches, Babes, and Bombs

We washed up in Kuta on the wonderful island of Bali and decided to pause for a day to collect ourselves.

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More than any other country, Indonesia required quite a lot of advanced planning.  Mostly because it has so many islands.  So we had to reserve a Komodo island trip, organize various legs of transportation, and get a rather dubious flight.

The flight has been the most worrisome.  We plan to overland out to the middle of nowhere, on the isolated island of Flores, and then fly back.  There is only one carrier, Merpati, that flies this route.  They have a wonderful website that looks great but doesn't work.  And they don't respond to emails.  So finally we arrived in Indonesia and booked the flight.  They are booked up two weeks in advance for this one, daily flight.  We just made it.  And we have to reconfirm or they'll drop us.  On a phone we may or may not have, to a number that may or may not work, at an office that may or may not exist.  And they doubled the price and charged us $25 for insurance because they have a monopoly.  This is fun.  We'll keep you updated.  But everything is more or less taken care of.

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We also got to spend a little time at the beach.  It's a surfer's paradise, with big, beautiful waves.  It also means you have thousands of Australians saying things like, "Let's go catch that curl, dude."  There are also thousands of friendly Balinese offering you massages, surfboards, blankets, chairs, watches, and sarongs.  Constantly and persistently around the clock.  We went down to watch the sunset and we found ourselves on the beach with thousands of people, both tourists and Balinese.  It's pure commercialism.  And its kind of nice after all our isolation. 

We also visited the somber bomb memorial, which lists all the people who were killed in the 2002 bombing that destroyed the innocence of this town.  Here's hoping that it doesn't happen again.

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~Travis 

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