We have nine glorious days to spend at this resort and each one has been great-we have never had nine whole days of downtime where we neither one had to be somewhere or doing something-and we still like each other so overall I’d say this is working out well!!! This will be quick because I don’t have a ton to report, but just wanted to share how amazing this place is. We have been surfing, stand up paddle-boarding, on long walks to nearby villages, to a local market which was super interesting and an Indonesian lady told Deeter to kiss her kiss her, instead of allegedly excuse me excuse me. This market was filled with fish, fruits that I didn’t even know existed until we were here, clothes for kids, purses, flip flops, dying kittens that no one seemed to notice. I was thinking about this incredibly disturbing site, but I figured when you have people who are barely surviving, it’s probably a little difficult to justify feeding a baby cat. Didn’t make it any easier to see though. Sometime I will tell you about the cat at our hotel who somehow adopted us and we didn’t know and contemplated the idea that someone maybe was trying to put a hex on us. Deeter says when the do that they leave a dog on your doorstep…so no dogs yet…I guess we are safe. Apparently this island is full of “black magic” and hexes and the like…we have been more impressed wit the surfing, food, locals an surroundins. We have visited a local “metropolis” of Negara with a large store…aka the equivalent of Walmart here known as Hardy’s…it was a little interesting to see this big company come into an area full of mom and pop shops…a whole new world is developing for these people. It meant getting some snickers bars for 10 cents for us and having a little taste of home after almost a month of being gone. We visited Jakan Negar, a Hindu temple in the area today and while it was beautiful, it mostly just made me really excited to see the extensive Angkor Wat in a couple of days. As part of our outing today we also went to some local buffalo races. Pretty sure I saw one other cracker there, otherwise the place was filled with locals. The buffalos were adorned with beautiful costumes and they carried a dude in a rickety at best cart. But the truly disturbing part was the stick they used to beat the buffalo with to make them move and the spikes sticking out of the stick. It was beyond disturbing to see and hear the whack of the stick against their skin…it kind of haunts me. We didn’t stay very long. Our guide said that in west Bali, buffalo races are popular. Everything was adorned in green and red to represent east and west Bali-red representing the west. It was crazy to see so many locals out and converging in one place, but it was probably my least favorite part of our stay here. We also got to go to a turtle conservatory. Jordi-this was what you wanted to do while we were in Mexico. We didn’t even have to develop an action plan around these turtle people-they were MUCH calmer and low key than those in Mexico! They dig up any eggs on the beach and they re-bury them in a fenced in area. Then when they hatch, they keep them for a little bit in a pool and feed them fish. They are then released when they seem strong enough to survive. We got to see a ton of baby Olive Ridleys, a one year old Ridley and two Hawkbill three year olds. So much fun!!! We got to release five into the ocean…Pablo, Petey, Huey, Duey and Luey all made it successfully into the wild-we even got to watch them swim out for quite a way! It was the highlight of today for sure! Eventually, we wound our way back to our little paradise and have been enjoying the pool, the surf and the Bintang since. Our wifi finally allowed us to download some stuff on our iPads and I think we are happy to have a little something to watch tonight-which will be a little different since we haven’t turned on a tv since we left. We have truly loved our time here…and with three more days to go in this beach paradise, I’m certain we will continue to love every minute before heading to Cambodia on the night of the 24th!
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