South East Asia on a Hamstring – January 15

Ubud, Bali – January 15, 2000

I woke up several times during the night, disturbed by the sound of crickets, geckos, and unidentified weird things.

Someone knocked at my door. I told them to wait, assuming it was housekeeping. Ten minutes later I opened up and was embarrassed to discover that it was Andy, the Intrepid leader. He explained to me that Intrepid tries to have little impact on the areas we travel through and told me that the Aussies are on a bit of a boycott of Indonesia at the moment, so the

rumors of drunken Aussies all over Bali were going to stay rumors.

Our group consisted of an older Canandian couple, a young New Zealand Indian couple, me, a trainee (and my roommate) named Joanne, and Andy. A group of seven – that’s a size I can live with.

Post-meeting, I walked through Ubud, trying to find a place to gets my roots bleached. All of the salons stared wide-eyed at my roots and the answer was always the same, “we are sorry but we do not have that color.” Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to live with multi-colored hair. Won’t be the first time.

I visited the Monkey Forest. Tons and tons of monkeys live there, playing in the trees and on the local temples. Tourists are not supposed to feed the monkeys, but “monkey-handlers” can bring bunches of bananas to lure the monkeys over. The monkeys are happy, the tourists are happy – it works out for everyone.

One frisky young monkey took a liking to my skirt and grabbed it. I grabbed it back. The monkey bared his teeth at me and grabbed my skirt again. I called him an undignified name and grabbed back my skirt and quickly got a safe distance away from the cheeky monkey.

Later, I met our group. All 7 of us took a minivan to the night market in a nearby town. The locals go there to buy used clothing and to snack on various Balinese dishes. We all bought spicy noodles from the foodcarts and ate up, happy to spend a quarter on dinner.

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