"Transport??"

Selamat sore,
In other words—good afternoon.

It’s us again. But THIS time we are reaching out from Ubud, Bali; a breath of fresh air after our dusty trails in Cambodia and polluted cities of Thailand. Everything is beautifully green and covered in moss. Little carved faces peek out at us from every corner and entrance to family compounds—many with ceremonial offerings of white rice and flowers. We are happy to be here, though it was quite a wild ride to reach this point on the map.

Shortly after our last update when we were in Siem Reap, we made a quick dash to the capital city of Phnom Penh. In our short visit, we went to the Killing Fields memorial site; a place where great numbers of people were executed during the genocide of the Pol Pot regime.

“Today Misra and I visited the killing fields just outside of the Phnom Penh. What an intense experience. There is a large, glass stupa encasing about 800 human skulls of the 17,000-plus people who were sistematically slaughtered and dumped into mass graves (mostly cambodians, but a fair number of foreigners, too.) Within the first five minutes of being at the memorial, I was physically affected to the extent that I really believed I was going to puke. I was shaking and almost started to cry---definitely shaken up. There were large, filled-in pits where the bodies were deposited and even on the dirt pathways I could see were bones poked through the earth and had been worn away by the feet of many tourists. Shards of tattered clothing were everywhere--lodged in the ground and raked into piles here and there. What a way to start my morning! Also, in the middle of the site, there is a huge, old and gorgeous tree which is called the Magic Tree--it looks like a wise old thing and one of the only friendly ones in sight. Well, the Magic Tree was used as a stand for large loud-speakers that would radiate a loud noise (uspecified) to drown out the moans of the tortured and dying prisoners---men, women, children, educated people, "weak people" with glasses or physical dissabilities, monks and foreigners. There were signs that even shared the fact soldiers would bludgeon the heads of the prisoners to kill them so they could save their precious bullets for other uses. Augh! How aweful! It makes me so sad! I felt that it was a very important place to visit...almost as if I had a responsibility to do so--not quite sure why.

Please don't let this put a damper on your day.” --from one of Cailin’s emails

Afterwards, we made our way back to Bangkok in time to catch our flight to Denpasar, Bali. Except…it didn’t quite work out the way we planned. Rising bright and early on the morning of our departure, we took a taxi to the airport. There we discovered—oh no!-- the departure time printed on our travel itinerary was off by one hour. We had missed our check-in cut-off by ten minutes, thus missing our flight to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia and connecting flight to Bali. Bummer. After arguing with the check-in lady (“please, please let us through—we can run—we can still make our flight!”), she was firm in saying there was nothing she could do and pointed us towards the sales counter. In the end, we each bought ourselves two new plane tickets , waited in the BKK airport for seven hours, boarded our flight after an additional hour of delay and landed in Kuala Lampur for an overnight-layover (no flights left for Bali until the next morning) just in time for dinner.

Where to eat? Well we’ve got McDonalds or Asian Food. Asian Food it is! What’s on the menu? Well, looks like we’ve got a lot of options to choose from—that’s nice. Oh. You’ve only got Nasi Lemak? Fresh out of EVERYTHING else? Hmm. Nasi Lemak or Nasi Lemak? We’ll take two of the Nasi Lemak, please.

Stuffed on Nasi Lemak (white rice with fried egg, peanuts, and some beef chunks with sauce), we found this airport was also fresh out of seats and any place to sleep. We spent a very strange, very long, very uncomfortable and rather amusing night on the cold, hard tiled floor of the only terminal in the entire airport. We couldn’t help but notice the large sign hanging from the ceiling boasting “Low-cost terminal of the year”—woopdeedoo. Luckily we survived the night. Any future airport slumber parties will probably be very cush in comparison.

Since our arrival in Ubud, Bali, we’ve been thoroughly enjoying the following: scrumptious food, a working toilet, free breakfasts included with accommodation, very friendly people, a lively market, dances, loads of fresh fruit, ample sleep, and the amazing artistry of the Balinese (among many other things). We have enjoyed a silversmithing course where we made some silver jewelry—foot-pedal-powered blowtorch and all. Last night we went to see a Kecak (Ke-chek) fire and trance dance which told the story of the Ramayana with amazing dancers and costumes. The only music was the rhythmic voices of over one-hundred men dressed in checkered sarongs and sitting in concentric circles around the dancers. This was followed by a man dressed as a horse who was in some sort of trance and danced through a fire of coconut husks—prancing over red-hot coals for a good five or ten minutes. We saw the sooty, but unharmed feet of the dancer afterwards—ouch?

Thursday morning we leave for the Gili Islands of Lombok (the island just east of Bali)—by evening we should be settled in on one of the three islands. We have until mid-February to travel through Lombok, Eastern Java and elsewhere in Bali before we return to Ubud to volunteer at the Yayasan Bumi Sehat birthing clinic. Hope all of you are enjoying this new year!

Best wishes, love, everything good, cheers, “mimpi manis”,
Us