Back to Bali - Sanur Beach

Sanur, Bali

Very touristy but as soon as you walk out of the motorcycle clogged trafficky streets onto the beach which has a 5 kilometer brick-paved “boardwalk” through shady trees and lovely seaside cafes with cooling sea breezes, it all makes sense why you are here.

the day's offerings to the gods at Little Pond Homestay

I am staying in the Little Pond Homestay, a guesthouse with 12 rooms that face each other down a long narrow courtyard with a lovely little bathing pool in the middle of it. Basic but everything you need and entirely comfortable bed and for $20 a night with air-conditioning it can’t be beat. Two of the guests had brought their own water-boiling kettles and within minutes in the morning I had made my own coffee with the supplies I have been hauling around and it was perfect. As it turns out, there is even a little kitchen that guests can use. A low-key, very friendly place – but I knew that from all the online reviews, which was why I chose it.

The clinic - purple sheets on the gurney

Hired a driver this morning to take me to Ubud so I could get my third rabies shot at the clinic there and pick up my winter clothes that I left at the Artini 2. Ketut was a nice guy who spoke good English and on the way back took me a silversmith store (very expensive) and an extraordinary art galley and then to a very touristy batik shop that at least had a demonstration area outside, but the prices in the store were outrageously high. It was a place for tourists who are afraid of the real market and bargaining.

Finally had a day with no agenda…Had lunch on the beach and then a leg, foot, arm and head massage – an hour for $5 US. Came back at end of day feeling very relaxed and met Harriet, a big-boned woman with curly curly red hair (the perfect Harriet), my age, and just coming off a Quaker service project for displaced persons in Java and we hit it off immediately, shared a beer and went out to dinner at a great place on the beach. I bought her dinner for all of $3.70 since she has run out of money because she left her credit card in an ATM machine in Java and has two days of travel back to the US tomorrow. In the middle of dinner a huge thunderstorm broke loose and all the diners had to run for cover  - they moved the beach tables up against the side of a building and we all huddled in there to wait out yet another torrential downpour which left us wading back through the streets again.

Bad internet here, none at all as I write this probably because of the storm, watching a yellow cat slink around the yard, checking all the guest trashcans on the porches for good eats. I have forgotten to mention waking up in the middle of the night in Tetebatu on Lombok to find a yellow cat sitting on my nightstand looking at me. When I sat up and told it to scat, it slinked out between the bars of the open window – no one could believe I had slept with my window open but it was hard not to in a room without a fan.

Had to carry my netbook to the beach this morning and have breakfast at a cafe, posting my blog and checking emails and bank accounts - and will have to walk it back and change to my bathing suit and come back to swim...oh, what a rough life!